Power to the Max (16 page)

Minus the fog, the night was only marginally warmer than in the City. Max refused to pull her jacket closer around her, even for warmth. Quiet fell after the slam of his car door. Lights were still on in the houses, but the street was empty. Just her. Just Witt. She barely heard the soles of his shoes on the macadam as he crossed to her. The lines of his face remained immobile, his eyes like black holes in the absence of light.

She waited for him to start yelling.

Instead, he stepped close, ran his hands down her arms, then up, finally resting on her shoulders, body brushing hers. His head dipped and all the light disappeared. She closed her eyes as his lips touched hers, the sweet taste of butterscotch candies on his breath and in his kiss. His hands came up to frame her face, to hold her still. He kissed with lips parted, stroked his tongue lightly over hers, then retreated. She sighed.

Safe. Warm. Protected. And wanted. She could have put her arms around him and stayed like that forever. At least a piece of her could. And that wasn’t the piece that had confessed the need for power to Angela.

She pulled back. Angela. Max might have forgotten for a moment, but Witt surely hadn’t. He was saving the blowout until after he kissed her, though only God knew why.

His fingers slid down her cheeks, back to her shoulders, then her arms, like the scene in reverse. But this time his eyes were a deep blue, and his lips were still wet with her kiss.

Hands now holding hers, he spoke softly, “Watch your back, Max. I’m not always gonna be there to do it for you.”

Not turning from her, he stepped away, his grip pulling free, arms dropping back to his sides. Four backward steps, he finally turned, climbed into his car, started the engine, and drove away.

He could have meant that she’d get herself into trouble when he wasn’t around. He could have been referring to a nebulous future neither of them could see.

Or he could have been telling her that sooner or later he’d leave. Sooner was the better bet.

* * * * *

Max sat on her bed by the window with the cat on her lap. Street light made it all the way through the now sparse leaves of the elm. Bars of light fell across the cat’s black fur like a cage. She’d opened the window to dispel the sensation.

She should have told Witt about Traynor, about meeting Julia and Lance, about the plethora of new suspects. Instead she’d kissed him, then let him walk away.

“Why’d you tell Angela the truth?”

She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. Cameron was talking about power, the way she’d admitted wanting it. Max swallowed, no longer sure it had been the truth, hoping it hadn’t been. Trust her husband to go back to it without warning.

“It was the truth. We both know it. Your need for power permeated our marriage.”

“I never wanted power over you.” He was the one who’d wanted power last night, when he’d forced her to beg for that orgasm, when he’d seduced her with Witt’s voice, Witt’s hands, and Witt’s cock inside her. Now
that
was a power play.

“You didn’t understand the lesson, Max. It was beyond you. You’ve always needed to be on top. With me, with every man.”

“That’s not true. I let Witt be on top.” She’d damn near reveled in his weight on her.

“Metaphorically, sweetheart. You’re always on top. You always have to make him beg. And you didn’t like the taste of your own medicine last night, did you?”

She cringed. The cat wriggled in her lap with the tight grip she had on him. “Nothing wrong with wanting to be in control.”

“Your precious control, Max, will lose you everything in the end.”

Deep breath. In, out. “You’re telling me Witt’s going to leave me, aren’t you?” Witt had said as much. “You can see the future.”

“I can’t even see the past clearly. But I know how it made me feel when you played your games with me.”

“How?” she whispered.

“Utterly helpless and alone.”

She didn’t ask what he would have done eventually if he’d lived. She didn’t want to know. “I can’t change who I am, not for Witt.”

“Not even for me.”

“I didn’t know how then.”

“You don’t know how now.” He sneaked in closer, wrapping himself around her like a warm down coat she could actually feel. “But do you want to?”

She blinked. No tears, only a stinging in her eyes and nose. The answer frightened her. If she said yes, then she had to try. And she couldn’t bear to fail, couldn’t bear to wake up in the morning and find Cameron gone. For good.

“Remember what Angela said?”

She shook her head as if he had eyes to see.

“Never stay in one place too long.”

Ah, yes, she’d known he’d get back to that.

“You’ve stayed too long where you are, Max. You’ve rooted like a tree. And those roots are strangling you.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know. Only you do.”

She laughed, a sad sound that hurt despite its softness. “You’ve always been so good at telling me what to do before.”

“Maybe this is the first step. Saying you want to try.”

She thought of all the walls she’d have to knock down, all the memories she’d no longer be able to shut out, all the pain she’d have to feel. Panic gripped her throat until she couldn’t breathe.

“Tell me you want to try, Max.”

And if she did? He’d leave her. Finally, his earthbound mission was clear after all these years. Free her, and he’d free himself. The worst of all the possibilities.

“Tell me.” Whispered like a succubus in her ear. Tantalizing. Terrifying.

“No.”

A harsh snort, and he pulled his warmth and comfort from her. “You’ll end up alone the way you want. Witt doesn’t even have anything to leave. You have no
relationship
with him, nothing. You haven’t even figured that out yet.”

She did know it, deep in her heart where fear lived, where it ate her up from the inside out. She bit her lower lip to stop her mouth from agreeing with him.

“Stop being so afraid.”

Easy for a dead guy to say. Dead. She squeezed her eyes shut on the word. God, how much easier that word seemed to come these days. Cameron was dead. He’d died. She’d watched him die on the gray linoleum, a bag of Fritos lying tucked in the crook of his neck. Dead, dead, dead. As dead as Lance La Russa.

“Cameron.” Her voice cracked on his name.

“What, my love?”

How could he say that when he was struggling to leave her? “Just help me with Lance’s murder.”

He sighed. He’d hoped for something more. “His spirit isn’t even possessing you, not like the other three. Why do you need to find his killer?”

Cold seeped in through her slacks. The cat had long since jumped from her lap. She hadn’t noticed.

“Bud Traynor.” She thought the name, but Cameron said it.

“None of what’s happened to me has been about the women who were murdered.”

The possessions had hit her full force with Wendy Gregory’s death. They’d crushed her with unrelenting regularity in the ensuing time, with only a brief respite in between. In every case, Bud Traynor had hovered on the fringes. That’s what she was supposed to have seen all along.

“I’m not obsessed with him, Cameron.” She turned, moved for the first time in what seemed like hours. Her neck creaked. Cameron’s eyes glowed in the far corner of the room. “Something—God knows what—wants me to do this. Some force. Something driving me.”

“Something haunting you.”

She pulled up her legs, crawled across the bed towards him. “Yes. There’s something at the end of all these murders, something that ties them all together, something to do with Bud Traynor.”

“It’s like a puzzle.” His voice dropped to a mere echo in her mind. “You haven’t found all the pieces yet.”

“Help me find them, Cameron. Then maybe I can move to another place.”

“Is that the carrot on a stick? Help me, Cameron, and I’ll do what you want?” he mimicked.

The excitement drained out of her, leaving her weak. “I don’t know. I want to stop seeing dead people in my dreams.”

“Even me?”

Her heart stopped. Cameron making love to her in her dreams was all she’d wanted for two years. Except for the impossible, having him alive at her side.

“Listen to your messages.”

His voice was like electric shock starting the heart beating again. She didn’t ask why the reprieve. She was sure it was one. Something was on the machine he wanted her to listen to.

The red light flashed the number two. Pushing the button, wondering why she hadn’t seen them when she first walked in, Max listened.

Sunny, her boss. “Max, I have bad news. Inotech doesn’t need you back. They’ve decided to move the project in-house. Budget cuts, a bad quarter. Who knows why? I’m so sorry. I know you need the money. I’ll look for something else. Call me tomorrow.”

“Did you do that?” she asked without looking for Cameron’s phosphorescent ethereal form in the dark.

“Who, me? The great and powerful Oz?”

She ignored the comment, not caring what force had solved her problem, and pushed the button again.

Julia La Russa. Max recognized the soft tones immediately. “This message is for Max Starr. I’d like very much to avail myself of your offer to help. For a short time. I...” The voice faltered. Was that a sniffle? Julia came back stronger. “Please call me when you get this message.” She recited a number, slowly, clearly, like someone used to getting voice mails with numbers rattled off so fast you couldn’t write them down. Max’s regard for Julia expanded an ounce, especially since she was one of the few people in the universe who didn’t have Caller ID.

She hated making Julia her prime suspect. Almost as much as she hated giving the title to Angela Rocket. Lance had screwed them both royally, though in very different ways.

Max glanced at the clock. Almost midnight. How had it gotten so late? She’d have to call in the morning. Early. To fit Julia in before her shopping expedition with Angela.

“Why does she want to see you?” Trust Cameron never to take something at face value. After all, he’d been a prosecutor.

“Maybe she doesn’t want to answer the cards herself.” Max had a flicker of disturbing memory. She hadn’t answered any.

“Maybe she and Baxter killed Lance,” Cameron suggested, “and they want to know how much Traynor has figured out.”

“Why come to me? Only he knows the answer.”

Cameron
tut-tutted
. “You’re stuck in the middle, Max, in more ways than one. Between the wife and the lover, between the father and the daughter, between Traynor and his suspects. Make sure you watch your back.”

His words were eerily like Witt’s. Had Cameron spoon-fed them to him psychically? She wouldn’t put it past him but decided an argument wasn’t worth finding out. “I’m going to bed.”

“Don’t forget about Baxter.”

Max stilled. “I’m getting tired of all these weird little warnings,” she said, referring to Witt’s as well.

“Don’t forget him merely because of his bow tie, soft voice and round spectacles. He’s important.”

“Did he kill Lance?”

Nothing more came from the dark side of the room. She wondered what the hell she’d gotten herself into. Again.

The covers billowed, cool air sliding across her naked skin, then a warm arm snaked around her middle.

“Please,” she murmured, keeping her eyes closed, “I don’t want to fight anymore tonight.”

“Neither do I.” Cameron used his seductive Witt voice again, surrounding her with Witt’s scent, musky aftershave mixed with butterscotch candies and salty male flesh.