Compulsion (Max Revere Novels Book 2)

by Brennan, Allison

  But nothing had been the same.

  Martha couldn’t do the things she wanted to.

  “Max, how about if you stay with Mommy’s friends for a few days so I can go skiing? You know you can’t ski the big slopes yet.”

  Max just looked at her, and Martha said, “You’re so selfish. I just want some alone time. Why can’t I have that? Why are you making me feel so guilty?”

  Martha was the selfish one, but at the time Max didn’t understand. Martha had told her Victor Tracy was her father, but he wasn’t. She’d lied. Max never told anyone about how she confronted the man, what he’d said, how she felt …

  * * *

  She sat upright. Her head hurt. It was like her brain was playing catch-up.

  But she knew how Carter Duvall learned about her past.

  Her journals.

  She slowly pulled herself out of bed. Hobbled up the short stairs to her office. A walk-in closet, big enough to double as a small bedroom, housed her old files—things she didn’t want to get rid of. Notes on every investigation she worked. Disks. And her journals.

  She still wrote in a journal, though sporadically. She’d needed them more when she was younger than she did now. She used writing in an attempt to understand her world, learn who she was, where she fit in. She’d read and reread her oldest diaries, from the time before her mother left. She remembered confronting Victor Tracy when she was sixteen.

  Max had never told anyone that her mother lied about her father’s identity. It never came up, and it’s not like people would ask. And it wasn’t like Victor Tracy wanted to admit he had an affair while he was married.

  But she’d written about it. Especially when she was in college and actively trying to figure out where she’d come from. Never for the public. Only for herself.

  Her journals were all there, where she kept them, neatly lined up. Her grandmother had stately day planners with gold leaf lettering on leather covers that she wrote in every day without fail; Max’s journals were small, some cheap, some expensive, a mishmash of sizes because when she was on the road with her mother, she took what she could get. The last few volumes were uniform but the older journals housed Max’s secrets and fears.

  The same secrets and fears that Carter Duvall had convinced her he’d learned through reading her books, as if he could read her mind.

  I can read between the lines.

  Bullshit. He’d been here. He’d read the raw material. He was a liar.

  Nothing was missing, but he must have read these. When? How had he known about them? Had he been in her apartment? This was a secure building.

  Secure, but not impossible to break into, especially when she was out of town more than half the year. What if he had a friend in the building? A relative? Tricked the doorman? Forged a work order from her?

  Her home. Her sanctuary. And he’d been in here.

  Anger flooded through her and she toddled down the stairs. Nick and David were sitting at her dining table, notes spread in front of them. “Carter Duvall has been in my apartment,” she said.

  They looked at her, skeptical.

  “I’ve kept journals since I was five. He said he knew all about me because of what I’d written. That’s true—but it wasn’t my books. It was my journals.”

  “Are they missing?” Nick asked.

  “No. They’re all in a cabinet in my office. But it’s the only way he could have known that I was looking for my father. My mother told me he was Victor Tracy.”

  Marco was standing in the kitchen. “Are we talking about Victor Tracy, the guy who’s been investigated by the FBI a half-dozen times?”

  She had never wanted to talk about this. With anyone. It had been a dark time in her life. But she had no choice.

  She sat down because she was feeling dizzy. Marco handed her a bottle of water, which she drank greedily.

  “I need to start at the beginning. But—this is difficult for me. I’ve never lied about it, but I never talk about it, either.”

  “You don’t have to,” David said.

  “Yes, because Duvall knows things I never speak of.” She sipped more, collected her thoughts. “He told me that I’d written about all the places my mother had taken me growing up. That in my books and articles, I mentioned I’d been to the town before when I was younger. I didn’t consciously return to any one town—I lived in dozens of big cities and small towns across the country before my tenth birthday.

  “But he knew about Jackson, Wyoming.” She wasn’t going to explain that, not with all three of them staring at her. “It was a particularly dark moment in my childhood and he asked about it. But he already knew everything, just like he knew my mother lied to me about who my father was.”

  “You’ve talked about not knowing who your father is,” Marco said.

  “Yes, but I never wrote about what I did except in my journals. You didn’t know I thought Victor Tracy was my father, did you?”

  Marco shook his head.

  “My mother never wanted to talk about my father, but I kept pressing her. When I was eight, she got mad at my nagging and told me Victor Tracy was my dad, but he was going to end up in jail and she didn’t want me around him. After she left me with my grandparents, I followed Victor in the press. He was the subject of investigations that never went anyplace. I was sixteen when I hopped a plane to New York. I knew he was still suspected of all sort of illegal activities, but when you’re a teenager and never knew your dad—well, you make up fantasies.”

  It was both simple and complex. She wanted to know if he’d known about her. She wanted to know why he didn’t want to be part of her life. And mostly, she wanted to know who she was. Where she’d come from. Who’d given her half of her genes. It wasn’t logical, maybe, but when she was a young girl it had seemed like the single most important question to answer: Who am I?

  “Long story short”—and it was a long story, one she wasn’t ready to completely share, especially in a group—“he denied it. It wasn’t pretty, to say the least, but I stood my ground. He’d admitted that he’d been involved with my mother for a summer—but that she was already pregnant with me. He dumped her not just because she’d started showing, but because he was married and didn’t want to leave his wife or raise another man’s kid. Still, I threatened to go to the press and publicly announce that he was my father, so he took the paternity test. It was negative.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about him?” Marco demanded.

  “Because you’re an FBI agent and he’s a suspected criminal. Really, Marco, is that so difficult?”

  “Do you still talk to him?”

  “Yes.” She wouldn’t say that she and Victor had become friends, but he’d been the only one in her life who was forthcoming about her mother. She learned more about Martha from Victor than anyone else. She knew he was a scam artist, but they didn’t talk about that. “I’m done with this conversation. The point is that I have always said publicly that I don’t know who my father is.” She knew, in her heart, that she was waiting for the time when her real dad would see something she wrote and contact her.

  “I didn’t know you existed,” he’d say in her fantasy. “Forgive me.”

  But that was a childish fairy tale, the one she’d believed until the paternity test proved Victor Tracy wasn’t her dad. For years she’d believed a lie because the one person she should have trusted above all others had lied to her.

  “That means,” she continued, “Duvall read my diaries. He knew about the paternity test. Not in so many words, but he implied it. And he knew about the cabin in Wyoming.”

  “What cabin?”

  “My mother—she left me once and I didn’t know if she would return.”

  “Your mother walked out when you were ten,” Marco said.

  “This was before that.”

  “How long?” David asked.

  “A week or so. There was a storm. She couldn’t get back to the cabin.” At least that’s what Martha had told her. Max didn’t
know if that was the truth. She’d told so many lies. It was ironic that Max could tell when other people were lying, but not her own mother, the mistress of the lie.

  “Duvall wanted me to tell him everything I remembered, how I felt, what I thought, and he played these psychological games. I see through him now. It’s so clear. We need to prove he was here.”

  “I’ll call for someone from the lab to come in and dust for prints,” Marco said.

  David said, “The building keeps security tapes for thirty days. I’ll review them, but he could have come in anytime.”

  “It’ll be when I was out of town,” she said. “Both of us. It could have been two years ago. When all this started.”

  “How would he know you had the journals?” Nick asked.

  “If he’s read my books, he would know. I’ve talked about my journals. A couple years ago I wrote an article about journaling and mentioned I started my first diary when I was five.”

  “Five,” Nick said with a half grin. “I’m not surprised.” He got up and went into the kitchen. “I warmed some of the soup I found in your freezer.”

  “Thank you. I’m finally hungry.”

  “Did he give you any clue as to why he’s doing this?” Marco said.

  “I took from him so he takes from me,” she said.

  “He said that?”

  She closed her eyes, put herself back in the hellhole.

  “You took from me; I’ll take from you.”

  She frowned.

  “What?” David asked. Nick walked back in with a warm bowl of soup and put it in front of her.

  “He also said he would sue my estate and take every last dime. What if this is just about money?”

  “Does that mean something to you?”

  “No.” She scowled and looked down at her soup. “I will be so mad if this is about money.”

  “There’s more to it than that,” Nick said quietly.

  They all looked at him.

  “Adam Bachman killed five people. Cole Baker killed four people, possibly more. The lawyer’s briefcase is missing, which means Baker must have thought Bachman said something about him or Duvall to the attorney. They both received psychiatric counseling at the same place with the same doctor. Did Duvall see psychopathic tendencies in these young men? Did he nurture it? Baker was violent, angry. Baker is the poster boy for teens who grow up to kill. Duvall must have known that, seen it, and used it.”

  “Duvall didn’t want to watch,” Max said. “He left. I made him angry.”

  “What happened?” David asked.

  Max really didn’t want to talk about it. Three days was a long time to think about her failures and fears. But they needed something. “The drugs had started to wear off and I started thinking somewhat clearly. I remembered who he was through his voice. I challenged him. He was angry that he hadn’t left me a whimpering mass of jelly. I think that’s why he said as much as he did, about destroying my legacy and making sure no one found my body.”

  Her voice cracked, and she really needed to get herself together. These three men were all watching her.

  Marco said, “We need to go through your files.”

  “I promise you, his name isn’t there.”

  “But maybe he was affected on the periphery by one of your investigations,” Marco said. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like Arthur Ullman to come over and interview you. He might be able to pull more information out, something that can help us narrow it down.”

  “Okay,” Max agreed. “I want to see Riley.”

  “Are you sure you’re up for the drive?” David asked.

  “I need to see her,” she repeated. “Please.”

  “I’ll take you,” he said. “Marco, go ahead and bring Arthur up here, get started. It’ll be at least a four-hour round-trip with traffic.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s noon. The traffic won’t be impossible coming back to the city, so expect us around five.”

  “I’m going to change. I’ll be right down.” She started for the stairs. She was getting used to the boot. At the bottom stair she turned and looked back at the table. “This all started after Maximum Exposure first aired. Duvall talked about my books, my articles, not the show—but Baker moved here two years ago. I’ve thought about those early programs and Duvall’s name never came up. I never heard of him before this week.”

  “Then we start there and work backwards,” Marco said. “Money. Legacy. We’re digging into his background. There’s something there and we’ll find it.”

  * * *

  Max slept most of the ride to Hartford. Somehow, riding in the car with David, she didn’t have any nightmares.

  A family stood outside Riley’s room, and Max knew they were Riley’s parents and brothers. They stared at her with tired, worried eyes. Guilt crept up her spine. What had she been thinking coming here? Of course they blamed her. She blamed herself.

  She walked as tall as she could over to the Butlers. “Doctor Butler, Lieutenant Butler, I’m Maxine Revere. I would have been here earlier, if I could.”

  Dr. Butler took her hand. She was a petite woman, with the same mass of black curls that Riley had, cut shorter. “David told us. How are you?”

  Max didn’t know how to take the honest concern in the woman’s eyes. “Better,” she said. “I wanted to see Riley.”

  “Of course. Her doctor asked us to leave for a minute, but she’s going home today.”

  Relief flooded through her. “I’m glad.”

  “We’re taking her to Boston,” Lieutenant Butler said, underscoring the point that when they said home they meant with them.

  “That’ll be good for her.”

  They stood in an awkward silence. Max wanted to apologize, to tell these people that she was sorry. She should have seen the drive in Riley. It made sense now, in hindsight. All the hours she put in to sell herself to Ben. Always trying to go above and beyond because she thought David didn’t like her. Riley had so much potential, and Max hoped she didn’t give up.

  “When she’s ready to come back,” Max said, “her job will still be there.”

  “We’ll see,” Lieutenant Butler said.

  His wife glanced at him, exchanging one of those silent conversations that people long in love did so well. She then turned to Max and said, “Tell Riley that. She needs to hear it.”

  The doctor stepped out and was about to speak until he saw Max and David. Dr. Butler said, “Please, Doctor, you can speak freely.”

  “I’ll sign her discharge papers as soon as I get the results of the last blood test,” he said. “But she’s ready to go. She’s still having trouble with her memory, but that’s due to the benzodiazepine she was injected with more than the heroin.”

  Max said, “Riley lost her memory?”

  The doctor turned to her and hesitated, so Dr. Butler said, “It’s a drug commonly used pre-op or for surgeries where the patient isn’t put under general anesthesia. Variants are used in Rohyponl and similar drugs, but the primary side effect is retrograde amnesia. Riley can’t remember anything from the day she was attacked. She doesn’t remember why she was at Greenhaven, but she does remember visiting the facility with you.”

  Riley’s doctor said, “I’ll start the paperwork. She’s over the worst of the withdrawal symptoms, but her system is weak and compromised. If she didn’t have you at home, Doctor Butler, I would insist on keeping her here another couple of days.”

  “She’ll do better at home,” Dr. Butler said.

  The doctor excused himself, and Max looked at Riley’s parents.

  “Go in,” the lieutenant said gruffly. “But not long. She needs rest.”

  “I’ll wait here,” David said.

  Max walked into Riley’s hospital room alone. Riley was lying in the hospital bed, eyes closed, dark circles dominating her tan complexion. Her curly hair was limp and stringy and she’d lost weight.

  “Hello, Riley,” Max said.

  Riley opened her eyes. It took her a moment to recogn
ize Max, as if she hadn’t been expecting her to walk in.

  “Max,” she said a moment later. “You’re okay.”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Riley frowned. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize.”

  “I fucked up.”

  “You followed a lead. Yeah, it was stupid to go to Greenhaven without telling anyone, without having someone as backup, but your instincts were good.”

  “My dad is so mad. And—he’s worried. I hate to worry my parents.”

  “Your mom’s a rock.”

  Riley smiled. “Yeah. She’s the only one who wanted me to take this job. She’s always encouraged me to do what I wanted to do. But”—her smile faltered—“I can’t remember who did this to me. I can’t remember what I learned at Greenhaven. I don’t even know if I found anything important.”

  “You must have, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

  “I’m going back to Boston,” she said.

  “Your parents told me. But I want you to know, as soon as you feel ready, your job will be waiting for you.”

  Riley sighed and closed her eyes. “I don’t know if I’m cut out for this.”

  “You are,” Max said. “You’re good. You needed a better teacher than me.”

  “You taught me so much.” She looked at Max. “I just don’t think I’m good enough. I never thought it was dangerous. I read all your books, all your articles, and you glossed over all that.”

  “Because whatever happens to me isn’t important compared to what happened to the victims I write about. I’ve risked my life many times, and maybe I shouldn’t have minimized those things.”

  “Did you ever regret anything?”

  Max opened her mouth to say yes, but she couldn’t. She didn’t live her life in regrets. If she did, she wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning. Instead, she said, “I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I’ve never regretted exposing the truth to get justice for those who can’t get it for themselves. I remember that if I hadn’t gone to Mexico and exposed the human traffickers who’d let three dozen women and children die locked in a hot truck, their families would never have known what happened to them. They suffered far more than I did. If I hadn’t exposed Lauren Smith and her group of wackos, innocent seniors would continue to die because of her greed and hate. I remember the successes. You have to as well.” She paused. “Your dad understands this, because it’s a lot like being a cop. They can’t save everyone. But they do the job because they can save many.”