Dead to the Max (25 page)

“And
I
saw what they did to
you
when I couldn’t stop them. I watched when they dragged you out of that store and into their car. I never left you. And afterwards I talked to you as you lay there, naked, beaten, and raped, in the park where they dumped you. Until the sun came up. Until the joggers found you.”

A litany of words, his voice and his warmth keeping her alive. She remembered that much. The rest? Most of the time she could pretend there was nothing else to remember except his loving presence.

Most of the time. If he didn’t make her think about it.

“Cameron, stop. Please.” She could squeeze her hands to her head, but that wouldn’t keep him out. His voice was inside her.

“I stayed to make sure you didn’t lose your will to live. And since then, there’s always been a reason why it hasn’t been the right time to leave. But it’s been too long. You’ve become what you were when I first found you, trailing from man to man, leaving behind bits and pieces of yourself. You’re lost again, Max. You’ve stored up so much stuff, I can’t even see
you
through it anymore.”

“My stuff.” She reverted to anger as her final defense. “That’s what you always said. Max, get over your childhood
stuff.
Max, I can’t deal with your
stuff.
Max, I need a couple of days to myself because your
stuff
drives me crazy. It’s always been
my
stuff, Cameron”—she jabbed a finger at her chest—“never yours. Well, I’ll deal with
my stuff
in my own way.”

“Your way isn’t working. It never did.”

“So now I’ve got to change because you think it’s best for me?” She writhed on the edge of his words, as if his voice were a string attached to her limbs. “Cameron says dance, and I dance. Cameron says find a killer, and I look for one. Cameron says don’t love this man, love that one. Fuck this one, not that one. You can’t tell me what to do anymore. I’ll have sex when I want and with whom I want.
I’m
in control, do you hear that?”

“Sex isn’t about power and control. It’s about making love.”

She wrapped her arms around herself, bit her lip until she tasted blood. “I’ve forgotten how to make love.”

“You never really knew how.” The words were just a whisper in the air.

They sliced her to the bone. “You were a lot of things, Cameron, but cruel never used to be one of them.”

“Cruelty is the only weapon I have left, my love.”

Anything she might have said would put her dangerously close to tears.

He was silent a moment. “I don’t like what we’re doing to each other. But I don’t know how to stop it.”

She rocked back and forth on her toes, eyes squeezed tight.

She felt him at her back, his lips at her nape, his arms curved beneath her breasts. “I will always love you,” he whispered next to her ear, his voice filled with real tears that seemed to fall against her own cheeks. “Forgive me for everything I’ve done to you, for all the mistakes I’ve made.”

Then the swirl of peppermint and aftershave vanished like vapor in sunlight, leaving only the echo of his final words, “Good-bye, my love.

She closed her eyes to the smell of rain on concrete, the tang of wet cat fur, frying bacon in a downstairs apartment. She sniffed the air, there wasn’t a trace of his scent.

“Cameron?”

She felt the silence like the sudden snap of the tether that bound him to her. He’d never said good-bye before.

“Don’t you dare walk out when we’re fighting.”

No answer. She bit her already abused bottom lip.

“This disappearing act doesn’t mean you’ve won.”

Nothing. She started to shake.

“Filthy bastard.”

It was a word meant to rouse his ire, a bone he couldn’t pass on, a gauntlet he’d never refused to pick up. It had always worked in the past.

She shivered even though the rain hadn’t completely eased the heat. “Please don’t leave me,” she whispered into the darkened room.

She focused on all her pain, all her anger, all her fear, then sent it out into the universe for Cameron to find, to feel, to despair over, knowing he’d have to come back if only to hold her in his arms one more time.

“I need you.”

A car honked a block away, across the street a mother called her son in for the night, and somewhere, a door slammed.

But there was not a sound in Max’s room except the jerky intake of her own breath.

Cameron was gone.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Since the day she’d met Cameron, there’d never been a time Max was truly alone. Or wanted to be. Sure there were the usual married couple fights, but she always knew he’d come back. He’d never actually said good-bye. She always knew eventually, after he cooled down, she’d hear his key in the door.

She sagged onto the bed beneath the weight of the silence in the little room. Buzzard leaped onto the coverlet, curled into a tight ball beside her. His bony spine jabbed her thigh. Within seconds, the cat was purring. The rain beat lazily against the siding. All other sound had died away.

“He’ll be back, I know he will.” Except that his words had seemed so full of anguish, so hopeless, so unlike Cameron who’d always been the one with all the answers.

So...final.
Good-bye, my love.

She shivered again, rubbed her hands up and down her arms. Her chest hurt as if she’d run a long distance. Her eyes burned. She rubbed the ache, and her fingers came away wet.

God, she couldn’t be crying.

She never cried.

Not the day she’d watched them put her mother in the ground when she was eight years old.

Not the day she was forced to live in her uncle’s house, nor the day she managed to leave it for good.

Not the day she first touched Cameron, nor the day she laid him to rest.

Because she’d never laid him to rest, she’d never let him go, never thought she’d have to say good-bye. Or hear him say it.

The cat rolled over, stretched, then sank his claws into her leg. He regarded her with wide yellow eyes; the little buzzard had done it on purpose. She pulled the needles out of her skin and rose. Dropping her sweatshirt, pants, and nylons in a line as she walked to the bathroom, she took her robe off the door. The lights were still out. She left them that way; she didn’t think she could stand to see her face in the mirror.

The red numbers on her bedside clock were slightly blurred. She wiped a hand across her cheeks. They were still wet, as if her eyes had watered involuntarily.

Boots sounded on the deck outside. Max’s heart leaped to her throat. Someone banged on her front door.

Cameron.

She ran down the stairs without even asking why the hell he’d knock or how she could have heard the slap of his boots. He’d never worn boots.

And he was dead.

When she flung the door open, she asked God to let it be Cameron. The hole in her heart when she saw it wasn’t almost made her slump to the floor.

Nicholas Drake stood on her front porch, wet hair plastered to his head, blue shirt molded to his chest. She wondered how he’d gotten to her front door. Where had he been hiding? With whom? A friend? Or his wife?

She didn’t really care. Wendy was the one who cared. Too much.

“Can I come in?”

She didn’t open the door any wider. “You shouldn’t be here. Detective Long’s looking for you.”

“I waited to make sure he didn’t come back.” A drop of water ran down his nose. He swiped his hand across his face.

“How did you know where I lived?”

A smile. “You know I’ve been following you.”

Hell, she was leading a hide-n-seek parade. Any day, Nick and Witt were gonna trip over each other.

“Did you follow me after work?”

“I trailed you for awhile, but the cop showed up. I figured it wasn’t safe to hang around, so I waited here.”

“Good answer, Nickie.”

It so conveniently got him off the hook. He could’ve anticipated the question and come up with that smooth lie. Or he could be innocent. She opened the door and let him into the small alcove. Without Cameron, finding Wendy’s killer was all she had left.

Nick was close, drenched with the heady scent of rain and potent male animal. Body heat rose off him in the relatively warm foyer after she closed the door.

“You’re crying.” He traced her tears with his gaze.

She swiped at her cheeks with the back of a fist. “I just washed my face.”

Denial came too late. She’d felt the change in him. A subtle softening of his features, a hint of tenderness in his eyes, and almost a reverence in his fingertips as he brought them within inches of her skin without touching. Faint changes, so meaningful if she only knew how to interpret them.

Yet the bottom of the stairs was as far as he’d get. She didn’t trust the shift in him anymore than she understood it.

Max moved backwards, up six steps, and sat down, pulling her robe closed over her thighs. It reached her knees. Her calves and feet were bare. She actually wondered if she’d remembered to shave her legs. They were smooth beneath her fingers as she tugged the robe down another inch. Her arms were covered with goose bumps, and her nipples peaked against the terrycloth.

Oh, but she understood
that
shift in herself perfectly. Wendy wanted him. Badly.

She put her palms together and wedged her hands between her thighs. “Why are you here?”

“You know why. I couldn’t stay away.”

“I suppose I remind you of Wendy.”

His nostrils flared, and she could have sworn he’d looked inward for a moment and didn’t like what he saw.

“Do you think I’m capable of murdering her?” Soft. Low. She wasn’t sure what he was really asking for.

She took a chance on baiting him. “You came in that night on a flight from Boise. Wendy met you after you gave your wife the kids. You were on the bus she took to the long term parking lot, and you got off when she did. No pun intended. Your fingerprints were in her car, all over the back seat where you fucked her. Where she died.”

He neither confirmed nor denied nor even asked how she knew so many details. Nick simply stared at her perched on the step above him. His eyes and face were shadowed by the overhead light slightly behind and to the left of where he stood.

“Shall I go on?”

“I know the rest.” He was silent. She didn’t press. And then he started talking. “We had a fight after making love.”

Oh yeah. That was the part she hadn’t wanted to hear. The part Wendy hadn’t wanted to remember. “Making love?”

Her stomach lurched when he laughed softly, mirthlessly, at her question. “I know
you
wouldn’t call what we did making love. It was adultery. It was fucking. I fucked her. She fucked me.” He stopped. Took a deep breath. “Anyway. We fought.”

“About what?”

Silence again. It lasted only a moment. “She’d left her husband. I hadn’t asked her to do that. I couldn’t handle that. My wife...it was a mess. What Wendy wanted would have made everything messier. I wasn’t ready.”

Max stared at him, hated him. As Wendy had hated him that night. “You were only ready to let her unzip your pants and suck you off—”

“Hey,” he snapped, raising his fist. “Don’t talk about her like that.”

“I was talking about
you,
Nickie.”

“I can see what you think of me. It isn’t any worse than what I’ve thought of myself.”

She waved a hand. “Fine. Let’s move on then. You fought because she’d left her husband for you, and you didn’t want her.”

His gaze narrowed, but he went on. Perhaps telling her was his penance. “We fought. Then I got out of the car. Another bus came. I took it. I left her alone.”

He looked at her. If he expected sympathy, he wouldn’t get it. If he expected expiation, she couldn’t give it. “Was she alive when you left her?”

She couldn’t see his eyes, but she felt them, and suddenly she knew she’d given him exactly what he was looking for. Blame. Righteous anger. Max was the hair shirt he wanted to wrap around himself like a cloak.

“No, she wasn’t dead. But you left her alone to die, didn’t you, Nickie? You ran away before she started to cry because you knew you couldn’t handle it if she did.”

“I didn’t see her car leave the lot, and when the bus went back around, it was still there.”

“You knew you should have gone back, but you didn’t.”

“I thought about it. It was late.”

“You left her there. She counted on you, and you let her die.”

Max closed her eyes. It felt like she’d been transported to the dark, lonely lot. The roar of the jet engines thundered in her chest. The pain of his leaving ripped a hole in her heart and soul. He’d been her last chance. Her only hope.

Wendy had wanted to die. She’d looked into the face of her killer, and she’d wanted death. She hadn’t even put up a struggle when the time came. Not until instinct took over.

“Please don’t cry.” Nick’s voice was a whisper, an agony.

Her eyes snapped open. “I don’t cry.” She swiped at her cheeks. “You did love her, even if it was just a little.”

“I needed her.”

“Because she needed you.” Cameron’s words echoed. Need. It was what had bound him to her. Need. “For you, that just might be the same thing as love.”

It was as true for Nick as it had been for Cameron. For Wendy. Carla. And especially herself.

Nick ran a hand down one side of his face. “I remember the first moment it hit me. Remy had trashed her about something, I can’t even remember what anymore. He trashed her a lot. Remy’s a picker. Drove me crazy with it. But Remy seemed to terrorize Wendy. She didn’t know how to take it.”

“You were always there to help pull her back up when Remy smashed her down.”

“Yeah. That’s the best thing I did for her. That day, she was in her office, and I walked by. I wanted to hear her laugh.”

Max jerked back. “Wendy never laughed.”

“She was always laughing. I’d never quite met anyone who seemed quite so...full of joy.”

“Wendy?” She would have sworn Wendy didn’t even know what
joy
meant. Not with a father like Bud, a husband like Hal, and a boss like Remy. Maybe Nick only saw what he wanted to see.