Power to the Max (4 page)

“Lay flat on your back and close your eyes.”

She glanced over her shoulder and narrowed her eyes on the glowing embers of his gaze. “Have you done this before?”

He sighed. “Do what I tell you. I’ll talk you through it.”

“What am I supposed to do once I get there?” If she got there.

“Roll the vision forward. Find out what happened to him.”

On her back, her legs stretched out, she put her hands at her sides and closed her eyes.

“Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.”

She bolted up on the bed, fingers fisted in the bedclothes. “I just thought of something. What if the woman is dead and they haven’t found her body yet? Maybe they were both killed.”

When he spoke, there were equal amounts of pride and exasperation in his voice. “Good thinking, my sweet. But neither of us is going to find out unless you try controlling that damn dream.”

She lay back down, the brief adrenaline burst making her antsy. “All right. I’ll try.”

“Now, breathe the way I told you to.”

She did, deeply, several times, from her abdomen. Her head started to spin.

“Picture a long staircase made of plush blue carpet.”

Blue. The color of Witt’s eyes. Plush. The texture of his hair.

Cameron should have snapped back with a response to her wayward thoughts. He didn’t, which said a lot to his need to hold her concentration. His words droned on. “You’re going to walk down those stairs, and with each step you’re going to count backwards from twenty-one. Your feet are sinking into the carpet.”

His voice faded. One part of her mind knew he was still directing, the other part went along as if the voice were her own. With each step and each count she felt more relaxed. The dizziness waned. The fear withered. At the bottom of the staircase was a door, a gold plate screwed to the wood. She stood on her tiptoes to read. “The truth about Lance.”

The truth. For one weak moment, the fear returned. She didn’t want the truth. She’d give anything not to face the truth. She reached out anyway, opened the door, and stepped into the office from her vision.

She entered the vision almost at its end, just as Lance had plunged deeply inside his lover’s body. Max prodded the dream Lance to say the woman’s name, but he was interested in only one thing. His desire and the need to control pounded through Max’s veins. He wanted, wanted everything, yet nothing was ever enough to completely satisfy his appetite. When he came, he screamed. She’d never heard a man make quite that sound. In that moment, she knew he had no power at all, he was at the woman’s mercy. The woman without a name.

The dream died.

Max tried to hold onto it, couldn’t, and instead floated back to the surface, gradually aware of Cameron’s voice. “It didn’t work. He climaxed, and it was over.” Just like a man.

Cameron laughed. “You’re so transparent.”

“Look who’s talking. I couldn’t push past it. Maybe he doesn’t remember the rest.” If indeed the vision was coming from Lance La Russa at all. “You don’t remember what happened to you the night you died. Maybe Lance doesn’t either.”

Cameron remembered nothing about the night he died. He didn’t have to. Max remembered for him. In bloody, living Technicolor.

He considered that for a moment. “Then let’s go backwards. Let’s see where they came from.”

They started over, and this time Max slipped down to the bottom of the stairs in a matter of seconds.

Max lay in the bed, boneless, exhausted, and exhilarated. Oh my God, she’d done it. Unbelievable. She’d never had so much control in a vision, never felt such power. She’d actually directed it, told it where to go.

But was it real?

“What do you feel?”

She felt the rightness of it. If she went to that hotel at that same hour tonight she’d find the same valet. He’d be wearing the same green jacket that matched the green of the hotel carpet. Whether he would remember the man and woman he helped into a cab two nights ago was something else, not that it would matter. Max knew the truth of what she’d seen.

“You are amazing. Now tell me,” Cameron whispered as if he were begging her to touch him with her mouth.

“I think she works that hotel.”

“Works it?”

“As a working girl. The happy hooker.”

“Oh, Max, you do pick ‘em.”

“And behind the valet’s shoulder, the name of the hotel was written on the door in gold letters.”

“
Eureka
.”

“No. It was called the Embassy.” She gave a sigh heavy with contentment. “I think that’s where we’ll find her tomorrow night.”

If she wasn’t already dead.

“How did you find me?”

Witt stood by the side of her car, the late afternoon sun bleaching his blond buzz cut in its bright light. “Got the address from your boss.”

Max came abreast of him, leaned with one hip against the car, and covered her eyes. “Oh God, you didn’t tell her you had to arrest me or anything?”

“Told her I was your boyfriend, that we had a fight, and you wouldn’t answer the phone. Said I wanted to make up real bad.”

She groaned. “That’s even worse.”

“How come she didn’t know you had a boyfriend, Max?”

Avoidance was the best tactic where the boyfriend-girlfriend thing was concerned. “Sunny Wright and I don’t discuss personal stuff. I only work for her temp agency.” When she needed money or she was going stark raving mad with nothing to do but talk to a ghost, Sunny found her temp jobs in accounting. Her previous profession before Cameron died.

“For you never getting personal with her, the woman seemed damned obliging. Almost giddy.” She heard the laughter in his voice and saw it in his blue eyes. He was too damn pleased with himself. Even though he hadn’t even gotten inside her last night nor reached his own release. Witt was far too patient and easygoing.

He bent down and took her lips with a bruising, hot, heavy, yet too-quick kiss.

She looked around to see if they were being watched. Not that it mattered a damn-diddly. They weren’t, though. On a job, she always arranged to leave at three-thirty to avoid the traffic. Sunny must have told him that, too. “This is my first day here. Don’t screw it up for me.”

He held up his hands and stepped away from the car to stand in front of her. “Who, me?”

She threw her purse into the front seat of her Miata. Certain this was one of the last warm days of the season, she’d left the top down.

Witt still wore his detective outfit, navy suit, light blue, button-down shirt, and striped tie. Three spaces away, he’d parked his nondescript tan department vehicle.

Then his big body blocked the view. Max wasn’t short, she topped five-nine with her three-inch heels, but Witt towered over her. It never failed to make her feel petite and feminine.

“People will see.”

He ignored her protests, moving in until she had to lean back to look into his eyes. “Didn’t get my good-bye kiss last night.” He hadn’t gotten anything else either, well, except her orgasm.

“I kissed you.”

“You call that peck on the cheek a kiss?”

“Yeah.” Damn, he smelled so good she couldn’t concentrate. “Plus you stole one.”

“Quickie. Want a better one.”

“You came all the way for that?” She couldn’t even find a decent reason not to do what he asked since she’d parked down a little slope at the far end of the parking lot and it wasn’t even five yet. And if they fired her for extra-curricular activity in the parking lot, Sunny would merely find her another job.

“Came for another reason, but I want a kiss first.”

“What reason?”

He shook his index finger in her face. “You aren’t going to wheedle it out of me. Kiss me first.”

She pursed her lips. “How do I know it’s worth it?” The feel of his mouth on hers would definitely be worth even the most ridiculous of reasons.

One side of his mouth quirked. “Lance La Russa.”

It was all he had to say. She hadn’t even given Lance a thought until he said the name, but she wanted the information. She’d even pay him to get it. Besides, she wanted to kiss him right there in the parking lot. That way she knew he couldn’t make any really big moves on her.

Putting her hands on his shoulders, she knew he wasn’t going to accept the quick peck this time. She went for the full liplock but no tongue. He tasted like butterscotch candies. Her fingers slid into his hair, and his arms went around her waist, pulling her flush against him. His muscles were hard. The collar of his shirt still smelled fresh out of the laundry. His hair was baby fine and soft. She should have pulled back then, but she couldn’t, didn’t want to. Instead, she relaxed and went up on tiptoe to wind her arms around his neck.

He hadn’t kissed her like this last night in the truck. In some ways, kissing was so much more intimate.

She couldn’t be sure later if she was the one who opened her mouth first, but she heard his sigh and felt his tongue and she liked it. No, she loved it. Warmth spread through her. Her heart rate spiked. She gave a tiny sound of pleasure, and his arms tightened across her back. His teeth nipped at her lower lip. His lips trailed to her ear.

“Jesus, Max,” he whispered, his breath fast, his voice shaky.

She slid down his body until she was standing on the heels of her shoes again. She tingled, she ached, felt all those delicious feelings they talked about in romance novels. “That was police coercion.”

“Mmm. Sure felt a helluva lot better than beating the crap out of a suspect.”

She tipped her head back to look at him. “No way, Detective. You’d always play good cop to someone else’s bad cop.”

He might be persistent. He was certainly dictatorial. He was also the most honorable man she’d ever met. His pride was clearing all his cases, but his goal was justice. Beating a confession out of someone would never even occur to Witt.