Part 7 (1/2)
Val stroked the back of his neck, and his whole body responded like the first time he'd ever touched a woman. His hands trembled.
”You have to trust me,” Val said with Kitty's voice.
She pulled him in for a kiss, and this time he couldn't resist. He kissed her back, drinking in her essence with a hunger that had gnawed at him for eight months. Every part of him wanted her, needed her, ached for her to fill the hole he'd been dumping drugs down and patching over with paper-thin promises to leave the past behind. He'd tried. He couldn't.
A guttural moan escaped from deep in his chest. ”Valentine.” He kissed her neck, her shoulder; ran his hands along her soft b.r.e.a.s.t.s, silky back, plump behind. ”Don't leave me again.” He dropped to his knees and kissed her between her legs, savoring her taste, kissing away the pain her ability caused her, the wedge it drove between them.
”I see you're busy,” Max heard Lucien say behind Val. ”Too bad. Next time.”
He stopped kissing Val and turned his head in time to see Lucien swimming away with three other penguins. Max squinted at his back. Hadn't Lucien already swum by and said those exact words?
He looked up at Val-and saw her pregnant belly. He gasped-How? When? Was it his? Of course it was his. A miracle child-the product they'd been pushed together to create, something neither of them wanted. But it made him smile. He put a hand on her belly and stood.
”Is it a boy or a gir-” The smile wiped off his face when he looked at her and saw Abby, face a mask of fury as tears flowed down her face. You b.a.s.t.a.r.d. You said you loved me.
”I'm sorry, Abby. I'm so sorry.” His voice choked up. ”I didn't mean to hurt you. I don't know what I'm doing.”
She grabbed his wrist with a strength he didn't know she was capable of. ”Max, snap out of it,” she said with Kitty's voice.
”I love you. I'm sure I do. I promise. You're perfect. Any normal man would want you. I don't deserve you-”
”Stop it. We need to get out of here.”
The walls around him burst into flames. Max cried out as tendrils of fire licked the ceiling and radiated a heat that seared his hair and burned his eyes. He spun in circles but couldn't find the exit. Penguins gawked at him as the inferno closed in.
”Swim away!” he yelled at the stupid birds, but they didn't move.
He tried to run, but everywhere he turned, there was only fire. He dropped to his knees as smoke filled his lungs and skin peeled off his face. His flesh cooked on his bones. He began to scream.
Max felt a sharp pain behind his head, then nothing.
Chapter Twelve.
Facing the foot of Sten's bed, Val lay on her stomach as she drew what she'd seen in her notebook. Margaret in the water again, a newly paved two-lane road nearby, a yield sign. The s.p.a.ce Needle across a body of water. Same stuff as her first vision. She tapped her pencil on the paper and sighed. Even if she managed to figure out where Margaret's body would wash up, it would bring her no closer to discovering Margaret's present location, where she was hopefully still alive. She needed to see where Margaret would be murdered or, better yet, who would murder her.
As Val took a sip from a beer can-Sten only had the cheap stuff, but it would do-she heard him scoff from behind her. She craned her head to look at him, kitty-cornered on the bed from her, sitting naked with his back propped against the headboard. His skin, naturally a shade darker than hers from whatever heritage he refused to talk about, glistened with a fine sheen of sweat. The lean muscles cutting across his fit body made up the same soldier physique she'd wanted to f.u.c.k all night back in her Army days. At least she could take comfort in the fact that she could do a lot worse than Sten-physically anyway.
He frowned at an issue of The Economist in his lap. ”What the h.e.l.l, Netanyahu?” he said to the magazine's glossy pages. ”Ben-Gurion would've never misread the political landscape that badly.” Sten tossed the magazine on the floor, then pulled a cigarette from a pack on his nightstand. With the flick of a cheap lighter, he fired it up and took a long drag. ”Cracked the case yet, Colombo?” Smoke curled out his mouth and vanished into the ceiling.
He liked to smoke after s.e.x; Val remembered that from her Army days. Had he known what her ”low blood sugar issue” really was back then, but never said anything? He knew a lot of things he pretended to be ignorant about, she now realized.
Val pushed a bead of sweat out of her eye. She touched the beer can to her cheek; the metal was already warm. d.a.m.n. Air-conditioning wasn't high on Sten's list of priorities, apparently. ”Do you know a guy named Ginger?” she asked him.
”Negative.”
”What about a club called the Blue Serpent?”
He paused for a moment, like he considered how to answer her question. He did that a lot. ”No.”
”Are you lying?”
He chuckled. ”What's there to lie about?”
She shook her head and finished the beer in one long gulp, letting the can drop to the ground. The buzz, and the s.e.x, were a nice relief from the horrible day. All her days were horrible lately. ”How can you live with yourself, being such a s.h.i.+tty cop?”
”That's your baseless opinion. Last year I won Gruff the Crime Dog's Seattle Public Protector of the Month award twice in a row.”
Val pointed at her notebook. ”This girl's been kidnapped. She and...other women have been raped, and you just sit there and do nothing.”
”I'm helping you now, aren't I?”
That was sort of true. He'd obliged her midnight booty call, knowing full well she only used him for a vision she hoped would give her another angle to pursue in her investigation. Better Sten than alone, or with Stacey-she'd never again risk their friends.h.i.+p that way. Val despised Sten as a person, but he offered s.e.x she could control, and he got her off every time. She preferred not to think about the psychological implications.
”Why are you helping me? Did Delilah or Northwalk order you to?”
He snickered. ”h.e.l.l no.”
”Then why?”
Sten put an arm behind his head and leaned back. He puffed on his cigarette in quiet contemplation for a few seconds, staring at his useless ceiling fan as it pushed warm air around. ”Say you know the future-hypothetically speaking, bear with me-and you want to prevent something from happening. But once you've seen it happen, you can't change it because now it's your past and the past has already happened. Schrdinger's cat and all that.”
Max had talked about something like that before. The fact that Sten and Max shared similar deep thoughts about the universe shocked her. There really were a lot of things she didn't know about her enemy-with-benefits. ”Okay...”
”But-hold the phone!-there happens to be one person on the entire planet who, through a fluke of biology and maybe some divine intervention, or maybe the opposite of divine intervention, can change the future after it's been seen. Now you can manipulate that person to change the past for you.”
”So you're saying you want me to change something about the future.”
”No.”
”Then what the h.e.l.l are you talking about?”
He sighed like he dealt with an idiot child. ”What I want is for you to always be available when I call.”
She laughed. Was he kidding? She could never tell with him. ”You mean you want me to drop everything and come to you whenever you feel like it?”
”Yes.” He snuffed out his cigarette in an ashtray. ”Do you want my help or not?”
”Will you help me take down Delilah and Northwalk?”
”I'd love to, but the timing's not right. Trust me, I've been working on that little project for a long time. You'll have to accept my many other skills.”
Val held his gaze for a long moment, his dark eyes as enigmatic as ever. She tried to get a read on his true intentions. Sten would be a valuable ally. He had access to Delilah, knew more about the strange conspiracy involving Max and Val than they did, and had police resources at his disposal. On the other hand, he'd brutally murdered at least one person she knew of, might have killed her fiancee, tried to kill Val, and almost killed Max twice. She had absolutely no reason to trust him-other than desperation.
Val scoffed at his offer. ”f.u.c.k you.”
Sten smiled. ”I'll take that as a yes.” He pushed himself to his knees and crawled to where she still lay on her stomach at the opposite corner of his bed. He ran his hands up the backs of her bare thighs. ”Let's start now.”