Power to the Max (21 page)

Max tapped her teeth, thinking. “But I still can’t see either of them killing him.”

“You’re stuck on Traynor.”

She turned at the end of the drive and headed back to the freeway. “No. It’s intuition about them.”

“Finally using your psychic abilities?”

She thought of those minutes alone with Julia. If she were totally honest, she’d have to admit she’d wanted to tell the woman everything about the night Cameron died, even without Cameron’s prodding. She’d trusted her. She felt Julia’s pain, her shame of having known all along that Lance was cheating on her and simply accepting it, the humiliation of having her strange marital relationship revealed to the hungry masses. “I like her, Cameron.”

“So do I,” he whispered.

“And I like that Baxter wanted to protect her.”

“You don’t want either of them to be a killer,” he added.

“They’re good people.”

“Good people can do bad things. You have to figure out why they had to go that far.”

* * * * *

The day spent shopping was so much fun, it was scary. Angela drove them all over the city in search of the perfect wardrobe. She was smart and funny, and for awhile, Max even forgot to hold the fact that she was a hooker against her.

They shopped as if they were buying for Max’s career as a CPA. Smart business suits with that extra touch of elegance, fitted skirts and delicate blouses, sexy for their very femininity. Bright colors. Mix and match. Angela had an eye for seeing the possibilities, matching a seemingly drab skirt with a short jacket and bringing them both to life.

Max came to life, too.

She couldn’t remember laughing as much in the last two years. She couldn’t remember telling anyone so much about herself. The words seemed to fall from her lips, about Cameron, about the job she’d left behind, even about Witt. They exchanged intimate sexual details like bosom buddies. They bought lacy underthings for Max, thigh-high stockings, push-up bras, thong underwear. They got their nails done, both dripping the same deep crimson. Angela said men liked to fantasize about a woman’s red nails holding their—Max had cut her off when the nail girl’s eyes started to bug. They drank mochas in a trendy cafe, surrounded by full bags that had lightened Max’s wallet considerably. The afternoon was exhilarating, exhausting, and frightening, like a roller coaster ride, the one perched miles above the street on top of that hotel in
Las Vegas
.

Alone at the end of the day, Max had suddenly realized she hadn’t learned a single pertinent fact about Angela.

Except that she wasn’t a killer.

Okay, so it wasn’t fact. Just a feeling. Intuition again. What Max had been doing all afternoon was attempting to slip beneath Angela’s defenses. Cameron hadn’t argued with her on that issue, not while she put on some of those lacy underthings, not when she zipped the schoolgirl pleated, red plaid skirt or knotted the red tie against her white blouse. Not when she smoothed the white thigh highs over her legs or stepped into her spiked heels. Not when she left her panties in the bureau drawer later just because it made her feel sexy to go without them. Cameron didn’t say anything at all.

Angela had chosen tonight’s outfit for Max’s first
lesson
. Men liked to think they were with a younger woman, liked to pretend they could attract a fresh nubile thing. The schoolgirl ensemble accentuated the illusion even if there were thirty-two years—no, thirty-three, now—worth of lines at Max’s eyes.

She troweled on extra makeup. It didn’t help. Still, when she’d stepped back from the mirror, the effect wasn’t bad.

It was then her late lamented husband stepped up to bat. “You’re acting like an infatuated teenager.”

“I’m acting like an amateur sleuth.” She liked the title.

“You told her we had sex on your office desk that first time.”

She pursed her lips. “I wanted her to know I’m not a prude.”

“That you aren’t, sweetheart. Tell me why you told her about the night I died.”

She froze, the lip liner in her tight fingers. “Hey, you told me to talk about it. So I did.”

“I told you to tell Julia.”

“So I told Angela as well. Big deal.” It was as if another person had done the telling, not her, someone who desperately needed to talk, who desperately needed a friend the way Max had once needed Sutter Cahill. With Julia, she’d done the picking and choosing on what to reveal, deciding what would best serve her. With Angela, the words had come of their own volition, as if a dam had suddenly crumbled beneath the weight of everything she’d been holding back.

“But why tell her?” he pushed.

Understanding? Expiation? Maybe plain old sisterhood?

“You told her they took you with them, that they raped you, beat you, then left you to die in an empty park, things you still have trouble talking about with me,” he went on.

Cameron’s killers. Three of them. She hadn’t even gotten to touch him one last time, to hold his still warm body in her arms, to kiss his forehead despite the blood and the hole they’d put there. They’d dragged her away before she could say good-bye.

Thank the Lord, Cameron hadn’t really left her. She would have died if he hadn’t come after her, hadn’t spoken to her in a soft ghostly voice until an early morning jogger found her lying just off the running path.

With a deep breath, she put a shaky hand to her lips as she applied liner. “I wanted to establish sympathy.”

He didn’t wait for her to get up before he slammed the next question into her. “Why did you tell her your uncle scared the crap out of you when you were thirteen with the way he looked at you?”

Because he had. At thirteen, she’d only known that look terrified her. At thirty-three, she knew exactly how much more it meant. “Angela told me her father was an asshole who molested her. I wanted her to believe we were sisters in a lot of ways, like she said.” She reached for her most daring shade of lipstick.

“But are you like her in every way?” Her heart pounded with his whispered words.

“What do you mean?”

“Your uncle, her father?”

Damn, she’d put a smear of red on her teeth. “Of course not.”

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t remember much about my childhood, but I’d remember that.” She told herself she wasn’t lying.

“But you remembered how he looked at you.”

“Yeah, but he never did anything about it.” Her teeth clenched on the words.

“But you don’t remember much of anything, not even the fight we had the night I died.”

. The second time he’d used that word. The worst was that hearing it and saying it didn’t seem to bother her as much as it once had, perhaps less even than last month, or last week. “I remember it was about you wanting kids. And me not being able to have them. Isn’t that what I told Julia?”

“It was about your refusing to adopt.”

What she remembered most was the moment he’d pulled out his cigarettes. She’d torn the pack from his fingers and shoved it down the garbage disposal, screaming about how the hell could he contemplate having kids when he couldn’t even quit smoking. That’s why he went to the 7-11 that night, for his last pack.

Because of what she’d done. She’d told Julia that. And Angela. Laid her guilt bare. To new acquaintances. But never to Cameron or Witt. Would Freud know why she’d done that?

Swallowing suddenly became a test. “What’s the point of this chat? And why now?”

“It feels like the right time. Tell me why you can’t have kids.”

He simply wasn’t going to let up. She recited the line like she’d practiced. “My internal female workings are all screwed up.”

Silence a moment, then, just when she thought deafness had settled in, his voice beat against her eardrums. “Why don’t you ask Angela why she can’t have kids?”

“How do you know she can’t?”

“Ask her. Maybe that’s another way the two of you are sisters.”

Max wouldn’t ask Angela whether she could have kids. Of course, she wouldn’t. It wasn’t her business. And she didn’t want to know if Cameron was right, if Angela was as barren as Max herself.

At nine o’clock, Angela waited for her at a table along the back wall of the Embassy’s hotel bar. She glanced at her slim watch. “You’re late.”

Max put her hand on the back of the chair opposite Angela. “You’re putting on an act for your potential clients. This’ll be the first time the person you were waiting for actually showed up.”

Angela smiled that perfect white smile. Her hair fell loosely around her shoulders, extra curl in it over the afternoon’s style. The sapphire bracelet still graced her wrist, while the Ann Taylor suit she’d bought that afternoon fit snugly with no blouse beneath the jacket. The V-neck plunged. A small cross on a thin gold chain nestled between her breasts. An odd effect that, virginity and brazenness rolled into one, sort of like Max’s pleated skirt and spiked heels.

“You’ve been watching me, haven’t you, Max?”

Max pulled the chair around next to Angela, then sat so they were both facing the dance floor. “A writer has to observe.”

Angela pushed a glass of white zin Max’s way. Obviously she’d been watching Max, too, knew her choice of wine. Max eyed the amber liquid in Angela’s glass.

She’d already been caught. What did it matter now? “I can’t stand it any more. What are you drinking?”

Angela smiled, held her glass next to the candle, observing the sparkle. “Cakebread Chardonnay.”

Max’s mouth watered, not that she really liked chardonnay. Perhaps it was the name, which sounded expensive and extravagant.

“I like to try something new, experiment when I’m here.”

Max arched a brow. “And impress your audience?”

Angela swirled the liquid, her lips curving with a soft smile. “Exactly.” She looked at Max abruptly, then dropped her gaze to Max’s house white zin. “That’s what you always have to do.”

Max didn’t have to ask the price, she knew she didn’t have the money to blow, not after what she’d spent that afternoon.

“Here, taste it.” Angela held the glass out. Max recoiled.

“Do it.” Max barely heard the words, merely saw them shaped on Angela’s lips. “Men are watching. They’re gonna love us sharing.”

Max swallowed the lump in her throat, then took the proffered glass and added her own lipstick stain to the opposite edge. She barely tasted the wine, let it slide down her throat, relishing the clean, dry burst of it in her mouth only after it was gone.

“Good, huh?” Angela murmured.

Max could only nod, then glance around the room. Eyes, so many male eyes. She couldn’t say why she’d suddenly become so enamored with being watched. She only knew it shot a sharp, almost painful thrill straight to her clitoris. A flush rose to her cheeks. “I want to know the particulars of your business.”

Knowing full well that Max wanted far more than she’d even admit to herself, Angela smiled wryly, and indulged Max’s question. “Well, the routine works. They wait, they watch, then when they think I’ve been stood up, they come sniffing around.”

“But how do you broach the money topic?” Max leaned forward, chin on her hand, feeling safe on firmer ground. This time she was going to ask her own questions and start pulling Angela out.

“I tell them I’m a working girl, and my so-called
date
petered out, so to speak.” She winked. “You’d be surprised how many of them get it right away. Makes you wonder how many times they’ve played the sex-for-hire scenario.”

Seated at twelve o’clock high, the dark-haired Greek God watched as Angela sipped her wine, his gaze traveling from her lips to her throat, finally diving into her cleavage.

What the hell was he doing here for the third night in a row?