Dead to the Max (33 page)

“Since when did quitting a job become a reason for murder?”

“Quitting her job? Come on, Nick, get a clue. She quit having sex with him.” She wondered where
her
brutality came from. Wendy. Payback for Nick’s failure.

“That’s total bullshit.” His lips tensed, the edges of his nostrils turned white. “Wendy hated him. She’d never have—”

“Wouldn’t she?”

He stared straight ahead, said nothing. She watched the slide of his Adam’s apple. His fingers tightened around the steering wheel.

“You really didn’t know, did you?”

His nostrils flared. The cords of his neck stretched with tension. “She wouldn’t have gone near him. I know it.”

“He watched the two of you. She knew it.” God, yes, Wendy had known. She’d despised herself for liking it, but it hadn’t stopped her.

“She
hated
Remy.” He slammed the flat of his hand against the wheel.

“She needed Remy as much as she needed you. He wanted her, but when she realized he was just another trap like her father, like Hal, she wanted you to get her out.”

His lips curled in a snarl. “Jesus Christ. It’s obscene.”

“And what do you call the things
you
did?”

He breathed deeply, lips thin, white. She’d punched a button.

“Shall I name them for you, Nick?” She held up a hand, ready to tick off a list of his failures. His continued silence drove her to it as much as Wendy’s insistent anger. “You had an affair. You left your family. You fucked Wendy, then you dumped her. And you let her die in the back seat of her goddamn car.”

“Shut up,” he snarled through gritted teeth. The man could crush rocks to dust with that bite.

“Can’t stand it, Nickie? Can’t stand knowing another way you failed?”

He turned away from her, looked out the side window.

Blaming Nick was fruitless. Wendy was the only one who could have rescued herself.

“All she really wanted was to be loved.” By her husband, her boss, her lover. But mostly by her father. “He won in the end,” Max whispered.

“Remy?” he asked.

“Bud Traynor. Wendy’s father.”

“She’s dead. How did
he
win?”

She couldn’t put it into words without betraying Wendy. The things Wendy’s father had done to her were her last secret, and Max would keep it. He’d won, because in the end, Wendy had still turned to a man to save her. Men had always failed her. She was doomed from the moment she left her husband to run to another man. And Bud Traynor had twisted the knife, brought her down.

One day Max would make him pay for that. The day
would
come.

Nick regarded her, hand supporting his chin, index finger resting on his lip. “How did you know her?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.” Such a beautiful double entendre. Wendy came to life inside her once again. Like a light switch, the anger winked out, and desire blazed like a thousand-watt bulb.

In life, being wanted was what had made Wendy feel alive. She’d lost everything in the end, except for a little while, when she’d had complete control over her body’s responses, when two men had wanted her. Then, Wendy had power. Big-time power.

Max dug her fingers into her palms. Her body’s heatwave receded with the pain. She leaned forward. “I’m a psychic.”

She wondered fleetingly if Cameron would have approved the admission. He would certainly have approved her in-your-face attitude.

She expected shock, even anger. Nick merely nodded. “I knew there was something.”

“You mean you believe me?” She clamped her jaw shut when she realized her mouth hung open.

“I knew you were special. You scared the shit out of me when I first saw you. You scare the shit out of me now. You’re not going to be an easy woman to live with.” The assumption in the statement turned Wendy giddy.

“I won’t live in your wife’s shadow.”

“I don’t want you to. No fuckups this time. I want to start over.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You don’t understand. I mean it’s over. I’m not like your wife. I’m not like Wendy.”

“I know. That’s why I think I love you.”

She almost laughed, caught herself only at the last moment. Inside her, Wendy cried. To finally hear those words, the ones she’d wanted so badly, the ones she’d died without hearing.

He’d said them to the wrong woman.

For Wendy, Max wanted to see him hurting. “You don’t love me. You want to take care of me. You remember seeing me at the Round Up going from man to man.” A shiver ran like a spider across her shoulders, but she went on. “And you want to save me.”

“What’s wrong with wanting to help you?”

“I don’t want a man who acts only on his passions, his pain, and his guilt. I will not depend on you. I will not have my wounds healed by you. I will not have my one-night stands fixed by you.” She stabbed her chest. “I
will
do it on my own.”

The words were as much for herself as for Nick. A surge of power straightened her spine. She liked the feeling.

She just wasn’t sure she could live up to it on dark, lonely nights.

Her nose tingled with the elusive scent of peppermint. She sucked in her breath. “Are you eating candy?”

“What?”

She yanked open the glove box, found nothing but papers. “No peppermints,” she murmured.

He cocked his head, his mouth lifting at one edge in a smile. “Did anyone ever say you were a little crazy?”

She laughed. “Yes, my husband. All the time. Good-bye, Nickie.”

She reached behind her, opened the truck door, stepped down onto the pavement.

“Hey, wait a minute. Where are you going?”

“Home. I meant it, Nick. I don’t want to be with you.”

He looked at her, a play of unreadable emotions racing across his face. “I’ll drive you.”

“It’s only three blocks back to my place. I can do it on my own. I don’t need a man to take care of me.”

“Wait.” He held out his hand, his eyes intense, willing her to take what he offered.

She almost slammed the door on him, then changed her mind. “Tell me, Nick, when you were feeling so guilty because you believed you’d driven your wife to kill your lover, did you ever even think about the fact that by confessing, you would be leaving your kids to be raised by a murderer?”

Chapter Thirty

Nicholas Drake hadn’t followed her home.

As she moved from shade to warmth to shade along the sidewalk, she felt oddly empty. No Cameron inside her head, whispering, cajoling, or taunting. And now no Wendy. The woman was gone. Max wasn’t quite sure what had sent her away. Was it something she said, something Nick said? Did it even matter? Something had liberated the poor woman’s tormented spirit.

It was almost anti-climatic.

Wendy was free.

Max couldn’t say the same for herself.

Running to Nick had been the easy way out for Wendy, just as returning to her nameless, aimless one-night stands had been Max’s flight from Cameron’s death and the things his killers had done to her.

Sexual power.

It was key to Max’s psychic connection with Wendy. They were sisters in the crimes committed against them by men, sisters in their quest for regaining their own power through the very same method. With sex.

Why had Wendy deserted her now?

“I don’t get it,” Max whispered. Just as quickly, she understood.

Wendy had bared her soul to Nick, then her throat to Remy. Max had finally set her free by telling them all to go to hell. One simple phrase that Wendy had found impossible to say.

She’d freed Wendy and in return, Wendy had left her with certain knowledge. Sex
was
about power and control.

Making love was something else entirely—that’s what Cameron had tried to tell her.

Witt sat on her porch steps.

“Invite me up for a beer?” He wore faded blue jeans and a black T-shirt with the word
Dodge
emblazoned in bold red. The sight gave her a head rush, as if she’d stood up too fast. Perhaps there were pieces of Wendy she might retain forever, her love of color being one of them. But the love of a Dodge Ram was all Max’s.

The shirt wouldn’t get him off the hook. She put her hands on her hips and glared. “You never arrested Nick. You lied. And you used me to get Remy.”

He sighed. “Guess that means no beer.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You put my life in danger.”

“Didn’t expect you to make yourself a sitting duck. Figured it had to be the wife, or Drake would never have confessed.”

“Well, you were wrong.” She yanked the screen door open. “I’ve got Dr. Pepper, no beer.” She’d run out yesterday.

“Dr. Pepper will do.” He followed her up the stairs to her room. “I made a mistake, Max. It won’t happen again.”

“Damn right, it won’t.” His admission threatened to turn her to mush. Again. She’d certainly had enough of that particular feeling.

Dwarfing her one chair with his big body, he popped the tab on the can she handed him. She sat on the edge of the mattress. At least she’d made the bed, and the studio smelled springtime fresh.

“What’s with you and Drake?”

She didn’t ask if Witt had witnessed the episode by the garage. If he had, he’d drawn his own conclusions. If he hadn’t, she wouldn’t admit how badly Wendy had wanted her to say yes. Until Max had said no.

“Nothing,” she answered breezily. “In fact, I think he’s probably gone back to his wife now that he’s figured out she isn’t a murderer.”

That seemed to satisfy him. The cat jumped on Witt’s lap, circled, then settled and started to purr. He stroked the soft fur and guzzled the soda, all the while keeping his gaze on Max.

She tingled. If she closed her eyes, she’d feel his touch. God, she wanted to jump the man, but she wouldn’t. She was afraid he’d demand they make love, and she still wasn’t beyond merely having sex. With a real man, she wasn’t ready for anything
other
than sex. Certainly not a relationship.

“What’s its name?”

“It’s a he, and his name is Buzzard.”

“Buzzard. An odd name. Just like you, Max.” He didn’t give her a chance to say anything. “Thought you’d want to know Remy confessed to everything. He stole Wendy’s datebook out of her purse, wrote Drake’s flight in there in an attempt to frame Drake. Stole her keys to the store to cover his tracks.”

“He must have left the note there, too,” she said almost to herself.

“What note?”

“The green note on the floor of the car. She threw it away in the airport, he retrieved it, and left it to frame Nick, too.”

“Very odd, indeed,” Witt murmured, his eyes narrowed on her throat. “Wendy told Lilah about Remy’s activities at work—”

“Harassment.”

“So Lilah blackmailed him, and he killed her. He also admitted to stealing Drake’s 4Runner and trying to run you down.”

“Extremely cooperative, wasn’t he?”

“He’ll probably go for the insanity defense. He says Wendy’s ghost has been haunting him.”

“Remy never lies, you know.” That didn’t stop her from asking the next question. “Did he say anything about Bud Traynor?”

“Traynor?” Witt’s blue eyes sparked. “No. Why? What’re you thinking?”

Hoping. Praying. “Forget it.”

“You’ve piqued my curiosity. Can’t pull out now.”

Oh God. Her prurient thoughts, just as Cameron claimed, worked overtime on that double entendre, whether or not it was intentional on Witt’s part. He didn’t move a muscle. She wondered if he even got it.

“I just don’t like the guy,” she said, and the words felt far too mild.

He snorted. “Traynor asked me when he and his son-in-law could have Wendy’s car back. Company car, you know, owned by the law firm. I told him he’d never get the smell out of the upholstery. Didn’t even phase him. Man’s pure slime.”

Slime was not the word Max would’ve used. Slime indicated something organic. Lacking a heart, Bud Traynor couldn’t even be considered living tissue.

She suddenly realized her fingernails had dug into her palms. She looked at her nails. Damn, the Cajun Spice hadn’t worn off with all that frenzied cleaning. “It was uncharacteristic of him to let you see what he’s really like.” Traynor’s facade could be dropping. “You must make him feel awfully safe.”

She prayed Bud would underestimate Witt until the moment the detective slipped the cuffs on him for...something.

“Wanted
him
to be guilty, didn’t you?” Witt was too damn intuitive about Traynor—and her—for her own good.

She shrugged her shoulders in answer. Witt let her go for now, but she knew he’d come back to the topic of Bud Traynor eventually. Witt never forgot a thing. He reminded her so much of Cameron.

She went back to the thing that had bothered her yesterday after Witt had rushed to her rescue. “So tell me, if you thought it was Carla, why’d you end up at Hackett’s?”

Witt shifted on the chair. Uneasy. An atypical reaction for him. “You need something more comfortable here. This thing sucks.”

“Nowhere to put it.”

“Then you need a new place.”

She looked around the room. She certainly couldn’t call it an apartment. “Maybe I do.” She supposed it would have to be somewhere that took pets. She couldn’t leave Buzzard alone to starve all over again. “And I do realize you didn’t answer my question.”

Witt rubbed a hand across his chin. “Never thought I’d be able to pull the wool over your eyes.”

“Then answer.”

He pulled at the neck of his T-shirt as if it suddenly felt too tight. “This is a little complicated.”

She crossed her legs, leaned back on one elbow. “I’ve finished cleaning so we have all day.”

He squirmed some more on the chair. Buzzard got so disturbed, he jumped down.

“Well...I sort of...heard a voice.” The words came out all in a rush at the end.

“A voice?” Her heart kick-started.

“Well, not really a voice. Just a feeling.”

“About me?”

“That you were in trouble.”

“But how’d you know where to go?”

He scratched his temple and avoided her eyes. “Just sorta seemed...to know.” He paused a moment. “There was this scent of peppermints, kind of led the way.”