Murder Aforethought

by Parker St John

  “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s just me,” he murmured, as he ripped the sack off her head.

  Her tear-streaked face tipped up to him and her eyes widened in shock. A cloth gag bit cruelly into her mouth.

  Maksim yanked a pair of noise canceling headphones off her ears and immediately tugged her close.

  “It’s okay,” he repeated, now that she could hear him. “I’m here. You’re safe. You’re safe.”

  She burrowed into his chest and began to sob.

  He raked his hand through her tangled hair and squeezed her tight, rocking her back and forth, back and forth. “I’m sorry, Em. I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

  “Are they gone?” she cried. “Are the police here? Are they gone?”

  Maksim’s eyes stung. He looked up at Val, who stood above them with a bleak expression.

  “They’re gone,” Val assured her. “Maks saved you. You knew he would, didn’t you?”

  Emma’s head bobbed frantically. She swiped a hand beneath her dripping nose, looking fragile and childlike. “I told Miguel that Maks would take care of everything. He… Miguel!” she screamed. “They killed Miguel! They killed Miguel!”

  “I’m here, chica,” Miguel called brokenly from across the room.

  “Miguel! Miguel!” Emma scrambled out of Maksim’s hold, struggling onto her knees despite her bound limbs.

  Val retrieved a penknife from his pocket and slit the zip-ties on her ankles. Emma didn’t even give him a chance to release her hands before she’d leaped to her feet. She stumbled once, but Maksim caught her, and then she was lurching across the room toward Miguel.

  “Emma, no!” Val yelled.

  He flew across the room so fast that Maksim could barely track him. Val caught Emma around the shoulders in a flying tackle and brought her down hard.

  A gunshot sounded, just a heartbeat after Maksim identified motion from Vito’s slumped body.

  Miguel yelled.

  Reese struggled to shift Miguel’s broken weight, so he could free his gun, but it happened in slow motion.

  Blood leaked from Vito’s mouth, and his eyes were more closed than open, but hatred gleamed beneath his slitted lids. His arm wobbled as he aimed for a second shot.

  Maksim brought his gun up — it was still in his hand, had it been in his hand the whole time? — and fired. He fired again and again, stepping forward each time he squeezed off a round. With each shot, his aim got better. He watched with satisfaction as Vito’s body jerked when each bullet buried its way home in his chest, stomach, and neck.

  “Maks!” Miguel’s voiced cracked out. “He’s dead! You got him, dude.”

  Maksim hesitated. He stood in the center of the room, panting, unable to lower the weapon. He didn’t know how many bullets he had left. Maybe he’d already emptied the clip.

  Vito was gone. His head was cranked at an odd angle against the bookcase, the rest of his body a gory mess, his legs sprawled like a broken doll. The gun was still in his limp hand. He must have had a backup hidden on him somewhere.

  Objectively, Maksim knew he was no longer a threat, but he couldn’t seem to force himself to lower his gun. His sweaty palms were slick on the grip.

  “Is the girl okay, Val?” Reese called. His arms appeared to be the only thing keeping Miguel on his feet.

  “She’s… fine.”

  The hair on the back of Maksim’s neck lifted. He finally tore his gaze from Vito’s corpse and looked at Val, who was painfully heaving his body off Emma’s prone form.

  “Val!” she screamed.

  “Rivetti?” Reese propped Miguel against the wall and bulldozed across the room, but Maksim beat him to it.

  He caught Val by the shoulders, but his dead weight practically yanked Maksim off his feet. He collapsed, taking Maksim with him. Maksim’s hands were wet from the blood pouring from his body.

  “Val? Val! Goddammit!” He pressed a hand against Val’s back, but his shirt was soaked, and it was impossible to identify the exact location of his injury. He ripped the shirt with his bare hands.

  Val didn’t object when Reese dropped to his knees and roughly manhandled him onto his side, so they could search for entry and exit wounds.

  “Miguel!” Maksim shouted.

  “I’m here.” His friend was already at his side, bracing himself on Maksim’s shoulder as he bent shaky legs. He stripped off his shirt and pressed it hard against a small fleshy hole beneath Val’s shoulder blade.

  They rolled him onto his back, and Miguel pressed Val’s own sodden shirt against the ugly, torn flesh of the exit wound beneath his diaphragm.

  “Call 911,” Miguel said grimly.

  Maksim fumbled for his cell phone, but Reese was already on it. He reported their injuries and location in a clipped, no-nonsense report. It sounded like something he’d done a hundred times before.

  “Get his feet elevated,” Miguel ordered.

  Emma, with her hands still bound, scrambled to lift Val’s legs and prop them in her lap. She was crying, but it was silent now. She seemed too afraid to make a noise.

  “Come on, Val. Stay with us.” Miguel wasn’t asking. He was commanding.

  Val was conscious, but he’d been silent and unresisting as they manhandled him. His eyes were unfocused. It seemed as if every scrap of will power he had left was concentrated on breathing. The wet, aborted noises coming from his chest filled Maksim with a creeping horror.

  He leaned over Val and cupped his cheek. His beautiful eyes were opaque, as if a slow frost was taking them over, but he struggled to focus on Maksim’s face.

  Maksim knew what he needed to hear. He knew this man’s heart. “You saved her,” he whispered. “We’re safe.”

  Val’s eyes squeezed shut. A tear escaped the cage of his lashes and streaked down his temple.

  “You’re going to be okay,” Maksim promised. He used his court voice, calm and soothing. The voice of a man who was certain of an outcome.

  Val’s lips were pale, but he smiled weakly. “How… can you… be sure?” His voice was barely more than a gasp.

  Maksim pulled him close and buried his face in his hair. Val reeked of blood, but if he breathed deep enough, Maksim could fill his lungs with the faintest trace of warm scent from his rapidly cooling body.

  “This is true love,” he quoted stupidly, remembering their ridiculous talks of the Princess Bride. This morning? Yesterday? A lifetime ago. Time had no meaning inside the storm raging through him. “Do you think this happens every day?”

  Val’s mouth twitched. It might have been an attempt at a smile. If it was, it cost him the last scrap of strength keeping him with them.

  He slid into unconsciousness just as sirens began to cry in the distance.

  25

  Val

  When Val first surfaced from the blackest sleep he’d ever known, the world was nothing but pain and confusion. Bright lights stung his eyes. Hands held him down at the wrists and ankles. There was something hard in his throat. He began to choke and struggle, and a cacophony of voices rose to a crescendo. The darkness rose up and swallowed him.

  The second time he awoke, the world was dark except for the dim orange glow of a distant light. Silence roared around him like a whitewater river. All he could hear was his own heartbeat, and every second he listened to it, he feared it would stop. Eventually he realized it wasn’t his heartbeat at all, but a mechanical beep. Somebody was playing a video game.

  A shooter game, maybe. Headshots that didn’t kill. Penalties reversed the instant a screen shut off.

  Lucky bastard.

  The third time Val opened his eyes, he was finally coherent enough to get his bearings. He was in a hospital room with beige walls and a floral wallpaper border. A heart monitor maintained a steady, incessant beep. His throat was sore, and his chest and stomach and back hurt. It felt as if he’d been rolled over by a Humvee.

  “About time your lazy ass woke up.”

  Val carefully turned his head and saw Reese seated in a c
orner of the room. His long legs were propped on a chair, and a tattered paperback rested open in his lap.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “A…” Val coughed. “A little rough.”

  “I bet.” Reese’s trademark smile flashed. He stretched and cracked his neck. “A bullet collapsed your lungs. You nearly bought the farm, Marine.”

  “Oorah,” Val joked weakly. He coughed again, harder this time, and pain blasted through him hard enough to turn his vision white.

  Reese was at his bedside in a flash, hitting a call button that summoned a nurse in teal scrubs. She boisterously welcomed Val back to the land of the living and checked his vitals before adjusting his IV.

  “The doctor is on rounds. I’ll get her up here,” she announced, as she placed a small device in Val’s hand. “Press this button if you need some morphine.”

  Val hit the button before she’d even gotten the door shut. “How much can I press this thing?” he muttered.

  Reese looked amused. “You’re about to pass out on me.”

  “Nah…” He closed his eyes. Then he jerked his head back off the pillow. “Emma?” he asked, blinking rapidly and grimly hanging onto consciousness.

  “Alive. Everyone’s alive.”

  “Good…” He laid back against the pillow, but the sudden memory of restraints on his wrists and ankles kept his eyes from closing. “Am I under arrest?”

  “Not yet.” Reese cocked a hip against the bed and scratched thoughtfully beneath his chin. “Your boyfriend has been working his ass off to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  “Hmm…” Val wanted to ask about that. He needed to ask about it. But morphine sleep was strong, and its sweet pull was too much for him to resist a third time.

  He thought Reese might be speaking again, but he couldn’t decode the meaning. He slipped back into a dreamless darkness.

  The next three days of recovery were hell on earth. Val quickly realized the cotton nausea effect of morphine wasn’t worth the respite from pain. He only allowed a dose when the sensation of a burning knife between his ribs became unbearable. He slept like shit, plagued by weird dreams full of disturbing nonsense, and he woke with pain so sharp he couldn’t bear to take a complete breath.

  He was cranky as hell. His nurses remained cheery despite his bitching, but by the end of a long shift their smiles were plastered on so thick and tight they looked like wax figures.

  His doctor was an asshole, but strangely, that comforted Val. He enjoyed the woman’s brusque, no-nonsense demeanor. When she slammed her tablet onto the counter and yelled that she’d have him restrained if he attempted to get out of bed one more time, she reminded him of his first drill instructor. Apparently, trying to prove he could piss standing up was a crime within the medical community.

  Whenever Val managed to nod off, someone inevitably came around to shake his snow globe.

  Within hours of regaining consciousness, the Portland Police Bureau was crawling up his ass. Andrea Nilsson was still the lead on his case, but the deceased Brent Miller had been replaced by a new partner.

  The man was short and wiry, with a backward baseball cap and his badge clipped to the pocket of his jeans. Unlike his predecessor, he appeared to have no skin in the game, and his questions were neutral to the point of boredom.

  Nilsson was pissed at Maksim for not keeping her in the loop, and she took her ire out on Val in the form of scathing sarcasm. Val didn’t mind, because he had the full arm of the Cabrini Legal Clinic standing between them.

  As witnesses, Miguel and Maksim weren’t allowed in the room during his questioning, but two sharp-eyed attorneys flanked him at all times when the police were present.

  Maksim’s coworkers had introduced themselves as Alexander Cabrini and Elliot Smith, and they didn’t give an inch of leeway during his interviews. They were quick to shut down any answer that wasn’t compelled by law, whether or not there was a chance of him incriminating himself.

  He was sure if Nilsson asked what brand of breakfast cereal he preferred, Cabrini would say coolly, “Don’t answer that.”

  Whenever they were allowed, Miguel and Maksim joined the conversation. They’d undergone their own interviews, and their colleagues had apparently been just as effective in shielding them from incriminating themselves.

  A portion of Miguel’s dark hair had been shaved, and a row of ugly black stitches lined his temple. His eye was swollen closed, and he had a hairline fracture of his cheekbone. But he looked damned good for a man who had survived a mafia hit.

  Maksim was thankfully uninjured and as icy and aloof as the day they’d met. He was dressed to the nines in a suit that probably cost half of Val’s Recon salary, briefcase in hand and not a hair out of place.

  Val wasn’t surprised that Maksim’s interviews with the detectives were the shortest of all. Trying to get information from that man, when he didn’t want to give it, would be like repeatedly cracking their heads against a concrete barrier.

  All four attorneys seemed confident that Val wouldn’t be charged. There was no evidence of his having ever been on Russo’s payroll. If the detectives suspected it, they couldn’t prove it. He hadn’t even fired a shot at Russo’s mansion.

  It was much easier to prove that Mary Russo had staged a coup in her own house and had been gunning for Val on the off chance his father had shared information with him. Maksim and Reese had been acting in third party self-defense, protecting themselves and others from imminent harm. Though they could potentially be charged with manslaughter, no one from Cabrini’s seemed to think it was likely.

  “I spoke with my friend at the D.A.,” Maksim informed him. “On the off chance the PPB think they have enough of a case to charge us, their office will decline to prosecute. It doesn’t make for very good PR, sending a couple of decorated Marines, a former police officer, and a philanthropic attorney to prison for defending themselves against an organized crime syndicate.”

  “That can’t be it,” Val said blankly.

  I can’t get away with murder.

  He didn’t say that. Maksim and his colleagues believed the matter resolved, or on its way to being so. But Reese watched him silently.

  Knowingly.

  Reese stayed with him most of the time, worn and unshaven, cracking jokes and bullshitting about things that happened years ago. He made Val smile, even though neither of them felt like laughing.

  What a pair they made. Val hurt too much and had too many questions floating around his swiss-cheesed brain, unasked and unanswered. Reese, for all that he was loose-limbed and quick to smile, still had the same tightly compressed anger packed into every damn cell of his body. No matter the lightness of his conversation, his eyes stayed flat.

  Maksim was there, too.

  Sometimes he sat and listened to Val and Reese talk, learning a hell of a lot about Val’s life pre-discharge without saying a single word.

  Often, he’d visit when Reese was getting some sleep. He’d sit at Val’s hip and stroke his hand with strong, gentle fingers. His voice was deep and mellifluous, and Val loved to close his eyes and just listen as he spoke about mundane things.

  He’d begun tearing up the blood-soaked carpet in his apartment, he said, though he was already looking for another place. He must have seen guilt cross Val’s face, because he swiftly explained that it had nothing to do with the fact that people had been killed there.

  “I’ve never really liked the place,” he admitted. “I only kept it this past year for Emma and now…”

  Val winced. “Are her parents still threatening to sue you?”

  Maksim sighed. There were lines of strain at the corners of his mouth that hadn’t been there a week ago. Grays and purples smudged beneath his eyes like watercolor shadows. “Her father calls once a day to scream into my voicemail. If he had any intention of actually suing me, or laying any criminal accusations against me, he would have done so by now. It’s impotent bluster. Emma called my office to tell me she threatened to turn the
m both into CPS if they made trouble.”

  “That’s fucking grim,” Val said disgustedly. “Maybe she should do that, anyway.”

  “I’ve worked too many deadbeat parent cases to think it would make any difference.” Maksim looked out the window. “They’re terrible parents who could use intense alcohol counseling and parenting classes, but they’re small fish to an overburdened legal system with horrific abuse reported daily.”

  “If you move, she’ll have nowhere to go.”

  “She isn’t allowed to interact with me anymore,” Maksim said in a hushed voice. “They’ve begun tracking the GPS in her phone just to be certain she’s obeying them.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Sorry didn’t cover it. That girl was one of the few people in Maksim’s life that he loved. Taking care of her kept him in touch with his own humanity.

  Maksim shrugged, but his jaw was clenched so hard it looked like it was about to shatter. “She’s alive,” he said. “That’s all that matters.”

  But it wasn’t all that mattered, not by a long shot, and the rest of it kept Val awake long into the night.

  Reese sat in his perennial perch, eerily silent, watching him with unblinking cat’s eyes. Val stared at the darkness outside his window, even though there was nothing to see but rain bouncing off the streetlights.

  He thought of Pop, and the way he’d loved his family and yet completely fucked them over. Maybe Val took after his father in more ways than he’d ever thought.

  He’d failed Reese by leaving the Corps, right when Reese had needed him most. He hadn’t even been around to cushion the blow when Reese’s own world was ripped away from him.

  If he hadn’t left the Corps, Russo would never have brought those dirty pictures to his mother’s kitchen table. He’d never have blackmailed Val’s family, just so Val would work for him. Pop would have still been in a load of shit, and things would have still gotten bad. Maybe really bad. But they both might still be alive.