The gunshot cracked through the cemetery, drowning out every other sound so all Val could hear was its echo ringing in her ears. Dean’s head jerked back with the blast and his body slumped to the ground, six feet above his dead son. She watched blood leak out of the back of his head and pool in the grass, the gun still in his limp right hand.
Did she just goad Dean into killing himself? Or had he planned to commit suicide before he’d even shown up? Maybe he’d been on the edge, and Val had pushed him over. God knows he looked like hell, was drunk and probably not thinking straight. Racked with grief as his murder-for-campaign-donations scheme had spiraled out of his control, culminating in his son’s death for reasons even he didn’t understand. Dean made a terrible mistake entering into a deal with the devil in the form of Barrister, but Robby wouldn’t have wanted this. She’d pushed Dean too hard.
I killed him, she thought as she stared at his body, the gunshot still ringing in her ears. I killed Robby, and then I killed his father.
Dean’s figure began to recede from her vision as if her mind left her body and floated away from the cemetery. After a moment Val realized that her mind was still in fact attached to her body—it was her body that moved, dragged away from the gravesite by Max. He held her arm tight and pulled her across the grass, dodging headstones and members of the funeral party that had suddenly appeared all around them.
“Oh my God!” “Was that a gunshot?” “There’s a man on the ground over there!” “Is that a pistol in his hand?” “I think they shot him.” “Is that Maxwell Carressa?” “It is Maxwell Carressa, and his girlfriend!” “Someone call the police!”
Their voices drifted past her, faces blurs as Max pulled harder on her arm, forcing her to move faster. She tried to yank herself away and tell him she could walk on her own, but her body wouldn’t respond to her commands.
“Somebody stop them!”
They stumbled downhill, her legs struggling to keep her body upright out of reflex. Max stopped her in front of the car, threw open the door, and shoved her inside.
“Get the license plate number!”
Max jumped into the driver’s side, started the car, and punched the gas. He threaded around the vehicles that surrounded them and swerved to avoid a would-be vigilante who jumped in front of their path. The single lane of pavement that wound through the cemetery turned into a side street, and the side street turned into a main street. Grocery stores and coffee shops zipped by.
With a shudder, Val’s mind snapped back into her body and she regained control of herself. She opened her mouth to ask Max where they were going, but a sob burst forth instead. It seized her whole body and surged in a tidal wave of grief she was helpless to stop. She pulled her knees to her chest as the pain flowed out in heaving sobs while Max drove. What had she done? How many people would die because of her? He’d put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, no hesitation. She’d pushed him. It was my fault. My fault…
My fault echoed in her mind until darkness enveloped them and the car stopped.
Val sat with her head buried in her arms until the flow of anguish ebbed and her thoughts began to clear. She looked up. “Where are we?” she asked between hiccups.
“A parking garage in Eastlake,” Max said, his face still a sickly shade of white. “Parents of an ex-girlfriend of mine have a boathouse here that’s in foreclosure. She asked me for a loan a couple months ago. It’s probably still empty.” He leaned back into the headrest and squeezed his eyes shut. “We need to ditch this car. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go that was close to the cemetery.”
She wiped the tears from her face with her sweater sleeve. Streaks of black stained the gray cotton, runoff from her Goth Girl eyeliner. She almost laughed; now they both looked like strung-out junkies.
Max lifted his head upright and let out a long exhale. “We have to walk four blocks.” He opened his eyes and stared at the concrete wall on the other side of the windshield for a few seconds, like he steeled himself with what little strength he had left, then looked at her.
Val took a deep breath, pushing away the image of Dean eating a bullet. “Okay.” She took Lester’s gun and the burner phone out of the glove box and shoved them into the deep pockets of her hoodie, and handed Max the stack of Lester’s cash to carry. Then they left the car and everything in it, a bunch of stuff they wouldn’t need anymore and couldn’t carry down the street without attracting attention anyway.
Outside the parking garage, cars ambled past as streetlamps popped on in the twilight. They were in what looked like a quaint tourist area, with restaurants and antique shops lining both sides of the narrow road. Val listened for police sirens and heard none. Max began walking down the street, his head down and hood up over his baseball cap. She hurried to catch up with him, then grabbed his arm and swung it over her shoulders as she hooked her arm around his waist. He didn’t ask what she was doing, so he must’ve understood—a young couple arm-in-arm who looked like hell might just be trust fund kids coming back from a rough party, while two shady characters stalking down a well-to-do street would garner more suspicion from curious onlookers. Max walked at a good clip but she felt his chest heaving with the strain, and his hand was like ice in hers. Every second they strolled in the open felt like dodging a prison spotlight.
He cut across the street and down a hill into a posh residential area nestled against the waters of Lake Union. Many of the houses stood dark—either second homes that were empty for the season or homes that were for sale. Max turned right and stopped at a small two-story house with lush wood siding, a burnished blue front door, and a sign that said “Foreclosure” next to the mailbox. After confirming that no one in the sleepy neighborhood was obviously around, they walked to the back along a porch that floated over the water. Max punched a code into a keypad at the back door—of course he would know the code, probably guessed it based on the Julian date of his ex-girlfriend’s sister’s birthday or something—and the door clicked open. Val followed him inside.
The house was dark and cool, permeated with the musty smell of a place that hadn’t been occupied in some time. Val squinted to make out the kitchen they stood in, counters bare save for a decorative bowl with plastic apples in it, the hallmark of a home staged for open houses. She followed Max through the kitchen, into a living room, then up a set of stairs. A master bedroom occupied the entire second floor, with a sliding glass door that led out to a deck overlooking the lake. Max closed the blinds while Val fumbled in the dark of an adjoining bathroom for a hand towel. She yanked one off its hook and draped it over the nightstand lamp before turning it on, giving them a dim halo of light to see with.
Val went back to the bathroom and used one of the two sinks to wash the black crap off her face. Max appeared next to her and used the other sink to splash water on his face. Then he lunged for the toilet and threw up.
She was surprised he’d gone this long without losing it. He was already weak with a lingering concussion when they’d arrived at the cemetery. Then he had to watch a man who confessed to being his real father blow his brains out, and then drag his partner to safety after she froze up. God—all the ways she’d fucked up, and forced him along for the ride. Maybe it would’ve been better if she’d stayed out of his life.
When his retches stopped, she handed him water in a fish-shaped glass she found next to the sink. Without looking at her, he took the cup from where he slumped over the toilet and rinsed out his mouth, then drank the rest in desperate gulps. He pushed himself up, stumbled to the bed, and collapsed into a sitting position on the floor, his back against the mattress.
Val took off her laden hoodie and gun holster and let them fall to the floor. She sat on the ground across from Max. “Is it true?”
“How the fuck should I know?” He took off his baseball cap and ran a trembling hand through his dark hair. “Dean was a friend of the family—my parents’ friend, not mine. I saw him maybe twice a year at most before my father—Lester—died.”
“Robby was your half brother—”
“If Dean was telling the truth. He wasn’t thinking clearly, obviously. Who knows what the truth is.”
“I don’t think he’d lie and then kill himself.”
“Then why’d he leave me there?” Max’s hands balled into fists. “If I was his son, why’d he leave me with a piece of shit like Lester? Because Lester had money? Because money makes people good parents? Because a guy who murdered his wife would make a wonderful father?”
“Are you sure Lester murdered your mother?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know anything!”
Max took a deep breath and raked another hand through his hair as he struggled to calm himself. They needed to keep the noise down. If the neighbors noticed activity from a house that was supposed to be empty, they’d surely call the police.
“I’d always suspected,” Max said, his voice quieter. “I was told she died in a car accident. I hoped it was true.”
“Okay, well, the past is the past.” Val stood and paced across the shag throw rug as Max eyed her with heavy lids. “Now that Dean is gone, all we have is the accountant who helped embezzle the money to corroborate the murder-for-political-donations scheme. And maybe Delilah, if whatever evidence she has is worth anything. But it could be nothing, so you need to remember the accountant’s name.”
Max sighed. “I can’t.”
“Try again.”
“I already have.”
“Try harder!” She rounded on him. “If you can’t remember, then we have nothing! Dean and Chet and Robby will never be avenged. You’ll go to prison for a crime you didn’t commit, and Barrister will get away with multiple murders.”
“So what if I go to prison? I don’t have any family left, and my ‘friends’ are acquaintances at best. No one would care.”
“I would care!” She scoffed. “You know what? Fuck you, Max. Fuck you for making me care when you can’t even be bothered to give a shit that you’re being framed for murder.”
“I’m not being framed.”
“The hell you’re not.” Val wanted to yank him off the floor by his shirt collar and shake the apathy out of him. “Dean told us Norman killed your father. It must’ve been either Dean or someone else working for Norman that leaked fake evidence to the police that you killed Lester. That’s a pretty classic frame job to me.”
Max looked at the floor. “Norman Barrister didn’t kill my father.”
“He probably hired someone else to do it, but if he ordered it, then he might as well have done the killing himself—”
“I know Norman didn’t do it because I did it,” Max said. He looked at Val. “I killed my father.”