Desperate to the Max (25 page)

She sat up, put a hand to her chest. Protective. “It’s better this way.”

“Helen, please, I must see you.”

“No, it’s not possible.”

“Helen.” His voice changed infinitesimally. Forceful. Angry. “I know where you live.”

Bethany clutched her robe to her neck. She bit her lip without even feeling it.

“You live in a garden, don’t you?” His voice became almost sing-song. “That’s it, my love, you live on Garden Street.”

She yanked her headset off, grabbed the phone off the table, and threw it against the wall. Then she flopped back against the pillows and covered her face with her hands.

They both heard the noise behind her.

“Turn around,” Max whispered. Bethany only shivered.

“Turn around,” Max shouted, the darkness closing in on them. Bethany shuddered.

“Turn around,” Max screamed.

The most Bethany could do was put her hands up to ward off the next blow. Her fingers touched a smooth cold surface. She tried to grab, to hold on, maybe even save herself, but her grip slid off.

Max opened her eyes before she died again.

She hadn’t seen a face, hadn’t heard a voice, and didn’t know a thing she hadn’t known before.

“You touched it, Max”

She shook her head. “What?”

“You touched it,” Cameron repeated. “You touched the murder weapon.”

“Oh my God.” She had.

“What was it?”

She closed her eyes, anchored herself in the smooth cool feel of it. Her fingers slid across it, slipping onto a shaft of some kind, a shaft that rolled in her fingers ...

“It was a rolling pin.”

* * * * *

She sensed him in her room before she was even awake, incorporating his male scent, the rustle of his clothing, and the exhale of his breath into her dreams. When she was on the edge of consciousness, his stare brought her fully awake.

Max opened one eye. In the early morning semi-darkness, Witt hunkered down beside her, a hand resting on his thigh, an elbow on his raised knee. His blond hair, wet and slicked back as if he’d sluiced water over his head, looked almost black, his blue eyes intense as he watched her.

“I won’t even ask this time because I know I locked that door before I went to bed last night.”

He said nothing, merely glanced above and beyond her hip as she lay on her side.

“I locked the window, too, even though I hate sleeping with it shut. Like a good little girl.” She faked a smile, all teeth and ire.

She was half pissed that he’d violated her space again, half dazzled by the proprietary nature of it. She thanked God she’d put on a decent nightshirt this time.

“What are you doing here?” she asked when he still remained silent.

“Wanted to make sure you’re safe.”

His soft words and the idea of them warmed her, turned her to mush, in fact. A debilitating weakness. She sniffed. “You stink.”

“Took a shower and changed clothes at the station.” His lips barely moved.

“You still stink.”

“Some things soap and water can’t wash off.” She finally heard the lethargy in his voice. His eyes were heavy-lidded with fatigue.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Yeah.” The word came out on a heavily exhaled breath. He rose as if he were a hundred and six instead of thirty-six, his knees creaking and elbows popping. Then he sat on the edge of the bed, his hip cradled by her thighs as she lay on her side.

She wanted to touch him with her hands, but didn’t. The feel of him against her legs was enough. “I’m sorry.”

He looked at her. His jaw clenched with subtle movement as he ground his teeth together. He took a deep breath, let it out, his shoulders sagging with it, then rubbed both eyes with the heels of his hands.

“You should have gone home to bed,” she told him.

“Didn’t trust you to stay put the way I told you to.”

“Remember not to tell me what to do, and we won’t have a problem.” She patted the bed behind her. “Lay down before you fall over.” She couldn’t quite believe she’d offered, but liked the idea once the words were out.

He apparently couldn’t believe it either. He looked at her, then rotated his head on his neck, side to side, backward and forward. More cracking and popping.

She raised the covers in invitation.

Finally, after one more wondering look, he toed his shoes off, threw his jacket ... somewhere. He hoisted himself over her, swinging a leg, then lay with his chest and thighs pressed to her back.

She settled the blanket and spread it over them. His head on her pillow, he rubbed his face against her neck, her hair. “You have no idea how good you smell.”

As compared to a garbage dump, yeah, she probably did. Is that what cops wanted, to come home to sweet smelling wives and babies, to a place where there were no dead bodies, no murdered children, no guns, no danger, and no brutal reality. “I lied, Witt, you don’t stink.”

She felt his chuckle against her back. “Didn’t hurt my feelings, honest.”

She lay there a moment, luxuriating in the feel of him, his arm across her just below her breasts, the scent of soap on his still-wet hair, and the way the bed sagged so that she rolled into him. He moved, tucked her in closer. She could have lain like that for the rest of her life and been utterly happy. She could, but she wouldn’t.

“Did Schulz and McKaverty trace the call?”

Witt stiffened, then relaxed. “One track mind, Max.” He nipped, then kissed her nape. She sizzled. Until his next words doused the little flame. “Call was untraceable.”

His arm at her waist held her down when she tried to sit up. “How could it be untraceable? I was on there for a least five minutes.”

“Wasn’t timing. He’s a hacker.”

“A hacker?”

“A phone hacker. Like a computer hacker. He hacked into someone’s 800 line. Phone company can’t trace that to the originator.”

“I don’t get how.”

“You want a communications lecture right now?”

“You can’t dial out on an 800 number. How did he do that?”

“Had a device. It’s not traceable. A dead end. Finito.” He punctuated with a slash of his hand. “There’s nothing they can do.”

Bud Traynor had foiled her again. Tears of frustration burned her eyes, seared her nose. Not again. He just couldn’t get away with it again.

“Will it make any difference if I tell you that was Bud Traynor on the phone with me tonight?”

He was silent a long time, though his fingers flexed against her stomach. She looked at the luminescent red light of the clock as it clicked over from 4:59 to 5:00.

“You’re obsessed.” He said it with the tone of a parent to a child, doctor to patient, teacher to student.

“Maybe I am, but Bud Traynor was Bethany’s Achilles. He said things to me that only Traynor would know.” She stopped, waited, then added, “He used my name.”

“So you think he recognized your voice?”

“I could fool those men who didn’t know Bethany well. I think I could even have fooled Achilles if he was anyone else. Bud’s different. He knows us both too well.”

“It still doesn’t make a difference. They can’t trace it.”

“He’s got to have a device, you said so. What if we could find it in his house?”

“No B&E. No way, no how. We’ve been through this before, remember?”

Oh yeah, she remembered. She remembered getting caught in the man’s house. “We have to do
something
. He killed her.”

It was a last ditch dramatic effort to bring Witt around to her way of thinking and bore no resemblance to what she really believed; Bud Traynor was a manipulator, his motto being “why kill when you can get someone else to do it for you?”

Witt didn’t fall into the trap, instead using her earlier words against her. “Max, Max, Max.” He sighed. “What was his motive? Your first theory was that Achilles killed her when he found out she’d been lying about what she looked like. Bud Traynor knew exactly what she looked like. He’d known her almost all her life.”

She wanted to cover her ears so she could think. She needed a plan. She needed ... “I don’t know. I have to think this through.”

“Don’t think that’s ever been your MO.”

Bastard. But a correct bastard. “Why don’t you tell me what I’m supposed to do then.”

He was silent a moment, but she was sure his brain was whirring. Finally, he sighed. “
You’re
gonna love it.” Then he groaned. “
I’m
gonna hate it.”

She turned slightly, her hip and shoulder pressing into his, her ear coming in contact with his lips. “What?”

“Gotta be crazy giving you ideas.”

His tongue barely touched the rim of her ear. She knew he could feel her shudder when he groaned again.

“Give me one. Please.” Ideas. A kiss. Sex. She’d take whatever he offered.

“Jesus, Max, you’re gonna be the death of me.” His arm around her waist clenched, pulled her tighter against him. “Get yourself invited into his house.” His voice was low and seductive, as if he whispered sweet nothings. “No sneaking this time. Look around, make yourself at home. You find the device, you find the murder weapon, you find anything, and we’ve got him.”

“How?”

His breath warmed her ear, reached down into the pit of her stomach. She closed her eyes and bit down on the moan trying to sneak past her lips. He dropped his head to the curve between her shoulder and neck. “Can’t believe I’m even suggesting you do such a thing.”

Neither could she. “Don’t tell me you’re beginning to trust me, Detective?”

“Just can’t figure out how to stop you anymore. Old adage, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

The why of it really didn’t matter. “Tell me more,” she urged.
Touch me more.

“
You
,” he went on, “as a private citizen, can tell
me
, your friendly neighborhood cop, that you saw a smoking gun in Joe Blow’s house, and I can get the damn search warrant.”

“You’re kidding. Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

He moved slightly, his hips pushing against her butt, seeking a hotter place. “Ya never asked.”

Bastard.

Chapter Thirty

The damn infuriating man made her ask for everything. Information, a killer’s head on a platter, a kiss, a caress. Max pushed back, squirmed against him, teasing them both and hoping he’d take her up on it
without
her having to ask first.

Then she remembered Jada’s dinner invitation. She remembered the rolling pin. Something you’d find in a woman’s kitchen, not a man’s. “Do they know what the murder weapon was?”

Witt’s hand slid up her rib cage to just below her breasts, his palm almost cupping her. “You really know how to talk dirty,” he whispered in her ear. She was sure he knew the effect. “Blunt instrument. What d’ya think ya know?”

“Did they find a rolling pin in Bethany’s kitchen? A marble one?”

He let out a breath. It streamed down over her throat and beneath the neck of her shirt. “Marble rolling pin. Hmm.” His chest vibrated with the sound. Max noticed that he didn’t ask how she knew. “Might find a crack or two in the marble. Blood residue. Marble’s porous, might even find a few stains. Wasn’t one in her place, as far as I know.”

“I bet there’s one in Virginia’s kitchen.” Virginia was a baker, always making Bethany’s favorite foods for solace.

His thumb moved rhythmically over the lower swell of her breast. “How’d we get from Traynor’s study to Virginia Spring’s kitchen?”

“I’m having dinner with the Springs tomorrow night.”

His hand stilled. “How’d you manage that?”

“I think Jada likes me.”

He moaned. This time it was a long-suffering sound. “What have you been doing today?”

She told him about Freddy, about the Internet, and about her idea to check Bethany’s computer in case she saved her e-mail messages. “Then I went to Jada’s group therapy session.”

Another moan. “How did you manage that?” He squeezed her beneath the band of his arm just as she opened her mouth. “No, don’t answer that. Did you and my mother cook this up, too?”

“Now, Witt, your mother—”

“Is incorrigible. Whose idea was it to go to Virginia’s yesterday?”

She should have known he’d get around to that eventually. “Mine.”

He nuzzled her neck, chuckled into her hair, then let out a sigh. “At least you two have integrity. She told me it was
her
idea. Birds of a feather.”

Quite frankly, Max couldn’t remember whose idea it had been. She pulled the covers up, trapping his hand, then snuggled deeper into him.

His arm tightened at her waist, held her against his chest for several dizzying moments. His voice when he spoke again was heavy and low. “Keep yourself safe. Don’t make me regret telling you to go into that house.”

She didn’t promise him something she couldn’t. “I’ll be as careful as I can.”

He was silent almost longer than she could bear, then he dropped his mouth to the curve of her neck and licked her. “Love your taste,” he whispered as his fingers tugged at her nightshirt. “Love the way you smell, too. I need something soft so bad I think I’m gonna die. Something soft and warm and good. Like you.”

She’d never been good, but she wanted his warmth as badly as he needed hers. Sweet male warmth to finally banish the sound of Bud Traynor’s voice from her memory. “What are you doing?”

“Shh.” He took her lobe in his teeth, then caressed it with his tongue. “Pretend you’re asleep. It’s just a dream. Let me touch you, baby.”

Baby
. Oh God, she melted. She pushed back with her whole body, then arched and moaned as his fingers stroked her belly, heading south, lower, lower. Until he slipped beneath the elastic of her panties. He stroked through her curls to slide a finger across her clitoris. She reached behind and pulled his face into the crook of her neck.

“You feel so damn good, baby,” he whispered against her flesh. “Open your legs.”

She’d have done anything he asked. She raised a leg and hooked it over his calf, exposing herself fully to his touch.