by JB Skully
Whoosh. He couldn't have done worse if he'd dumped a bucket of ice over her head. Babies. Children. She'd long since accepted she was barren, maternally-impaired, or whatever politically correct term they used these days, but his words took her by surprise. Hell, they gave her a big dose of reality. This guy was thinking marriage and babies, and she hadn't even fully admitted to herself she was a widow. Things were moving too fast, way too fast. It was time to put the brakes on Witt's renegade train.
"I don't think we were talking about children or marriage at all,” Max said coolly. “I was about to point out that I think you're terrified your mother might actually be psychic."
That did it. His blue eyes turned the most amazing shade of icy gray, and he leveled her with a look. “Did you say psychic or psychotic?"
"That's why I've terrified you since the day you decided I wasn't a murderer. You finally had to admit I'm psychic."
"You? Terrify me?” He backed her once more against the car. “Don't think so, sweetheart."
Okay, so maybe that was the wrong challenge to use on him. There was a sharp edge to his voice, an angry scowl on his lips, but the rest of him was primed to go right there against the driver's side door. In spite of his hostility. Or maybe because of it.
He turned her to jelly. Maybe that's why she stuck her nose up in his face. “Yeah. You're scared shitless your mother really does talk to your father.” She narrowed her eyes. “He tells her stuff, too. About the future. About stuff your mother has no business knowing. Stuff about you. You don't want to believe she might be right on, do you?” It wasn't such a shot in the dark. It wasn't even psychic. Just an educated guess.
His nostrils flared. She'd hit bone with that one. “You're the one that's not gonna wanna hear, Max. Don't push."
"Oh yeah, I forgot. You don't like to fight."
Nose to nose, they started in on a doozy right there in front of his mother's house. “Wanna hear?” he challenged.
Not. “Yeah."
"He says I'm gonna kill someone. For you. Because of you."
She shrank back, but she couldn't get away. “That's a lie."
"You're the one who says she's psychic."
"Who're you going to kill?” Barely a whisper. Inside her mind, one name pounded. Bud Traynor. Her nemesis. The man who had chased her through two murder investigations and still haunted her dreams. The man she had sworn vengeance on for the vile acts he'd committed. The man who had yet to pay for anything he'd done. On the heels of that thought came guilt. And anger. Anger with herself for even wishing that Witt would take care of her problem for her.
"No names. Sorry. Not that easy."
"In the line of duty?” she asked as if that would somehow make killing more palatable.
"Does it make a difference?” He didn't wait for her to answer. “I've drawn my gun, fired when necessary, even shot a suspect once. But it's not all cops and robbers like on TV, Max. I've never killed anyone."
"I'm glad for you.” She was glad for herself. Perhaps his big hands might feel different against her skin if she knew they'd killed.
"You're glad? Do you even get what I'm saying?"
"Yeah, I do.” No, she didn't want to. Dammit, she should never have started this. Picking a fight didn't work with Witt. She always seemed to wind up on the losing end.
"I'll spell it out for you, ‘cause I have my doubts that you really do get what I'm saying. Try this on for size. If my mother talks to my father's ghost, and he's right about my killing someone for you, then how does that make you feel?"
It made her fingers numb. It made her brain shut down. It made her responsible for his moral deterioration. She knew without a doubt that killing another human being would change Witt forever.
"How's it make you feel, Max?” His voice a mere whisper, a breath against her hair.
She took a deep breath, stared at his red tie against the black shirt, and told herself the words wouldn't hurt her. “It means you and I really aren't cut out for a relationship. It doesn't mean I'm not psychic.” God, Cameron would be proud of her. She'd fought him on that very issue for years.
"We don't have a relationship.” Witt's voice had softened. “Yet,” he added ominously.
"Look, I really don't want to fight."
"Liar.” His voice was dangerously soft now. Goose bumps skittered along her arms. “You love fighting. That's your favorite defense mechanism."
She didn't realize she was so obvious.
"If you won't tell me how it makes you feel, I'll tell you how I'd feel about killing for you. I'd feel haunted. I'd feel desperate.” He shook his head slowly. “But it wouldn't change a goddamn thing. I'd still want you anyway.” He grabbed her face with both hands, and planted a quick, closed-mouth kiss on her lips.
* * * *
God, that kiss. Short and hard, and nothing like the kiss he'd made her give him the day he forced her to agree to meet his mother. Nothing like it, but equally as devastating. Max touched her lips. They still throbbed, and over an hour had passed. She was crazy to still be thinking about the touch of his lips, still tasting him and wishing he hadn't stopped.
Crazy because he'd damn near admitted he didn't care if he had to kill to have her. That he had no intention of walking away.
Destiny lay around the corner. She wondered exactly what fate would bring, yet was terrified to contemplate the possibilities.
"What are the donuts for?"
Oh, thank you, God, a scapegoat. “I'm going to eat them. What of it?"
"Three jelly donuts?” Cameron's disapproval and his peppermint essence enveloped Max as she parked the Miata on the gravel drive outside her studio apartment. She had one small room on the second floor of an old Victorian within walking distance of Santa Clara University.
She liked the anonymity among the constantly revolving score of students housed in the other rooms. She liked the fact that she had her own bathroom, her own entrance, and her own separate, distinct life. She mailed her rent. No one talked to her. No one knew her name. In short, she was isolated. She liked her life that way. God, she sounded too much like Bethany Spring.
"You didn't answer about the three jelly donuts."
The porch light had come on with the motion of her car. She climbed from the seat with the fragrant white bag clutched to her chest. “That's because my eating habits are none of your business."
"I wasn't referring to the food."
Her high heels crunched angrily on the gravel. Food? Whoever called donuts food? They were luxury, gratification, comfort, and love, but certainly not food.
"Who's talking, Max?"
Duh. Bethany. She needed comfort. After all, she'd just died. One deserved a little something special after enduring an experience like that. “You told me to ‘run with her.’ That's what I'm doing. I'm indulging her, trying to draw her out. Using my psychic skills.” Like you keep hammering at me to do, she added silently.
He heard that, too. “I didn't hammer at you to let her take away your common sense. You're not used to eating like that, and you're going to make yourself sick."
She wasn't used to reconstituted turkey, potato buds, and cardboard peas either. Her stomach had begun to rebel, but she wasn't about to drop her sack of sugar-coated confections. Or maybe she was rebelling against Cameron's unvoiced threat earlier in the car. He couldn't be grooming Witt as his replacement. He wouldn't. Like a coward, terrified of understanding what he really meant, she'd avoided bringing the subject up again. Better to forget the conversation, better to be angry with him and pick a fight. Better to pretend he'd never leave her.
Digging in her purse for her keys, she stepped up on the plank decking outside her front door, and almost squashed the small package lying on the mat.
She recognized the bold script instantly, and her heart seemed to seize up. “Sutter. She's been here.” Sutter Cahill. Her best friend.
"The best friend you've avoided since my funeral."
She bent to pick up the parcel. �
�I didn't want all the drippy sympathy."
"You didn't want anyone who might have the ability to make you cry it all out."
Two years later, she still hadn't cried. What was there to cry about? Cameron had never actually left her. Except in corporeal form.
"Open it,” he urged.
Her hands shook. She set her purse and the bag of jelly donuts down. The package was wrapped in an old cut-up paper bag. Sutter was excessively frugal. Max's fingers got down to the bubble wrap. She squeezed, soothed for a moment by the air-pop.
"Open it,” Cameron now commanded.
She pulled at the scotch tape, felt the ungiving bulk of metal encased inside. She'd opened the packet upside down. A silver picture frame. She held it that way, picture-side down, for long, long seconds, absolutely terrified to turn it over.
"How did she know where I lived?” Max had moved, left no forwarding address, though she had forgotten to tell the phone company not to give out the new number. Sutter had called almost biweekly ever since. Max had never returned those calls.
"She's psychic."
"She sees ghosts, she doesn't see addresses."
"Look at the picture, Max."
She slowly turned the frame in her hand, and looked at the slightly unfocused photo. A black cat with wide, yellow eyes. She almost lost it then. Louis. She'd adored Louis. After Cameron died, well, she couldn't take care of a cat. Couldn't feed him, couldn't change his litter box, couldn't pet him, hold him, or love him. She'd left him on Sutter's front stoop with a note, like an abandoned baby.
"Why doesn't Sutter give up?” Her words weren't more than a whisper.
"She's an eternal optimist."
"She's delusional."
"She wants you to come back."
Max didn't say she couldn't. She didn't say she wouldn't. What she said was far more than she'd given Cameron on the subject in two years. “I'm not ready yet."
Chapter Seven
Max gathered her purse, her sack of donuts, and the picture to her chest, then unlocked her front door. The steps above her looked too long and too steep, but she climbed them to her small room. Her sanctuary.
Was that how Bethany had thought of her own home?
Buzzard the Cat slept on the bed right next to where he'd crawled through the half-open window. He wasn't her cat, not like Louis had been hers. He was an emaciated stray with a penchant for dry and crumbly tuna fish. She hadn't invited him in that day over a month ago; she'd simply been incapable of letting him starve. There was the fact, too, that with his black coat, despite its lank appearance, he'd reminded her of Louis, of a different life, a life with Cameron.
She and Cameron had finished each other's sentences, laughed before they got to the punch line. They'd stayed up late, lying in bed, and planning their future. They'd told each other everything. He wanted a sailboat. She wanted to drive across Canada in a sports car. They loved the same funky futuristic art and the same sappy old black and white movies. She hated his Jazz. He hated her Country. He could drive her crazy with a look across a crowded room. She could make him forget his next sentence with a whisper. She missed seeing his face. She missed touching him.
"What about the fights?"
"What fights?"
Cameron snorted. “You only remember the good things."
"It's called viewing the world through rose-colored glasses, and I like it.” She did remember the fights, the nights he'd stormed out, and the nights he hadn't come home.
"We fought the night I died. Do you remember that?"
"We fought about your cigarettes. If you hadn't needed another pack, we never would have gone to that 7-11."
"The fight ended with the cigarettes. That wasn't how it started."
For the life of her, she couldn't remember how that particular conflict had started. She only remembered shoving the whole damn pack down the disposal and grinding them up. What had started the ill-fated argument that changed everything that came after?
Max faltered, but another bit of logic was born on her lips. “I thought you couldn't remember anything before you died.” Unless, of course, she remembered an event first and reminded him.
"The answers hover on the edge of your consciousness, there for me to read like an open book."
"Oh, you're so mystical, Cameron,” she scoffed, fear adding a tinge of sarcasm to her voice.
"That fight was important, Max, but you always did forget the really important things."
She shivered, reached for the thermostat, set Louis’ picture on the bedside table, then turned to close the window. With her back to his voice, she demanded, “Tell me why it's important.” Besides the obvious, besides the irreversible devastating result.
"I can't tell you. You have to figure that out for yourself."
She didn't even try.
Buzzard mewled then, and Max was glad for something to do. She opened another can of tuna, put half on a chipped saucer, then sat on the bed to finish the rest herself. It needed salt and pepper. She didn't care. The cat inhaled the fish like someone was going to snatch the food right out of its mouth.
She thought about Witt, marriage, and babies. She thought about the future she'd planned with Cameron. “Did you want children?"
"It's a little late to ask now."
"I mean did it bother you that I couldn't have children?"
"It wasn't your fault."
"But did it bother you?” She waited, holding her breath.
"Yes."
She put her hand to her chest for a long, silent moment, until the pain slid back into its hiding place. “Why didn't you ever tell me?"
He sighed, peppermint swirling around her. He'd taken to sucking mints instead of smoking cigarettes. Of course, he had to die first before he'd made the change. Bitterness swelled inside her.
"We didn't talk about babies. We didn't talk about a lot of things, Max. You just don't remember that."
Another of those convenient lapses in her memory. She couldn't remember how they knew she was the one who couldn't have kids. Maybe she'd always known. Maybe she'd been born with a barren soul. She'd certainly managed to have a barren life except for those few short years with Cameron.
* * * *
It was eleven o'clock, and Max lay wide-eyed in her single bed. Buzzard snuggled against her side. She was a morning person, early to bed, early to rise, her bedtime no later than nine, even when she had no temp job in the morning. She hated to wake later than seven. It felt like the day was half over and wasted. She liked to lay in the dark and watch the sun come up, as if with the new day came new hope. If she was disappointed that this day ended the same as the last, there was always a chance the next one might be better.
A stereo played softly in someone else's room, but that wasn't what kept her up. The traffic on the nearby freeway had softened to a slow dribble. That hadn't kept her awake either. Nor did the occasional passing car, or the screaming match next-door that had just ended. Max could sleep through anything.
Anything except Bethany Spring. Bethany had been a night owl. She'd stayed in bed until one in the afternoon, heavy drapes pulled across the bedroom windows to keep out the bright light. She didn't start to feel alive until her phone began to ring at midnight. Midnight, when Bethany Spring turned into Cinderella.
The Cinderella in the prurient fantasies of lonely, desperate, hungry, horny men.
Then again, Max's insomnia could have been caused by the three jelly donuts she'd wolfed down. They writhed in her stomach like maggots. Bad thought, it almost made her barf. She needed to barf. She'd probably feel one helluva lot better if she did. She could stick her fingers down her throat and get rid of the squiggling donut mass...
Damn. Bethany again. She'd obviously been bulimic at one time or another.
"Right, and like you never were,” Cameron scoffed out of the darkness. He apparently never slept.
"I was a teenager. All teenagers half-starve themselves and stick their fingers down their throats when they've eat
en too much. I did not have an eating disorder, if that's what you're trying to imply. Making yourself throw up is all part of being a teenager."
"Was it? Did all your friends do it?"
She didn't recall having many friends. “Sure. We all did. I'm trying to get some sleep here, do you mind?"
Sleep wouldn't come even without Cameron's voice in her ear.
Max turned to look at the clock. Eleven-oh-two. About the time Bethany ran her bath, then soaked, powdered, petted, and prepared herself. The time when Bethany blossomed.
What would her callers think when she didn't answer at midnight? Would there be one of them who never called at all, one who knew she wouldn't answer?
Max bolted up in bed, covers falling to her waist. Buzzard mewled and stared up at her, bleary eyed.
Jesus. Someone should be monitoring those calls. As of right now, the police most likely didn't have one single clue as to Bethany's nocturnal activities. They wouldn't even think about the phone sex angle or that maybe one of her clients had broken into her home and whacked her. Witt certainly couldn't tell them. By the time the cops hit on that slant, they would be too late to catch the killer. If indeed, the killer had found Bethany through her sexual proclivities.
"What are you thinking, Max?” Cameron's eyes glowed in the corner of the room like a fire-breathing dragon. The excitement was unmistakable, vibrating in his voice the way the arrival of a new case in the DAs office had kept him up all night when he was alive.
"I'm thinking of going for a drive,” she whispered.
"You're going to breaking the seal on Bethany's front door."
"Back door. I don't want to be seen."
"And then?"
"Then I'm thinking that I'd recognize his voice..."
"Achilles?"
"Of course. If he calls tonight, that's a good indication he wasn't the one who killed her.” She spread her hands and shrugged. “Otherwise, why call, right?"
"If he doesn't call?"
"Then he's my number one suspect."
Chapter Eight
Max climbed from bed, dragged on an old pair of black jeans, a maroon, paint-covered sweatshirt she wore for cleaning, and her black suede boots. She loved suede whether the heels were four inches or flat. These were flat, which made running easier.
