Evil to the Max (31 page)

“Goddamn it, don’t lock me in here.” Silence. Another round of frustrated, terrified pounding.

They were both trapped.

Max squinted against the throbbing behind her eyes. Her gaze swam. She couldn’t focus. She closed her eyes, swallowed, then opened them again.

A woman. Faded jeans, but definitely a woman’s backside and long shaggy hair. Bad haircut and dull color.

The missing Nadine Johnson. Of course. She’d probably been in the Round Up, watching Jake on the dance floor with another woman. She’d freaked. She’d attacked. Here they were ...

There was no doubt. Max would soon suffer the same fate as Tiffany. Snuff film and all.

Use your wits
. She could almost believe Cameron was there, reminding her, pushing her, keeping her alive.

It all made sense. Witt had been right all along. Women killed Tiffany. And Nadine Johnson was one of them.

Jesus Christ, how was she supposed to fight that? She was half-zonked from the blow, her vision foggy, her limbs incapable of responding. Be calm. Be strong. Fucking impossible.

Use your wits. Take stock. Think your way out
.

It was a damn sight better than weeping on the cold concrete.

Max could only thank God they hadn’t tied her up. Yet. Her gaze darted around the small room. Racks of wine filled the walls from top to bottom. She remembered the strange circles beneath the blue sheeting in the video. That was no sound baffle. The sheet had been there only to cover the butt end of the wine bottles from the camera’s eye.

Her breath stuck in her throat when she saw the baseball bat in the corner. She heard screaming. Echoes of Tiffany. She prayed they weren’t her own screams. Her lips were frozen solid like blocks of ice.

Jesus. They’d saved it. She thought of the blood, guts, and flesh staining its wood surface and found herself closer to puking than before. Poor Tiffany. Poor Jules. Poor, poor Max.

Cut the goddamn self-pity and move
.

God, she was getting good at this Cameron thing. She almost giggled. Hysterically. But she moved.

Use your wits
.

Max pushed herself into a sitting position, waited a moment for the dizziness to dissipate. She kicked off her remaining high-heeled pump. “You know ...”

Nadine jumped at the sound of her voice.

“You should realize that locking you in means she intends to kill you, too.” Max didn’t care at the moment who
she
was. She only cared about catching Nadine off guard. That was using her wits. Divide and conquer. Nadine was the weakest member of the duo.

“You’re supposed to be unconscious.” The woman’s eyes were wide, and her fists were still raised and clenched.

“And now I’m not. She’s going to kill us both.” She was surprised at the calm in her voice, the strength.

Nadine’s hands worked spasmodically, clenching and unclenching. Across the small space, Max heard her breathe with short gasps.

“I mean, after all, she made
you
kill Tiffany.” Max tested, then rose to her knees and smoothed her skirt down over her butt. Nadine took no defensive posture. Her fingers clamped around the pendant at her throat. Her eyes were bright, her pupils dilated.

Max’s heart stuttered. God. There wasn’t a single doubt as to who’d wielded that baseball bat. The answer was in her gaze.

And Max was next.

Unless she did some damn fast thinking and talking. Begging. Screaming.

She was calm. On the outside.
Cameron, be proud of me
. “You didn’t really want to kill your sister, did you? Not at first.”

Nadine took a hitching breath and stroked her necklace. A heart-shaped locket, like the one Tiffany had worn. “I only wanted to have Jake.”

A man. So simple a reason for murder. So uncomplicated. So terrifying. Max shuddered.

Nadine looked up then. Her nostrils flared, and her eyes narrowed. “You were with Jake tonight.”

Shit. Nadine had a one-track mind. Explanations weren’t going to do a damn bit of good. Max thought fast and came up with a reasonable lie, hoping her voice didn’t shake when she told it. “Right, and I walked out because all he could talk about was Tiffany.”

“She was
all
he ever talked about.”

“It made me so goddamn mad,” Max pushed. “It was like I wasn’t even there, like he was dancing with
her
.” The ruse could go either way, save her or blow up in her face as the last seconds of her life ticked away. Max didn’t have a better idea. She was running out of time fast.

A sob. Nadine rubbed her fists against her eyes. “He never even saw me when she was around.”

“She dominated him.”

Nadine hiccupped, then swallowed her tears. “He thought she was special. She was always the special one. Never me.”

“And you wanted to be special so bad.”

“I’m special. I’m special,” Nadine chanted, and then she choked on it, burying her face in her hands.

God help her, Max was putting her life in the hands of a crazy woman. They were
both
insane.

She pushed to her feet. Her knees creaked and almost gave out. Her vision went out of kilter and turned everything lopsided. Her pulse roared in her ears. It took valuable seconds to clear. “So, beating your sister with a baseball bat was supposed to make you the special one?”

Shock widened Nadine’s eyes, as if she’d never actually thought about the true nature of what she’d done. “No,” she wailed. “It was only supposed to be the sex thing. A lesson.” Nadine huddled near the door.

“Oh, so you weren’t going to kill her, just let someone rape her.” Max moved two slow steps towards the bat in the corner.
Use your wits. Be strong
. But how long did it take to get video equipment, blue sheets, and Halloween costumes? How many more minutes or seconds did she have? God, oh God.

“I ... we wanted to show her that sex was a tool someone could just as easily use
against
her.”

“But she liked it, didn’t she?” Tiffany had wrested the control from Nadine’s hands, turned the lesson against her captors. Max could only pray she’d be able to do the same. Successfully. “So you killed her.”

Another sob. “I didn’t mean to.”

The woman was pathetic and driving her into the concrete floor with a hammer of guilt was the only chance Max had. “Well, you sure did a bang-up job. How did you get Jules to participate?”

Too mired in her own misery and guilt, Nadine didn’t even question the things Max knew. “Pippa told him to pick up Tiffany at the Round Up. That it was a game. That Tiffany already knew all about it. Besides, Pippa had used him to do ...
things
before.”

Pippa? Hell, it shouldn’t have been a surprise, not after the reference she’d overheard. Ariel had been the next intended victim. Ariel was also Miles Lamont’s intended Tiffany replacement. It all made perfect sense, Max should have seen it long before now, but she hadn’t.

“
Things?
Like murder?”

Nadine wagged her head. “No. Sex things. Pippa made videos of him with ... people.”

Pippa forced Jules to make sex videos? She couldn’t think about that now. Later.
If
she got out of here.

First, she had to deal with Pippa on her own territory.
Calm down
. Her heart pumped too fast.
Be strong
. Her legs threatened to give out beneath her. Pippa Louise Lamont was no pushover. She was no Nadine. She was cold, calculating, and manipulative. Bud Traynor’s perfect stooge. Confident enough to think she was in control and evil enough to make Bud’s suggestion her own sadistically brilliant plan.

Oh God, Cameron, now what?

Too quickly, Max took three steps to the bat. Nadine didn’t notice, but everything around Max dimmed when she moved. Her legs wobbled. She stared longingly at the blurred shape of the weapon now standing less than four feet away.

Keep her talking; get to that damn bat
.

“Just what kind of game did Jules think he was playing that night?”

“Tiffany used to tease him. Sometimes ... she let him watch her ... doing
things
. Sometimes she let him touch her.”

“She enjoyed corrupting him,” Max finished for her. “And Pippa had you kill him because he’d realized what happened that night wasn’t a game.”

“No. I’d never hurt him.” Strident. Angry. The huddled form suddenly stood straight, arms rammed down to her sides.

Panic welled up inside Max and turned her gaze red-rimmed. She’d pushed too hard, too fast, and lost the war. But she didn’t have time to find another way.

“Right, you’d never hurt him. But you beat your sister to death with a baseball bat.” Another step. She now stood between the bat and Nadine. Max pointed to it. “And that’s the bat, isn’t it?”

Nadine’s eyes went wide and wild. She crumpled, fell against the door, and slid down until her knees hit her chest and her butt slammed the floor. Fresh tears streaked down her cheeks. She sobbed. Her breath came in gasps. “I ... I ...”

“If you didn’t kill Jules, then Pippa did. And when she’s done with me, she’s going to kill you. You know that, don’t you?” Push, push, push, she had no time, no other ideas.

“What does it matter?” the woman sobbed against her knees, her fingers manipulating the necklace at her throat like a rosary.

It mattered a helluva lot, because Max didn’t want to die. Not here. Not now. Not like this.

“What matters is that you’ve got a chance to have one less death on your conscience.”

Nadine sniffled, looked up with a question in her eyes.

“Mine.” Max tapped her chest. The bat was within reach. She grabbed it, felt the weight of it in her hands, knew that she could heft it and bring it down on Nadine’s head before the woman could do anything more than put her hands up to ward off its descent.

But she didn’t. Nadine was almost beaten without the final blow.

The woman’s fingers moved at her throat. Praying.

Max clutched the wooden bat to her chest. “That’s Tiffany’s locket, isn’t it?”

A sniffle. “I ... I switched them.”

Which was why the one Snake had couldn’t be linked to Tiffany. That necklace was the connection between Nadine and her sister’s murder.

“Why would you do that, Nadine?” If she could understand that, Max knew she would understand everything about the reasons Tiffany died. And the way she could save herself. She waited, holding her breath.

“I ... I don’t know.”

It wasn’t the answer she wanted. “Did you switch them before or after she was dead?”

Nadine sniffled. “After.”

“What does Tiffany’s locket say, Nadine?”

The woman had the saddest brown eyes Max had ever seen. Like a whipped puppy’s. Like Jules when Pippa yelled at him. Nadine turned the locket, held it away from her, and read the words aloud, softly, with tears in her voice. “To Daddy’s special little girl.”

Max swallowed past the knot of fear in her throat. “What did yours say?”

Nadine pulled her lower lip between her teeth. “Nothing.” A tear slipped from the corner of her eye and trailed down her cheek.

Guilt lay buried deep inside Tiffany’s sister. Wearing Tiffany’s necklace was a penance, a reminder, a talisman, and just a touch of hope for a woman-child who had never been special. Did she even know how lucky she was? Didn’t she know what happened to special little girls? What bad daddies did to their special girls? Bud Traynor’s daughter had known. Max’s gut twisted.

But she used the guilt against Nadine, kneaded it, expanded on it. “Pippa’s going to make you do it all over again, Nadine,” Max pushed, though she had no idea what Pippa had in mind. “She’s going to film my death, then she’ll either blackmail you with it, or she’ll have to kill you, too.”

She stared hard into Nadine’s brown, swimming eyes.

Max held the bat out in front of her, resting the end on the floor. Rusty brown stains covered the wood. “Can you do it again, Nadine? Can you hit me with it until I’m dead? Like you did your sister?” She bet her life the answer wasn’t yes.

In the silence, jumbled voices tumbled through Max’s head.

Do it, do it. She’ll never let you have Jake. She’ll take everyone and everything from you just like she always has. She’ll laugh at you. She’ll tell you all the things Jake loves to do to her. She’ll never stop, never, not until she’s dead.

She did not recognize the voice as Pippa’s, but she recognized the contempt, the quiet, manipulative tone. The power. The evil.

Do it, do it. She’ll take your husband. She’ll take the salon. She’ll take everything, and she’ll laugh at you while she does it. She’ll want you to watch. She’ll get him to ask you to watch. She’ll never stop until she’s dead.

Voices clamored inside her. She couldn’t tell male from female. She couldn’t tell when Pippa’s words became Bud’s. She couldn’t tell when Jake became Miles. She didn’t even pretend to understand it beyond the fact that Pippa’s motive had been the same as Nadine’s. Only the method had been different.

Beyond the door, footsteps grated on concrete.

Time had run out. “Nadine?” she whispered, hoping she’d said enough. Praying she hadn’t said too much.

Keys jangled over the sound of Max’s heartbeat.

“Is she still unconscious, Nadine?” Pippa’s calm voice through the door. Chills skittered down Max’s back like spiders.

Nadine swallowed and looked straight into Max’s eyes as she lied. “Yeah.”

A key scratched at the lock. Max managed to stumble to the door. The handle turned. Nadine scurried away into a corner. And Max raised the bat over her head.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Twelve hours had passed since Pippa had walked through that door, but Max still heard the thud of the baseball bat as it connected with flesh and bone. She felt it when she closed her eyes.

God.

“You’re a menace to yourself.”

Max gritted her teeth and screwed in the last bolt on her new medicine chest. Arguing with Cameron was not what she wanted to do on a Sunday afternoon. Especially not when the night before she’d been clobbered over the head, consumed endless terrifying minutes waiting to die in a cramped little wine cellar, spent half the night answering Detectives Scagliomotti and Berkowsky’s endless questions, and the other half avoiding Witt’s scowling looks. The sun was coming up when he’d brought her home.