Power to the Max (42 page)

A door at the front of the house slammed, the sound dying away, leaving them alone once more in the silence of noises they could ignore.

Max’s confession wasn’t over. “Making you beg in the car was wrong. Running to Angela without telling you was even worse.” She folded the money carefully, then pushed it into the little box. “This will remind me to throw away the price tag. To squash my ulterior motives. To trust you,” she finished on a whisper.

Tucking the box safely in her pocket, she took another stair. His gaze frightened her, dark, steady, and ice cold. Then she said it, the thing she’d never asked for because she was afraid no one could ever give it to her. “Can you forgive me?”

After a few interminable seconds, he laughed without humor. “What a fucking pair we are. Will I forgive you?” He laughed again, then leaned forward and grabbed her chin, holding without hurting her. “Don’t you get it? I wanted your mouth on me. I still want it. I’d let you do it on my mother’s goddamn front porch. And dragging you into that alley? Anger was an excuse to put my hands on you.” He swallowed, then dragged in a breath. “I’d kill ten Angelas for you. Without cause. Without provocation.”

He let her go and sat back to stare at her, waiting for something. “Do you even get what that means?” he asked one more time.

She could have told him she’d killed when she was thirteen. She could have put aside the fear and the shame for him and admitted the truth. She would have if she believed her truth was what he needed. She didn’t think it was. She said the only thing she had left to give him. “I forgive you.”

He laughed once more, a cracked harsh sound. “You think I need your forgiveness?”

With a deep breath, she steadied herself against the sarcasm in his tone. “No.” She licked dry lips. “But it’s what you think you need.”

He looked at her with an incomprehensible gaze.

“It’s what you needed me to say when you told me about the young girl you helped.” She’d failed him then and given him a meek apology later that hadn’t been worth the breath it was said with. The words had come from her head and her mouth, not her heart and her gut, as Cameron said they must.

Witt knew the reference, but he asked anyway in the most restrained of voices. “What girl did I help?”

He would force her to repeat his sins out loud. “You were a beat cop then, and she was a kid you saw on the streets where you worked. She was thirteen.” That terrible age. He couldn’t know how much it cost Max to tell his story. But she did, for him. “You gave her money for an abortion. You took her to a clinic and saw her through the whole thing. Because she’d told you her father raped her and got her pregnant.”

“She lied. It was her boyfriend.” Finally, the ache broke through his control, permeated his voice, and bled into the lines of his face. Max knew it would be stark in his eyes if she could have seen them beneath his hooded gaze.

versus
I forgive you
. Such a fine distinction. Witt wouldn’t blame Max for her crime at thirteen. But could he forgive the choice she’d made? He hadn’t forgiven the young girl who lied to him. He hadn’t forgiven Debbie Doodoo. Max didn’t want to think the next thought.

Witt was close enough to touch. She’d climbed another step without realizing. Knowingly, she made the next move, putting a hand to his cheek. “I forgive you for helping her and being terribly wrong.”

He sagged, leaned his forehead against hers, and rested his eyes, lids closed. “You should have told me that before.”

He meant the girl, she knew. He was right. She should have told him two weeks ago when he’d first made his confession to her. Forgiveness. True, only God could grant it, but sometimes a man needed a human voice to utter the words.

“Forgive me for letting you think I believed you could be a monster.” She’d thrown him out the night he told her, not because of what he’d done, but because of her own terror. Good people make bad mistakes. Witt was one of the best. Hidden behind a badge and an attitude, his very nobility had eaten him alive with guilt. She should never have let it fester, not even for those few days.

She stroked his face, ran a thumb across his lower lip. “I forgive you for being forced to take Angela’s life.”

Killing Angela would forever change him. She couldn’t reverse that. She’d stolen his innocence in much the same way her own had been stolen. There were no platitudes to offer. Angela had murdered, she might have done so again to hide her crime, but Witt would be forever tainted by her death.

“And forgive me for leading you to do it.” The last was a whisper, with her eyes closed, too. His breath fanned her cheek as he let it out.

His hands moved up her arms. “Didn’t I tell you I’d always forgive you?”

She went down on her knees, her arms around his neck. “I believe you indicated you sort of hated me for that.”

“Lied,” he whispered against her ear.

The lack of pronoun almost broke her. She hated when he used them. It had never been his way unless he was really angry.

“Why do you keep on forgiving me?” She had to know. As if the answer would be the secret to making sure she never crossed the line that would drive him away forever.

“Hell if I know.”

She squeezed him close to her heart. “Tell me why. Please.”

He took a long time answering, finally murmuring into her hair, his low voice a rumble against her chest. “Because you’re like that girl, Max. Good at heart.”

“She lied to you.”

“She was a desperate kid and made the ultimate error in judgment.”

“But you paid the price.” As he had with Max’s error. He’d had to kill Angela because of Max’s stupidity.

“And that’s why I’ll always forgive you.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You know when you’ve fucked up. You’re sorry. And as much as I give you shit about it, you don’t make the same mistake twice.”

Hah. Cameron would beg to differ on that. She still wasn’t sure she understood Witt. But if she really tried her best not to repeat her mistakes, maybe, just maybe, she could keep him around for awhile.

And she did want Witt around.

Something else beat on her nerves. “What are they going to do to you now?”

He pulled back from her, though his hands remained her on her shoulders. “Situation’s in review.”

Max’s stomach dropped to her knees. “Will they fire you?”

“The brass are pissed as hell at my actions, but it won’t go that far.”

Shit, shit, shit. “This is my fault.” She might cost him the thing he loved most, his career.

“My fault.” He bent to look in her eyes. “Walked out on a crucial interrogation to take a call from my mother.”

Ladybird, who had told him per Horace and Cameron where Max was and what would happen to her if he didn’t get there in time. Max laughed, almost choked on it. “You mean it’s not about Angela?”

“Record’s clean, and I haven’t got a rep as a hothead. I’ll be cleared. Boss is a little concerned about my sanity around you, that’s all. It’ll blow over.”

She trusted him with her life, but she wasn’t sure she trusted him not to lie about this. “What can I do to make it better?”

He pointed at his lips like a child with a booboo. “Kiss it.”

She did what he asked, lingering, until he murmured against her mouth, “Don’t you wanna know about our Mr. Hammerhead?”

She liked the inclusive possessive. “He came forward,” she scooped him, “and told them Angela came out of that building covered with blood. After Julia La Russa had left.”

“Wrong. Never woulda come forward. Cops rounded him up. Told ‘em everything thinking they wouldn’t bust him for pimping.”

She pulled back. “They busted him?”

“Him, the night manager, and the bartender.”

“What about Bud Traynor?”

“Traynor?”

“Blackmail. They were making videos of Angela’s johns.” Her heart tripped thinking how close she’d come to letting Witt be recorded. “Bud put them up to it. I told those cops all about it.”

“Hammerhead didn’t say a word to confirm it. Nor did
Newton
or the La Russa woman.”

There went her last hope for nailing Traynor. “But they have to go to Bud’s house. Find those other videos—”

Witt put a finger to her lips. “What goes around comes around.”

She gave a muffled “but” against his touch.

“Karma.” Witt dropped his hand to hold her chin. “We’ll get him when the time is right.”

Damn. “They couldn’t get a search warrant, could they?”

“Didn’t even try.”

Double damn. “Can’t they—” This time she stopped herself. “I’m doing it again. Jumping in and running with it.”

“Shows you have passion, Max.”

So, like, was that a good thing? “Some day, I will prove something against him.”

“In the meantime, SFPD doesn’t think the existence of a video constitutes a crime. Especially when no one but you talks about it.”

She sighed, then muttered, “Next time.” And there would be. She was sure of it. Bud Traynor had been like a phantom through four murders, five counting his business partner,
Walter
Spring
. Bud would pop up again. Sooner, rather than later.

Witt touched her elbows. “Forget about Traynor for now.” Then he whispered against her ear, “Just wanted to tell you.” He sighed, sending a delicious shiver right through her mid-section. “That was the best goddamn blowjob I’ve ever had.”

Oh my God.

“Care to do a repeat?”

Her heart rose to her throat. For a moment, she couldn’t answer. Need, awe, and fear gripped her. After everything, he still wanted her. Though he doubted she would ever be able to give him what he needed most, he still wanted her. She knew in her heart it was time. Despite the terror, she gave into need hoping it was not the capitulation Bud Traynor said it would be. “I’d rather make love with you.”

She didn’t know if she could, but she was willing to try, willing to learn.

Witt closed his eyes and put his head back. “Don’t do this for me.”

She stroked his chin, then leaned in to kiss the ever-present cleft. “It’s for me.”

When he looked at her finally, light shimmered in his deep blue eyes. “I love you.”

The words tripped a barrage of emotions, fear and horror, desire and warmth. She opened her mouth to answer him. He covered her lips with two fingers. “No. Don’t say anything. I’m not ready to hear whatever it is. Just make love with me, and that’ll be enough for now.”

He still had doubts. He didn’t completely trust her not to lie. Maybe he was right not to do so. Still, nothing had ever felt so right as taking this one small step with him, and for him.

She put her hand to his pants. His face was soft, his body hard. “It was always making love, I just wouldn’t say it.” She’d been afraid. She still was. But Angela’s death had done something to her, opened her eyes. They were sisters. Neither had ever let go of the past. Angela had died for it. Max wanted to live. “I can show you.”

He covered her hand and stroked himself with her palm. “Yeah. Show me.”

She’d been fucked on these stairs not so very long ago. She’d had a marvelous orgasm, but orgasms could be hollow and incredibly unsatisfying, leaving a ménage of conflicting emotions that were better left unacknowledged. Tonight, for now, she didn’t want any conflict. No price tag, no ulterior motive, no power. She wanted to wipe clean the memory of what she’d done in almost this exact spot. She wanted to make love to Witt with her mouth. As scary as those words were.

The rasp of his zipper was loud and exquisite in the night’s silence. She pushed on his chest. “Lean back. I want to take care of you.”

He put his elbows on the step above and gave himself up to her.

She undid his belt, tugged at his pants until he rose and let her pull the waistband over his hips. In her hands, his briefs came with it, revealing all his splendor. Long and thick and hard.

She licked his full length. He groaned and put one hand in her hair, stroking her scalp with his fingers.