Evil to the Max (12 page)

“You don’t utilize the gift God gave you.”

“It isn’t a gift. It’s a disease.”

“That’s a lame excuse, Max. Face your fears.”

She couldn’t even name them, let alone face them.

“You’ll have to label them someday if you want them to go away,” he whispered.

Maybe that’s what terrified her. Not that her fears would go, but that Cameron himself would. For good. As soon as she mastered all her damn “gifts.”

“I have to go someday.”

An arctic cold front gripped her chest. Her protests froze on her tongue.

“I swear it won’t happen until you’re ready.”

She hadn’t been ready that night two years ago when he was shot. She wasn’t ready now. She’d never be ready. For several moments, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even see clearly. Her ears buzzed. Her fingertips went numb.

“Talk to me, Max.”

Finally, she could speak, but what came out had nothing to do with his flying off into the oblivion a final time. Her words seemed almost mundane in contrast. “Tiffany was way more than angry. She could have killed him.”

Cameron’s irritated sigh ruffled her hair. The way she avoided a subject had always pissed him off. “Define ‘him?’”

“Jake maybe? I don’t know.” She scrubbed a hand down her face. “I swear I don’t. I feel her anger, know it’s directed at a man, but I can’t see who.” Her voice trailed off. She was suddenly so tired, as if intimate contact with the inanimate wood door had somehow drained all her energy. Her legs were jelly, her head pounded, and if she stood there much longer, she’d probably do something ridiculous like burst into tears.

“You, Max? Never.” Cameron’s ethereal body flowed over her, held her up when her knees might have buckled.

Neither spoke. Not for minutes. And Max couldn’t banish Cameron’s plain and terrifying promise.

He wouldn’t leave until she was ready. She’d just have to make damn sure she never was.

Chapter Eleven

Max glanced down at the map she’d printed. It hadn’t been a color printer, and she was having trouble following the route. Nadine Johnson lived close, but the route was marred by one-way streets, dead ends, and meandering roads. Sort of like Max’s life at the moment.

It took fifteen minutes to find the complex. She parked at the south end and across the street.

She was calm again.

While physically located only blocks and a few minutes from Tiffany’s, Nadine Johnson’s apartment was miles away in appearance. Gone were the trees, the manicured landscaping, and the garden gnomes. In their place were concrete, rusting carports, peeling yellow paint, and laundry hanging from a second floor balcony. Nadine had crossed the proverbial tracks and lived on the wrong side.

“Why the hell would Tiffany even consider moving in with her when she left Jake?”

“I haven’t a clue,” Cameron quipped.

“Why don’t you ask her? Isn’t her ghost floating around somewhere? Do a little ghost hunting, would ya?”

“Sweetheart, if she could communicate with
me
, I’d skip that and go right to the heart of the matter, like who killed her. But it wouldn’t work, because we don’t carry memories with us, only emotions.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Just as Cameron didn’t remember his passing, or even many of the details of his life except what she reminded him about. Having a ghost for a husband should have made things easier, but it never had.

“Never?” he breathed close to her ear.

“Okay, so you’ve got your uses.” In the dead of night, when she was the loneliest, the most afraid, she could close her eyes and imagine his touch was real. Even if sometimes—most times—their
intimacy
ended in a fight.

But no, no, no, she’d never let him go.

The emotion overwhelmed her, as if it belonged to her and Tiffany at the same time.

God, she couldn’t stand it anymore. Max had her hand on the door handle of the car when a white truck flew around the corner and pulled into the lot in front of Nadine’s building. It parked directly across the street from Max’s Miata.

Max’s hand dropped away from the door.

The driver was Jake Lloyd, dressed in a black suit, white shirt, dark tie, and oddly, a pair of workboots. His windblown hair glistened blue-black in the approaching dusk, five o’clock shadow stubbled his chin, and the knot of his tie hung loosely three inches below the customary spot. He climbed from the truck, crossed the lot, and bounded down a walk that presumably led to Nadine’s apartment.

Jesus, he was a hunk. Doable, very doable.

“Doable, sweetheart?”

Max’s gut twisted at Cameron’s taunting tone. The act was something she contemplated at the Round Up. She’d size up, pick out, and get down. “It’s just a term. I don’t do that kind of stuff anymore.”

But she’d thought about it very seriously the other night, right after one of those annoying Witt dreams. She changed the subject before Cameron could make another comment. “What’s he doing at Nadine’s?”

How long would he stay? How should she approach the two of them? Or should she wait? Why hadn’t they gone to the funeral together? Or maybe they had. Why hadn’t he changed out of his funereal garb? How did she know those weren’t the clothes he usually wore to work?

The questions assaulted her, some hers, some Cameron’s. So many, so fast, she was afraid her brain would implode.

She tackled the last one first. “A suit-wearing office worker would not have a dirty white truck with a tool chest and those great honkin’ orange extension cords in the back. And he wouldn’t be wearing workboots.”

“What are you going to do?”

She shrugged. “How the hell am I supposed to know?”

“Try telling them you’re a vacuum cleaner salesman.”

Max snorted. “They’d turn me down flat, and then I’ll have screwed myself. Be serious, would ya?”

“Tell Nadine you’re a friend of Tiffany’s who couldn’t make it to the funeral.”

Max dismissed that with a wave of her hand. “Between her ex-husband and her sister, they’d pretty much know all her friends.”

“Not if you let them think she had a secret life they didn’t know about. You could shock them both.”

“Jake was at the Round Up that night, remember? I don’t think there’s much Tiffany could have done to shock him. I need to tackle them separately.”

Streetlights flicked on as deep dusk settled in. She pondered her options. “I can use the mysterious friend thing with Nadine. But him ... I don’t know.”

“Tell him you were there the night he dragged Tiffany into the restroom.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard you say. What if he decided I needed to be eliminated?”

“You’re so melodramatic, Max.”

“You’re not the one who might end up with chunks of concrete tied to your chest when he throws you into the Lexington Reservoir.”

“Then you admit he’s dangerous?”

She slapped a hand across the passenger seat as if she could see him sitting there. “So that’s what this is all about. Dammit, Cameron. Why don’t you just come out and say what you’re thinking instead of pussy-footing around?”

He gave a self-satisfied snort. “Why don’t you read my mind?”

“You know I can’t do that.” He could read her thoughts, but it didn’t work the other way round.

“Not yet.” He made it sound ominous. “Besides, my sweet, you always seem to remember the lesson if you figure it out on your own.”

“Well, I still don’t think he killed her. And I’m pretty sure he didn’t dress up as Frankenstein or Dracula to dump her body. But I’m not a total imbecile, either.”

“I should have more faith in you.”

His sarcasm irritated her. “You’re damn right.”

“I should have known you’d use your intuition, your psychic abilities, and your powers of deduction in conjunction with one another.”

Sensing a trap, she narrowed her eyes. “I’m getting better at it.”

“And I should have known you wouldn’t automatically assume the innocence of the first hunk that crosses your path.”

Bastard. “You couldn’t resist that, could you?”

His laughter floated out of the convertible. “Why don’t you try touching his truck the same way you touched Tiffany’s front door.”

“I wasn’t trying to get anything when I touched the door. It just happened.”

“See if you can
make
it happen with that truck over there. Come on, Max, you like trucks.”

“It’s not a Ram.”

“Try it on for size anyway. I’m sure Tiffany must have been in it at some point.”

Prickles of apprehension slithered along her arms to the back of her neck. She was getting used to the visions popping up at odd times. Sort of. But to try bringing one on ... well, that was downright scary. What if it actually worked?

“What on earth will it prove?” she asked.

“We won’t know until you try. And if it works, you can use your psychometric abilities on Miles Lamont’s big black Lincoln.”

The thought of that didn’t frighten her as much as touching Jake’s truck. And, she had to admit, Cameron was right, it was a damn good idea. “Maybe I’ll try it on the Lincoln first.”

“You could be missing a big clue if you don’t do the truck. You wouldn’t want to miss something, now would you, Max?”

Damn Cameron. He’d push and push until he shoved her little house down.

“Fine. I’ll do it. You stand guard.”

Chapter Twelve

Using her
psychometric
ability, as Cameron called it, shouldn’t have been as scary the second time, but it was. Maybe even worse, because she
knew
what could happen.

Or maybe she’d lost control of her emotions. Murder kind of did that to a girl after a while.

Max yanked her car door open, looked both ways, then crossed the street. Cameron didn’t follow. She knew by the lack of peppermints in the air and that strange sense of aloneness, as if the tether binding them together had stretched to its limit.

She wondered how far she could go before it snapped.

Lighting in the parking lot was poor. Under other circumstances, she’d have complained to the management. Now it suited her.

She approached the truck from the side of the building to make sure she wasn’t visible from the ground floor apartment Jake had entered. The closer she got, the faster her heart beat. Oh yeah, it was fear all right. Without Cameron by her side, Max could admit that. But it was not the fear of discovery. That she could deal with.

It was Tiffany’s influence that set Max’s adrenaline rushing. Tiffany’s scent oozed from her skin, something mesmerizing and erotic. Tiffany’s excitement pumped through Max’s blood like cocaine. Tiffany’s need ate at her insides, sexual and power-hungry.

Tiffany had hated and loved that truck. She’d been at her best and worst in and against that truck.

Something shifted inside Max. A flash of heat shot through her, images pulled at her. It was all about sex.

Tentatively, she put her right hand flat on the door of the vehicle.

Hot! Hot! Hot!

Her body exploded with bright colors. He drove deep, then pulled out again. She wrapped her legs around his waist, pulled him closer, then ground against him with each angry thrust. Power streaked through her. She brought out the animal in him. Power-drunk, she wanted to come forever. The heat built inside her. When he withdrew slightly, she massaged her clitoris, loving the sensation as he dove in again, smashing her fingers to that sensitive spot. Pressure, intensity, colors swirling behind her closed lids, she panted and bucked against him. Almost there, almost over the edge, almost ...

Max jumped back and cradled her hand as if she’d been burned. She stared at the white truck door as if the surface crawled with maggots.

Cameron blew in alongside her with a waft of peppermint and compassion. Damn, she wanted to lie down and draw him inside her, pretend he was alive. Pretend he existed somewhere other than in her mind.

“I’m here, my love.”

She didn’t realize she’d been crying until his phantom tongue licked away her tears.

Giving him a mental push, she wiped moisture from her face. “Tiffany was crying, not me.” Tears of overwhelming passion.

Of course, the experiment had brought out Tiffany, not just Jake, because everything was about Tiffany.

“What did you see?”

“You know what I saw.”

“I know what
I
saw through you. The two things are miles apart, Max.”

She turned her back on his voice in her head. “Sex. It was just sex. Again.”

“It was more.”

“It’s part of her—sex—that’s what she was all about.”

“You’re afraid that’s what
you’re
all about.”

She slashed a hand through the air. “No.” He was right. “She did it to control him. Made him take her where she wanted and when she wanted, even when he didn’t want to. He was pissed as hell she could make him lose control.”

“So he decided to kill her?”

Whirling on Cameron’s peppermint scent, she jammed her hands into her pockets. “He didn’t kill her.
She
was capable of it.
He
isn’t.”

“We all are. Given the right circumstances.”

“I refuse to believe that.”

“Is that your hunk syndrome talking?”

“It’s my—” She cut off the thought. She had visions. Now she knew she could even bring on sensations and images, but her abilities still tied her insides into painful knots.

“It’s your gift, Max. Use it. Tell me what you’ve learned about him.”

She swallowed, her mouth dry, her throat muscles working. Closing her eyes, she let her head fall back and stretched out her arms. Opening her fists, she sought to put the flashes of insight together. “He wanted her to stop seeing other men. He wanted her to be only with him. At first she was amused, then she got angry and threw him out. But he went slinking back on her terms, even though he hated himself.”

When she opened her eyes, complete darkness had fallen. Jake Lloyd’s truck stood in the shadows at the end of the parking lot where the lights didn’t reach. Max was just as alone and isolated.