Max took a long drag off his joint and blew out the smoke in a slow exhale. From the leather couch he lay on, he watched the gray tendrils float up and disappear into the ceiling of Aaron’s private room at Jones’s.
Sitting in the loveseat next to Max, legs propped on an ottoman, Aaron said, “I’ll admit it”—he took a hit off his own joint—“I didn’t know you could hang.”
Max chuckled. “You don’t read the tabloids?”
“They exaggerate and lie. I assumed none of that shit was true.”
With a snicker, he said, “Most of it is true.”
“Hell of an exciting life you lead.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
Max checked the time on his phone—quarter past seven. He should get home soon, spend some time with the kids before they went to bed. Strange that Val hadn’t called wondering where he was. Probably too wrapped up in her goddamn obsession with Eleanor to notice he’d been gone. She might want to talk about what happened two nights ago—but probably not. Hell, she might even ask for a repeat performance, and there was no way he was going to do…that again, whatever he’d done. It made him sick just thinking about it.
Running a hand through his hair, he let out a weary sigh. He couldn’t help her. He didn’t know how. She wanted to jump into danger again, face off with a deadly force destined to kill her—the yellow hyena, whoever or whatever it was. Maybe Eleanor, maybe not. What use could he be to her? To anyone? It’s not like he could use his money to build a secret lair and amass cool gadgets to fight crime with under the cover of darkness.
Actually, he could do that, if he really wanted. His ability basically gave him access to an infinite supply of monetary resources. What would his superhero name be? The Fucking Fighter maybe? Sex Samurai? Magical Man-Meat Man—
“Jesus, I’ve had too much weed.” Max sat up and rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to pull his thoughts together, until a snickering cackle broke loose from his chest.
“What?” Aaron asked.
“Magical Man-Meat Man,” Max said when he caught his breath. “That’s my superhero name.”
“That is really fucking weird.” Aaron thumped his chest. “Mine’s Count Doctopus.”
“How is that not weird?”
“Count Doctopus has so much going on. It’s a touch of aristocracy, a touch of intellect, and a touch of eight-legged freakiness for women who like that sort of thing. It’s definitely better than Magical Man-Meat Man. What the hell is that even?”
“It’s when…your dick can see the future.”
Aaron nodded. “Ah, the all-seeing eye—the all-seeing One-Eyed Willie.”
Max spit out another uncontrollable laugh, and they cracked up together until they ran out of breath.
“Oh my God,” Max said, wiping tears from his eyes. “I need to get out of here.” He was getting way too wasted, and too friendly with a guy he barely knew. But damn, it felt good. Too good.
He dropped his joint in an empty glass at the foot of the couch. Leaning over to reach the end table abutting the sofa, he pressed the intercom button on the phone perched there. When a waitress’s smooth voice answered, he said, “Can I get a glass of water, please?”
“Of course, sir. I’ll get that for you right now.”
“Thank you.”
Max fell back into the sofa, legs and arms splayed in a way that felt immensely comfortable but probably looked not so gentlemanly. The waitress would be scandalized. He’d sit up nicely when she got there. He’d try anyway.
Aaron’s phone chirped. He had lots of friends who holla-ed at him often, though his annoyed sigh tipped Max off that it was the missus calling.
“Shit,” Aaron muttered, confirming Max’s suspicions. He let the phone fall in his lap and sank in his chair, head drooped to one side. “I gotta go. Lacy’s going nuclear again.”
“She thinks you’re cheating on her.” Max should keep his mouth shut, but he couldn’t help himself. Aaron deserved to know if he didn’t already. “She’s hired someone to find out if it’s true.”
Aaron lifted his head off the loveseat. “Who?”
“I dunno.” Max looked away.
“Val? You’ve got to be shitting me.”
“I can’t confirm or deny it.”
“Goddammit, Lacy.” With a heavy sigh, Aaron pushed himself off the chair, retrieved his jacket from the hook near the door, and began threading his tetrahydrocannabinol-addled arms through the sleeves.
“Are you cheating on her?”
Aaron scoffed. “You’ve met her. What do you think?”
“I think if the love is gone, you should end it.”
“It’s not that simple. And hell, I still love her. I can’t resist a difficult woman.” He glanced at Max and smirked. “Neither can you.”
Wasn’t that the truth. Though a more accurate term for Val would be complicated. Resistance was futile. He’d love her until the day he died. He hoped she felt the same about him, but her lingering anger with the people that stalked them—and with the whole goddamn world and every perceived injustice in it, for that matter—made him question what she really valued, and what she was willing to sacrifice for vengeance.
“You’re not worried about her father?” Max asked, remembering that Lacy’s dad was rumored to have ties to the Mafia, or actually be in the Mafia. He’d heard different versions of both scenarios.
Aaron shrugged. “A little.” He smiled. “But you only live once.”
Max supposed so, but he’d still rather not take the risk of crossing a mob boss. Then again, all those poor people living safe, uneventful lives who’d died in the bombing probably thought they had plenty of time to do something risky just for the hell of it.
A light knock on the door announced the waitress with Max’s glass of water. She poked her head in and smiled politely at him as he still lay sprawled on the couch. Oh, right—he was supposed to sit up before she saw him like that. Damn. Despite how it pained his sluggish limbs to move, he forced himself into a proper sitting position and returned her polite grin as she handed him the water.
“Thank you,” he said, and drank half the glass at once.
“Anytime, Mr. Carressa.” She watched him for a moment as he chewed an ice cube. “Would you like another?”
“No ’ank ’ou,” he said around the cube in his mouth.
She kept staring at him. Did she see something he didn’t? He wiped his chin with the back of his hand to make sure he hadn’t accidentally drooled on himself.
“Okay, well, if you need anything else, please let me know. Anything you need, really. My name’s Annie. I’m just a phone call away.”
“Yup, got it.”
Finally she left. As soon as she was out the door, Aaron burst into snickers.
“What?”
“Holy shit, dude, you are a fucking chick magnet. How do you not cheat on your wife when beautiful women practically throw themselves at you?”
Max took another gulp of water. “Val’s the only one who can handle my magical man-meat.”
“Whatever, man. If I were you…look out, womankind.” As he threw on his thick overcoat, he said, “A group of guys at my gym get together on Thursdays and play pickup games of basketball. Wanna join us?”
Play a team sport? That was a new one. Since he was trying new things lately, might as well give it a shot. “Okay. But I’ve never played basketball before.”
“Seriously?” Aaron laughed. “Who are you?”
“A man who secretly fights crime with his penis.”
Aaron waved dismissively at Max on his way out the door. “See ya at the office, Magical Man-Meat Man.”
“Later, Count Doctopus.”
As he left, Aaron called from the hallway, “My superhero name is better!”
Max shook his head. Aaron was right—his superhero name was better. He finished his water, set his glass on the end table, and rubbed his legs as if the stimulation would help him sober up. He could hang, but he was embarrassingly out of practice. It’d been decades since he had a real platonic friend—if he could call Aaron a friend. He definitely enjoyed the analyst’s company, but they hadn’t known each other for long. Then again, he’d known Val only a couple weeks before he’d realized he loved her. Whatever he had with Aaron seemed like friendship anyway. He’d spent the vast majority of his life keeping people at arm’s length so they wouldn’t discover his secrets. Spending time with Aaron, he began to realize what he’d been missing. It felt nice, having someone to be irresponsible and goofy with.
Standing, Max braced himself against the sofa’s armrest, then sat again as the room slewed to the side a bit. He’d hoped the water would help him sober up enough to drive home, but it looked like that wasn’t happening. Great, he’d have to call a cab and come back to get his car later. Val would be ecstatic.
He used the intercom again. “Can you bring me another glass of water, and call me a cab, please?”
“Right away, Mr. Carressa.”
“Thanks,” he said, rubbing his cheek. Maybe he’d take a nap there before he left.
A minute later, Annie came in. She carried a tray in her arms, on top of which was a glass of water and a package about the size of a hardcover book. She set her burden down on the end table and held his drink and the package out to him.
“This came for you,” she said, shaking the object wrapped in plain red paper.
He took the water, then the package; certainly felt like a book. “Who sent it?”
“I don’t know. Mickey said someone dropped it off. You must have a secret admirer! Probably lots of them…”
Max didn’t like the sound of that. “Secret admirer” was another name for stalker. Shit, Eleanor hadn’t sent this, had she? The last thing he needed was confirmation of Val’s paranoia—or that Eleanor was the yellow hyena. He frowned at Annie, suddenly repulsed by her fawning over him.
Her smile slipped, as if she sensed he wanted her gone. “I’ll let you know when your cab is here, sir,” she said, and hurried out the door.
Setting the water down, Max set his jaw and unwrapped the package, praying he’d find something innocuous. It was a hardcover book, as he’s assumed by the feel of it—a classic version of Alice in Wonderland. From Val, a sticky note on the front read. He turned the book over in his hands, fairly certain it wasn’t actually from Val. For one thing, she didn’t know where he was at that moment, though she could’ve traced his phone and found out if she really wanted to. But more importantly, she wouldn’t send him a random gift with no explanation. If she wanted to apologize—which she probably didn’t—she’d tell him to his face. Subtlety wasn’t her style.
He flipped the book open, and something fell into his lap—photographs, he realized. Picking them up, he looked at them. They were—no. They must have been doctored. He looked at each one—five total—over and over again, cycling through them as if they might change with each viewing. The pleasant buzz he’d had disappeared, and his body went numb. Part of his brain disconnected, a terrible scream of rage trying to rise in his throat.
He heard somebody gasp, and tore his eyes away from the photos to see Annie in the doorway, staring at shattered glass amid a pool of liquid and ice at her feet. It was his glass of water. He’d thrown it.
* * *
Val awoke to the familiar sound of Max getting ready for work. So he’d returned home after all. She hadn’t heard him come in; rolling over, she saw his side of the bed undisturbed. She’d hoped after three days he’d be calm enough to clear the air about what happened between them the night of the memorial service, but if he’d slept in the study again last night, he must still be pissed. Val sat up, stretching and kicking her legs over the side of the bed as Max yanked a tie from the closet and stomped to the other side of the room behind her without making eye contact.
Yep, still pissed.
After taking the kids—and her mother and Jamal by default—to visit Santa in the morning, she planned to spend the rest of the afternoon pounding the pavement for Eleanor. Since it was Saturday, she could go to the ferry terminal and ask if any of the employees working there knew Eleanor. It was a long shot—the boat commuted thousands of people back and forth across the Sound every day—but worth a try. She’d stake out the ferry all night if she could, but Max was prone to wandering off without telling her lately, and leaving her kids alone with her unstable mother was out of the question. She needed to conduct her investigation in small chunks.
She’d already questioned Eleanor’s coworkers at Jones’s and gotten nowhere. That left Aaron as the only person with a connection to her, and Max would be even angrier if Val jacked up his friend. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that, but mending bridges ahead of time would be a wise move.
Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and thought for a moment about what she should say. She needed to extend the olive branch, even if she thought she’d only done what was necessary.
“I’m sorry about what happened the other night,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked you to—”
She heard papers slap against the bedspread next to her. Opening her eyes, she saw Max standing in front of her, his arms folded and face a mask of cold fury.
“What are these?” he said, his voice calm but words so sharp each one might have been a tiny dagger of dread stabbing her in the heart.
She looked at what he’d thrown on the bed at her side, and her breath caught when she recognized photos of her and Sten. Feeling the blood drain from her face, she picked up the first one, a shot of her and Sten through the window of his apartment as she straddled him on his bed, mid-coitus. The next one was the same location, same situation, but a different position—Sten had her pinned against the wall in this one. Underneath that picture, a wide shot telescoped in as he went down on her in the back of his police cruiser. Then one of her entering his apartment, when she’d gone there to ask him about her mother. The final shot was of her and Sten sitting across from each other at Tully’s coffee shop, the date—this month—clear on a chalkboard to the side of them advertising peppermint mochas.
Oh God. How many more of these were there? Who took them? The first three had been taken during their twisted fling five years ago, but the final two were from the last few days. Someone wanted Max to think they were all recent, and she was cheating on him with his enemy.
Val’s mouth hung open as she stared at the pictures shaking in her hand. “It’s—it’s not what you think—”
“Then what is it?”
“I—I—” She swallowed, her throat so dry she could barely speak. “This was—it was a long time ago, when we weren’t together. I mean, I went to talk to him recently, but—but just talk, to ask him about my mother, if he knew anything about her, because he’s connected to Northwalk and he would know, and nothing happened then. Of course nothing happened.”
He was silent for a moment, destroying her with his withering glare, arms still crossed over his chest like a shield as his fingers tightened against his biceps. “If nothing happened, why didn’t you tell me?”
Laying the pictures facedown on the bedspread, she put a hand over her mouth to keep from hyperventilating. Oh Jesus. Why did he have to find out like this? Could Sten have slipped him the pictures? What did he have to gain? It must have been part of Eleanor’s harassment campaign against them. But where had she gotten the pictures?
“I knew you’d be angry,” she said, barely able speak. “It’s Eleanor. She’s trying to hurt us. I don’t know why, but she is. I was in her apartment. I found her journal—”
“That doesn’t explain why these photos exist.”
She choked out the only response she could give. “It was a long time ago.”
He turned away, walked to the closet, and jerked a suit jacket out with such force the hanger it’d been draped on boomeranged off the rack and bounced against the wall before falling to the floor.
“Let me know when you think of a good excuse for fucking the man who tried to kill me twice,” he spat as he shoved his arms into the coat sleeves.
“Max, please—”
He stormed out of their room before she could say any more, his heavy footfalls filling the silence he’d left behind.