Vengeance to the Max (26 page)

“I’m not a cop.”

Huh? She cocked her head. “How did you put it all together?”

“I’m a reporter.”

“What’s your name?” She might recognize something he’d written.

He stepped back. “Riley. Riley Morgan.” He didn’t produce a card. She wondered if a good newspaperman would have.

“I’ve never read anything you’ve written.” She looked him up and down, smelling something wrong. That one step back he’d taken started a warning bell ringing inside her.

“I’m new at this. I don’t always get my name out there.”

She smiled, a nasty turn to her lips. “I think you’re just a coffee gopher for the real pros.”

A cub reporter at best, the farthest thing from a wolf. His inexperience flooded into his face. Then he gave her what was probably the truth. “I work the scanners. And when I went to fill in the background, I found your name. Over and over. Different jurisdictions.” Full stop, incomplete sentences as if explanation made him nervous.

Her mouth lifted in an involuntary smile, taking advantage of that uneasiness. “And you did a little checking.” Max took a step forward, inched him backward, then tapped his chest. She took the upper hand like candy from a baby. “How did you get that composite,
kid
?” she asked, giving the moniker a derisive twist.

His eyes narrowed and his lips thinned at the intended slight. Then he shrugged and tried to pass for defiant. He came off resembling a petulant boy. “I’ve got sources.”

She laughed without humor. “You mean you bribed someone.” She considered him a moment. “I suppose you have the others, too.” Tattoo and Bootman. At the time of Cameron’s murder, she’d given details to a sketch artist. The police had found no one matching their descriptions.

He stiffened his spine and squared his shoulders. “I have everything I need.” Ooh, a taste of cockiness there.
Need for what
, he wanted her to ask.

She let her mouth lift in one corner, then shot him down. “Not all.” He didn’t have Bud Traynor.

He was young—a man like Witt would have laughed if she’d called him kid—but this one had potential. He might have his uses. She wondered which side he’d end up on, hers or Bud’s. “Tell me what else you
do
have.”

“The piece de resistance.” He reached once more inside his jacket pocket. Max didn’t flinch. He held out another photo, this time without relinquishing control.

A full three inches shorter, Max towered over him despite his sudden return of confidence. “A watch,” she said, feeling a twinge.

“A gold Rolex watch. Shall I tell you the inscription?”

A crawling sensation started low in her belly. Her stature shrank from the three-inch advantage she’d held moments before, incapable of more than a whisper. “To Cameron. This is the last one. Love, Max.”

He cocked his head to one side. “And I suppose you know where it was found.”

Tiny hairs rose on her arms. “Where?”

“With the dead man.”

“But where?” The hiss of desperation dripped from the words.

“On his chest.” He paused a half second to weight his next words. “Like a message.”

Yes, a message. But the message was
to
her, not
from
her. “Time of death?”

“Maybe
you
should tell
me
.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “Time of death.” Insistent, grating, teeth clenching, pulse pounding at her temple.

“Report of shots fired came in at three-ten a.m. The cops found the body at three-thirty.”

Bud had called her at three-twelve. Right after he’d killed Scarface. Who reported the shots, Max didn’t care. It wasn’t important. Bud would have made sure they didn’t see enough to exonerate her. She imagined Bud, cellular phone in hand as he’d walked out of that garage near Pier 39 and off into the night, a smile on his face.

He knew she didn’t have a witness who could conclusively testify as to what she was doing at the time Scarface was killed.

Max took the stairs to her apartment two at a time, her spike heels wobbling with effort.

Cameron’s watch. She didn’t care what Riley Morgan, scurvy reporter, wanted from her or how he’d obtained his information, didn’t care who found Scarface, who heard those shots, or the million other questions she hadn’t asked the man.

All she worried about was Cameron’s watch.

Her left shoe slipped on the hardwood. She fell to her knees on the throw rug beside her bed, her breath sawing from the mad sprint. Buzzard screeched, arched his back, hissed, then vanished like a wraith through the five-inch window opening she left him.

On her hands and knees, Max stuck her head beneath the bed and pulled out the box of Cameron’s things. His shirts, socks, tapes, books, everything flew across the room, clattering to the floor as she rummaged. Where was it? A whimper rose in her throat. She cut it off ruthlessly.

A knock sounded on the door below. Thank God she’d locked it or that Riley person would probably invite himself in. She stared into the box and ignored the second louder knock.

The watch was gone. As were Cameron’s gold cuff links and his father’s ruby stick pin. Three items that led directly to Cameron.

And to her. Items to be left on the bodies of three killers. Scarface was the first. Bud had much more planned.

The bastard was framing her.

Cameron’s watch had both their names on it. The cuff links were engraved with his initials. And the stick pin? True, there were no identifiers, but Cameron had worn that pin daily. He’d been wearing it in the picture the newspapers used to advertise his death. Reporters weren’t stupid. Neither were cops. They’d put it together after the first two pieces were found on the dead men.

“He knows I don’t have an alibi,” she whispered to the room at large, to Cameron in particular. Her hands trembled as she gathered his clothing to her. Her knees creaked. She slipped her shoes from her feet, almost curled into a ball right there on the rag rug, then stopped herself. That’s what Bud wanted her to do, cower in the corner and fear for her life, her freedom.

Bud’s scent overlaid Cameron’s. The things in her arms stank of cigars and an aftershave Cameron had never worn. Bud’s aftershave, the scent cloying, sickening. He’d stolen that, too, Cameron’s fragrance from his own clothes. He’d pawed through the box, her special box of memories, scents, and sensations, robbing her of far more than the mementos he’d stolen.

“How did he get in?” She looked to the five-inch gap between window and sill. “He could have climbed the tree.” Someone might have seen him though. He wouldn’t risk it. Nor was he the tree-climbing type. “He could have picked my locks.” Witt always did, to show her how flimsy they were.

She waited a beat. “Why don’t you answer me?” Her voice was rough with a show of strength.

Cameron remained silent.

She let go of her husband’s personal effects and rose to her feet. The bottom drawer of her small dresser hadn’t been closed properly, something she would never do. Fanatic that she was about order, an open drawer niggled at her subconscious. Bud had searched everywhere. She knelt, took in the rumbled sweats, t-shirts, and turtlenecks where she remembered folding them with her usual military precision. Closing that drawer, she opened the top one containing her underwear. She could almost see his fingerprints on the soft cotton, lace, and satin. Her favorite pair, red with roses, had gone MIA. He now knew she liked thongs, the biggest violation of all. He’d stolen her fantasies with everything else.

“Where’s the gun?” A numbness began in the core of her body, spread like acid through her bones and veins, and ate her alive from the inside. The Glock was missing. “He’s killing them with your gun, Cameron.”

“He’ll leave it close by when he does the last one.” After his long silence, Cameron’s answer shocked her in the quiet room.

She gripped the edge of the dresser to steady herself, but resisted putting her hand over her eyes. Strong. She needed to remain strong. “And they’ll follow the trail back to me.”

“Maybe not.”

“Why?”

“Because in the end, we’re going to be smarter than him.”

“Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better. What have you done, Cameron?”

“Later.”

“I want to know now.”

He gave her only silence. Bastard. He had no intention of telling her how he planned to thwart Uncle BJ until he was ready. “Don’t keep secrets from me, not at this point.”

“Call Witt.”

She wanted to scream with frustration at his damn games. Witt couldn’t help her if she looked guilty. She’d get him in worse trouble. Even if Cameron had fixed the gun problem, there were the other things Bud had stolen to plant on his victims. She chewed the skin from her lower lip until it bled. “Do you think he’s already killed the others, but they haven’t found their bodies yet?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can’t you feel their ghosts or something, their life force?” Or dead force, as the case might be.

“No, I can’t.”

“Then if they aren’t dead, I’m the only one that knows they’re on his hit list.” Bile rumbled into her throat. “And if they aren’t dead, I’m the only one who can save them.”

“I’m not even sure you can save yourself, Max.”

She could. By killing Bud Traynor.

* * * * *

Cameron’s murderers. Scum of the earth. Worthless excuses for human beings.

Killing Bud would save them, but did she want to save them? No. She wanted them to die. She wanted Bud to die more. In the early morning hours of a September day, three months ago, after Wendy’s Closet Dream, she’d made a sacred vow to Wendy. Bud would pay, no matter what it took. Now she would make him pay for what he’d done to Cameron.

Max dialed Witt’s cell number. She’d promised him she wouldn’t go after Bud. She didn’t want a lie to stand between them. The ring sounded like a refrain of
guilty, guilty, guilty
. She wasn’t sure what she’d say when he answered.

“Long here.” The tinny sounds of street traffic, the buzz of nearby conversation, and car horns bleating muted his voice.

“Where are you?”

“San Francisco.”

Her heart stopped beating. Actually it skipped a beat or two, then kicked back into gear with ferocity. He’d found out about Scarface. “Why?” she asked to confirm.

“Already know why, doncha, Max.”

Right, cops weren’t stupid, especially not Witt. But he couldn’t think
that
, could he? “I didn’t do it.”

“Christ,” he swore over the bark of a male shout in his vicinity, and when he went on, frost entered his tone. “Didn’t cross my mind.
I
know you better.” The implication being that she should have known
him
better. “Figured you had another of your visions.”

Worse. She had Bud Traynor’s phone call in the middle of the night. Her eyes ached, but crying wasn’t an option, not with frustration nor self-pity. “I need help, don’t I?”

“Right now,” he paused, his breath picking up pace. She imagined him walking away from nearby cops, from the crime scene he’d obviously invited himself to. “They’re of two minds. One, ya wanna get caught when it’s all over. Two, someone else wants ya caught.”

Hope flared. “So they think someone’s framing me?”

“Not ruling it out.”

“Thank God,” she murmured on the out-breath.

“They’ll wanna interview you.”

“Question me?” That sounded worse than if they only wanted a talk.
Talk
was friendly,
interview
was ominous.

“I’ll pick you up.” Then, after the briefest of pauses that didn’t give her a chance to answer, he added, “You still at home?”

“I told you I wouldn’t leave.” But she’d been planning on it, and she couldn’t allow him smack dab in the middle of her plans now. “But—”