Vengeance to the Max (30 page)

“Remember that dream?”

She
still
didn’t want to talk about it. “What dream?”

“Don’t play games. Remember the closet.”

A shiver ran through Max’s body, the proverbial walk over her grave. It hadn’t been about the closet, but about the things hidden inside it. About Wendy and her father. About ... Max’s own uncle.

“Remember the first time you had the vision?”

That vision of Wendy’s father. Bud Traynor. Oh yes, she remembered it well. Thirteen-year-old Wendy wanted the father Bud had never been. She’d wanted love. Instead she’d gotten pain, abuse, and degradation. Max could still feel first Bud’s fingers, then his penis, inside Wendy’s body, taste Wendy’s tears at the corners of her mouth, hear the horrible names he called her, as if the child were to blame for the horrific crimes of the father.

“You vowed to kill him then.”

Could it be only three months ago?

“Why are you doubting yourself now?”

Dammit, why did he always twist out of her questions? “That’s still about me, Cameron.” She stabbed her finger to her chest. “Why
I
want him dead. I can’t believe
you
want me to do it.”

“You want me to stop you, to make the decision for you, to say it’s okay if you don’t follow through.”

She puffed out a breath. “You actually want vengeance.”

“I want what you want.”

She’d say it for him. “You’re thinking about vengeance, for Cordelia, for yourself, for what he did to you.” She’d left too much room between the 4Runner and the chrome bumper in front. Mr. Nose shot over, cut her off in mid-roll, forcing her to tromp on the brakes again. “Shit.”

“I’m thinking about you and how you’re going to save your soul, set yourself free.”

Saving her soul wasn’t the issue. Meeting her destiny head on was. The whole thing made her head ache.

Maybe the whole issue was about Cameron’s freedom, not her own. Pain flared in her chest. Maybe he needed vengeance to free himself from the earthly plane she’d trapped him in.

He didn’t deny the thought

Please don’t let it be that
.

All alone in that terrible silence, she realized she had nowhere to go. Odds were high Witt had staked out her apartment. If not him, plenty of other cops would have the same idea. Of course, Riley Morgan, newshound, could put in an appearance. She needed a place to lay down, a place to think, a place to formulate a plan.

“You need a gun, Max. You need Witt. Go home.”

“You know something I don’t,” she snapped. He had his own agenda. “That’s why you’re pushing me.” She didn’t trust anything she couldn’t understand, not even from Cameron. She no longer trusted him to stay with her. “You knew who Bud was that night I broke into his house.” Only a couple of months ago, that night seemed a lifetime away. “You knew what he’d done to you. That’s why you broke the glass on Evelyn’s picture. You
knew
.”

“It was a momentary lapse. Back then, I didn’t know why I did it.” Several times after they’d been to Bud’s house, she’d asked why Cameron had broken the picture of a woman he didn’t know. She’d assumed it was Bud’s wife. Cameron had failed to reveal the woman was also his mother’s sister. His aunt. Family.

A motorcycle whizzed down the center, making Max jump. “Don’t lie to me, Cameron.”

“Why don’t you believe me?”

Because she now remembered all the warnings he’d given, all the times he’d said he couldn’t move on until... She’d always thought the
until
was about
her
being able to let go. But maybe it had always been about Bud, about this moment, about vengeance. The traffic crept forward, an endless stream of red lights.

“Did he really have you followed?” Jesus, she wished she hadn’t asked the question.

“He said he did. That’s all I know.”

“Did he see...” She found it hard to breathe and clamped down on the words.

“You mean was I having an affair?”

“I wasn’t going to ask that.” She’d rather die than ask.

“You don’t want to know.”

What was so wrong with not wanting to know? “It doesn’t matter anymore.” Yet the idea was like an iron band tightening across her breasts. If he had ... if she knew ... the betrayal would be too great to bear.

A break came in the traffic to the right. She yanked the wheel and pulled over, heading to an exit. She was far from home ... but she hadn’t intended to go there anyway. If she was moving, she could think. But exhaust fumes clouded her head and made her eyes ache. She flipped on the signal. One more lane change, then a quarter of a mile to the exit sign. No one would let her in. Damn, damn, damn, she pounded the steering wheel. How about some courtesy here?

“It matters, you know it matters.”

“I don’t give a fricking damn.” The words spewed out. “You’re dead. I don’t care what happened back then.” But God, she did. The 4Runner was big, four-wheel drive, the car blocking her, to the right and behind, a Honda Civic. She flexed the iron muscles of the SUV and began to pull over. A squeal of brakes, a shrieking horn. Max flipped her middle finger in the rearview mirror.

“You care. Why not admit it aloud?”

“How did we start talking about this?” She clenched her teeth.

“
You
brought it up.”

“Bud brought it up.”

“
You
can’t forget what he said. Go ahead, Max, ask me.”

She wouldn’t. “Why did I follow you to the 7-11?”

“We had a fight.”

About smoking, about adoption, about God only knew what else. She couldn’t quite remember despite how many times Cameron had made her talk about it since. “Why did I keep your clothes? As if you’d—” She stopped herself, no longer able to hear the honking of horns or the rumble of engines over the roar in her ears. But she could hear Cameron.

“As if I’d what, Max?”

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “As if you’d packed a suitcase.”

“Maybe I did.”

She took a breath, tried to let it out slowly, felt the stutter of it in her throat, her chest. “Were you leaving me?”

He was silent for the longest time, long enough for her to hit the exit ramp.

Then, “Maybe I was.”

Cameron hadn’t given her a real answer, only left her with more questions. Damn her own memory, too. Her amazing ability to forget had always been a blessing. Suddenly it was a curse.

He did know, Max was sure. He’d probably known all along. All that stuff he’d fed her about not remembering anything that happened before he died, it was a load of bull. He’d lied then. He was lying now.

She had to learn it all because of Bud Traynor. That was Cameron’s ultimate betrayal.

In that moment, she hated her dead husband with a passion equaling that with which she’d loved him. Hate ate the lining of her stomach, burned in her chest, and squeezed her heart until she felt her eyes would bleed with the pressure.

He’d been leaving her that night. Socks, underwear, shirts. What the hell else was in that damn box she kept? Kept for nothing. Kept to mourn a man who’d been walking out on her.

It was stupid, but her hands were driving, not her head. She ended up cruising her own street looking for Witt’s truck, or a police car, even an unmarked vehicle like the detectives drove, like Witt drove when he was a cop, before she got him thrown out.

The road was empty of suspicious cars. No blue Cameros driven by overzealous, hungry reporters either. She parked the Toyota two doors down. If Witt did come, he wouldn’t know she’d beaten him there as long as she left the lights off.

Alone, in the dark, she’d plot Bud’s demise. Something tactile, something vicious, something bloody. The adrenaline rush shot her body into overdrive. God, what was happening to her?

She kept to the shadows, her grip so tight around her keys, the tines jabbed her flesh. Exposed in the porch light, she unlocked the door, then made the long climb up her short flight of stairs. With Buzzard obviously out prowling, the apartment screamed with silence. The moon, knifing through elm leaves, provided the only light by which to see.

Her nose prickled with Bud’s cologne, as if she’d carried it in her membranes. Damn, his scent still violated her room just as he’d violated her visions, her memories, and her life.

She needed a gun.

Witt had a gun.

“Why don’t you have sex, then steal it while he’s sleeping?”

She swallowed a screech.
The end justifies the means
.

“I thought you’d like my idea.” How could a ghost sneer?

She was out of options. Witt would get over it. He’d understand why she had to do it.

“Soon you’ll be judging every relationship by what you get out of it. Like Bud.”

Blood-red rage clenched her fists. “I’m not like him.”

“You will be.”

“Fuck you.” She wasn’t like Bud. She never would be. She’d be saving all the other sorry souls before he destroyed them.

“That’s what I said when I got that gun.”

She took a mental step back. “You were going to kill him. That’s why you had a gun with no serial numbers.”

“I was going to make him admit what he’d done. Then I was going to stop him.”

The gun. The yearbook. “With a gun in his face, you were going to show him his own picture and force him to confess?”

“Yes.”

“You were hiding that shit in your overnight bag before you even packed it.”

“Yes.”

“You lied the other day, too. You did teach me to shoot with what’s-his-face’s gun, not that one.” God, she couldn’t remember Cameron’s friend’s name now, remembered only the recoil snapping her arms.

“Yes. It all ended up in your treasure box. Including your memories.”

Lies upon lies. She no longer knew what was real. “What do you really know, Cameron? Everything down to the last detail? Was all that stuff about remembering
only
your love for me just more shit?”

“No. Loving you is what this is all about.”

As if that answered anything. Weariness weighted her eyelids. “You should have told me about Bud and what you planned to do.”

“You wouldn’t have understood before.”

Not then. Not about the overwhelming number of lies. But about threatening Bud? About the lofty goal of making sure he never hurt anyone again? About killing him? “That’s why you stayed. So I
would
understand.”

Maybe so she’d act on it for him.

He neither denied nor agreed, but urged her to the bed like a mighty wind at her back. “The box, Max.”

“I’m so mad at you, why the hell should I do what you say?”

Peppermint overlaid the sickly stench of Traynor’s cologne. “Be mad at me later. Remember Wendy now. Remember the closet and her terror when her father opened the door.”

A lump choked her. “The box is about you, not Wendy.”

“The box is arming yourself with your memories. You can’t vanquish the evil you don’t understand.”

She knelt on the floor to fumble beneath the darkness of the bed, an eerie sensation crawling along her spine. The child in her feared the monsters under the bed. The adult feared the truths she didn’t want to face. Monsters did live under her bed, in that box. It harbored all their dreams, all their secrets, hers and Cameron’s.

“Touch them, smell them, taste them. All the memories, Max. To win the battle, we need them all now. It’s time.”

She did it for little girls like Wendy. Like the little girl she herself had been so long ago. Sitting up straight, Max dragged the box into the open, onto the rag rug.

“Remember. Then Bud can’t use it against you.”