Dead to the Max (12 page)

Max grabbed her purse from the table where she’d left it. Stupid, someone could have ripped it off, and so engrossed with him, she’d never have seen. She backed away, unwilling to take her eyes off him in case he tried to grab her. “I don’t hang around with murderers after dark.”

“But do you sleep with them?”

Her skin turned alternately hot, then cold with his words.

He raised a brow. “No, I forgot. You only pick up urban cowboys. Much safer that way. Except for sexually transmitted diseases. But there’s condoms for that, isn’t there?”

Why did everyone keep bringing up—yeah, the detective—STDs with her? As if she wasn’t quite clean in some way.

That was probably exactly how Nick saw her. Unclean. Tainted. Diseased. He knew her secret. He knew her shame. He knew her. “Get away from me.”

“Till we meet again, Max Starr.” He’d known her name all along.

She’d totally lost control of the whole info-mode thing.

Her heart pounding, Max did something totally in conflict with her goal of finding Wendy’s killer.

She ran away.

* * * * *

“What does he want from me?” Max lay in her claw-foot tub, steam rising into the air, perfumed bubbles up to her chin, her handmade gardenia soap—one of her few indulgences—in the tray beside her. She’d turned the lights off, lit scented candles and lined them up along the tile wainscoting. The mixture of flowers and vanilla intoxicated her. So did the memory of Nicholas Drake’s hands on her body as he held her close, rubbing his cock against her. She was sure Wendy Gregory was somehow influencing her.

“Sex,” Cameron said.

“What?”

“He wants sex.”

“I’m serious. He has ulterior motives.”

“I’m serious, too. I think you should give it to him.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“Why? You give it to every other Tom, Dick, and Harry that can dance the pants off you.”

“That’s really a low blow.” Nor was it true. It wasn’t
every
Tom, Dick, and Harry. It wasn’t even that often. Why couldn’t he understand that sometimes she just had to get out or...die?

She was glad when Cameron didn’t seem to hear the thought, or at least ignored it. He merely went on needling her about Nick. He was just dying to pick a fight. “You want him bad, sweetheart. I know all your little signals.”

“Stop it.”

“The dreamy, half-closed lids. The quickened breath. The hardened nipples. The sweet little moan in your throat.”

“I didn’t moan.”

“Don’t deny it. You’re wet, and you’re hot, baby. I can feel it. And this time it’s not for the macho detective.” The water swirled gently around her.

She slapped the gardenia bubbles as if he were next to her. “What do you expect? Of course, I’m hot and wet. I’m in a steaming bath.”

“Why didn’t you just fuck his brains out the way you’ve been fantasizing for the last fifteen minutes? He was offering.”

“Hey.” She sat up, water and bubbles streaming down her breasts. “You know damn well that was all about Wendy’s emotions.”

“Sex. That’s what it’s all about, what it was
always
about. Even with me. You always called it sex, Max, never making love.”

Her body chilled in the steamy bathroom. She couldn’t deny his accusations, but nor could she answer them. “Where is all this coming from? Why are you so angry?”

“Did we ever make love, Max?” His voice was a whisper in the air, soft as a teardrop on her cheek.

She closed her eyes, breathed deep. “Of course we did.”

“Then how can having sex with strangers replace what we had?”

It couldn’t. It never had. It only kept her warm for a little while. The way it had before she’d ever met Cameron. She’d never had a relationship before him, just...casual sex. She’d given all that up for him. He left her anyway, even if it wasn’t his fault.

“A woman has needs,” she whispered. The need to feel flesh-and-blood arms around her.

His answering murmur reached inside her, tore her heart out. “You need a
real
man for that, Max, not a fleeting encounter with some useless gigolo you meet only in the dark. Someone you can wake up and face in the morning. Someone who loves you back.”

“I’ve already had that.” She couldn’t bear to let him go. She couldn’t bear to even the contemplate that kind of loss ever again. She wouldn’t survive it a second time.

“I never meant for you to stop living your life, baby. I only stayed to protect you. Because I thought those bastards would kill you that night, too, if I didn’t watch over you.”

“I don’t want to talk about that.” She was cold, so cold, despite the heat of the water.

“I only stayed afterward to help you get over what they’d done to you, what you watched them do to me.”

“Please don’t,” she whispered. “Not another word.” First the detective. Now Cameron was reminding her all over again. Twice in two days was more than she could handle. She stood, grabbed a towel to cover herself, and resisted the urge to clamp her hands to her ears. Been there, done that. Right now she needed control.

“I’d have thought picking up guys in bars would terrify you after what my murderers did to you. How can you bear to have strangers touch you now?”

“I’m not discussing this with you.”

“You’re burying yourself with those barflies, hiding what you really feel. But you can’t hide from it forever. You’re going to explode, and God help me, Max, I’m afraid what will happen when you do. I’m afraid you won’t be able to live with what you’ve turned yourself into.”

“Get the hell out of my head, Cameron.
Please.
” The words hurt her throat and all she wanted to do was hunker down in a tiny ball. Hiding from everything he said.

Cameron ignored her strangled voice. “It’s not like this is anything new to you. It’s how I found you, what you’ve always done under stress. Isolation by shutting off your emotions and fucking men whose names you don’t even ask.”

She could not take one more moment of it without breaking into a million tiny pieces. “I said get out.” Her voice was a shriek in the quiet of the night, the sheer out-of-control quality of it almost frightening. Steaming water lapped at her legs. She shivered anyway.

“I’m sorry, baby, so sorry.” His whisper faded away into the darkened bedroom, leaving behind only the scent of peppermints, vanilla, and gardenias.

The mixed aromas turned her stomach. His words made her sick.
She
made herself want to vomit.

Dropping the towel on the tile floor, Max slid back down into the water, slipped beneath the surface where she tried desperately to drown every memory of the night Cameron died.

Chapter Nine

“You stupid cunt.” The male tone was almost casual, devoid of anger, pain, and love.

Max dreamed, knew it was Wendy’s dream, but fell slave to it even so. Terror lodged in her chest.

“You’re a sniveling, whining, good-for-nothing slut.”

Max, as Wendy, sat back on her knees on the hard cement. She wore a green-and-black striped wool skirt with suspenders made of the same rough material. The childish outfit was a favorite. She wore it like a talisman against evil.

Today, it had failed.

The giant towered over her, faceless, soulless, and pointed his index finger in her face, his other huge hand curled into a fist, the ruby stone of his class ring winking. He’d given her a black eye with that fist on more than one occasion.

“You drop your panties for any scumbag who promises to watch over you, protect you, and steal you away from me. You’re stupid, you’re weak, and you couldn’t live without a man to take care of you, you little whore. Tell me who the cocksucker is.”

She listened, a woman trapped in a child’s body, a child’s nightmare. God help her, she believed. But she didn’t give him a name.

His fist rose, ready to strike. She buried her face in her hands, took the blow on her ear. Fire burned across her skull. Shooting stars flashed in front of her eyes. Bells clanged inside her head. When she looked at him again, she was deaf. His lips moved, she heard nothing. A generous gift from a God that had suddenly remembered her after years of desertion.

In the blink of an eye, Max stood across the darkened garage, apart from Wendy who still huddled on the concrete, her shoulders shaking with silent tears. In shadow, the monster loomed over her, fist clenched for another strike.

“You want this,” the monster said. “You need this. You must have my punishment in order to feel whole again.” And Max felt the monster’s sick sense of pleasure and anticipation.

Wendy turned, the woman and the child all rolled into one portrait, a beam of heavenly light illuminating her face, just before the fist pummeled her head.

Max woke. Sweat drenched the bed sheets. An acrid scent rose from her skin. She lay curled in a cramped ball, her arms covering her head, as if anticipating the next blow.

She wiped the wetness from her cheeks. Wendy’s tears. Max didn’t know how to cry.

Was it a vision or a disjointed dream? She didn’t know. Usually she could ask Cameron. Not tonight. His peppermints hung in the stale air, but she didn’t call out to him. It wasn’t anger that kept her quiet. It was fear. She’d rather endure the visions than give him another opening into that long ago night he died, or to the things she’d felt tonight while dancing with Nick.

They’d had fights when Cameron was alive, both of them too stubborn to end it before it escalated into a screaming match. Back then, he’d disappear for a day or two. But he’d always come home. With flowers. Or her favorite mocha.

He hadn’t left her again since the day he died.

His apology was a far off echo she had to ignore.

She didn’t want to talk about how the dream, while she knew it was Wendy’s memory, was also a statement about her own behavior. She was the slut being punished, for all the men, all the amoral desires.

Unfurling, she sat up, pulled her feet beneath her, then stretched across the bed to push up the window. Over-painting had made the slide stiff. She yanked, and it rose with a start, toppling her over onto her hip. She lay there, the night air gently caressing her.

She imagined it was Cameron. She knew he’d come to her in a sweet dream if she wanted, wash away the nightmare, wash away the earlier argument.

She also knew that afterward, he’d want to talk about...everything. And that she couldn’t bear.

Something soft rubbed against her face, and a purr vibrated near her ear. “Buzzard,” she whispered.

The cat pushed its nose against hers, rubbed its sleek face across her cheek, staked its claim of ownership, then flopped on the bed, warm fur pressed to her belly.

Max let it stay, just for the night, and fell asleep with the comforting warmth of something alive tucked close to her body. The scent of peppermint drifted in through the window.

She remembered the ring the moment before sleep claimed her.

A ruby ring. Like the one Remy Hackett wore.

* * * * *

Cameron didn’t talk to her all weekend. She didn’t talk to herself either.

By Sunday night, alone in her too-narrow bed with nothing more than Buzzard the cat, she was going mad.

“I’m sorry, Max.”

Weren’t cats supposed to hiss a warning when there was a ghost around? Buzzard had neither raised his head nor opened his eyes. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” she whispered.

“You thought that was a bullshit movie line when I was alive. You sure as hell don’t believe it now that I’m dead.”

“Have it your way. But that was Friday night, Cameron. You don’t need to apologize. Let it go.” She wished
she
could.

“Status quo, huh, Maxi?” he murmured, then left it alone the way she wanted him to. “Wanna talk about the vision?”

The vision? For a moment, she hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. Oh yeah, the Wendy dream. She’d begun to think of it as one of her own, not a vision, not some dead woman’s memory, but her own personal nightmare inspired by her actions over countless nights for two years, the needs she couldn’t control.

There were, however, parts of it that were undeniably Wendy. And someone else. She could almost feel the cold, hard concrete floor beneath her knees and the fist against her ear. Then, quickly, the physical sensation of hurling that blow, consumed with the need to hurt, humiliate, and control, the almost sexual thrill of it and the swift stab of pleasure when the fist connected.

Both themes sickened her. Power over weakness. In one way she was the abused, in another, the abuser.

“I figured it out,” she murmured into the dark.

“You said you forgave me.”

“I do.” She would always forgive him. It was herself she wasn’t so sure about.

“You don’t sound like you mean it,” he singsonged.

“Nag, nag, nag.” She had to fight the smile wanting to rise to her lips. He was here. That’s all that mattered.

His laughter swirled. “Okay, now you sound like yourself again. So tell me about the dream.”

“You’ve already read my mind.” She prayed he hadn’t read any of her emotions concerning the nightmare.

“I know all about your emotions.”

“Then you know I don’t want to talk about them.”

She was the bad girl, a very bad girl. She knew it. Cameron knew it. That’s why he’d made those awful, sarcastic, cruel but very true comments on Friday night. She deserved the punishment.

His warmth surrounded her as his words filled her head. “But I was talking about the substitution of sex with strangers for intimacy. I was talking about why you do that, not about punishment.”

“Please, Cameron, not tonight. Please don’t start this again tonight.” It was the closest she’d come to begging for anything in...maybe forever.

“What do you want to beg for?”

She wanted to beg for him to be alive.

“I’m as alive as you make me. Take off your T-shirt.”

There was experiencing a real, physical touch. And then there was feeling a real man’s touch, even if he was dead. God, the truth was she craved both equally. Still, she didn’t move.