Vengeance to the Max (23 page)

He didn’t apologize for the secrets they’d kept from each other. “You wouldn’t have known how Cordelia fit into it all. We still had to go back to Lines.”

Two years ago, even if she’d known about Bud or BJ or whoever he really was, she wouldn’t have known how to save Cameron. “Do you remember Walter Spring?”

With that bizarre trick of Death, the details came back to Cameron now, but only after the event had received her independent verification. His voice grew weaker, tired, pained. “I remember Walter’s case. I remember the moment I saw BJ.”

Like Cameron, Max was now free to remember the time, shortly before his death, when he’d cried in her arms. About a case. Now she knew it had been the Spring case. He’d cried, something she’d never seen him do before. He hadn’t shared the why of it with her. He wouldn’t. He’d never talked about any of his cases. But neither had he told her about BJ Tyler. Yet she’d never been closer to him than when she’d wiped the tears from his face, her arms around him, giving him succor and comfort.

He’d died only a few days later. After the mother of all fights. They’d had their best moments and their worst so close together. All because of Bud.

“He didn’t recognize me, not at all.”

“You knew him, though.”

“His hair had turned.” The silence lasted five beats of her heart. “But he hadn’t changed much. I gave him my card.”

“He saw your name.”

“Not a flicker in his eyes, but I knew he recognized it.”

“Had you figured out that he killed Cordelia before—” Before Bud had him murdered.

“She might have died in childbirth.”

“No, she didn’t. She was alive to hold her baby.” Max closed her eyes, the weight of motherhood in her arms as if the child had been her own, love, tenderness, the miracle of it. “I think I’m feeling Cordelia again.”

“Cordelia’s spirit is gone, Max. I’ve told you that. You’re feeling something else.”

This wasn’t like any of her other possessions. Could he be right? That what she’d felt in the woods were Cordelia’s residual memories and feelings, not her spirit taking over Max’s body?

“Then what is it?” Her own wishful thinking or her own guilt?

“If she had the baby, then it could be related to the child...”

If Cordelia did have the baby, then...

Max stopped pacing. The blood drained from her head, leaving her dizzy. “Oh my God.” She put a hand to her mouth, breathed the name through her fingers. “Wendy.” Bud’s murdered daughter. “Wendy was Cordelia’s baby.” Cameron’s niece.

The hand of fate, destiny, maybe even the God that had deserted her, reached up inside Max and twisted her guts to mush. She’d mourned Wendy, she’d lived her emotions, her pain. She’d become obsessed with making Wendy’s tormentor pay. She’d lived and breathed that obsession for months now. But the connection went so much deeper, like a mighty undertow dragging her down to drowning depth. Max had stepped into Wendy’s world only months ago, but Wendy had been a part of Max’s life far longer. Since the day Max met Cameron.

“Yes, I believe she was Cordelia’s child.” Cameron’s sigh filled the small apartment.

Max’s legs shook. Her fingers numbed. She couldn’t take one more revelation without crumbling to the floor to cover her ears, screaming into the silence. But there was Cameron, and dead or alive, he’d suffered far longer than she. She tried to squeeze her own emotions into a tiny corner of her mind and heart and deal with the issue at hand, Cameron’s meeting with BJ after all these years. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. If she could touch him, hug him...

Cameron hadn’t asked for that when he was alive. He didn’t acknowledge her feelings now.

“When he pretended he didn’t know me...” Peppermint-laced air whooshed past her ear as he flitted to the other side of the room. “That’s when I knew he’d done something to Cordelia.”

If Cameron could bottle his emotions so easily, she could do him one better. She could unleash her hatred for Bud Traynor. “And
he
knew he’d made a mistake. He started planning to get rid of you right then.”

She wondered if Bud had experienced a moment’s panic. He’d gone with his emotions all those years ago, and the miscalculation had come home to roost. But he’d recouped the loss. By having Cameron murdered in what everyone believed was a random shooting.

“How did he find them?” Tattoo, Scarface, and Bootman. They weren’t his type of clientele. His ran to rich men who needed trust work, tax planning, and legal thievery from the government.

“His roots reach deep into the underground.”

“Into hell,” she whispered. The man had connections with both good and evil. She bundled herself into sweatpants, woolen socks, and a thick fleece pullover that might once have been Cameron’s. The chill of Michigan had followed her, burrowed deep beneath the surface of her skin. Buzzard the Cat remained on the bed, alternately regarding her and licking his privates, saying something for his disdain of the subject. Outside the window, gray clouds turned the night sky pitch black without a sign of stars. The light of the moon only scratched the surface of the cloud cover. Not Michigan, not the murky night, not the loneliness of her one-room apartment without Witt’s presence, no, none of these caused the hollow in the pit of her stomach.

The need for answers did. Traynor did. The desire to lay her hands on his throat did.

“What about the things he had them do to you, Max?”

The things they’d done to her? She remembered Scarface’s ring, the death’s head he threatened to slice her face with. She remembered the feel of steel toes, the coil of Tattoo’s snake. All that paled in comparison to Bud’s real crimes, Wendy’s subjugation, Cordelia’s loss, Cameron’s murder.

“He had them rape you, beat you with their fists and boots.”

She closed her eyes. Those images didn’t live inside her the way Cameron did amid the Cheetos and Doritos.

“Why is this only about Wendy and Cordelia and me? Why isn’t it about what those men did to you, about the rape?”

Taking a deep breath to ease the clenching of her teeth, she told him the truth, her truth, one most women would never begin to understand. “Rape is just another bodily function.”

“And so is sex?”

He knew her so well. “Yes. One feels good, one doesn’t. But neither touches your mind.” She held her breath a long moment, then let it out, letting out the words that she knew could only hurt him. “And neither touches your heart.”

They didn’t speak of her emotional revelations with Witt. They were four days old. The others had propagated in her for a lifetime.

“Your honesty makes me cry, my poor sweet Max. You think it hurts, and if I were alive, maybe it would. But now acknowledging
your
truth only fills me with joy. It means someday you’ll heal.”

“And the truth shall set you free?” She laughed hoarsely. “That’s a crock of shit.”

“It’s not. That’s why you’re so damn scared. Now tell me why rape is nothing to you.”

She swallowed, snagging the lump in her throat. Why? Because ... she’d given up the right to hurt years ago. When she was thirteen and committed the crime that made her as bad as those who’d committed crimes against her. Everything else had been punishment meted out by a God thirsty for justice. Or vengeance.

She didn’t have to speak aloud; she could never really hide from Cameron, or from what
he
thought was the truth. “Your uncle never gave you a choice about the baby.” His words fluttered through her hair.

She shut her eyes against the word, the image, the sensation of the being that had been inside her. She’d made a choice all those years ago. She could have run away. She could have felt some emotion about the murder she’d done. Instead she’d willed herself to forget it. She’d refused to pay her penance with remembrance. Perhaps that was what Cameron’s death was really about. Karma. What goes around comes around. She got what she deserved. Cameron’s murder she could never forget, as hard as she’d tried. Perhaps she’d even been the one to bring Bud into their lives.

“Stop. The next thing you’ll lay claim to is Christ’s death on the cross.”

Maybe she would. She’d worn a figurative trough in the floor, and the conversation was getting them nowhere. “I can’t stay here and do nothing.”

“You promised Witt.”

“Under duress.”

“Let it alone for now.”

“What if I can’t?”

“There’s a plan, Max. Let it unfold.”

“All my life I’ve let things unfold.” Her mother’s death, her uncle’s nighttime visits, that horrible trip to the doctor when she was thirteen. She’d done nothing to stop any of it. Guilt by inaction. Max sat on the bed, hugged herself, the warmth of the cat along her thigh failing to penetrate the bone-deep chill. Even Cameron had bulldozed his way into her life. She hadn’t wanted what he brought, not his love at first, and not his death and all the pain in the end.

“Self pity is unbecoming.”

He was right. “Tell me about this plan you think is out there.”

“I don’t know what it is.”

“Liar.” She spoke without compunction, without much feeling.

“I don’t know,” he repeated vehemently. “God set it in motion the day that man walked into our lives all those years ago.”

Max drew in a deep breath, waited, knowing there was more.

“Do you know what day that was?” His voice was suddenly all around her, inside her head, her body, filling the room, making her skin buzz as if she were a live wire.

“No.” The whisper echoed in the room.

“It was the day you were born, Max.”

Max fell headlong into sleep with her legs pulled to her chest and her arms wrapped around her knees. In that tight fetal ball, she tumbled into a particular dream, one she’d had before, Wendy’s closet dream, Wendy’s nightmare, and the original reason Max had vowed vengeance against Bud Traynor. This was the dream where she’d learned first hand the things he’d done to his daughter.