Valentine Shepherd: Retribution Part 14

"I know that, Max. I'm not stupid."

Knowing the odds was one thing; hoping anyway was another. When he pushed the door open, Val barreled past him into the dark room, praying to a G.o.d she had little faith in that Margaret would be there, alive and still in one piece. She held her breath and flicked the light on.

Yet again, G.o.d did her no favors. She and Max stood alone in an upscale if generic office, a mahogany desk and executive leather chair set up for the use of guests. Val took a moment to push back a lump in her throat. She surveyed the room and shook off her disappointment. Margaret remained missing, but they'd found the next best thing-Lucien's temporary office s.p.a.ce. A laptop sat on the desk. An odd silver suitcase leaned against the opposite wall, next to a rolling tote.

"You look through the computer," she told Max. "I'll take the suitcase." She would've preferred to just grab the computer and run, but they'd almost certainly be caught trying to sneak anything large out of the building if they intended to keep up their ruse and leave the way they came in.

Max pulled off his mask and dropped it on the desk as he concentrated on the laptop. Val pushed her own mask off her face but didn't remove it completely, fearing she wouldn't be able to get it back on without messing up her wig. As she knew he'd done with the cypher lock, Max used information he'd gleaned from earlier visions to crack open pa.s.sword-protected files while Val searched the suitcase. She unsnapped a couple of latches on the side and lifted the top. Black foam surrounded a collection of what looked like medical equipment. She recognized a jet injector, but not a palm-sized gadget next to the injector with three wires and a plastic tube sticking out of a triangle-shaped body.

Val held up the triangular gizmo for Max. "What is this?"

He glanced up from the laptop for half a second. "I don't know. I'm not a doctor."

She couldn't believe he hadn't at least read about how to be a doctor, with all the books he devoured. Val put the gizmo back and eyed another mysterious object, this one a series of seven tiny gla.s.s flasks connected with a strange red metallic tubing. None of the odd objects had serial numbers or brand names on them. She popped the lid off a thermos embedded in the foam. Vials of different colored liquids sat inside its cool interior; no labels.

"I think Lucien made a lot of this stuff himself," she said.

Max didn't take his eyes off the computer. "Could be. He's got hundreds of diagrams for strange devices in here, some of them scanned copies of very old plans, going back decades."

She remembered the almost one-hundred-year-old photograph of someone who looked suspiciously like Lucien. Maybe her initial speculation about Lucien's immortality wasn't so crazy after all. "Why would Lucien host wild, drug-fueled orgies and elaborate faith-healing performances, all under the same Blue Serpent moniker? What do those two things have in common?"

Max looked up, seemed to think about it for a moment, then frowned. "One to spread s.e.xually transmitted diseases, the other to cure them."

"Stacey told me a few of the escorts she talked to reported missing time, then later some of them got sick. Maybe Lucien's using high-end prost.i.tutes to spread illnesses through wealthy communities, then charging them for the cure."

Max cringed. "That's disgusting. If he really can cure previously incurable diseases, why doesn't he accept his n.o.bel Prize in medicine instead?"

"Because he's a greedy piece of s.h.i.t." Val slammed the suitcase closed. "Still doesn't explain where he's getting the blueprints to make these magical cures."

Max stared at the wall next to Val's head for a long moment. "Maybe he's like us."

"What?"

"Arthur C. Clarke said, 'Technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.' What if he can see future medical technology?"

Val shook her head. "You've got to be f.u.c.king kidding me."

"It's one possibility."

"All the more reason for us to shut him down." She opened the rolling tote and pulled out a stack of doc.u.ments, some printed and some handwritten, all in French. "s.h.i.t," she muttered. Max knew French, but he was busy with the laptop. She did her best to scan for Margaret's name. The grandfather clock began to bong again. They were out of time.

She picked out a couple of memos addressed to Asclepius Inc., hoping they'd be useful in some way, folded them up, and shoved them into her bra. "We gotta go."

Max stayed hunched over the laptop. "Wait. I found a couple dozen videos. If one features Margaret, that's a smoking gun he's involved in her disappearance. When did you say you saw her video online?"

Oh s.h.i.t. "It was...uh...I don't remember. Max, let's go. Now. Come on."

He squinted at the computer. "This one's recent. It's-" He froze.

Val's heart raced. A cold sweat p.r.i.c.kled up from her neck. "We should go. Please."

The blood drained from his face. He gaped at the screen as utter horror twisted his features. Then his gaze cut to hers, crushed by what he'd seen and how it would affect her. She swallowed hard, and felt her own blood leave her cheeks.

Then he realized what her lack of surprise at his reaction meant. His horror turned to numb shock. "You knew about this?"

"I'm handling it."

"You knew about this, and you didn't tell me?"

"It's not your problem."

He stared at her.

"I didn't want to bother you any more than I had to."

He kept staring.

"The whole world doesn't need to know, okay? I'm not ashamed, I just don't want to deal with people treating me differently. Like I'm damaged, or...or a freak. It's bad enough with our condition."

He said nothing. He didn't have to. The devastation in his withering glare told her everything.

Tears crept into her eyes. "It's not like you go around telling people what your father did-"

"I told you!"

She jumped. A sob rose in her throat. She put a hand over her mouth for a second to hold it back. "What would it have accomplished if I'd told you? It would've only made you upset, like you are now. It happened, and it can't be undone." Her voice grew small and weak. "I didn't want to mess up your perfect life. You're finally happy, and...and..."

She didn't know what else to say. He wasn't listening anyway. The blood had returned to his face in spades, and his whole body had stiffened like a spring pulled to its limit. In his eyes boiled a rage she'd never seen in him before-a pure, all-consuming anger he barely controlled. It was the rage that killed his father, she realized, so intense that just being in his presence sucked the air from her lungs.

With one lightning-fast movement, he picked up the laptop and slammed it into the ground. Val yelped as it exploded into a thousand pieces. Bits of electronics and hard plastic showered her feet. Then he stalked out of the room.

Val took a ragged breath, her whole body trembling. Why did he have to find out like this, in the worst possible way? She'd asked so much of him, and he'd done it all, despite the cost to himself. She should've told him. He'd trusted her with his most intimate secrets, but she hadn't trusted him with hers. She'd never seen him so furious before. He would never hurt her, but Lucien...Hopefully Max would just go home, and not storm the stage to kill the man who'd orchestrated her rape.

With Lucien's laptop shattered across the room's floor, there was no covering their tracks now. She picked up pieces of what looked like the hard drive and wedged them inside her nylons, so they stayed put against her inner thighs. It felt uncomfortable, but if she stepped carefully, she could make her stride look natural. All she could do now was beat feet out of there, pretend to be Abby and make up some excuse about a lover's spat, then ask for a cab. She wiped tears off her cheeks and slipped the mask back over her face. As seemed to always be the case, she would be finding her own way home.

Chapter Eighteen.

Val gripped the edge of the lobby's granite countertop with white knuckles, as if she could dig her fingernails into its smooth surface. "I said Asclepius Incorporated. Asclepius."

The receptionist held his empty, nonconfrontational smile in place. "I'm sorry, ma'am, there's no company by that name in the building."

"I know Asclepius rented s.p.a.ce here in the past." Val showed the receptionist the crumpled paper she'd swiped from Lucien's office the night before. "Can you at least tell me what s.p.a.ce they used when they were here?"

"I'm sorry, ma'am, I don't-"

Val slapped the paper on the countertop. "G.o.d, just let me talk to your manager already." She knew she should've been nicer-more flies with honey and all that-but she wasn't in the mood to play along. Not after last night.

The receptionist's steely smile slipped into a slight frown, and he made a call on the phone behind the front desk. "Julia, can you come to the front, please? I've got a customer here with some questions."

A moment later, a woman who might have been about Val's age emerged from the "Employees Only" door, though graying hair and a square build made her seem older. "Can I help you?" Julia asked.

"Asclepius Incorporated rented office s.p.a.ce in this building at some point in time. I know because this memo lists this building in the return address. So can you tell me where they used to be?"

Julia glanced at Val's paper, then smiled. "Oh yes, I remember a man from Asclepius coming in here often, about six months ago. Christophe, I think his name was. I didn't see him again after their lease expired and they didn't renew. Too bad, he was a really nice guy. Very charming. French."

"He's under investigation for rape and kidnapping."

Julia's smile fell like a lead weight. "Oh."

"Where is the s.p.a.ce he rented?"

"On the twelfth floor. There are doctor's offices there now."

A seed of hope sprang up in Val. Doctor's offices were perfect places to conduct experiments on people, though how Lucien could get unwilling partic.i.p.ants up there and keep them imprisoned without attracting attention was an open question. "I need to go up to those offices and look around."

Julia's eyebrows furrowed. "Who did you say you were again?"

"Abigail Westlake, with the Seattle PD."

"Can I see your badge?"

"It's in the shop right now. Listen, all I want to do is look around. You can follow me if you want."

"I can't let you up there without some identification, or a warrant."

Great, someone was a Law and Order fan. "You're impeding a criminal investigation."

Julia set her jaw and put her hand on her hip like a stern mother. "I don't know what you're really doing here, but the only people allowed in this building are employees and people with appointments. Please leave."

Val gritted her teeth and shoved the Asclepius memo back into her pocket. "If you want to put innocent people's lives at risk for the sake of your draconian rules, then fine. I'll be back with my badge, and a warrant." She stalked to the exit, then cut right just before the revolving gla.s.s doors. In a quiet corridor, she took a pen from her pocket and flipped the fire alarm. Val tossed the ink-covered pen in the trash as she exited the building with the other evacuating occupants. She snaked through people loitering in the parking lot, got into her car, and waited.

Two minutes later, a couple of fire engines roared up. They'd have to sweep the building, even for a false alarm. If she couldn't search Asclepius's old offices, the fire department would do it for her. Val drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and watched the firemen enter the building. Twenty minutes later, they came out, got back in their trucks, and drove away.

"f.u.c.k." Val pounded the dashboard with her fists. "f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k!" Another dead end. Her last hope was the mangled hard drive.

She drove to Zach's house in the Kent suburbs. Usually she didn't go to his place, since his mother was around most of the time, and it made doing business with him face-to-face awkward. This time, it was just Zach at home-his mom had gone to the plant store-and he gleefully led her to his room.

"Uh, sorry about the mess," he said, pushing dirty clothes off the foot of his bed. "I don't normally, you know, get girls up here..." He blushed, a bright flame across his face when contrasted with his pale skin and black eyeliner.

"It's fine." Without sitting down, she handed him a baggie with the hard drive pieces inside. "I need you to see what information you can pull from this."

He emptied the baggie into his hand, the pieces clinking against the huge silver skull-and-crossbones ring he wore. "d.a.m.n. Someone throw this off a building or something?"

"Can you work with it or not?"

"Hmm...maybe. Probably."

"Good." She dropped five twenties on the desk in the corner he'd piled high with computer equipment. "The sooner the better."

"You always say that."

"Because it's always true."

As she left his room, he called after her, "Hey, you can come by anytime and I can show you how I do my magic, it's pretty cool-"

She stepped outside and shut the front door behind her.

Back in her car, she let out a long, exhausted sigh. At this point, she had no choice but to tell Nora that even though she knew who had her daughter, she still couldn't prove it. Nor had she been able to find Margaret, despite being only a few steps behind Lucien.

She should also apologize to Max, maybe in a couple of days, after he'd cooled off. What could she say that would make up for keeping such a big secret from him? He'd told her a lot of things about himself that weren't any of her business. h.e.l.l, she knew practically everything about him. And he knew almost everything about her. That intimate knowledge bound her to him in a way she would never experience with any other person. Her stupid, stubborn heart couldn't give him up, no matter how hard she tried to force it to.

Val took a deep breath and pulled out her phone. Might as well start the process of making uncomfortable calls, beginning with Nora. She paused when a new e-mail notification popped up, from an address she didn't recognize. An article was embedded in the message: "Mysterious Death Outside Local Bar Baffles Authorities." Val's blood pressure spiked as she read the story of Calvin Williams, a Lakewood mechanic who'd somehow choked to death on his own blood. The article speculated about possible viruses. Was someone trying to blackmail her?

Then she read text underneath the article: Calvin Williams: c.o.kehead and amateur hacker. Five arrests. One conviction for drug possession with intent to sell, two misdemeanor convictions for mail fraud and unlawful cybercrimes, sp. hacking into corporate servers and personal e-mail accounts. Restraining order in effect for stalking ex-girlfriend.

It was signed simply at the bottom: a.s.shole.

Sten had sent this to her.

So Cal had worked in Lakewood as a mechanic...hadn't Zach told her the spoofed IP address where Margaret's video came from originated from a car garage in Lakewood? If Lucien was the source of the rape videos, maybe he hadn't intended for them to pop up on the Internet. Could Cal have hacked into Lucien's computer and stolen the videos? It was also possible Lucien sent the videos to certain sickos-people like Ginger-as a f.u.c.ked-up "memories" keepsake for recruitment, and Cal hacked into their accounts and found the videos. The second scenario seemed more likely, given Lucien's gift for covering his tracks. Could be Cal targeted Ginger in particular because the two knew each other. The mechanic had a history of selling drugs-maybe he was Ginger's dealer? And when Lucien found out about the theft, he dispatched Ginger to take care of the problem, with poison in the form of a bribe.

It seemed a viable theory, taking into account everything she knew so far. How could Max be engaged to a woman whose brother was such a piece of s.h.i.t? Val a.s.sumed Abigail and her brother grew up together. Was she really so much better than Ginger, or just better at hiding her depravity?

Val scoffed and shook her head at her spiteful thinking. Here she was, hoping her true love's fiancee was somehow a demented psycho-after she pushed him away. Pathetic. Val started her car. She'd call Nora after she was done being an emotional basket case.

On the way home, she rehea.r.s.ed the conversation she knew she needed to have with Nora, though her mind kept wandering back to Max and what she should say to him. Jesus, a woman was being tortured somewhere, and she fretted over her ex-boyfriend. Way to have your priorities straight, Val.

Feeling like a complete piece of s.h.i.t by the time she pulled up to her house, she saw an unfamiliar car parked in her driveway. Val put a hand on the gun at her hip, then relaxed as Josephine stepped out of the driver's side. She hadn't seen Robby's sister since Dean's funeral close to a year ago. She couldn't think of any pleasant reasons why Jo would make an impromptu visit.

As soon as Val got out of the car, Jo asked, "Why does Maxwell Carressa keep trying to give me money?"

"He's what?"

"He keeps offering me money, first as a scholarship fund in Robby and my dad's names, then as a charity donation. You...know him. Why is he hara.s.sing me?"

"Maybe you should ask him."

Jo scoffed. "I don't want anything to do with that a.s.shole. He killed my father."

"He didn't kill your father. I was there when it happened."

"Well, Carressa somehow pushed him to do what he did. Dad never would've killed himself."