Power to the Max (38 page)

“Max, don’t—” Angela stopped, started again. “Let me talk to her first. Let me ask her.”

Max shook her head, the cold and damp beginning to seep through her jacket. Or maybe it was the thought of Julia at the mercy of the press and the blind justice system. “What did she say to you last night at the Embassy?”

Angela’s head tipped to the side. “Last night?”

“So you didn’t see her.” Max crossed her arms. “Well, I saw her there as I was leaving. And I think it means she was spying on you.”

Angela said nothing.

Max wanted to take her arm and shake her. “She’s dangerous. She could hurt you. We need to tell the police what really happened.”

Angela took a deep breath. “You said you liked her a little.”

“Actually I used the word
love
. Don’t make her do any more than she’s already done, Angela. It isn’t fair to her. Help her by telling.”

“Come with me, Max.” That swimming brown gaze pleaded. “Let’s try it my way first. Please.”

Max thought how real life wasn’t like the movies. Julia, upon hearing that Max knew about the affair, the video, and the broken alibi, would probably crumble. Chances were slim she’d try to kill the two women confronting her. Very slim. Not like the movies where the killer whipped out her Uzi and mowed down her enemies in a wild gun battle ending in death by police SWAT team. Julia was too refined for that.

“All right.”

Angela jumped forward and threw her arms around Max’s neck, hugging her, the scent of wet hair and perfume enveloping Max and damn near bringing a tear to her eye. No woman had hugged her since her ex-best-friend Sutter Cahill. Before Cameron died.

Was it possible to be friends with a hooker? Derogatory term. She’d call Angela a working girl.

Cameron whispered.
She set you up with Traynor.

Okay. She’d forgotten. For a moment.

Besides, it wasn’t important now. When it had started, Max was probably nothing more to Angela than another potential video.

Angela held up her keys. “I’ll drive. I know where her house is.”

“Don’t you want to call her office first to make sure she’s not there?”

Angela grinned sheepishly. “I already talked to her this morning. She’s at home.”

“What did she say?”

She shrugged. “She didn’t confess, if that’s what you’re asking. She just cried a lot. I was trying to calm her down.”

“Is that why you didn’t answer my page? I put 911.”

“I didn’t recognize the number. And the 911 was sort of creepy.” She looked over at Max after they’d climbed in. “Stalkerish, you know?”

“I was worried about you.”

Angela’s head jutted back. “Because of Julia? She won’t hurt me. She blamed it all on Lance.”

Max thought of Julia’s question about loving someone so much you’d do anything for them. “Is she in love with you?”

Angela tucked her purse down the seat beside her, started the engine, backed out of the space, and cleared three of the levels before answering. “Yes. I guess she is.”

The Jag had that new car smell along with the scent of leather seats. Max ventured another question. “Are you in love with her? More than a little bit, I mean.”

Reaching to a convenience holder in the dash, Angela pulled out her parking card as they neared the entrance. She said nothing more until they exited the garage.

“If you’re asking if I ever considered being with Julia in a significant love relationship, the answer is no.” She turned briefly to Max. “You know I’m not like that.”

Angela couldn’t get enough power out of one relationship. But Julia? “And how do you think she’s going to react when you tell her that you don’t want a relationship?”

Heading out to the freeway, Angela negotiated the city streets with ease and flair, so unlike Max. “I’m not going to.” She reached to pat Max’s knee. “We’re going to try to talk her into turning herself in, aren’t we? If she really did it. Which I’m not sure she did.”

“I’m not convinced this will work. Murphy’s Law, you know.”

“If something can go wrong, it will,” Angela quipped.

Max shook her head. “This is a stupid idea.” She turned in her seat to regard Angela’s profile. “I have a friend. He’s a cop. We can go to him.” Now that Angela was safe, Max’s urgency had dissipated. She could take the time to track down Witt before they went to Julia’s. Plus, it no longer mattered if Angela knew that Witt was the man Max picked up at the Embassy or that he was a cop.

“What do you think’s gonna happen? That she’s going to rush us with two letter openers?”

Max didn’t laugh. “What if she has a gun or something?”

Angela patted her purse. “She doesn’t. I have the family gun. Right here. Lance gave it to me for protection.”

Max stared in horror.

Angela beamed as she stared through the windshield. “So you see, I’ll keep us safe.”

Oh God, this whole thing really was a stupid idea.

He didn’t answer.

“Why did you agree to help Bud Traynor to get me to do a trick?”

Angela laughed, lightly, so much lighter than Max had ever felt. “I wasn’t going to let you do a real one. He told me you knew that guy. I wouldn’t have let you otherwise.”

Well, that answered that question. “What did you think it was all about?”

Shrugging, Angela took the 280 extension. “No idea. Bud asks for some strange stuff.”

“Is this how you always go?” Max pointedly asked.

“I know the drive, Max.”

Yes, Angela knew the drive. How many times had she made it?

Angela looked over. “Relax. Everything’s going to be fine. And I didn’t go down to the garage to watch you. I knew you didn’t like that idea.”

What Max had gotten had been worse and all part of Bud’s plan. But Angela hadn’t known. For a working girl, she was a tad naive.

“Did you know about his blackmail schemes?” Max asked. Angela had to have known. There was naive, and then there was plain old dumb.

“I know what you’re thinking.” Angela tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. “That I’m a piece of crap who will do anything for money.”

Max didn’t think that, but she didn’t deny it either. Perhaps silence would get Angela to tell her everything she knew about Bud.

“We didn’t do it with everyone. Not the guys I met in the bar. Only special ones that Bud needed an edge with.”

The swish-swish of the windshield wipers was almost hypnotic, but Max concentrated on Angela’s profile. “Do you know how much he made those men pay to get rid of the videos?”

Angela’s lips quirked. “I don’t think it was money. It was a favor he needed or to swing a vote this way or that. Some of them I don’t think he’s even used yet. He keeps them just in case.”

“Like Julia’s?”

Her small half-smile flattened. “I felt the worst about Julia. She never knew I was a working girl, didn’t know that Bud was the one who paid for my time. Some of the guys he brought me”—she smirked—“well, they deserved every bit of trouble they got. But not Julia.”

“So why’d you do it?”

With a sad smile creasing her lips, Angela shook her head. “Sometimes you get to a point where you just have to do things you don’t like.”

“What about Baxter?”

Angela turned, gave Max a funny little look. “My, Bud told you everything, didn’t he?” She bit her lip. “I wonder why.”

Max breezed over Angela’s musing, not sure anymore what she’d learned on her own and what Bud had supplied. “Julia must have hated you when she found out about that video.”

“Bud never showed it to her. He said it was only for insurance.”

“I suppose he got more bang for the buck by showing it to Baxter.” Neither laughed at Max’s small, unintended pun. She now understood Baxter’s demeanor the day she’d shown up at his house, the thing he couldn’t reveal.

Angela sniffed suddenly, breaking the thoughts going round and round inside Max’s head. “I never wanted to hurt them. I certainly didn’t want it to end up like this.” She turned to look at Max. “You don’t really think she’d try to kill me, do you?”

“You’re the one who had sex with her. Why don’t you tell me?”

“Do I detect a little censure there, Max?”

“Yes. Despite everything, I like Julia.”

“I do, too.”

“And I don’t like that everyone ended up using her.”

“Neither do I,” Angela whispered with real feeling.

“Didn’t you mind that Bud forced you to have sex with her?”

“You mean because she’s a woman?”

Max nodded. It was another thing she wanted to know, to wend her way into Angela’s psyche.

“No. I wouldn’t call myself a lesbian or even bisexual. More like a humanitarian. Julia felt better about herself. She’d been lying for years about who she really was. I let her see it was okay.” With a deep breath, she glanced at Max. “I’d do you if I thought you’d feel better about your husband and your uncle.”

Max laughed instead of screaming at her. “Thanks, but I don’t think sex is going to make me feel better about anything.” It certainly hadn’t last night. It had only driven her deeper into a hole with Witt, one she was sure she’d never get out of.

“Sometimes sex is the only weapon we have.”

“I’d like to stop thinking of it as a power tool.” Max shifted in her seat, stared out the side window at the cars racing by, listening to the slosh of the tires on the wet concrete.

Angela slid her hands down to the bottom of the steering wheel, holding it with a relaxed grip. “I once went to a psychiatrist who said that when you’re taught the power of sex very young, you’ll use it the rest of your life to get what you want. You force it, you tease with it, you withhold it, you cleanse someone with it. But in the end, it’s all about getting your own power.”

Max watched the spit of the tires on the car next to her, their speed, for one short fraction of time, matching.

“I had no power until the day I turned thirteen,” Angela said.

Max’s stomach tightened. Thirteen, such a bad, bad age. Terrible things happened to thirteen year-olds. “What changed?”

“I almost died.”

Max didn’t want to know, wanted to cover her ears and close her eyes.
Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.
“Why?”

“He made me”—Angela’s voice dropping to a whisper—“kill it. It almost killed me, too.”

Max struggled not to scream, Cameron’s words echoing in her ears.
Ask her why she can’t have children.

Angela never said what
it
was. Max’s hand fell to her abdomen, her womb, the seat of motherhood. She didn’t have to ask to know.

Silence in the car, dark and threatening. Max’s hand went to the door handle, some vague notion of yanking it open, throwing herself out, just to get away ... away.
Please, please, please let me out of here.

But Angela saved her, pulled them both back from the brink, voice returning to normal, calm, like she was telling a story about someone else, someone she didn’t even know. “My father didn’t always use sex, though. Sometimes he used other things.”

Max breathed in the scent of the leather seats, brushed her fingers over the butter softness of them and found herself forced to ask, “What else did he do?”