Evil to the Max (22 page)

“Why didn’t you damn well get me out then?” She down-shifted at the end of the on-ramp, sped across three lanes of traffic, and whipped out in front of a slow-moving Lexus.

“You got yourself out. And slow down.”

She didn’t.

“Well, thanks for no help. I could have used a soothing little comment or two while Tiffany attempted to take over my body.”

“Tiffany?”

“Yeah, raging hormonal, sexual Tiffany. She would have done him right there if she could have.”

“Are you sure it was Tiffany?”

“Of course it was.” She answered too quickly and knew it. She backtracked to try to save herself. “I don’t have one whit of attraction for that man. I hate him.”

Cameron was silent.

“What’s that supposed to mean?

“I didn’t say anything.”

“That’s exactly what I mean. You didn’t say anything. That means you think I’m lying to myself.”

Again. He was silent.

She ground her teeth. “I am not fooling myself.” Damn him. Damn them all.

“Your sexual problems started long before Tiffany came on the scene.”

“Low blow, darling,” she snapped, “and this isn’t about
my
sexual problems.”

“It always is, Max. You wanted a man, a live man. Well, you had one right there all to yourself. And he wanted you badly.”

“That’s a rotten thing to say. And you’re just jealous because I wished for a little backup from Witt.” Ahead, red police lights flashed, and she didn’t care.
Come and get me, you bastards
.

“You don’t even get it. I’m saying you did something good. You got Traynor to back off, you didn’t succumb, and all you can do is castigate me for letting you take care of yourself. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

He was right, in one respect. She didn’t need a man to take care of her. “I told him to go screw himself.”

“Isn’t the victory so much more meaningful when you really have something to fight?”

He had a point in there somewhere. Fighting Tiffany was a no-win situation. Fighting her own needs said a helluva lot more about her fortitude. And horribly, sickeningly, there might have been an infinitesimal part of her that wanted to give in. Like fatal attraction. You know it’s stupid, demeaning, and putrid, but you can’t help yourself. And can’t help hating yourself for the weakness. You’d do anything to hide it from the world, from yourself, such as lying and saying you wouldn’t fuck him because you didn’t trust him. When the truth just might be that you were afraid you’d like it. Oh my God.

That just was not fucking true.

The truth was that she’d just battled in the belly of the beast and she’d won. Things hadn’t gone so badly, not badly at all. Traynor had told her how well he’d known Tiffany. He’d practically confessed.

And she had the DVD. A really big clue.

Her foot let up on the accelerator as her pulse rate began to slow and her anger turned to mild peevishness.

Yeah, Cameron
was
right. She’d won. She’d won big time. Bud Traynor had wanted her, and she’d told him to go fuck himself.

“I can feel your brain working overtime in there, Max. Admit it. You needed a man, and any man would have done, but you still told the evil bastard to go blow.”

“Tiffany’s the one that needed a man.” She wouldn’t yield on that point. Not now. Not ever. Still, she could admit an ounce of the feelings had been her own. But it wasn’t the man himself she’d wanted, not even a man at all.

“Just the power surge. Isn’t that right, Max?”

Yeah, the power surge. That’s what she’d been craving since the last time she’d been to the Round Up for a one-nighter. Power. Control. This was, after all, a man’s world, and being desired equated to power and control.

“Why not get it from your buddy, Witt?”

She passed the accident, red and blue flashing lights, fire engine, ambulance, and twisted metal. It could have been her car on the side of the highway.

“Witt definitely wants you,” Cameron said after just enough silence to let the scene sink in. “The air sizzles around you whenever Witt’s near.”

Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “He’s a cop.”

“He has a big bulge in his pants for you.”

“You’re disgusting. And he wants more than sex. The man stinks of commitment.”

“And you’re terrified you can’t hack it.”

She bit her lip on the inside and tasted blood. “I’m just not ready. I’m still a widow, you know.”

“At this rate, you’ll be a widow for the rest of your life.”

She slashed one hand in the air. “That does it. Just what the hell does Witt have to do with Bud Traynor, Tiffany Lloyd, and that damn DVD you made me take? What the hell is on it anyway?”

“Good, Max. Very good. Nice smooth switch of topic to one that doesn’t scare the crap out of you. I can see your tactics miles away, darling. But I’ll let you get away with it since you’ve had such hard night.”

“All right, fine. I’m busted,” she answered blandly, then turned on her indicator and moved into the right lane. Her exit was ahead. “So what’s on the disk?”

“I don’t know.

“All that, and you don’t
know
?” She enunciated each word through gritted teeth.

“I just know it’s important.”

“It had better be, Starr, or I’ll set your little angel wings on fire.”

“I never intimated I was an angel.”

“God forbid.”

She turned onto her street. Home at last. At least sort of home, not that she’d ever truly considered her one-room apartment a home. She hadn’t had a home since Cameron had lost corporeal substance.

She parked, grabbed Traynor’s DVD, and climbed from the car. The gravel drive crunched beneath the soles of her tennies. It was late, past eleven, yet the stereo blasted from the house next door. College students. How could they study with that din? She unlocked, then pushed the door open. There was movement in the shadows at the top of the stairs.

Cameron? She couldn’t see him, except in the strange light shows that played out in her room, his luminescence enhanced by the dark. Since he’d given up smoking two weeks ago, she couldn’t even track him by the glow of his ghostly cigarette, nor by the ever-present scent of smoke.

She went up the stairs toward him. Her room was dark, the moon was new and almost invisible. A sound, like someone breathing. Her skin prickled.

“Cameron?” she whispered. No answer. She turned, fumbled along the wall for the light switch, something she normally accomplished without thinking.

Before she could find it, the hardwood floor creaked behind her. She smelled fresh soap as a hand clamped down on her shoulder.

Max screamed, and the big hand covered her mouth.

Chapter Twenty

“You’ll wake the neighbors,” he whispered in her ear.

Witt.

“All men are bastards.”

His hand muffled her words, but he chuckled. “All women are liars.”

She tugged his fingers away from her lips and turned on him. Her heart still pounded, and not just because he’d scared the crap out of her. Bud’s influence still lingered. “I’m not a liar.”

“I’m not a bastard, and my mother would resent that statement. Who’s Cameron?”

She held the stolen disk to her chest. “You know he’s my husband. You’ve read the file on him.”

“Your
late
husband?”

“He’s usually on time.” Except tonight, when he’d been uncharacteristically quiet as she’d battled Traynor and Tiffany.

“Sure as hell hoped you’d meant somebody else.” Witt shook his head slowly. “You talk to your dead husband?”

The room was still dark. She thought about turning on the light, but decided against it. She didn’t want to see the expression on his face. “I never quite got out of the habit of discussing issues with him.”

“He doesn’t answer you?”

She chewed on her lower lip a moment. “It’s just a tool I use when I’m working out a problem. Like thinking out loud.” She was a liar, after all; it was good to know she hadn’t lost her touch.

A book clattered to the floor near her nightstand. Max did her best to ignore it. She was, however, aware of Witt’s movement in the dark. He must have eyes like a cat, because he went directly to the side of her bed and picked up the book. Illumination from the streetlights was enough to show his furrowed brow. He opened his mouth, shut it, then put the book down next to her clock.

It was time to attack, before he could think too much and come up with a bizarre question that she could only answer with an even more bizarre lie. “What are you doing in my apartment? And just exactly how did you get in? Where the hell is your truck? I didn’t see it.” It wasn’t like her to miss a black Ram, even in her current flustered state.

Like any good cop, Witt took the offensive. “Where’ve
you
been?”

“That’s none of your business.” Being alone in the dark with him suddenly unnerved her. She found the light switch and filled the room with a bright overhead glow. “I asked how you got in.” She folded her arms across her chest.

“Got fifteen minutes from home, and it suddenly occurred to me how eager you were for an early night.” He took three steps toward her. “Too eager.” He smiled lazily. “Just knew something was up.”

She held up the disk. “I went out to rent a movie.”

“It took almost three hours? And it’s not even in a case. Try again, Max, my love.”

She ignored the endearment—he didn’t mean it
per se
—and stuck her tongue between her teeth. Thinking hard, she came up with the perfect answer. “I checked out the Round Up. To see if anything interesting was happening.”

“Lying again. Doesn’t become you. I already went there looking for you.”

Holy shit, the man actually thought she was a ...

A man-hungry she-devil
, Cameron supplied. Yeah, fine, he knew just when to jump to her defense. Bastard.

“Shut. Up.” Two distinct sentences. Venom in her tone.

Witt cocked his head at her odd answer and took two more steps. “Just be glad I didn’t find you there.”

She hated to ask. “Why?”

“Because I’d have dragged you back here, thrown you on your bed, and had my wicked way with you.” His mouth curved. “And you would have liked it.”

Oh God, she certainly would have. Around him, she sizzled, just like Cameron said she did.

“Then in the morning, you’d have scratched my eyes out.”

She’d have done that, too.

“So, better all around that I didn’t find you there. Where’d you really go, Max?”

One more step. With the size of his stride, he’d managed to get within a foot and a half of where she stood. He smelled ... clean. So very different from Bud Traynor.

She ignored his question to ask one of her own. “So, while you were out trying to find me, did you at least make some headway on the Snake thing?”

His mouth quirked. “The snake thing?”

Between the question and the glitter in his eyes, she was sure there was a sexual innuendo in there somewhere. “Your detective buddies. Did they pick up Snake and find out the license number of the car that dumped Tiffany’s body?”

“Oh,
that
Snake thing. Didn’t drop by the bar so I don’t know. Too busy looking for you.”

“Where are your cop instincts on this, Detective Long?”

“My instincts are right where they belong.”

Another step toward her. She remembered the DVD at the same time his gaze fell to her breasts and the disk clutched there.

“Doesn’t look like an ordinary DVD rental.”

She swallowed. “Okay, it’s not.”

“Porno flick you just made?”

The words stabbed despite the smile on his lips. “You don’t have a very high opinion of me, do you?”

He paused a moment and swept a look from her head to her toes. “The highest. You’re special.”

From the serious line of his lips, he might actually mean it.

He went on. “You’ve seen things, done things, know things. So I wouldn’t peg you as being judgmental. You could be the one woman who might understand me.”

“You make me swoon.”

No joke, he really did, with that strange, backhanded compliment. She almost touched his arm in gratitude, then quickly changed her mind. It would tell him way more than she ever wanted him to know.

“What’s on the DVD?”

She glanced down, then gave him Cameron’s answer. “I don’t know.”

“Let’s watch it together and find out.”

She had the feeling he was talking about far more than the disk. “I don’t have a player.”

His eyes widened as he looked around the room. “You’re joking, right?”

“No.” The DVD player had broken down two years ago. She’d given it to the Salvation Army along with the rest of Cameron’s things and hadn’t bothered to get a new one.

“Then how were you going to watch it?”

“I was going to rent a machine.” Could you even rent players? She hadn’t even thought about it when she’d run out of Traynor’s with the disk.

His gaze returned to the DVD in her hand. “I get the irrational notion there’s more here than meets the eye. You better tell me everything.”

She worried her lower lip between her teeth. “Do you solemnly promise not to yell?”

He held his hand to his heart. “I solemnly promise.”

“And not to get mad?”

“You’re pushing it, Max, my love.”

“Quit saying that.” It turned her sort of gushy inside, a ridiculous feeling for a thirty-two-year-old woman. Love didn’t have any part in their relationship. “Now promise.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.” He drew an X over his chest.

“Well ...” She leaned flush against the wall, putting three more inches between them, although she hated to destroy the relaxed atmosphere. Their banter made her dramatic little scene with Traynor fade into the background. She was afraid her confession would bring it all charging back.

She started again. “Well ... I was doing mailers at the salon.” She stopped to run the tip of her tongue along her lip. Witt watched her mouth. Her next words followed in a rush. “And I fell across Bud Traynor’s name.”

“Shit.”

“So I went to his house tonight.”