Dead to the Max (31 page)

God, if she kept this up, her body would waste away to a shadow.

And Bud Traynor would win.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The sun was down. Hackett’s parking lot was empty, windows, dark, and the street silent except for the train whistle a block away.

Max couldn’t remember how she’d gotten there.

The afternoon was a blank, as if she’d hidden next to the stairs outside Hal’s office building in a daze until dusk. But no, there had been a panicked flight, Wendy’s heart pounding in her ears, Wendy’s hands on the steering wheel, and Wendy’s frantic breath in her chest.

If spirit possession was real, not a product of her own fractured mind, then Max was well and truly possessed. She went with it. She had no choice. Together, she and Wendy rushed toward a goal like that train out there on the tracks.

The problem was that Max had no idea where to stop. She wasn’t sure Wendy did either.

She climbed from her car, rooted around in her purse for the key she kept on a separate chain. The shop closed at five on a Saturday and was empty by half-past. Deserted. Cold and creepy, like Bud Traynor’s voice along her nerve endings.

In her office, the fronds of Wendy’s spider plant crawled toward non-existent sunlight and water. She stroked a leaf, felt it with the tenderness of a mother.

Inside her, Wendy was pleased.

With the greenery once again happy, Max sat at the desk, stretched, and reveled in the silence. Pulling open a drawer, she ran her fingers across the tabs of the folders, flashes like a rainbow. When she closed her eyes, prisms of color danced against her lids.

She turned on the computer, went into the word processing program, and started her list.

Bud Traynor. She left the text black. For evil.

Carla Drake. She turned it green. For envy.

Hal Gregory. She chose yellow. For being the pale angry shadow of Wendy’s father.

Remy Hackett. Red. For draining the life blood of the people who worked for him.

Nicholas Drake. Blue. For sadness.

The computer froze. Her cursor stopped blinking. She hit the escape several times. Nothing. Damn thing. Remy wouldn’t spring for an updated model. Max crawled beneath the desk and reached for the power button. The CPU beeped, and the fan whirred.

“What’s going on here?”

She shrieked, jumped, rammed her head into the underside of the middle desk drawer, and flopped over onto one hip.

Remy.

“Jeez, you scared me.” She rubbed the bump on the top of her head, tried backing up, then wriggled around to peer out at his legs. She couldn’t see past his abdomen.

“What are you doing under there?”

I knew you were coming, and I hid.

Wendy’s words, just like the Closet Dream.

With them, Max tumbled straight into yet another of Wendy’s nightmares. This time, she was wide awake.

She slammed the phone down, anger and impotence shuddering up her arm and coming to rest in some soft, squishy part of her mind, diminishing her resolve. Father’s voice had always done that to her. Weak. Weak. “God, I hate you,” she whispered. Her father. Her husband. Herself.

Wendy’s office. Wendy’s voice. Wendy’s slight hand still on the receiver. Max was just along for the ride. Again.

She didn’t turn when she heard him breathing at her door. The dragon was out. Remy was pissed. Always. Endlessly. There’d never been a time she hadn’t done something wrong, hadn’t screwed up, hadn’t been stupid. Not before Remy came into her life, not now, and probably never in the future.

She seemed destined to gravitate to men like Remy. Like Hal. Like Father.

Remy hovered close to her desk. “Theresa says the copy machine’s broken.”

“Marvin isn’t answering his cell phone.”

“Call again.”

She looked at him, gut protruding, smile triumphant, and pinkie ring glinting under the fluorescent light. Some synapse in her brain misfired. “You want him here, you call him.” She never spoke to him like that, never braved the retribution.

She didn’t care anymore.

For Remy, that was the beginning, middle, and end of the argument. “In my office. Now.”

For Wendy, it was a divine revelation.

Something happened to her body. A dampness between her legs. A subtle contraction of her muscles. A pleasurable tug of heat. They were signs she used to ignore. She knew what he wanted. This time he would get so much more.

She rose, looked down at the coral polish of her fingernails, imagined them a crimson red. The color of his blood.

Theresa the viper stood just outside the office door, a self-important, back-stabbing smile on her freshly painted lips.

Trailing Remy down the hall, Wendy saw him disappear into his office. He didn’t turn, didn’t bother to see if she did as he ordered. He was so sure of her.

If she’d had a gun, she’d have shot him in the ass.

“Shut the door.”

She did.

“Lock it.”

She did that, too.

He stood in the middle of the room, just in front of his desk, legs spread, paunch resting on the top of his belt buckle. His pants wrinkled at the crotch.

“Get over here.”

Three steps. They stood nose to chin. Her eyes dropped to his erection.

“Get on your knees.”

She took a deep breath.

“Did you hear me?”

“I heard you.”

His penis jerked in his pants, jumping like a snake. Her mouth watered in shameful anticipation of the salty taste. The earlier moist rush increased. She’d done it so many times before, there was no question she would do it again, keep on doing it. Forever. Until the day she died. Unless...

“What are you waiting for?”

She pictured herself a gray-haired old woman down on creaking knees sucking a decrepit cock that no longer even got hard. She’d have lockjaw, her lips forever curled into a perfect round O to receive whatever man demanded sex from her. And she would still be masturbating quietly in shame in her lonely bed, a victim of her own unreleased desires.

Deep inside, someone howled. A death knell. Her own. “No.” At first a whisper. “No.” Stronger. Fuller.

“What?” Shock. It vibrated on his vocal chords.

“I said no. I won’t do it.” Power streaked through her extremities. The very power she’d always sought when she was down on her knees in front of them. The power she’d only had to stand up to find.

She would choose the cocks she sucked. No one else.

Remy reached out, fisted his hands in her hair, and forced her down on her knees. He pulled her head back by the roots, his gaze on her mouth. He didn’t even bother to look into her eyes, as if she was less than human. “Unzip my pants.”

“No.” A shiver ran through her, leaving a strange sense of control in its wake.

His mustache twitched like a rat’s whiskers.

“If you put it in my mouth, Remy, I’ll bite it off.”

He wrenched her hair, her scalp screamed. “Don’t ever say no to me.”

She didn’t raise her voice, didn’t shout. The word was all the more powerful for the softness of her tone. “No.”

He hauled her up, pain shot through her scalp to her ears, her neck and her shoulders. When he had her on her feet, he yanked her head back so that she had to look at him. “You’ll pay for this in a million excruciating ways.” He truly believed he could do it.

“You’re a dickhead, Remy. Call Marvin yourself. I quit.” Then she spat in his face.

* * * * *

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Max was still huddled on the floor, Remy towering over her. The vision seemed to have gone on forever, but she knew in reality it had lasted less than a minute.

Nevertheless, Remy had cursed at her. Her trance had unnerved him.

That gave Max all the insight she needed. He’d lost control when Wendy spat in his face. He’d had only one choice left. If you can’t control ’em, kill ’em. A new Remy motto.

“Why didn’t you tell anybody Wendy quit her job that last day?”

His mouth dropped open. He swallowed hard, took one step back. “You couldn’t possibly know that.”

She tipped her head to one side. “That’s why you killed her, isn’t it? Because she said no to you.” Finally. Irrevocably. Courageously.

Max felt pride. Wendy had said no.

He’d forced sex on her. Definitely something a boss would want to hide. But why hide the fact that she’d quit? “Were you afraid Detective Long would figure out everything if he knew Wendy had quit on you?” She tapped her lip. “Come to think of it, that’s probably why you searched my office the other day. You were afraid she might have written her resignation in her notes.”

Remy was too much of a control freak to stay down for long. He didn’t confirm her supposition, he didn’t have to. And he knew it. He straightened his shoulders, closed his lips. Recovered, he shook his head. “You
are
becoming troublesome.”

He didn’t state the obvious. If Witt knew Wendy had quit, he’d start asking why. Remy would have to lie. He wasn’t good at lying. Instead, he’d omitted the fact. With that one action, he’d branded the word “killer” into his chest.

Max was on her knees at Remy’s feet, halfway under the desk. Definitely not a one-up position, but that had never stopped her before. It certainly didn’t now. “Can’t answer the question? Afraid you’ll have to tell a lie?”

If she could keep him talking, she would find a way out.

He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a length of nylon cord. “You know, you could learn a lesson from Wendy.”

“And what’s that, Remy?”

“Stay on your knees and keep your mouth full.”

“Fuck you, Remy.”

He wagged a finger. “Max, you know my rule about swearing.”

“And fuck your rules, too.”

Her heart stuttered as he coiled the rope around his fist. “
That’s
why she died, Max, because she thumbed her nose at my rules.”

“Of course, it had nothing to do with the fact that her job description including sucking your cock every afternoon.”

She pushed with the language. Pushed with the sarcasm. Pushed him to the edge. Max figured when he made his move, cramped under the desk as she was, his maneuverability would be severely hampered, too. Then she’d turn the tables on him.

Remy only laughed and shook his head. “I know you must have been a friend of hers, but you really didn’t know her at all.”

“Yeah, I was a friend, and I know she hated your guts.”

Still smiling. “She needed me. I made her feel special.”

It was Max’s turn to laugh even as she braced her hands on the floor, waiting, watching for an opportunity to spring. “That’s the most pathetic bullshit I’ve ever heard.” She deepened her voice, mimicked him. “She
wanted
me to sexually harass her.”

“You had no idea what made her tick. Making me want her was power, and Wendy craved power.” He wound the other end of the cord around his left palm and pulled it taut.

Never let them see you sweat. “Did you do all this psychoanalysis before or after you forced her to have sex with you?” None of what he said fit the vision Wendy had given her.

Did it? Stronger than Wendy’s futility, a rush of the dead woman’s adrenaline high throbbed in Max’s veins. She shivered.

“She could have left any time, but she kept on doing it.”

“Right,” Max scoffed, but his words made her wince. She injected every ounce of venom into her voice. “So that’s why you killed her when she finally told you to go fuck yourself and called you a dickhead.”

“I killed her because—” He stopped, as if suddenly realizing the enormity of his admission. No matter the nylon in his hands. But once out, he just had to explain. Isn’t that what killers always did? “She shouldn’t have betrayed me with Nick. She shouldn’t have chosen him over me.”

“Guess that’s why you framed him by writing his name in her date book.”

Dropping one end of the rope, Remy lunged. The move took Max by surprise. She’d dropped her guard, listening to his lies about Wendy. Fingers digging into her arms, he dragged her upright, her head whacking the desk. Jerking free, Max stumbled, spots of light flashing. She fell against the filing cabinet, catching herself with both hands.

She’d be damned if she’d go down on her knees for him again.

She rested, head spinning, his voice close behind her. “She knew it was a game. She went to him. And when she was done, she came to me. I think she even knew I’d watched them.”

“You’re a fucking liar.” Her breath stuck in her throat.

Remy didn’t know how to lie. Panic flashed across her skin and raised goose bumps. She leaned her cheek against the cool metal, then rolled on her shoulder to look at him. “He put you up to this, didn’t he?”

He curled his lip. “Nick?”

“Bud Traynor.”

“What the hell does Wendy’s father have to do with it?”

“He goaded you into killing her, didn’t he?”

“It was my idea,” he shouted, as if it was a great achievement someone might steal from him. Then he calmed just as abruptly. “You’re trying to sidetrack me. It won’t work. Your Royal Canadian Mountie isn’t going to rescue you.”

“Witt?” She choked back a laugh, the sound almost frantic. Witt didn’t have a clue where she was. She faced the cabinet again, pulled herself upright as if she were doing chin-ups.

Stalks of Wendy’s spider plant caressed her face, the earthy scent of moist soil cleared her head. She felt Remy at her back, heard the snap of the nylon between his hands. “You can’t kill me here. They’ll know it was you,” she told him.

“I’ll clean everything up.”

“They’ve got that stuff that detects blood even after it’s washed away.”