Evil to the Max (8 page)

Witt absorbed her take on it. After a few moments, his brow troubled and his voice deep, he said, “He had exactly the right words when we told him his daughter had been murdered. Showed just the right amount of emotion. Shut the door in our faces at precisely the right moment and called us back to apologize after just the right length of time.”

“And you never liked him either.” Because everything Wendy became was beaten into her by her father. Witt would have sensed something evil just as Max had.

He shook his head slowly. “No, never liked him. In the end, after the dust settled, all he wanted to know was when he’d get her car out of impound. But there wasn’t a damn thing tying him to his daughter’s murder.”

“Because
he
didn’t do it. He just set her up for it.”

He sat back, crossed his arms. His gaze narrowed. “You scare me, Max.”

She snorted softly. “Why?”

“You’ve got plans for Traynor. I know it. And they’re going to get you into trouble.”

“I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”

He snorted this time, much more loudly than she had. “Right. That’s the other reason I’m here.”

She tipped her head and glared at him. “Why?”

“I’m going with you tonight.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“You were planning on looking for that wino.”

How the hell did he know that? “Are you going psychic on me, Detective?”

“I’m starting to know you inside and out.” His gaze swept her, ignited Tiffany’s slow-burning fire inside her with the intensity in his eyes.

Max shook her head slightly to clear it. “I was thinking he might come out only at night, like a vampire or something.”

“We’ll go together.”

Max didn’t bother to fight about it. She looked down at her wrinkled white shirt and bare feet. “I have to take a shower and change.”

His eyes smoked. “I’ll wait.”

“Outside in your car.”

He smiled, that sweet, sexy, hot smile. He was starting to use that one on her way too much. And damn if she wasn’t starting to fall for it, too.

“Don’t trust yourself, Max?”

She didn’t trust Tiffany, not that she could tell him that. “It’s you I don’t trust.” Max folded the newspaper across Traynor’s face, rose, pulled fresh clothes from her child-size bureau, and crossed to her bathroom in three long strides. “Detective?”

He half-rose off the chair. “Sure, I’ll join you.”

“That wasn’t what I was going to say.”

“Too bad.”

“Did they find a necklace in the dumpster?”

“Why?”

“Why do you always ask why?”

“I’m a cop. What is it you think you know?”

“Tiffany Lloyd was wearing a necklace the night she died. A gold locket. But it wasn’t around her neck in my vision of her in the dumpster.”

“Not my case, Max. I don’t know.”

“But you can find out.”

His eyes sparked. “What’s it worth?”

“It’s worth a long, cold shower for you, Detective Long,” and with that, Max closed the bathroom door on him.

Chapter Seven

“I can’t think with him sitting out there like a vulture waiting to pick my bones.” Max had barricaded herself in the bathroom for over five minutes. It wasn’t long enough. Her heart still pounded. She hadn’t even started the shower yet.

“I don’t think that’s what the detective has in mind.”

“That’s what I mean,” she whispered. “You’ve got to get her out of me, Cameron. She’s driving me nuts.”

“She?”

“Don’t use that sarcastically amused tone with me. You know exactly who I mean. Tiffany.”

“Oh, so your over-active libido is Tiffany’s fault?”

“She’s invaded me. I can feel it. And it’s worse than with Wendy.”

And in many ways, it was the same. Wendy Gregory’s spirit had invaded her dreams and her body. Wendy’s emotions had become Max’s emotions, taking Max over until she no longer knew who was responsible for what feeling, reaction, emotion, or response.

It was happening all over again with Tiffany. But stronger, more powerful, and overwhelming when she threw Witt into the mix.

“Don’t you think these feelings have more to do with DeWitt Quentin Long? Admit it, Max. You’re attracted to him.”

“It’s Tiffany, I tell you.” She could have told Cameron about that bizarre sojourn into Tiffany’s mind while she sat across the table from Witt in the Round Up. But there were some things a wife ought to keep to herself. Even if she was a widow. And it didn’t matter that he’d probably read her mind anyway.

“Max, you okay in there?” Witt. Right outside the bathroom door. He’d probably heard voices and thought she was talking to herself.

Just what the hell would Detective Witt say if she told him she’d been talking to her dead husband?

“I’m fine,” she called. “I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

“You want some help scrubbing your back?”

“My back’s fine, thank you.”

“Been told I give a good back scrub.”

The image stole her breath. Her flesh prickled. She flopped down on the closed toilet lid, her knees weak as all get out. Yes, yes, yes.

“I’m not interested in your sex life, Detective.”

“That’s not about sex. It’s about attitude.” But the deep tone of his voice said it was about both.

“Go away.” She jumped up to turn the water on. Cold. Freezing. She thought she heard him laugh. Or maybe that was Cameron.

Tearing her clothes off, she dropped them on the floor, then climbed into the shower. Eyes closed, water cascading over her body, her teeth chattered.

“You never blamed Wendy, did you?”

She hated Cameron’s out-of-the-blue questions. She never had an appropriate answer ready. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about Traynor. You’re terrified of him.”

“I hate him. There’s a big difference.”

“Anything we fear, we hate. Anything we hate, we want to eradicate.”

“My, aren’t we waxing philosophical,” she quipped, but her bones quaked.

“Wendy’s father was a monster. Therefore, according to you, nothing
she
did was her fault.”

Her insides twisted. “Everything was Bud Traynor’s fault.”

“Such sympathy for Wendy,” he scoffed. “Where’s the sympathy for Tiffany?”

“Tiffany didn’t have a Bud Traynor in her life.”

“Everybody has a Traynor lurking somewhere.”

Deep in her belly, the thought terrified her.

“Everyone has reasons for what they do, Max,” Cameron whispered, “even for promiscuousness like Tiffany’s.”

He was just short of bringing her own sexual activities into it, she knew, bringing up that particular connection between herself and Tiffany. Max turned the water up to almost scalding. It wasn’t enough to warm her.

“Why didn’t you tell Witt about Tiffany’s husband, Jake?”

She flipped water out of her eyes, relieved for the respite from his insight and pissed as hell that he went for another of her vulnerabilities. “You’re jumping around like a cat with fleas, Cameron. We were talking about Traynor. The two things don’t even relate.”

“Yes, they do. You fell for the prime suspect in Wendy’s murder case, and you’re doing the same thing all over again here.”

“Give me a break, will ya? I talked to the man once.”

“And after one ‘conversation,’ in which he simply apologized for running into you, you’ve decided he didn’t have anything to do with Tiffany’s death.”

She hated it when he twisted her own words around. “It has nothing to do with sex. I’m using my intuition. You’re the one who told me to use my gift.”

He ignored her jab. “The man screwed her on the dance floor. Don’t you think that at least bears investigation?”

“It wasn’t quite on the dance floor. They went to the restroom.”

“You’re purposely missing my point. He was there the night she died. Even if he didn’t do it, he knows a helluva lot more than the police do. You should have told Witt.”

“I can’t implicate the man until I’m sure of my facts.”

“You tried to implicate Bud Traynor in Wendy’s death.”

She turned and punched the tap off. “It isn’t the same thing.”

“It’s always the same thing with you, Max. You let your feelings blind you.”

“I thought I was being psychic.”

The conversation was old, and she was angry. Rubbing her hair with the towel, she blocked out the sound of Cameron’s voice.

As if she really could. He was inside her, always with her.

She pulled the towel across her back, looked over at the new medicine chest, with its pristine mirror, leaning against the wall. She’d bought it just as she said she would. She’d hang it soon.

And she knew what she’d see when she did. A liar. A woman who deluded herself. She hadn’t told Witt because ... it was all about sex again. Tiffany, Witt, and sex. She’d wimped out.

She closed her eyes. “You’re right,” she whispered. “I should have told him. It was just so automatic not to.”

Cameron reached around her then. She felt his arms, his weight, his breath, as if they were more than desperate memories.

“Let me ease the tension, baby.”

Damn. That weird sexual tension she always seemed to have around the detective. “He’s sitting right outside.”

“Then you’ll have to be very quiet.”

“Don’t you dare,” she hissed. But she’d already turned the water on full blast in the sink to cover any sounds she made. God, this was kinky. Cameron eased between her legs, parting her with his tongue and flicking the bead of her clitoris. Oh God.

She grabbed the edge of the sink.

“What you really want to do is open the door and let him do this to you.”

“It’s rude to talk with your mouth full,” she whispered, letting her head fall back. But he was right. She wanted the detective inside the bathroom, not on the other side of the locked door.

Oh man, this was really, really kinky. Sort of like Tiffany in the bathroom stall with Jake. And all those men listening, chanting, just outside.

Cameron sucked harder. Her body juiced up, her legs wobbled. Two fingers entered her, then his tongue, though amazingly, she still felt him swirling against the nub of her clitoris. He pinched both nipples at once, and stars exploded against her closed lids. God, he was such a clever ghost.

“Open the door and do him. He wants it, you want it. Do it.”

She couldn’t. Her body bucked against Cameron’s mouth, but the tactile sensation against her fingers was the bristle of Witt’s short military style hair.

She bit her lip when she came and almost collapsed to the floor.

“You talking to yourself in there, Max?”

Witt. Jesus. Witt, out there. He’d heard her.

“I always have my most interesting conversations in front of the mirror, Detective,” she croaked. “Almost done.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “That was really sick.”

“Nothing a man and a woman do together is sick if they both enjoy it.”

“Well, there’s two men in this apartment, in case you’d forgotten.”

“No, there’s not, Max. Because I’m not really here. There’s only Witt.”

Oh God.

Chapter Eight

The night was a bust. No Snake Arm wino, no locker numbered 452, and no sex on the hood of Witt’s Ram truck.

Thank God.

He drove her back home, but he didn’t get out of the truck, nor indicate he wanted her to leave. Instead, he leaned back against the driver-side door and watched her. The cab was warm, and the darkness surrounding them became a cocoon. The prospect of intimacy made her dizzy. Or maybe it was just the knowledge that she was supposed to tell him about Tiffany’s husband.

“All right, spit it out.”

“Huh?” she stalled.

“You’ve been dying to tell me something the whole evening. What?”

He wore a pleasant aftershave. The scent had plagued her all night, especially now, when they were alone. When he was a foot-and-a-half from her. When he looked at her with his lids half-closed, his back against the truck door, his leg pulled up casually, and his hand resting across his knee.

She fidgeted with the band of her sweatshirt, then stopped. She hated fidgeting. “I know who Tiffany was with at the bar that night.”

“You mean the guy in the men’s room?”

“Uhum.” She punctuated the sound with a nod, but didn’t risk looking at him.

“Who?” With the closest streetlight three cars away, his face was thrown into shadows, his eyes unfathomable. “Someone she knew?”

So, he wasn’t surprised, had already begun forming his own theories. She wondered if her answer would blow him away. “Her ex-husband.”

She couldn’t tell one way or the other. Witt was silent a long time. And still. A nervous trickle of perspiration ran down between her breasts. The windscreen began to fog slightly with their breath.

Finally, “How long were you married, Max?”

“What’s that got to—” she started, then cut herself off. “Three years.”

“Did you trust your husband?”

She thought about the fights they’d had. The nights Cameron disappeared, the mornings after when they made up. The way he called her whenever she worked late, the way she never called him. “Yes, I trusted him.” Enough never to ask.

“But you don’t trust me.”

She hadn’t trusted a man since she was eight years old, except Cameron, of course. “I’ve known you for less than three weeks, Witt.”

“That’s long enough to know a person.”

“Right, and you trust
me
,” she scoffed.

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

He shouldn’t. She snorted softly. “You don’t even know me.”

“Tell me the things I don’t know.”

Hesitating, her lips twitched, but no words came out. In the end, she had to turn it around on him. “Why don’t you tell me about yourself, instead?”

He flipped a hand negligently. She was almost afraid the action was done with a hint of disgust. No, resignation sounded better. “Fine,” he murmured. “What do you want to know?”

She didn’t want to know a damn thing about him. “Ever been married?”

“Yeah.” Strange that a man could answer personal questions and yet remain so utterly still. Women weren’t like that.