Vengeance to the Max (27 page)

“No buts. You don’t have an alibi for last night.”

“I was at home in bed.”

“Can’t prove it.”

“They can’t prove I wasn’t.”

He sighed amid a faint
thump, thump, thump
. Jeez, was he banging his head against a wall? “You’re with me when the third one gets whacked, no question—”

“Third one? What about the second?” She was getting a really bad feeling here.

After a dangerous silence, filled by the shushing of car tires on the road, indistinguishable background voices, and the bad connection, he blew her last shred of hope to smithereens. “Found the second one this morning just before seven. Thought that’s what you were calling about.”

“Shit.” Shit, shit. “I was calling about the first. Which one did they find this time?”

“Tattoo markings.”

They’d have no trouble connecting him to her by the snake on his arm. In the statement she’d given from her hospital bed, she’d been exceptionally detailed about the tattoo. “When did it happen?”

“Killed last night between ten and two.”

“How?” she fired back.

“Gunshot.”

Why hadn’t Bud called her after that first death? Did that mean he’d done all three in the same night with one still left to be unearthed? “What did they find on him?”

Uncannily, Witt understood her thought processes, answering her abbreviated questions to the letter. “Cuff links on his chest.” A car honked close to him. “How’d you lose that stuff, Max?”

“Bud stole them from my apartment while we were in Michigan.” Should she tell him about the gun, too? Nah, Cameron said he had that fixed.

Witt muttered a curse she couldn’t make out. “Also found a newspaper clipping covering your husband’s murder shoved in the front pocket of his jeans.”

Max closed her eyes, took in a deep breath and held it so long, spots swam behind her lids. Bud had tightened the net around her. There’d be no mistake to whom the cuff links, watch, and stick pin had belonged.

“Max, you get any whiffs of 452 around this?”

Trust Witt, a mind like a bulldog. He was back to numbers and connections. “No. Not a one.” Not that she’d looked for it.

Tell him about the gun
. Cameron’s voice in her head.

Why, if he’d eliminated that problem?

Witt needs to know everything if he’s going to help you
.

Fine. Better get
that
bit of bad news out. “I had a gun.”

Sweat popped out along her upper lip in that lengthy silence. Finally, inevitably, Witt gave her one harsh word, “
Had
?”

“It’s missing.”

He gave a small laugh of pure exasperation. “Jesus H. Christ, Max, when you dig a hole, you dig deep.” She heard a breath long and loud enough to be called a sigh. “We need damage control. Report the theft right now.”

“In my own jurisdiction?” A stall since she already knew the answer to that one.

“Now, so it’ll be on file when these guys check.”

You can’t. It wasn’t registered
.

Shit. That wasn’t Cameron’s plan. “I’ve got a problem.”

Witt made a sound. She heard him roll his eyes. “What?”

“The gun wasn’t registered.”

A crack. Curiously like the sound of Witt slamming his fist into metal. “Like it was a cold gun?”

She waited a beat for Cameron’s answer. “He says yes.”

“Why the hell did he need it?”

“I don’t know.” She didn’t want to know.

All he said was, “This is bad, Max.”

Umm, yep. Cameron had gotten an illegal gun for God only knew what reason. Bud was framing her. “There’s something else.”

“I’m terrified to hear.

“Along with Cameron’s watch and his cuff links, there was—”

He didn’t wait for her to finish. “Traynor’s got another trophy to plant on the last guy, doesn’t he?”

How easily his thoughts ran right alongside hers. And what he really meant... Giddiness turned her head. Witt believed her. She kept the elation from her voice since it wasn’t appropriate under the circumstances.
Just the facts, ma’am
. “A tie pin. One single ruby. It’s the one in the newspaper photo.”

“Fuck.” The epithet burst against her ear. “Why’d you keep that shit, Max?” A strangled pause, then uncharacteristically, an apology. “Sorry. And it’s not shit.” Another hesitation, shorter. “And you’d want to keep it.” A beat this time between sentences. “But the gun, why didn’t you get rid of it?”

How should she know? Why had she kept Cameron’s shirts, underwear, socks, and shaving kit? Why had she driven her own car down to that 7-11, following him like some enraged harpy? Why had she kept
Cameron
, his ghost, like an animal on a tether? The thought was as apocalyptic as it was honest. She strengthened her voice. No use sounding like a weakling with Witt.

“I didn’t know I still had it.” Any of it.

His question hung in the dead air between them. How the hell could she not know she had a gun in her apartment?

“If it wasn’t registered, Bud can’t use it to hurt me.”

“He took something, he can leave something behind.”

“But he doesn’t know it can’t be traced.”

“Were the serial numbers filed off?”

Cameron supplied a simple yes. Bud would see that, too.

With her silence, Witt stopped questioning and started issuing orders instead. “I’ll be right there. Don’t leave.”

“There’s something I have to do.”

He paused. She could almost hear his mind’s struggle. If she’d been standing next to him, he might well have put his hands around her throat. Though his next words were innocuous, his tone set her heart racing. Cold and deadly. “You’ll make it worse.”

“The third one might already be dead, might have been killed along with the others last night. You probably can’t give me the alibi you’re trying to anyway.”

“Don’t you leave, Max.” His voice stuttered in her ear, as if the phone jiggled against his mouth. He was running to his truck. He’d be down to her in minutes. Or he’d send a patrol car.

“I have to do this.”

“Fuck whatever you think you have to do. You goddamn stay right there. I’ll fix this.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Don’t—”

Max cut the connection on him.

For a short time, she’d thought she could let Witt help. She’d believed that she wasn’t alone. But the truth had always been out there. This was
her
battle. Her foe was Bud. And only she could save herself from whatever he had planned for her.

She had no other choice but to go hunting for Bud Traynor.

Sutter was home when Max arrived. “Can I borrow your car?”

Max had given a thought to the fact that until two weeks ago, she hadn’t spoken to Sutter Cahill in two years, virtually dropped off the face of the earth, and ignored message after message. But she didn’t have a choice. Witt would be looking for her car. The cops might be looking for her, too. She had to do something to throw them all off her scent.

A stiff wind hit Max’s backside and whirled around her, drawing the scent of something sweet and spicy from inside the house. Max’s stomach pinched. She’d forgotten to eat. Holding the door open, Sutter pushed back a swath of unruly dark curls and smiled. Sutter was good at smiling. She did it a lot, along with a lot of laughing that had already etched tiny lines at her eyes and mouth. She had a round face with healthy cheekbones, and an enviable hourglass figure. They were the same age, they’d gone to college together. If she’d had a wedding instead of an elopement, Max would have had Sutter as Best Woman or Maid of Honor or whatever the hell it was they called those types.

Sutter had forgiven her for not calling in two years.

“Why do you want my car?”

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

Sutter held out a slender hand, manicured nails beckoning. “You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”

Just like that. So easy, Sutter so accepting, a trait Max had always envied. So trusting and so worthy of trust. Max pulled back the hinge, separating the Miata keys from the rest on her ring and dropped them into Sutter’s cupped palm. “Thanks.”

Sutter smiled. “You’re the one who’s going to regret it. I’ve always wanted a sports car.”

Max worried her lip. “Someone might come looking for me.”

The smile never faded. “Hello?” Sutter tapped the side of her head and jutted her chin. “Do I look like an idiot?” A second’s pause in which she tipped her head. “Anyone dangerous?”

“Ahhh,” Max drew out the sound. “Could be a cop.”

Sutter rolled her eyes. “I won’t ask what you’ve done.”

Sutter never interrogated her friends. She never even asked why Max had ignored her messages. She accepted unconditionally. Of course, Sutter was picky about who she chose as a friend. You had to pass a litmus test. It had taken Max months that first year of college, though God knows she hadn’t really tried. Still, she’d passed with flying colors. And Sutter didn’t question anymore.

Perhaps that also had to do with the fact that Sutter herself was psychic. She saw ghosts. They told her things. Someone—something—must have given Max a thumbs up.

Max had the almost irresistible urge to hug her. “Thanks.”

“Maybe he’ll be to-die-for. I love men in uniform.”

“If he’s got a buzz-cut and a dimple in his chin, he’s mine.”

Sutter raised an arched brow, but didn’t ask. “Done,” then she held out the keys to her white Toyota 4Runner. Like Max, she had a detachable ring. A single girl couldn’t be too careful about who she gave her house keys to. Not that it mattered when she had locks like Max’s. “You have to come inside for a nice cup of herbal tea and a chat. That’s part of the deal.”

Max kept her end of the bargain. Though the clock was ticking on her search for Bud Traynor, Sutter’s calm voice, her cluttered living room and bright flower-print sofa soothed Max’s sensitive nerve endings and, for that short space of time, made it seem possible that life would be normal again.

Leaving Sutter, armed with Witt’s cell phone—she’d never owned one herself—Max didn’t call ahead. Alerting Traynor of her search would give him a chance to disappear before she got to him, wherever it might be she found him.

She went to his office halfway up the Peninsula in Belmont, pulling the SUV into a lot one building over, in case Witt anticipated her move. She saw nothing untoward. The bright sun blinded her. Stepping from the car, a devilish wind ripped through her blazer. Though Bud’s Cadillac wasn’t in his parking area, she headed to the second-floor offices of Traynor, Spring, and Gregory.

Bud Traynor, Walter Spring, and Hal Gregory, a man rivaling Bud in his self-absorption. Three partners in a law firm. Father, godfather, and husband of Wendy, respectively. Traynor had palmed his daughter off on Hal and manipulated Walter’s suicide.

Dormant flowering bushes lined the walk, and the pebbled concrete steps seemed to shift beneath her heels as she climbed.

Their secretary, a pert young thing with long blond hair and large breasts, said she’d seen neither Hal—thank God, Max didn’t need a run in with him—nor Bud all day.

“Did Mr. Traynor have meeting?”

“No. He phoned to say he wouldn’t be in today,” the girl replied with an endearing toothy smile, flipping her pencil between her thumb and forefinger.

“Did he leave a number where he could be reached?”

“No.”

Did the girl know
anything
? She was young, a Tiffany look-alike. She didn’t ask questions and, like poor
dead
Tiffany, did what she was told. Ripe pickings for a man like Bud. Max bit down hard on her tongue, wanting badly to tell the twenty-something kid to run for her life before her employer got a crack at her.