Vengeance to the Max (20 page)

“I need you to be ready. I want you so ready you don’t give a damn whether I’m beneath, behind, or on top, as long as I’m inside you. So ready, you beg, and it’s between us, no ghosts, not the living nor the dead. Just us.”

She sucked her inner cheek between her teeth. What they’d accomplished wasn’t enough for him. The backs of her eyes ached as if tears had clogged there. She asked him for time last night. Asked him to stay. He’d agreed. But he wouldn’t give her all of himself until she was willing to let go of ... the past.

He put his thumbs beneath her chin, lifted, trailed his cold nose down her cheek, then dropped a kiss on her lips. “I said I’d be around and I will be. Keep giving me these moments of sheer bliss and I’ll probably wait for freaking ever. I do know how hard you’re trying for me. You get full brownie points for that.” So many words, so many full sentences, completely serious and sincere.

God, she felt like crying then. “My butt’s cold and wet.”

He smiled, understanding that she was beyond giving him any real answer, then pulled her to her feet and into the circle of his arms. “That’s romantic.”

“I know.” She’d never felt so romantic. Witt made her feel that way. He’d understood. He’d realized her effort. He hadn’t rushed her or pushed her. He’d simply accepted.

“Got one more question,” he said, his mouth against her ear.

“What?” She could stay like this forever, wasn’t even cold though she’d claimed she was. No, she was warm against him. Warm and safe with his arms around her.

“Who was on the phone last night?”

Her ears, cheeks, and nose burned. The bitter air froze her damp pants to her legs. Her toes, despite two layers of socks, deadened in her boots. She could no longer feel her hands at the ends of her arms. And when Witt stepped away, she seemed to wither and die like the bare winter trees.

Max drew in a breath, her lungs wanting to burst against the icy bite of it. “Bud Traynor.”

Witt swore.

“I was going to tell you.”

“When?”

Damn, it was back to that trust issue. Holding things in seemed as natural as breathing, as natural as talking to her dead husband ... at least before she’d found out about Izzie’s letters.

She couldn’t say she hadn’t intended to tell Witt at all. “Well ... at dinner.”

“Why not at breakfast? Or on the drive here?”

“I was going to tell you when I figured out what he wanted.”

He shook his head. Clearly he didn’t believe her. He was a smart guy. “And naturally you haven’t figured anything out yet.”

She shivered. “Can we talk about this somewhere warm?”

Gone was the lover as he watched her with that enigmatic blue gaze. “Tell me now.”

She did, told him about Sunny’s call the Friday night and everything Bud had said. Well, everything except that part about semen on her breath. Even
she
couldn’t say that. Witt’s eyes narrowed and his lips thinned with each new bit of information. He didn’t speak until she’d finished. “He’s afraid. Why?”

Why? A rhetorical question neither of them knew the answer to, and worried Bud was, despite his seeming domination of that call. He’d admitted he was scared, and there had been that
something
in his tone she couldn’t identify. “Maybe he didn’t like me being out of his sphere of control.”

Witt stilled. Tiny flakes of white began to fall and caught on his lashes. She clenched her stomach against his dangerous tone. “Why would he think he controls you, Max?”

“He doesn’t.” She almost stammered. “But he wants to.”

His lips thinned. “Why do I get the feeling you haven’t told me near enough about your encounters with him?”

Because she hadn’t. And she hadn’t told him about all of them, couldn’t remember how much she
had
told him. No point in lying about it, though. “Maybe I haven’t said everything I should.”

He put his head back and stared at the sky. “Just when I think we’re making progress.”

She forced her feet to move, stepped close to him, and put her hand on his arm. “We have. We are.” She was.

His gaze shot her to her face. “What about your memories of this place?”

“Cameron’s memories,” she was quick to say.

“Bullshit. Even to yourself, you can’t admit what’s going on.”

“Of course, they’re his.” Weren’t they? A quake began in her limbs. From the cold, yes, from the cold.

He merely stared.

“He’s feeding them to me.” She sounded lame.

“Remember what you said about Wendy, Tiffany, and Bethany?”

“No.” She told him a lot of things, not all of them truthful.

“You heard their thoughts, felt their feelings ...”

Sort of like possession. “Cameron isn’t possessing me.” At least not that way.

“Maybe
Cameron
isn’t.”

“No.” The word exploded from her chest.

“Yes.” He voiced the fear lodged in her chest. “It’s Cordelia.”

Max denied, denied, denied. “That’s not possible.” Of course, it was, she’d acknowledged the memories and emotions as other than her own, but ... “I’m remembering Cameron.”

She closed her eyes. It wasn’t the weather turning her extremities to ice. Not the new snow falling, nor the white already covering the ground. Not the wet of her clothing nor the leaden gray of the sky.

The memories belonged to Cameron. She wanted, needed Witt to believe that, but knew by the look in his eyes he didn’t. She had to convince him. Had to. “The Bergers had a St. Bernard. They even put that silly barrel thing under its chin. And one year, we were tobogganing down their hill, that one.” She pointed through the trees to the big hill that had been the backyard of Cameron’s youth. “And the dog grabbed the hood of my jacket and started to drag me. The zipper dug into my chin, and I was screaming and choking and Cameron was running to get Mom and—”

Cameron
was running. She saw it all, his hood flapping, his legs, encased in thick snowpants, pumping up the hill to home.

Ohmygod. Not again. Her body was her own, not some other person’s.
Please not again.

Witt took her frozen cheeks in his hands. “A few weeks ago you were the one trying to convince me you were psychic.” He didn’t use the word
possessed
, but in her mind, it meant the same thing. “Now I have to convince
you
?”

Why was it so scary? She wanted to screech. “I don’t want to lose myself again.”

“Maybe it’s the only way to find yourself.”

Maybe. Eventually. The truth burrowed deep in her bones, though she still wanted to deny because ... because this odyssey
was
about answers to the past present and future, as Bud Traynor had said. And Cameron had no future, not with her, not forever.

Finding Cordelia was one step closer to a future without Cameron.

Witt suddenly reached out to stroke her cheek, a long, slow caress. “For a moment, I thought that was the real you lying in your snow angel. I saw a glimmer of hope for us. I thought you made progress. I should have known it wasn’t you at all.”

“It
was
me.”

He looked at her, his eyes almost colorless in the snowy landscape.

“Some of it was, Witt.”

But some of those feelings hadn’t been hers. She clenched her teeth but knew she couldn’t deny indefinitely. “She’s buried somewhere near here.” The words were a whisper, the knowledge simply
there
.

Witt heard over the sudden gusts of wind and snow. “Where?”

She pointed past the snow angels they’d made, to the pond Cordelia had skated on as a child. A bird shot to the sky, a black bird, a crow, a buzzard. “Beyond those first trees.” Covered by almost thirty years of growth and frozen, hard-packed earth. “BJ? I don’t know. He’s probably down there, too. They never left town.”

Witt grasped her arm. “Who killed them?”

Frost hardened her marrow. She tasted fresh snow on her numb lips as she licked them. Wishing Witt would hold her hands, warm them, she pulled her arms back into her coat sleeves.

“I don’t know.” She didn’t want to know. Cordelia didn’t want to know. A hole gaped in her chest where her heart should have been. Someone had ripped it out. And while Cameron had failed to remember so many things, try as he might, Cordelia actively refused to see. It was a trick Max had perfected over her own lifetime.
If it’s bad, forget it
. Now she managed to forget things she didn’t want to. Except the night Cameron died.

“Convenient.” Witt’s harsh breath penetrated her haze.

Max cocked her head. The sensations were odd. Not like the other times she’d been possessed. Cordelia, strangely, felt almost content. At least the feelings surrounding Max were of the contented variety. Weren’t murdered spirits supposed to be all angry and desperate and justice-seeking?

“I just don’t know,” she said again.

Witt wouldn’t let her off so easily. “What about the number? 452, how does it fit?”

She swallowed against the belief that Cordelia’s death was connected to the others. “I don’t feel it.” She shrugged Witt off. One thing was clear, though. Even if
this
possession felt different than her past experiences, Cordelia was dead. “We have enough to see Evelyn. I know the most important question.”

Who buried Cordelia out in that field?

* * * * *

“Did you kill your niece and your husband?”

Max expected Evelyn to rage. She expected her to cry. She expected her to drop in a dead faint. She didn’t expect her to laugh.

They were in Evelyn’s living room seated on her patternless furniture. She hadn’t offered them coffee this time nor turned on the lamps. Without artificial aid, the oppressive sky outside failed to lighten the room. The old woman’s face creased with shadows, and her brown eyes appeared almost black. Evelyn put one elegant Cameron-like hand to her mouth, but the laughter didn’t stop.

Not having fully recovered from the morning’s jaunt in the snow, Max shivered. Or perhaps the resemblance to Bud Traynor’s black gaze caused her teeth to chatter before she caught herself.

“I know you don’t mean to offend me, but—”

“Well, of course, I do,” Max snapped. “I want to make you so damn mad you spill your guts.” She looked to Witt, sitting in the chair as he had before, lifted her chin as if to say
how’s that for honesty
. Damn him, he smiled, with approval or censure she couldn’t be sure.

The wind picked up, buffeting the window and hurling snow about like the flakes in a snow globe after a vigorous shake.

Evelyn’s laughter waned. “Why are you so angry?” Surreal, unbelievable. The woman was asking
her
questions.

“I’d say you were the one who was angry. We saw what you did to that album.” Max waved a hand indicating herself and Witt.

Evelyn sighed, still without emotion. “Oh my dears, that was such a long time ago. I’d forgotten about those pictures.” Right, yet she’d known immediately what Max referred to. Max let her go on, hoping she’d crucify herself. Evelyn, though, was apparently done.

Max pushed her. “Why keep the album at all? You could have thrown it out instead of mutilating it.”

Witt gave Max the floor.
Just the facts, ma’am
, she remembered his earlier admonition. He eased back in his chair, put his hands on the armrests. Max wasn’t sure if she’d blown it or if he was pleased. But it did get Evelyn started again.

“The album was all I had after Madeline left for Cincinnati. I sometimes took it out to remind myself what they looked like. Father, Madeline, Cameron. Cordelia when she was a little girl.” As Max had used the box of Cameron’s things under her bed.

“Why did you tell us Cameron didn’t have a sister?”

Like Witt, Evelyn eased against the back of the sofa, crossed her legs and smoothed the skirt of her unadorned olive green dress over her knees. “Because you’d want to know where she was. Then I’d have had to tell you I didn’t know, and ... well, I assumed you’d keep asking questions until you got the whole shameful story.” She pursed her lips. The green dress turned her skin sallow. “And I didn’t want to tell it.”