Free Vengeance by Shana Figueroa

moment, not sure what to do with it, until she realized that not only was the hand holding the coat shaking, but her entire body shook from the cold that saturated her wet clothes and chilled her to the core. She took off her own jacket and put on his, still infused with his body heat and masculine scent. His warmth soaked into her like a hot bath, and her tremors subsided.
    “Thank you,” she said, “for the coat, and for saving my life.”
    He nodded in response as the waitress returned with their drinks, eyed the unusual fractal tattoos on Max’s forearms, then left again. Val threw back the first tequila shot and let it burn a path down her throat. She took a deep breath as her resolve fortified again and her thoughts untangled themselves.
    “What the fuck is going on?” she said.
    Max took a swig of his beer and shrugged. “Hell if I know.”
    “You can…You can really…”
    “See the future when I come? Yes.”
    “Since when?”
    “All my life. Since my first wet dream. As far back as I can remember. You?”
    She raised her eyebrows at him. “Why would you ask me that? Aren’t you the expert?”
    He laughed. “Hardly. You’re only the second person I’ve ever met who can do it.”
    “There are others ? Who? Where?”
    “I only met the one guy. He was looking for something, like you. He implied there were others, but he came and went quickly—in more ways than one. I didn’t get many answers out of him.”
    “If you knew there were others, why didn’t you look for me—I mean, people like me? Like us?”
    His eyes fell and he fidgeted with his beer bottle. “It’s complicated.”
    She balled her hands into fists as a spike of anger surged through her. “I’ve felt alone my entire life . Even when I was with other people, I still felt alone. And you were just a few miles away the whole time? Did you even try to look?”
    His face darkened, and when his eyes met hers again, she could practically count the bricks in the emotional wall he’d erected. “It’s complicated .”
    Fine, he didn’t want to talk about it. She knew how difficult it could be to discuss your deeply personal and weird ability with other people who’d probably dismiss you as a delusional sex addict. Whatever—his previous disinterest in finding others like himself wasn’t important now.
    “How did you know about me?” she asked.
    “A hunch. I confirmed it right after you visited me at the Red Raven.”
    She smirked. “Did your little pussy cat help you with that?”
    “Kitty’s gotta work her way through nursing school somehow,” he said with lazy sarcasm.
    Val rolled her eyes, then asked, “What do you mean ‘confirmed it’?”
    “I saw a string of prime numbers. That’s the same thing I saw with Ethan—the other guy with our condition.”
    “ Condition?”
    He sighed and took a long drink of his beer. “At first I saw images, and I couldn’t figure out what they meant until I started interpreting them as numbers, because I’m decent at math. Now all I see is numbers. I’ve gotten pretty good at deciphering what they mean. But I still think of it as more of a sexual dysfunction than a gift.”
    “But it’s how you got rich, right?”
    Max’s face hardened and his eyes turned cold. “Yeah, it is.”
    “At least you don’t see dead people all the fucking time.” The image of Chet in his death throes popped into her head—yet another person she’d failed to protect—and her hands began to shake again. She downed her second tequila shot, then slammed the glass on the table. “What’s your connection to Norman Barrister?”
    “The guy running for mayor?”
    Val nodded.
    “I don’t have one.”
    “Bullshit.” Gorgeous knight in shining armor or not, she was going to get some damn answers out of him. “Before Chet was gunned down in his own apartment by a couple of Seattle’s finest, he told me that he heard Barrister talking about your dad’s death two weeks before it happened. How would