"Beautifully written. Shana Figueroa is an exciting new voice in the paranormal genre." -- Opal Carew, New York Times bestselling author Not every Valentine is a saint . . . Corruption. Greed. Illicit sex. Murder. Private investigator Valentine Shepherd thinks she's seen it all, and her strange ability to glimpse the future gives her an edge no one else in the world has. But when her fiance is killed trying to exonerate his client, billionaire Max Carressa, Val makes it her personal mission to bring the people responsible to justice, no matter the cost. Convinced the two men are linked by more than attorney-client privilege, she enlists Max's help in her investigation and gets more than she bargained for. On the run, Val and Max must uncover who wants them dead and why. The answer leads them to a conspiracy that has Val herself at its center. She doesn't understand how or why, but time is running out to expose the truth and escape the danger she knows is coming . . .
Release date:
September 6, 2016
Publisher:
Forever Yours
Print pages:
340
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Valentine Shepherd slid her fingers down her fiancé’s bare chest, over his hard nipples and across the soft slopes of his abs. Robby had never been a hard body—the only exercise he got came from yard work or running from their neighbor’s rottweiler when it escaped from the backyard—but he was naked and all hers. A fuckable man of integrity. He cupped her ass in his hands as she straddled him, face in a cockeyed grin, eyes hungry like they hadn’t done this hundreds of times.
“What was his name again?” Val asked. She rocked on top of him, rubbing herself against his hardness.
“Chet,” Robby said. “He didn’t—” His breath caught when Val sat back and he slid into her. “He didn’t give his last name.”
Val rolled her hips against his, gliding him in and out. “What else?”
“He wants to meet at Union Station tomorrow.” Robby moved his hands up her back. “Says he’s got information that proves Max Carressa didn’t murder his father.” His back arched up and down in time with her cadence. “He didn’t say anything about money. Makes me nervous about what he really wants.”
She leaned down and kissed him, letting her tongue linger against his lips, then cross the night’s stubble to flick his ear. “Don’t be nervous, baby. I’ll protect you.”
He laughed at their little joke—he was the “fragile” defense lawyer with a big brain, while she was the “tough” ex-military private investigator with a big gun. She sat up again and flipped her strawberry red hair over her shoulders, then laced her fingers behind her head as she rode him.
He grabbed a breast in each hand, rolled her nipples between his fingertips. “But I don’t want to meet at Union Station. It’s…too public…Not safe…” He struggled with his words as his breath turned quick and rough.
Val’s mouth watered. She was close. This moment was the best, right before. If only she could pull herself from the brink and savor the feeling. But biological imperative thrust her forward, a runaway train controlled by her reptilian brain. Her hips quickened.
“I want to meet Chet today instead.” Robby gripped her breasts tight, the flesh bulging between his fingers. “I need to know where he’ll be…this…evening. Come on, baby, tell me what you see—” A guttural moan forced its way out of his chest. His whole body tensed as he came. He pushed himself deep into her. White-hot lightning raced up Val’s spine as she came with him. Her eyes closed and her mind slipped into the future—
I’m on a street with light traffic. Rain falls from a patchwork of scattered clouds. I see Puget Sound behind me, roiling as choppy waves mar its surface. The red October sun sets behind dirty brick buildings tattooed with graffiti of crooked words I don’t understand. A man in a blue hooded sweatshirt pulls a pair of bolt cutters from his backpack, snaps the lock off a bike chained to a rack, and rides away with it. A moment later a young, thin Hispanic man wearing a slicker and lots of lip gloss bounces out the door, discovers his bike has been stolen. He stomps his foot, swings his helmet in the air, and swears. He sighs and begins to walk down the street in the rain. He walks a few blocks, turns left. Walks more. He stops between two buildings. Painted on one of the walls is a naked female torso with a clown head grafted on top and misshapen words spilling out of its mouth. The man leans down to remove a rock from his shoe. Traffic parts. Pedestrians disappear. For a moment the man is alone. Robby runs across the street and approaches him.
“Chet? I’m Robby Price. You called me.”
Chet looks around, sees they’re alone. “What the…How did you find me?”
Robby cocks his head between the buildings. “Let’s talk over here.” They disappear into the alley.
The scene faded from Val’s vision like cigarette smoke drifting up and away. She looked down and saw Robby lying still beneath her, eyes closed, enjoying the afterglow. How nice it must feel, like licking cheesecake off a fork and rolling it around in your mouth after a rich meal. She felt only the sensation of having eaten without remembering the taste.
She caressed his cheek. He opened his eyes and looked up at her. “So? Anything?”
“You’ll have a chance to intercept Chet this evening,” Val told him. “He’ll be somewhere in downtown Seattle. A guy will steal his bike so he’ll be forced to walk. Then he’ll stop to get a rock out of his shoe, and no one will be around. That’ll be your opening to approach him unnoticed.”
He smiled, grabbed her hands, and kissed them. “You’re the best, babe.” He looked at the clock and cringed. “Aw, shit, my dad will kill me if I’m late to work again.”
She slid off him, and he hopped up and ran to the bathroom. Morning sun poured into their bedroom through bay windows that faced a patch of evergreen Pacific Northwest forest. Val back-flopped onto the bed and let the sun warm her bare skin. She heard the tinkle of water from the sink, then the scratch of Robby’s toothbrush.
“What did he look like?” Robby asked between brushes.
Propping her knees up and crossing one leg on top of the other, Val bounced her foot in the air. “He looked Latino, effeminate. He’s either gay, or he ate a stick of lip gloss.” Her finger traced idle circles around her nipple, a hard outcrop atop a mountain of softness. “Could he be Max Carressa’s lover? Like maybe Chet knows Max is innocent because Max was with him on the night of the murder?”
She heard Robby chuckle, then the tap of his toothbrush against the sink rim followed by the clink of it dropping back into its holder. “Could be,” he said. Shaving gel sprayed, then a razor wisped. “Max is a pretty odd guy. He’s got this rich playboy I-don’t-give-a-fuck thing going on, but I get these weird vibes from him like he’s got major skeletons in the closet.”
“I thought all rich people had skeletons in their closets.” She propped an arm behind her head. “Do you think he killed his father?”
“As one of his lawyers, I think he’s completely innocent. As a normal person, I have no idea. Like I said, weird vibes. He’s definitely not too torn up about it. But rich people hating their parents is pretty common, too, right?”
Val heard running water, then face splashing.
“What street in Seattle did you see Chet on?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said with a frown. “I didn’t see a street sign in my vision. But I know that the building where he stops has a creepy naked clown painted on the side. I can figure it out from there.”
Robby turned on the shower and poked his head out of the bathroom. “Won’t that be like looking for a needle in a haystack?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “It’s a private investigator’s job to find hard-to-find things. I’ll track down the clown and drive you there this evening, don’t worry.”
He smiled and disappeared behind the door.
Sighing, Val stretched out on the bed. She listened to the water plink against the shower walls and let her fingers trace a lazy path down the valley between her breasts and across her flat stomach. Since she’d never experienced a real orgasm, she was never fully satisfied after sex—like eating and never feeling full. The side effect was a sexual appetite and stamina that outpaced most other women. Robby loved it, but he had a job to go to unfortunately. Her hand drifted between her legs, still ripe and wet with him. She slipped a finger inside herself—her magic vagina, or curious oddity, or mistake of nature, whatever it was. Her belly warmed as she rubbed the sensitive sides, the nub of flesh in the center. She moaned as she stroked deeper down and imagined what it would be like to feel this times a thousand, or whatever an orgasm was supposed to be like. All she’d ever experienced was the sweet edge of climax, the desperate contractions before and after her mind slipped into a jumbled, banal, or horrific vision of the future.
Val felt her hips move in time with her strokes as if possessed by their own will, heat rising in her cheeks. So badly she wanted to feel what other people felt—the toe-curling ecstasy, the consumption of her body by another, the connection. She forced herself to stop. Having an orgasm while her mind wandered often resulted in visions of fire and death. She wasn’t horny enough to risk it.
Instead, she rolled to the side of the bed and pulled a pencil and notebook out of her nightstand drawer, then flipped to an empty page and started drawing the clown she’d seen in her vision. The notebook was filled with similar pencil illustrations of random objects or scenes: a willow tree in front of a decrepit barn, half a billboard sign, a pair of leopard-print stilettos. Sometimes, though rarely, a crude face. She wasn’t great at sketching faces, avoiding the practice required to get good at it. Since she usually saw them in the throes of their deaths, she preferred to forget them. Not every vision she had of the future came true, but most did. Why her mind—or vagina—insisted on showing her people’s often-gruesome demises was a mystery to her. It’d just always been that way, since her first sexual experience in junior high school, fumbling around with her best friend Stacey.
Val traced the naked clown, its head thrown back and mouth agape in a silent cackle. A word spilled forth from its throat and lodged in its maw. She tried to recall what the word said, but her mind’s eye couldn’t decipher the crooked letters that had been sprayed on the brick, cocked at strange angles in a style she couldn’t quite read. It was something like “Diehards” or “Demons.”
Robby emerged from the bathroom and put on a suit and tie. “So you’ll pick me up at six?” he said as he shoved his wallet and keys into his pocket.
“Yep.” She tapped her drawing. “Be prepared to meet Mrs. Chuckles.”
He kissed her. “Love ya, babe,” he said, then hustled out the door.
She had until the evening to figure out where the creepy nude clown was hiding. Val smiled—she loved a good puzzle.
* * *
Val heard her front door open and close as she scrolled through a lineup of clown images summoned by her computer’s search engine. A moment later Stacey strolled into the spare room that served as the Valentine Investigations headquarters while clutching two cups of coffee.
“Morning, fellow hot bitch,” Stacey said. She placed a venti latte next to Val’s keyboard, then sat down and kicked her legs up on the leather sofa across from her friend, her tie-dyed skirt draping off the side of the couch. She sipped from her own giant cup. “The mom from the Brewer case called again this morning. She’s got more ideas about who it could be that’s stalking her daughter. She wants you to look into some guy from her daughter’s science club.”
“No need,” Val said. She pulled a manila envelope off the top of a stack of papers on her desk and handed it to Stacey without taking her eyes off the computer screen. Nothing the Internet offered up looked like the clown in her vision.
Stacey opened the envelope and thumbed through a dozen photographs of a little boy hiding behind various objects as he ogled a teenaged girl in the background. “Who’s this?”
“Connor Gleason, the Brewers’ twelve-year-old neighbor. He’s the one that’s been leaving gifts and pictures and uploading creep-shot videos of her online. He’s their daughter’s stalker.”
Thank goodness it had only been a misguided little kid obsessing over the poor girl, and not some violent psychopath. A nice break to a case that could’ve been much worse. Also a nice respite from the string of rapes and revenge porn jobs she was usually hired for, to help desperate clients get justice after the police proved useless. Something about the name “Valentine Investigations” attracted a large contingent of sex crime victims throughout the greater Seattle area, which was ironic on so many levels.
“Aw, the world’s littlest stalker,” Stacey said. “Maybe they’ll issue him the world’s littlest restraining order.”
Val shrugged. “It’s up to the Brewers if they want to press charges or just have a really awkward talk with Connor’s parents. In any case, they still owe us our full fee. Don’t let them talk you down.”
Stacey saluted. “They will be charged the full fee, Sergeant.”
Val cocked an eyebrow at the reference to her old military title.
Stacey slapped the envelope and pictures back onto the desk. “Thank God you turned me off boys. You don’t see little girls pulling this shit.”
Val rolled her eyes. Stacey liked to rag Val about turning her into a hippie lipstick lesbian, on account of being each other’s first. Two awkward junior high girls, afraid of boys but comfortable with each other, curious to know what sex was all about, wanting to be prepared. After Val had a vision of her uncle’s wide-eyed corpse draped over a smashed steering wheel instead of the spike of ecstasy she’d heard so much about, Stacey quickly confirmed that visions of dead people at sexual climax weren’t normal. When Val’s uncle died in a car accident three days later, she realized that whatever had happened to her during her very first orgasm went beyond abnormal. Stacey, of course, volunteered to help Val explore whatever this newfound ability was. Through her best friend’s soft kisses and gentle caresses—and some impressive tongue work—Val pieced together the ground rules of her ability: the strength of the visions was directly proportional to the strength of her arousal; they were stronger when she had sex with another person rather than alone; she could sometimes control the subject of her vision if she concentrated at climax—otherwise, she saw random stuff, mostly death and destruction. Not all of it came to pass, but the vast majority of it did.
The revelations weren’t totally about Val’s odd ability, though. When all was said and done, Val realized she preferred men while Stacey preferred women. By high school the two had transitioned back to friends, and eventually business partners in Val’s PI agency after she’d separated from the Army.
Stacey sat up from the sofa and craned her neck toward Val’s computer screen. “What’re you looking at?”
“Creepy-ass clowns,” Val said. “I saw one in a vision, spray-painted on the side of a building somewhere in Seattle. I need to find out where it is and take Robby there tonight to meet an informant.”
“Some kind of gang symbol?”
“Maybe.” Val searched for “Seattle clowns,” then “Seattle clown gangs,” “clown gang symbols,” “Seattle area gangs with clown symbols.” Nothing.
“Dammit, the Internet has let me down.” She sighed. “I’m going to have to ask Sten.”
Stacey cringed. “Ew. Good luck.”
Chapter Two
Val avoided making eye contact with the mayoral campaign volunteers lurking next to the Seattle Police Department entrance, but one waylaid her anyway on her way inside.
“Vote for Norman Barrister for mayor of Seattle!” A plump-faced college kid in a red T-shirt jumped in front of Val, waving a flyer and red plastic button in her face. “Change you can believe in!”
Another college kid in a blue T-shirt, wielding a blue button, appeared to Val’s right. “Charles Brest is best! Don’t mess with success!”
Sighing, Val took both their buttons, the penance she had to pay so they’d get out of her way. The college kids glared at each other but thankfully parted to let Val pass without any further harassment. Inside the station, she glanced at the buttons and winced at Norman Barrister’s name emblazoned on the red one. What a sad coincidence that retired Colonel Norman Barrister, Val’s old battalion commander, just happened to be from Seattle, and also had political aspirations. The idiot couldn’t lead his units out of a paper bag, but while they died in one bloody Afghan skirmish after another, he racked up awards and medals that served well the myth of his “strong leadership abilities” that was the cornerstone of his campaign. He’d duped the district into electing him to the state’s House of Representatives, so why not mayor? Hell, why not president? God knew if you had enough money, it wasn’t that hard. Val dumped both buttons in the trash and walked into the heart of the station.
The place hummed with activity, a cacophony of voices talking, phones ringing, keyboards clacking. The police officers set up shop in a large open space, each manning an oak desk covered in paperwork. Val snaked her way through the desks, past Homicide and Special Victims, until she reached Vice. She spotted Detective Sten Ander in the far corner, leaning back in his chair, hands held casually behind his head as he conversed with a strung-out woman in a puffy leopard-print coat and ripped nylons underneath a black miniskirt. Val wasn’t close enough to hear the details of their conversation, but after a minute of talking he waved a hand and two uniformed officers swooped in and cuffed the woman.
“I want my lawyer!” the woman shrieked as they led her past Val and through a door to the cells. Sten smirked at the woman’s back until she disappeared, then cut his gaze to Val. He didn’t bother sitting up as Val took the chair across from him.
“Ah, Shepherd,” Sten said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Val suppressed an eye roll at his use of her last name. They’d known each other since they’d both joined the Army right out of high school, even dated for a short time while stationed together at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Now that he was a man of the law, he addressed her by her last name only, like he starred in a crime procedural TV show. He even looked a bit like a Scandinavian version of Jeremy Renner.
Sten sipped coffee as he eyed Val over the rim of a ceramic mug adorned with Norman Barrister’s smiling face.
“I never pegged you for a Republican,” Val said. “I would’ve thought you’d be more of a Guns and Dope Party kind of guy.”
“Still waters run deep,” he said. He licked coffee off the caterpillar attached to his face that he called a mustache, then propped his feet on his desk. “Let me guess—drunk sorority girl fucked some frat boy and is now pretending like her drink was spiked so her parents won’t think she’s a slut? Or someone sent dick pics to the PTA again?”
Val gritted her teeth. It’d been almost ten years since she’d broken up with Sten, but the asshole still held a grudge. He’d been cooperative enough when she’d first approached him for inside police information at the onset of her PI business. She’d assumed that he’d buried the hatchet in the name of justice, but soon realized his real motivation was the opportunity to play mind games with her. Val considered cutting him from her roster of contacts on many occasions, but just before her last straw, he’d cough up a piece of valuable info and buy himself a reprieve. At least he didn’t demand money or sexual favors; apparently toying with her was payment enough.
“I am always amazed at what a big heart you have,” Val said through a tight smile. “Always looking out for the”—she held up her thumb and forefinger, and narrowed the gap between them to an inch—“little guys.”
Sten clanked his coffee mug down on a ceramic coaster. “What do you want, Shepherd? I’ve got places to be.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to make you late for your men’s rights rally.” She pulled her notebook from her tote and flipped to the clown drawing. “Have you seen this picture before, maybe as gang graffiti?”
Sten leaned across his desk and eyed the illustration. A glimmer of recognition flickered in his gaze. “Why do you ask?”
“A client’s daughter ran off with her gang member boyfriend. The mom says the boyfriend had this picture tattooed on his arm. She wants me to bring her daughter home.”
Sten sat back again, picked up his mug, and took a long slurp. “Remember when you used to blow me in my dorm room before retreat?”
A trickle of bile rose up Val’s throat. Here we go with the mind games. “I’ve repressed most of those memories, but yes.”
“You were really good at sucking dick, did I ever tell you that? I guess practice makes perfect.”
Val drummed her fingers on the side of her chair to occupy her hands. It was all she could do to keep from punching his smug face. She gave him a bored look and waited.
Sten took another long drink of coffee, relishing the moment. Finally, he said, “The Diamond Gang pride themselves on running ‘high-class’ hookers for low-class needs. Entrepreneurial sorts, despite their stupid clown logo. They hang out west of the I-5, around South Washington Street. Charge fifty dollars a pop.” He shoved a thumb in his mouth and jerked it out with a popping sound. “A small fortune for a junkie, but their girls are pros. Practice makes perfect.” His thick mustache curled into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
A shiver ran up Val’s spine. She knew Sten had an edge when they’d dated—she’d always liked the edgy guys, though she knew she shouldn’t—but only recently had she realized just how much he liked to see her squirm—like a sociopath. With a police badge. She forced out a “thanks” and stood to leave. In the end his words were harmless, and his idiosyncrasies worked to her benefit.
“Hey, Shepherd,” Sten called after her as she walked away, “You find that poor girl and bring her home, to safety.” He smiled again, and Val was struck with the image of a snake’s mouth just before it swallowed its prey.
* * *
Val watched the rain smear the world through her windshield as she sat in her Corolla, idling in front of the Bombay and Price Law Offices sign outside Robby’s work. After a few minutes of staring out the window, she saw him emerge from the glass building and trot through the puddles to her car. He tossed a gym bag with his suit shoved in it into the back, then hopped into the passenger’s seat.
“Did you find Chuckles the Creepy Clown?” he asked, brushing water off his jeans.
“You know it,” Val said. “I narrowed it down to South Washington Street, near the waterfront, then drove around the seediest areas until I found the graffiti with the right background that matched what I saw in the vision.” She pulled away from the curb and began driving to Chet’s future location.
“You’re too go. . .
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