Power to the Max (22 page)

Was he following Angela? Did Angela know him? Only one way to find out.

“Who’s your quarry for tonight?”

Elbows on the table, Angela clasped her hands and took a deep breath. A smile lifting the corners of her mouth, eyelids at half-mast, lips red and pouty, she surveyed her kingdom.

“How about that dark cutie by the dance floor?” Max said.

Angela tipped her head left and right. “There’s four types of guys.” Max waited for her to go on. Angela rested her chin on her hand, still looking at the Greek God. “There’s the doable guys.” She glanced at Max. “You know, the ones you wouldn’t kick out of bed for eating crackers.”

Just like Sutter would have said. Max was thinking that very thing the other night in regards to the Greek God.

Angela winked. “Then there’s the blowable ones.” A quick sideways glance to make sure Max was paying attention. “Don’t need to explain that one. Then there’s guys like him.” She sighed. “For him, Max, I’d swallow.”

Max laughed outright. “Kind of like the top of the food chain, huh?”

Angela turned a breathless smile on her. “God, Max, we really are sisters, I swear. That should have been my line.”

“So I guess he’s the one.”

“Sor-ree.” She slowly shook her head, sat back. “The other thing about guys like him is that they’re self-absorbed.” Angela made a face, then rejected Mr. Greek God. “I’d have to worry about my own orgasm.” She turned her back to him completely. “I prefer the fourth type, the mild type, the ones who are a tad more desperate.”

“The ones you can help?”

She pointed one polished nail at Max. “Exactly. They need me. He doesn’t. The greater the need, the more they’ll pay.”

Max evaluated the entire conversation. Angela didn’t know him, Max was sure, so she let that question go. “So not him. Who then?”

Angela turned, chin atop her clasped hands once more, her dark brown eyes a man’s chocolate wet dream in the dim light. Angela blinked, then lifted her lips in a half-smile. “Oh, tonight’s not for me, Max. It’s for you.”

“Me?” She gave a very unfeminine squeak.

“We dressed you up—the makeup’s good, by the way—and now we’re going to let you loose on these guys.”

“I’m here to observe.” Max’s heart beat a rap song in her chest.

Angela widened her eyes. “You said that so quickly, I don’t think you’ve thought through all the possibilities.” She spread her hand and indicated the room with a sweep of her arm. “Look at them out there. You can have your pick.”

As the week had moved on, the place had gotten busier. Wednesday night, hump day, conventioneers wanted a little fun. Maybe some were returning home tomorrow and wanted to go for broke on their last night. The songs being played, though not totally eclipsed by voices and laughter, were harder to identify. Fewer older couples ventured out, more groups of men, women, mixed couples. The dance floor, while not packed, was too dense for the beautiful ballroom dancing practiced on the previous evenings. The music had at least moved into the nineties.

So many eyes, men’s eyes, focused surreptitiously on their table, on Angela’s chest, Max’s legs. They left her moist and needy. Hot and ready. Breathless.

“You should have seen them when you walked in.” Angela leaned closer. “The shoes really got them.” Her gaze traveled the room. “Which one do you want?”

Max’s heel tapped a staccato beat against the floor. She couldn’t have stopped the nervous tick if she tried. “I really don’t think—”

“That’s it,” Angela cut her off, “you think too much. But haven’t you ever wondered?”

“About what?” Max knew very well about what and wondered instead how the hell she was going to steer the conversation back to Angela and hopefully to Lance.

“Did you know in a study done in 1989, women’s most powerful fantasy was to be paid for sex?”

“1989. That’s an old study.”

Angela’s voice dipped, low, seductive. “Haven’t you ever wanted to see how much a man would pay for you? Just once? Haven’t you wanted to feel the power when he comes because you made him, knowing he paid you for the pleasure? Knowing you can make him do just about anything you want?
Anything.
”

Max swallowed, throat suddenly dry. She’d admitted as much to Angela last night, and now the woman used it against her. Heat came in waves, her skin flushed. The
power
word. The all-seeing, all powerful Max. Yes, she’d fantasized about it. Yes, she believed most women had, in the deepest darkest part of the night when they couldn’t be found out.

“That’s why you really came here, isn’t it?” Angela went on in that hypnotic tone while Max scanned the room. “You didn’t do it for a book or a career. You did it to make that fantasy real.” She touched Max’s arm, slid the stem of the wineglass into her fingers, helped her lift the sweet white zinfandel to her lips with a gentle push. “Pick one, Max. Any one. See if you can do it. You know you want to test that power.”

Pick one. Any one. If she had her choice. If she actually could do it. Her eyes roamed the room, met a glance or two, saw others slide away, including the Greek God’s. Him perhaps? Hadn’t she wanted him to answer a question or two? She moved on, checking the full field available, all the while Angela’s voice in her ear egging her on.

Dark hair, brown eyes, balding, plump, florid, mustache, a cornucopia of choices.

Finally, broad shoulders, full chest, blond hair, blue eyes.

Icy blue eyes and a dimple in the chin to die for.

Shit. Witt.

Power. Her body ached with the need for it, for him. He’d said he was addicted to her. He’d turned around and come back for more of her. He’d cried out against her lips and come inside her, then he practically begged her to keep him on an orgasmic high all day. He said he had control over his body, but did he really? Could he resist if she set her mind to seducing him completely. Would he do
anything
for her?

Her body buzzed with hot, wet physical reminders of their little tease that morning. The sexual high he’d left her with had died in Julia’s house, but it was back in force. She burned with it.

“That’s him, isn’t it? I saw the way your eyes widened. You feel it in your gut, don’t you? That immediate zing straight to your clitoris.” Angela’s voice, Angela’s perfume making her dizzy, Angela’s words as if they were her own thoughts. “You could think yourself into coming merely by looking at him. But you don’t want to come. That’s not what it’s all about. You want him to beg you, to do anything for you, anything you ask.”

Max turned slowly, finding Angela’s face too close, invading her space. “Even to kill a person for you?”

Angela sat back. For a moment, she looked far older than the twenty-five or so years Max guessed her to be. Something in the eyes, deep, perhaps pain, perhaps fear, perhaps Lance.

Then it was gone, Angela back on top again. She didn’t take the bait. “I suppose killing is the ultimate power.” She traced a crimson fingernail down her cheek like a trail of blood. “But killing, beating, and maiming is something men do.”

Yes, they did. Angela knew how familiar Max was with the concept. She steered the topic her way. “Women do it, too.”

Angela tipped her head to the side, thoughtful. “I lost you somehow, didn’t I?”

Max cocked her head. “You mean that you thought I was really going to ask that guy for money?”

“Yeah.”

“I was only fantasizing.”

“No, you weren’t.”

Max neither confirmed nor denied.

Angela crossed her legs, then her arms, plumping up her breasts for the audience around them. “You’re going to have to do this for me.”

Fear snaked its way around Max’s insides. “Why?”

Angela looked across the room to the entrance where Hammerhead sat with his glass of amber beer. “He won’t let me keep you around or answer your questions if you don’t.

Max, with a show of bravado, snorted. “So much for feminine power.”

Angela shrugged. “Women have brains, men have brawn. It’s a fact of life. In this business, we need protection. Nothing’s free, Max, and he wants payback for our time together.” She leaned forward, a touch of sadness in her brown eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any other choice.”

Of course, Angela would have told him all about Max’s research needs. Hammerhead would have made his demands. Max, however, still had choices.

“You’re free to walk away at any time,” Angela conceded, before slamming home her final ball. “But you have to ask yourself how important this book is to you.”

The book, synonymous with Lance La Russa’s murder. How important was finding Lance’s killer? Max didn’t know. She’d had one dream, several flashes of more. She wasn’t possessed. She could walk away at any time. Couldn’t she?

“I have to write it.” She had to see the visions through.

Something Max needed badly lay at the end of the trail, even if she didn’t know what that something was. It wasn’t only Lance, it was all of them, all the dead girls. It was Bud Traynor. She’d hadn’t reached the finale, couldn’t stop until she did. But was succumbing to Angela going to give her what she needed?

Max mentally pushed Angela anyway, a last ditch effort to save herself from something indefinable but bad. “I can write the book without you and him,” she said, indicating Hammerhead with a jut of her jaw.

The other woman’s eyes went serious, the jokes, the sensuality, all gone. “I’m sorry,” Angela said again. Max believed she meant it. “But if you don’t do it, I’ll know you’re setting me up. And that could have consequences for you.”

Like what? Her legs snapped like chicken bones?

Max took a deep breath, understanding already that she was losing. Angela wasn’t going to back down. “What could I possibly be setting you up for?”

Angela didn’t answer that, said instead, “No one has to know. No one will know. Not from us.” She looked down at her glass, put a finger on the rim. “Tit for tat, Max. You have to give to get. It’s the law of the streets.”

“You said you’d never been on the streets.”

Angela said nothing, waiting her out. Max rolled her bottom lip between her teeth. The working girl saw it for the
yes
it was.

“That’s the one you want?” Angela insinuated with a little nod of her head.

Witt was the obvious choice. It wasn’t such a big deal. She’d get him up to a room. They’d wait Angela’s requisite half-hour. She’d come back down. Done. Hammerhead satisfied.

Max’s hands started to shake thinking about it. Witt had told her he’d leave her if she continued on her present course. Well, he’d
sort of
said it. He was most certainly pissed. Would asking him to act as her john push him over the edge?

“Don’t ask me to do it tonight, Angela. I’m not ready.” She needed to talk to Witt first.

“Nobody’s ever ready.”

“I don’t know what to do.” A distinctly pleading quality bled through her voice.

Angela pursed her lips with another glance at Hammerhead. “If not now, when?”

She dashed a quick look at Witt. “Tomorrow night.”

“He won’t be here.”

“I’ll pick another.”

“Or maybe I’ll pick one for you.”

Shit. That wouldn’t work. She agreed anyway, buying herself some time to think it through. “Tomorrow. If he’s here, it’s him. If not, your choice.” She’d have to make damn sure Witt didn’t let her down.

“How do I know you’ll show up?”

It was her turn to regard Angela with her best enigmatic stare. “You don’t.”

Angela laughed. “You’re right. I might be giving the whole game away.”

Max wondered what the game was, but decided not to ask. She’d find out eventually anyway. Because she would be back. Being led by Cameron’s weird psychic forces, she really wouldn’t consider flaking out. “Trust me.”

“First lesson, working girls don’t trust.” Angela took a full mouthful of wine, rolled it around her tongue, then licked her lips. “Now I have to get to work. We’re on the clock, baby.”