Vengeance to the Max (6 page)

“Jesus H. Christ,” Witt hissed in her ear. “You okay?”

She tasted blood. She’d bitten her tongue.

“Did I scream?”

“No. Dug your nails into my arm.”

She looked down. Her nails were still in his arm. Pulling free, she surveyed the physical damage. Half-moons marred his forearm where he’d shoved back the sleeve of his rugby shirt.

She checked out the boy opposite. Eyes closed, earbuds in, he’d neither seen nor heard a thing. Two flight attendants handed out a final round of drinks a few rows ahead, another buzzed back and forth to the galley. Beside the boy, the businessman buried his nose in ... ohmygod, a romance novel. The woman kitty-corner to Witt shook the pages of a newspaper. No one had noticed a thing.

Even so, why the hell couldn’t she have the really bad dreams in the privacy of her own bed?

“This is fricking embarrassing. What if I’d screamed out loud?” But she hadn’t. Just as she hadn’t cried out when Witt made her orgasm. God, she’d lost all that sweet lassitude he’d given her. She drew in a deep breath, but didn’t close her eyes, afraid she’d see Traynor’s black and evil eyes once more. A dream. A bad dream. Damn Bud Traynor, thoughts of him stripped her of every good feeling she’d managed to find earlier with Witt.

“Tell me about it.” Shades of Cameron, Witt offered a shoulder to cry on, someone to share the fears with.

She almost didn’t tell him.

His fingers slipped beneath her palm, curled around her hand, held it. Ooh, so nice, his concern so comforting.

Take his hand. Tell him. Trust him
. She couldn’t tell whether it was Cameron’s voice in her head or her own thoughts.

She gave him the edited version. No graphic details, no death’s head rings, no Mystery Man following her. Witt would be pissed she hadn’t told him earlier. She’d deal with what the guy wanted when they got back. Unless he showed up in Lines. For Witt, she kept to the basics. He’d read the police report about that night, he didn’t need more. “And it sort of had Bud Traynor in it, too.”

Silence, strained, then, “Sorta?”

She sighed. “At the end. He was staring at me. His was the face behind all the masks.”

“Shit.” Witt didn’t usually swear in front of her. Unless he was disturbed. “You have a distinct problem with that man.”

She narrowed her eyes on him. “He’s a murderer. You should have a problem with that, too.”

“We haven’t been able to pin a thing on him to this point.” Knowing Witt’s penchant for truncating sentences, it was a sign of his agitation that he’d added all the requisite nouns and verbs.

Her chin jutted. “You haven’t so far.”

Bud Traynor had murdered his business partner, the man’s wife and daughter, his personal financial advisor, even his hairdresser. There’d been other deaths along the way, too, ones Bud Traynor would have called incidental. And there’d been what he’d done to Angela, hardened yet still I Angela.

But the worst, the crime Max vowed to make him pay for, was the murder of his own daughter. Wendy. He’d molested, abused, and destroyed her, then he’d had her murdered.

“Obsession is a bad thing.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not obsessed.”

“Those murders were solved,” he said. She hated it when he read her mind like that. “It’s written on your face,” he added. Damn, she hated that, too.

“He engineered them all. His weapon was another person. He manipulated people into doing what he wanted.”

“None of the perpetrators implicated him.”

Let it go, Max
. She’d heard the unspoken words so often they made her ill. She stared out the window at the clouds below them. “He’ll make a mistake. And I’ll be there.”

She’d do almost anything to be there. If that was obsession, then yes, she was obsessed. She’d been possessed by the spirit of his daughter Wendy. Her first vision had been of Wendy’s murder. Sort of. Bud Traynor had known every murder victim. He’d so much as admitted to Max that he’d engineered their deaths. And the man loved taunting her with the fact that she could never prove a thing against him.

In a way, Traynor gave her a reason for living. She wouldn’t rest until she stopped him. Permanently. Any way she could.

“We agree you’re obsessed.” Then Witt boiled it all down to its essential elements. “So what did the dream mean?”

What did Bud Traynor or her Greek God have to do with Bootman? Or Dracula, who, incidentally, had, in costume, figured prominently in the murder of Bud’s hairdresser?

“I don’t have a clue.” But she’d for damn sure figure it out.

* * * * *

Slush was all that was left of the snow from two days ago, but Chicago was freezing. Icy-wet cold seeped through her new down parka. She’d forgotten to buy gloves, her fingers barely registered as appendages, and the damn jean skirt was the dumbest idea she’d ever had, orgasms on the plane and the tights she’d donned after putting her panties back on in the restroom notwithstanding.

She was cold and grumpy and wanted nothing more than to get to Lines, find Cameron’s sister, do what had to be done there, then get back to California.

“We could have taken a puddle jumper to South Bend,” she said, the sound muffled. Her lips were frozen, too. The rental car had been parked miles out. South Bend was only a few miles across the Indiana border from Lines, Michigan, and being the home of Notre Dame, she was sure they’d have an airport.

Witt put his hand on her arm and bent down to look in her face. “That supposed to be teasing?” He didn’t sound as though
his
lips were frozen.

She slapped a hand to her forehead. “I forgot. It’s takeoff and landing you don’t like.” She hadn’t been teasing. She’d been plain old cranky. But knowing he’d risked flying for her made her feel too damn mushy inside. Same as she had on the plane when he’d touched her. Had she really let him do that? Yeah. She’d loved it, and she’d probably beg him to do the same again on the return trip.

Dropping her arm, he moved to the trunk of a maroon rental car and beeped the remote.

Watching him toss their two bags—which he’d been holding in one big hand—into the trunk, she stamped her feet on the ground for warmth and said, “Couldn’t you have gotten a Ram truck?”

He eyed her as if he thought she was joking. “Contrary to the popularity of black and red Dodge
Rams
”—he emphasized the word—“they’re not that easy to rent.”

She loved the black and red color scheme and the lines of the truck, and not merely because Witt owned one. No, there was something else, something downright sexy about it, especially with him in the driver’s seat.

“Then we could have gotten a compact. It would have been cheaper.” Sometimes she liked arguing for the sake of arguing.

Ever the gentleman, he opened the passenger side door before saying, “Unlike you, I’m not a mere titch of a thing. Need lots of room.” That’s why he drove the huge Dodge Ram, though he wasn’t above using it to his advantage with her whenever he could.

“I am not skinny.” She knew that’s what he meant. “I’ll have you know that since I’ve met you I’ve gained five pounds.”

He laughed, then cut it off. “So now you’re over a hundred.”

“One-oh-seven, to be exact.” Women generally revealed neither their weight nor their age. Max wasn’t ashamed of her age, three years younger than Witt’s thirty-six, and only a little ashamed of her weight. Five-foot-six and a hundred and seven pounds was bordering on anorexic. At least that’s what Cameron always said when he ragged on her about forgetting to eat.

Witt shook his head. “You amaze me. Get in the car.”

“This car better have seat warmers.” She didn’t ask how she amazed him. It was probably something else she’d get all gushy over again. Right now, she couldn’t allow herself to get all squishy over him. She had the vision to analyze. She burned with the goal of finding out what it meant.

As soon as she found Cameron’s sister.

Witt held the door, leaving her little room to sidle by him and get in. The flesh of his face was still unnaturally wan even for a blond guy. She thought she could make out new lines at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were a shade more pale than normal.

She felt that rush again. He’d risked his fears to come with her. She couldn’t say for sure she’d be able to do the same for him. But boy, she’d give it her best shot if the time came.

“Kiss me.” His voice was a rasp of emotion.

There was that writing on her face again, telling him her thoughts. How was she supposed to keep anything secret? “What am I, your trained dog? Kiss on command?”

Blue flame flashed in his eyes. “One day, you’ll do it spontaneously without me asking.”

“Dream on.” They’d been having this particular fight for two months, almost since she’d met him. She’d come to the conclusion that giving him an easy capitulation would ruin some of his fun. Besides, she
had
kissed him spontaneously a time or two.

Witt wasn’t done. Raising a hand to her cheek, he crowded her, heating her up, letting her smell that lovely indefinable scent of aftershave that could never be duplicated on another man. She forgot all about the cold and the slush. She forgot all about Chicago, Cameron’s sister, and the nightmare on the plane.

“You’re gonna kiss me, Max. And not just a passionate kiss in the heat of the moment when you can’t seem to help yourself or because you think you have to placate me when I’m pissed.” His tone and the movement of his lips mesmerized her. “Oh no, you’re gonna give me all those little every day kisses, too. The hello and good-bye kisses, the pecks on the cheek when you’re in a hurry, the thank-you kisses, and the honey-do kisses. The kind of kisses we can do in front of my mother.”

She couldn’t speak. Her frozen tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. Her eyes almost watered. Oh. My. God. He was asking for the moon. He made her want to give it to him.

She swallowed with difficulty.

His eyes followed the movement. “Does that scare you?”