Vengeance to the Max (24 page)

* * * * *

“Do you believe in destiny, Max?” The line crackled as if he were on a cell phone, his breath fast, unlike his usual relaxed state.

Bud Traynor woke her from the horrible nightmare. She almost cried with relief. It wasn’t a vision, it was a mixing up of personalities. She hadn’t liked it ever, never had an orgasm, couldn’t have. She’d traded places with Wendy’s closet dream. That’s all it was.

Remember the time
, Cameron murmured in her head. Max switched the phone to her left ear and rolled to look at the clock. Three-twelve in the morning.

A dream, a very bad dream. Let it go.

Bud’s words echoed in her ear as if she hadn’t quite registered them the first time, so did Cameron’s earlier ones. She answered. “I’m your destiny, Bud.”

He’d pay for the things he’d done to Wendy. She’d make him pay for Cameron. That was her destiny.

“I believe you’re right, Max.”

As much as she hated him, inside she knew how easily he could seduce with that extraordinary voice, deep and powerful in the middle of the night. So many unsuspecting victims he must have brought down with it. The mountains he could have moved, the peoples he could have united, if only he hadn’t turned to the dark side like Darth Vader in
Star Wars
. Like the line between love and hate, the line between good and evil was thin, tenuous. One event, even one small word, could turn it aside.

“Are you alone, my love?”

Her stomach rolled over with the endearment. If he’d called her
baby
, she would have screamed. “I’m not your love, and I’m not alone.” Something in his tone brought out the need to lie.

He saw through it. “He’s not there. I’d know it if he was, Max. I’d feel it in my bones, sense that you’d just given yourself to another man when you’re mine.”

She thought of the dream, cringed against the images as if they were somehow tangible. Witt, he was talking about Witt, no one else. Useless to correct him, so she didn’t try.

She comforted herself with the feel of a gun pointed at his head. A garrote around his throat. A knife in his heart.

He let her have her moment of silence, then said, “You’ve never let him touch your soul, have you, Max?” He sighed. “I’m so glad, my love.”

Asshole. The tender phrase was an abomination coming from his mouth. Raging words abraded on her lips, but she kept them locked inside. Forget the dream, think like Bud, wrest the upper hand from him, find his button the way he so easily found hers. Because she had so many questions, about Cordelia, Cameron, Wendy, Bootman, questions only Bud could answer.

Remember his buttons
. Two weeks ago, Cameron had broached a theory. She’d dismissed it. Maybe it wasn’t so far off. Monsters begat monsters, created them from the seeds of sweet young children.

Her steady voice did her proud. “Who did this to you?”

A subtle change of tone, less seduction, more ... something. “Did what, my dear Max?”

“Turned you into a monster.”

He laughed. “I would never give anyone else that much power. I created myself.” His words were good, strong, but she recognized the slim thread of anxiety as only another control freak could.

Cameron was right. She’d found the man’s button. Bud, victimized as a child, had grown into a man who would say anything, do anything before he’d admit it, even to himself.

She pressed her finger to his open wound. “Was it your uncle?” Uncles were capable of so many bad things.

“Both my parents were only children. I never had an uncle.” Firm denial, a distinct ring of control, the need to over-explain; she’d used it often herself, and she knew she had him.

She used elation to thrust aside the remnants of the nightmare. She had work to do, a devil to bring down. The dream only served to add proof to that. Of necessity, she slipped into the role she had to play as readily as she’d been dragged inside that nightmare.

Wriggling deeper beneath the covers, she arched her back, let out a soft sound of pleasure that he would react to. Eyes closed, insight reigned. All right, not an uncle. Maybe not even a male. A woman. Someone he’d looked up to. For a moment, her mind reached across the invisible phone lines and they were one, the soulmates Bud claimed them to be. Dropping her voice, she became the seducer rather than the seduced. “You called her aunt, didn’t you? And you loved her, would have done anything for her.”

“Remember I said my parents were only children.” A cocky tone, but neediness slipped through despite himself. “I didn’t have an aunt either.”

He’d forgotten to use Max’s name, forgotten the power point. She picked it up for him, turned it on him. “A friend of the family, Bud, such a good friend. Your parents practically gave you to her to raise.”

“You’d like so much to think there was someone like that in my early life, wouldn’t you?” So calm, so caustic, too caustic; he’d still forgotten to use Max’s name.

She had him, knew it in the very core of her female body, where life was created and where it could be annihilated with so little effort. “She gave you pain, Bud, and rewarded you with such pleasure. She had total control over you.” The statement was anathema to him, she heard his snort, knew it was his last line of defense. “What did she make you do to prove you were her drone, Bud? What were you dying to do for her?”

“There was a woman in my youth,” he finally said. “But you’re wrong.
I
controlled her. She did things
I
wanted her to do.”

“Oh Bud, you’re such a terrible liar.” Max baited her hook and let him dangle.

“I had her arrested for child molestation,” he went on in a desperate attempt to prove her wrong. “I told the most delicious lies about her. They put her away for years.
I
did that.”

“What did she make you do, Bud?” Max prodded. She would keep asking, over and over, listen to his spinning of tales, then ask again until eventually he told her the truth. Or better, remembered it all himself.

“She died in an asylum. In those days, they didn’t put her kind in prison. They locked them up in asylums. So much worse because no one ever got out of there.”

Voice a shade lower, deeper, Max asked again. “What did she do to you, Bud?”

“No one ever realized it was I that had the upper hand, I that pulled her strings as though she were a puppet, brought
her
to
my
bed, took her head between my legs—”

The horrible image pounded her against the mattress, yet she went on with a strength she never knew she had.

“What was the worst you had to do, Bud?” The very worst, like the thing Max had done when she was thirteen, the day she lost her humanity forever.

Silence, deep and seemingly endless. Max held her breath.

“Did you come back to me in time, Max?”

Fuck. She’d lost him, lost the advantage she’d gained. But she knew it was there, knew she could find it again, knew he had a weakness, one to exploit. “Did you cry for her, Bud?”

“I want to help you, Max.”

“Did you kill for her?”

“I don’t want to hurt you, Max. I never did. Did you come back before it’s too late?”

Yes, it was too late. She knew who he was, what he’d done. She also knew his question was rhetorical.

“You know about my poor Cordelia, don’t you, Max?”

“Yes,” she murmured.

“And your dear departed husband, Max?”

“Are you saying you killed him?” The fury she’d managed to bank bubbled up inside. “It doesn’t matter whether you say it or not. I’ll make you pay. Witt’s working on it. He’ll find a connection between you and them. And I’ll watch you fry. I’ll enjoy it.”

“Leaving it all up to the hunky detective, are we, Max?” He lowered his voice, a bedroom voice. “What about you and I, Max?”

She knew what he meant. What about their battle? It wasn’t Witt’s battle. It never had been, never could be. Only she could truly vanquish Bud. He was
her
destiny.

“You killed Cameron. And I will make you pay.” Somehow, some way, if she died doing it. She’d bring him down with her.

“How, Max, how will I pay? What will you do?”

She held her breath, knowing the words, once uttered, would be a promise she couldn’t break. “I’ll put you down like a rabid dog. With my own hands.”

“Like a dog, Max?” He waited a beat, and his voice when it came was a breath across the phone. “Don’t you mean like a child, Max, like an innocent babe in the womb?”

Oh God, he knew. Impossible, but he knew what she’d done. Bud Traynor was God’s retribution against her. Payback for her sin had not come with Cameron’s death. God had so much more planned for sins.

If she’d ever had any leverage over Bud at all, she lost it completely with the paralysis of her vocal chords.

“I wish you’d never tried to find Cameron’s past, Max, wish to God you hadn’t gone to Michigan.”

She wanted to laugh, almost cried instead. Bud had never believed in God.

“So much pain, my lovely Max.” If Bud could feel emotional pain, she believed he felt it now. Because he seemed to know he’d lost her, too. “I never wanted you to make payment for the sins of your husband. You should have left it alone.”

What was he talking about? She couldn’t ask, frozen in voice and body, a victim to his words.

“It shouldn’t have been this way, Max. We could have been together. You might have pulled me to the straight and narrow. How do you feel, knowing my life was in your hands, Max? But now ...” He paused for impact, let the unspoken meaning sink in.

Icicles clogged Max’s veins.

“Now, Max, it’s a choice between you and I. I choose myself.”

What had he done?

“I’m sorry, Max. It’s out of my hands.”

Oh God, what had the man done to her?

Max didn’t sleep again. The numbers of the clock flashed three-twelve over and over as if time had stood still from the moment Bud called.

She phoned Witt at six. He wasn’t home. She tried his cell phone, the police station, couldn’t find him, and stopped short of calling his mother, Ladybird. The little woman would have worried herself into a tizzy or worse, asked to help.

“Tell me what to do,” she whispered urgently in the dark.

Cameron answered. “Save yourself, Max.”

“I don’t even know what he’s done to me.”

“You’ll find out soon enough.” A moment of silence to let that sink in, then, “Shall I ask about the vision?”

Dream, not vision. She didn’t correct his terminology. “No.”

He didn’t let her off the hook. “You had more in common with Wendy than possession.

Wendy’s spirit possessed her, her emotions and thoughts penetrating Max’s body. Feelings traveled her veins, sometimes stealing Max’s control. Why did that happen first with Wendy?