Power to the Max (34 page)

“Maybe that’s why I haven’t.” Maybe letting Witt in meant letting Cameron go. The thought terrified her more than any other.

She heard him crying for her, a soft choked sound he’d never made in life. She could only remember once that he’d cried back then. It had been towards the end, before the 7-11. A case, the last one he’d ever had. She’d learned later that it was a man named
Walter
Spring
. Cameron had never talked about his cases. He hadn’t talked about this one either, only cried while she held him. Why, she’d asked him over and over, what had he learned, what had happened to bring him to this? Cameron had never answered. Through the years, she’d often wondered if he’d had a premonition of his own death and thus the tears. But Cameron, after death, hadn’t remembered crying, nor had he remembered
Walter
Spring
. He’d only remembered his love for her, only his emotions.

She could not deal with his emotions. She couldn’t deal with her own. Considering the concept that she held Witt at bay to keep Cameron tied to her was more than she could tackle.

“I’ve had enough,” she whispered. One more soul-wrenching discussion and she’d croak. “I’m going to sleep now.”

“Sleep then, my love. There’s always tomorrow.”

He sounded like Scarlett O’Hara after Rhett Butler had walked out on her. Well, someone had written another book, and Rhett had returned.

“You and Witt are both wrong,” Max murmured half asleep. “I didn’t fuck you, Cameron. I think I made love.”

Sometime deep in the night, she fell into the dream.

She clawed her way to the surface, broke through the layers of dream, then dug her fingertips into the mattress to prove she was still in her bed.

Before, after a bad dream or a vision, Cameron had always talked to her, calmed her. But now he watched in silence, his glowing eyes outside her window, like a phantom who hadn’t been invited in.

He was still pissed at what she’d done to and with Witt. Or rather, what she hadn’t done. Apologize.

But no matter how screwy her behavior, she wasn’t like Bud Traynor. The dream had been pretty self-explanatory, except for the videotape. What did it mean? She suddenly shuddered. Old videotape as a metaphor for a video camera? No, it couldn’t be. She hadn’t taken the room Angela offered. And she’d been the one to suggest Hammerhead’s car. They couldn’t have been caught on camera. No way.

She felt sick to her stomach anyway. Until she remembered Lance’s face and his tensed fist. The tape had something to do with him, she was sure. If not, he wouldn’t have appeared in the dream. Everything had meaning in one of her visions. Everything. She just had to figure it out. Lance had been imploring her to do something. Yes, that was the dream’s meaning.

Some slip of memory pressed insistently on the edges of her mind. Video. Bud. He’d said something ... something ... yes! At the Belladonna, Bud had intimated he’d captured Julia on video with him. “
Something like that
,” had been his exact words.

But what difference would that make to Lance? Why would it anger him? If she knew one thing about Lance, it was that he really hadn’t cared what Julia did. Certainly a video wouldn’t have led to his death.

Dammit. Why did these dreams have to be so confusing at times?

There was only one way to find out the answer. Rolling over, she eyed the luminescent clock. Three a.m.

Reaching for the phone, she stabbed in the now memorized number.

Bud answered on the first ring, as if he’d truly been a part of the dream and was waiting for her call. “Hello, Max.”

“I want that DVD.” She figured taking the offensive would best net results, as would letting him think she knew what was on it.

He sighed, a sexual sound. “Tomorrow morning. Ten o’clock. My home.”

She curled around the phone. She’d been to his house once. She’d hoped never to go again. “You meet me somewhere.”

“Now how are you going to watch it without a DVD player?”

How did he know she didn’t have one? Had he violated her sanctuary? Bastard. “I’ll watch it at Witt’s.” She liked throwing that at him.

“You don’t think I’m going to give it to you, do you, Max? If you want it, you have to watch it with me.” He paused. “Or steal it from my home like you did the last one.”

Either way, she’d have to enter his house. “I’ll bring Witt with me.”

He laughed, a cruel sound. “Do you really think he’s going to stick by you after the way you used him tonight, Max?”

God. Bud knew. Had she been so stupid as to have exposed Witt to Bud’s evil?

No. The videotape in the dream concerned Lance, perhaps Julia, but definitely not Witt. Bud could know what happened with Witt from another source. Logic dictated that Angela had told Bud about the night’s events since he was her client. Max had given Angela her real name, and with a brief description of Max’s
john
, Bud would have realized the man was Witt. A very rational explanation.

The danger was in her own mind.

“Tomorrow. Ten o’clock. Your house.” She acquiesced simply to get the show on the road. Bud wanted her at his house. It was the only way to see what was on that video.

“I can’t bear the wait, Max,” he purred.

Bud Traynor made her feel like her flesh crawled with maggots. She hung up before she threw up.

* * * * *

Max had slept only in fits and starts after that call, then she’d risen from her bed, taken a shower, and prepared herself for the coming confrontation. Finally she’d climbed into her car and entered the morning commute.

“Where are we going?” Cameron asked.

He said
we
.
Them
.
Together
. She could have given a few tears right then and there that he’d stayed with her. And that he didn’t bring up last night’s discussion again.

Instead, she told him what he wanted to know. “Traynor’s.”

Forecasters hadn’t predicted rain, but it started as she entered the freeway. A dismal beginning to what would most assuredly be a dismal day, considering the task that lay ahead of her. She headed north to yet another
San Francisco
suburb. She was suburban, preferring that to the confines of big city streets, one-way signs, and hordes of people. At least on the freeway, cocooned in her car, she felt safe, apart, even when the traffic was stopped.

“It’s only a little after six. He said ten.” Cameron picked up the time from her scattered brain waves. Sometimes it was very nice not having to say everything out loud.

She tuned the radio, listening for traffic reports. Commuters were hell on that first day of rain after a dry spell, when the oil rose out of the concrete and turned the roadway into an ice rink. The report, however, was in her favor. “I’m going to surprise Bud.”

“He might surprise you.”

“I can handle whatever he dishes out.”

“Gee, and here I thought last night’s trauma had gotten you past the cocky stage.”

Her stomach lurched. Dream trauma or the emotional roller coaster she’d ridden with Witt? “Six o’clock or ten o’clock doesn’t make a difference. He’ll spring whatever he’s going to spring either way.”

“He’ll use the fact that you’ve gotten him out of bed against you.”

Max shuddered. “He’ll try to use sex against me no matter what time it is or where we are. He’ll make his little innuendoes and try to get under my skin. I want to get it over with.”

“All right, baby. But I can’t do this with you.”

Just like Witt couldn’t take care of her.
I won’t be there to protect you
.

She hesitated, a car flashing its brights in her mirror as she involuntarily slowed. “Do you forgive me, Cameron?”

“For what?” He could read her mind just as easily as ask, but he wanted to hear her say the words.

“For playing emotional mind games with you when you were alive.” There, she’d admitted it. So many times, when she was angry or stressed or scared or freaked out, she’d jerked him around to make herself feel less out of control. Just as she had last night with Witt in Hammerhead’s car.

“I understand about powerlessness and power. I understand your need for it.” Pause. She gulped knowing worse was to come. “But I don’t know how much longer Witt will put up with it.”

Witt’s words came back to her loud and clear.