The savory smells of eggs and bacon permeated the diner as the late breakfast crowd began to filter out. Val sat in a booth tucked away in the corner, out of sight of any news reporters that might be lurking nearby, and sifted through a stack of folders. Her cell phone beeped.
Tell me what the pancakes taste like, Max texted her.
She patted the half-eaten buttermilk slab with her fork and licked the syrup off the prongs. Sweet maple on top of blueberry goo, melted butter seeped into the bread. YUMMMM, she texted back.
A minute later, her phone beeped again: Damn you.
She responded: Don’t ask if u don’t want 2 know.
I thought I could handle it. I was wrong.
She chuckled, then forced herself to push the phone away. If she didn’t stop texting with him, she’d never get any work done. Val picked through the folders, each one a new case for Valentine Investigations. Since word had gotten out that she’d “cracked the Carressa case,” all the clients that had jumped ship during her time on the lam came running back, plus a flood of new ones. Business had never been so busy, though she spent most of her days at the hospital with Max, keeping him company while he healed. If he got the all-clear from his doctors, he could finally check out that afternoon and go home. Maybe eat some solid foods.
The familiar beep sounded from her phone again, enticing her like the rattle of a box of Meow Mix to a hungry cat. Val tapped a folder she’d laid open and tried to read Stacey’s hand-written notes above an e-mail chain, but she couldn’t stop eyeing her phone. She bit her lip, then snatched up the cell and read the text: I hate green jello. I will never eat it again. NEVER.
Val wrote back: And chocolate pudding.
No, I could never hate chocolate pudding. A moment later, he texted: Get me out of here.
A warm smile spread across her lips. She would read through a couple more cases, finish her coffee, then head back to the hospital.
Eh, what the hell—she’d already looked through five of them; she could look at the rest later. And the coffee wasn’t great anyway. Val closed the folder, put it back on top of the stack, and fished money out of her pocket to pay the bill and go.
As she waited for the server to bring her change, Val’s gaze fell on the television suspended above the take-out counter, its volume muted. Delilah Barrister stood in front of a podium before a slew of reporters, her face a mask of anguish despite perfectly coifed hair and makeup. Norman Junior stood close behind her—Derek, the text at the bottom of the screen read. He scrunched his face in an unconvincing version of “concerned” while he held his mother’s shoulders and stared blankly off-camera. “Live—Delilah and Derek Barrister Speak Publicly for the First Time Since Norman Barrister’s Death,” the headline read.
“Giovanni Dinapoli had been terrorizing us for months,” the closed captioning on the TV spelled out as Delilah talked. His mug shot floated into the corner of the screen. Strange, Delilah had never mentioned Dinapoli to Val. “He threatened my life and my son’s life if Norman didn’t pay him. Norman wanted to go to the police, but I convinced him not to, for the sake of our family.” She wept as Derek patted her shoulder.
Val narrowed her eyes at the television. Was that true? Why hadn’t she told Val about the extortion? Sure, Delilah obsessed over appearances and was willing to lie through her teeth and leave Val dangling in the wind to maintain her perfect housewife image, but it still seemed like a fairly major detail to leave out if she truly feared for her life. Without taking her eyes off the TV, Val slurped down coffee. Her mouth had gone dry. Something didn’t add up here.
Delilah composed herself and went on. “In the end, my husband did the right thing and confronted Mr. Dinapoli. He stood up for our family and it cost him his life. My husband is a hero.”
The camera panned out to show members of the Seattle Police Department nodding behind her. And holy shit, there was Sten. Val choked and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. He stood behind Delilah and to her right, his hand wrapped in a bandage, faded bruises still coloring his face around the giant mustache. He nodded enthusiastically along with everyone else. What the hell was he doing there? If Barrister had owned the police, and Sten worked for Barrister, did Sten now work for Barrister’s widow? Val didn’t totally understand how the transfer of illegal power worked, but she doubted allegiances would shift that easily.
Unless they hadn’t actually shifted.
No. No. It wasn’t possible. She wouldn’t even entertain the idea she’d been played that badly. There was absolutely no way Sten had been working for Delilah all along, that she was the one who could see the future, that she’d told Barrister about Lester Carressa’s impending death and maneuvered Sten against Val and Max.
No way Delilah had tricked Val into coming to the Pacific Science Center, knowing she’d run into Barrister, knowing she’d kill him.
A wave of nausea hit her. Ridiculous. Paranoia clouded her thoughts again. She needed to get a grip on reality, and get the hell out of there before she puked all over the table. Hands shaking, Val began throwing the folders back in her tote. She stopped when she noticed a stack of mail wedged in the middle, a manila envelope with no return address among the bills. These must be the e-mails Delilah had promised, the ones that incriminated her husband. Breathing a sigh of relief, Val pulled out the large piece of mail and ripped it open. Barrister’s wife had come through after all.
Val dumped the envelope’s contents on the table. They were indeed e-mails, thank God. She read the first one, only two lines, from someone named “Fortuna” to an unknown recipient:
I’ve told dearest he needs to take care of R. That should bring M and V together, as you’ve requested.
What the hell was this? She looked at the date—five days before Robby died. R, M, and V…No. She pushed it aside and read the next one, from Fortuna again, written three days after Robby died:
R gone. M and V made contact.
Then the next one, written by Fortuna six days after Robby died:
M and V together. Our asset made sure they’d stay that way for a while. Everything going according to plan. Stop worrying. You rely too much on your Alpha.
“No,” Val whispered. Goddamn her. Goddamn her! Covered in a cold sweat, Val splayed the rest of the e-mails across the table in a manic attempt to read them all at once. Each was short, one to three lines long, primarily from Fortuna to an anonymous account. They all said some version of the same thing: Get rid of R. Get M and V together. Keep M and V together.
Val struggled to keep down her breakfast. Robby did die because of her. Someone desperately wanted her and Max to be together, and they’d enlisted Delilah, aka Fortuna, to make it happen. But why did it matter? Why were they important?
She got her answer from one of the last e-mails, dated three days ago:
They’re in love, as I foretold it—me, not your Alpha. Remember that. A child is certain, no matter what happens now. I expect the support you promised per our deal. The wheels of political progress need greasing.
It wasn’t Max and Val that were important—it was their offspring. These anonymous people wanted to steal their future child, the beautiful boy or girl she’d seen in her visions. God no. Hell no. She backhanded the e-mail away as if she could reach through the page and slap Delilah herself. That’s when she saw the paper underneath, the last in the collection Delilah had sent, not an e-mail but a blank page with a single handwritten note:
Thank you for killing my idiot husband.
She sat frozen, her mind reeling. The waitress wandered by and asked if she’d like a coffee refill for the road; it was all Val could do to shake her head in response. She could take all these e-mails to the FBI, or even the media, but how would she explain them? It made no sense without disclosing the whole future-seeing aspect of it, and nobody would believe that. Even Delilah’s personal message to Val, as damning as it seemed, meant nothing without the context behind it, and that bitch knew it. Whether or not Barrister had truly been abusive, Delilah was no victim. She and Barrister were two fucked-up peas in a pod. Delilah had sent her this glut of information solely to torture her. And it had worked.
Her eyes wandered back to the TV, where the squeaky-clean public version of Delilah Barrister, mourning yet stoic widow, still addressed an audience of reporters at the press conference.
“I’ve talked about this at great length with my family, and we think the best way to honor Norman’s memory is to continue his fight for this city and state that he loved. Therefore, I will be taking my husband’s place in the run for mayor.”
The closed captioning noted excited gasps from the audience.
Delilah looked at the camera. “I ask that everyone that would have voted for my husband, and those that are still undecided, cast your vote for the values and integrity my husband gave his life for, and for a better future for Seattle and Washington State.”
Val remembered her first vision with Max:
I’m standing on the balcony of Max’s house, the balcony where he threw his father to his death. The sky is overcast, the water is black. All of the glass is cracked, and trash is strewn everywhere. At my feet I see a weathered newspaper with a headline that reads:
President Barrister Declares War
Before I can check the date or read the article, the brightest light I’ve ever seen bursts in the sky and mushrooms upward. I hear and feel a rumbling that grows louder, shattering the glass around me, until a shock wave hits and I’m engulfed in flames. I’m screaming as the fire chars the flesh off my body and roasts my bones.
President Barrister—Delilah Barrister. For Delilah’s help, these anonymous and powerful people had promised her a ticket to the White House. And Val had danced like a fucking puppet to her lies.
Still feeling like she might vomit at any moment, Val gathered the papers back together, dumped them in her bag, and crawled out of the booth. The TV finally cut away from Delilah, onto a different subject: “Secret Sex Tape of Mayor Brest and Unidentified Blond Woman Goes Viral on Internet—Poll Numbers Plunge.”
Her cell phone rang on her way out the door. She glanced at it and saw Max’s number on the caller ID. Their child couldn’t be stolen if they never had one. Tears filled her eyes as she watched it ring, and ring, until it went to voice mail, unanswered.