Evil to the Max (29 page)

“Hers was engraved on the back. Snake’s wasn’t.”

It was dark, and it was cold. She barely kept her teeth from chattering. “But—”

“When he said Dracula and Frankenstein dumped her ... ” He stopped. She couldn’t see his eyes in the shadows they stood in, but she felt the pity in his voice. “They let him go.”

She shuddered. It traveled down her spine and left a deep cold burning at the base. Wrong again. Who might die this time? “But those were masks,” she said through gritted teeth. “You saw them in the video.”

He slashed a hand through the air. “Forget the damn DVD. You stole it. We can’t use it.”

“But what did your friend find on it?”

“Nothing we can use in court. Female voices. But we already knew that. Even when he cleaned it up, the audio wasn’t good enough for a positive ID on anyone. Now if you’d left it in Traynor’s place, and we’d found it in his possession ... ” He let the words trail off meaningfully.

You’re a fuck up, Max Starr. Face it. You fucked up
. No Snake. No incriminating DVD. Just Jules dead in a dumpster. Oh God. She put a hand to her mouth to keep from screaming. Anger, fear, humiliation, and guilt robbed her of anything to say.

“And you want to know the kicker?” A rhetorical question, he didn’t stop to let her answer. “Know what kind of car Jules drove?”

Jules drove a car? She hadn’t even considered it. She shook her head, slowly, as if her brains would dribble out if she moved too fast.

“A dark gray 1984 Cadillac Biarritz.”

Her organs seemed to seize up in her body. “The Wolfman.” Just as she’d speculated. But God, she hadn’t wanted to be right.

Car lights swept over Witt’s face, turning it a ghastly white. “Wolfman,” he repeated. “They used the Caddy as the dump car.”

“But Jules wasn’t in the room when they killed her. I don’t think he even knew what they’d done.”

Witt watched her with skeptical eyes. She thought of the dead cat Ariel had told her about, of Lenny in Steinbeck’s
Of Mice and Men
. Lenny who didn’t know his own strength. But thinking Jules had any knowing part in Tiffany’s death felt so very wrong.

“He didn’t know,” she said. “I’d bet my life on it.”

“Wrong again, Max. I think we bet
his
life on it.”

He’d hit her again, below the belt. She didn’t know how much more she could take without falling to her knees and bleeding to death. The killers had used Jules in the video they’d made, used him to dump the body, then murdered him because he was the weak link. She should have known, should have felt it, should have dragged the masks off their goddamn faces and seen what they planned.

But she’d failed, despite Cameron’s urgings.

So cocky, Max. So sure of yourself. You stupid bitch. You were wrong about everything, and now Jules is dead. Dead, dead, dead. You should have left it alone. But no, you went stumbling and bumbling around, poking into everything, and you got him killed. Go on, run off to the Round Up. You’re better at fucking a bunch of nimrod cowboys. It might even keep you out of trouble.

The voice pounded against the inside of her skull. Tiffany’s voice.

She couldn’t breathe, started to hyperventilate right there in front of Witt.

“Max?”

She put a hand out, waved him away. “I gotta go.” As if Jules’s ghost chased her.

“Where the hell are you going?”

Away. Anywhere. Somewhere that the music would drown out the sound of Tiffany’s voice and Jules’s plaintive accusations. Max caught her breath, hugged it to her, then let it out in a long, slow sigh. “None of your business.”

His hand snaked around her wrist. Like a shackle. “You’re headed out to the Round Up, aren’t you?”

“What of it?” She gave off as much venom as she could manage.

He narrowed his gaze. “You don’t have to go there.”

“I
want
to go there.” What she wanted was to run from him and Cameron and the voices in her head.

“I can give you whatever it is you’re looking for.”

She laughed. Almost choked. “I don’t think so.”

“You want sex, I can give it to you. Any
way
you want it. Any
where
you want it. All you have to do is ask.” A soft, low, seductive voice. The words begged, the tone consumed. He had the upper hand. If she didn’t fight him now, he’d win.

“Sorry, not interested,” she snapped

He jerked her to him, wrapped his arm around her back, and held her flush against his body. He was hard, hot, and demanding. She wanted to give in. More than anything. Almost.

“I think you’re lying. I think you’re real interested.” He rubbed a thumb across the pulse point at her wrist. “Your heart is racing. You want me as much as I want you.”

He’d never know how badly she wanted to take exactly what he offered.

But she couldn’t. She shot him a cocky smile, her pulse racing just the way he’d accused. “It’s a purely physical reaction. But I’m not stupid enough to take you up on it.”

“Stupid?” For the first time, there was a dangerous glitter in his eyes.

“Yeah, stupid. I’m not into relationships, okay? And I’m sure as hell not interested in meeting your mother.”

“I don’t think you know what you really want.”

“I know what I
don’t
want. I
don’t
want you hanging around. Sure you’d be good for a time or two, but I’ve got a feeling you’re the kind of guy that’ll outstay his welcome.”

The line of his jaw turned rigid. He stepped back, but he didn’t ease his grip on her wrist.

“Don’t make me spell it out any plainer, Detective.”

This time, he dropped his hold. His eyes were hidden in shadow.

His silence unnerved her, forcing her to lash out again. “And don’t even think about trying out your little threat from last night.”

“You mean about dragging you home?”

“Yeah, that one. You even come near me at the Round Up, I’ll scream bloody murder. And believe me, you wouldn’t stand a chance. I know all the bouncers there.”

“Yeah, I’ll just bet you do. Have you fucked them all, too?”

His vicious words sliced her neatly like the fine blade of a surgeon’s knife. Before she even knew it, she’d raised her hand and slapped him hard across the face.

He stared at her, the ugly red imprint of her hand staining his cheek. He opened his mouth, and she had the awful feeling he was going to apologize.

She couldn’t stand that, not when she knew she’d asked for everything he’d said, had, in fact, pushed him to it.

Max took the coward’s way out and ran to her car. Driving away, she glanced one last agonizing time in the rearview mirror.

But it was Jules’s dead eyes that chased her as she sped into the night.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Cameron
? He didn’t answer. He wasn’t there. He hadn’t followed her.

She knew why. He hated the Round Up, hated that she went there. It was the only place on earth where she couldn’t feel him beside her when she needed him.

Fine. It was the only place she could get a little peace.

At a red light, Max rummaged in the glove box for Witt’s cell phone. She set it on the front seat next to the Mag-Lite still laying on the camel leather, evidence of her late night sojourn. The light turned and she pulled away, then reached once more for the cell phone. She turned it on, then let it lay beside her again.

“What the hell are you doing?” She asked the question aloud. She’d gotten so used to talking to Cameron that when he wasn’t there, she’d started doing it for him.

The truth was, despite the childish way she’d stormed off, she wanted Witt to call. Sort of. In an odd way. For reassurance. Just to be sure he didn’t take anything she’d said personally. Not even the slap.

On second thought? Not. Her feelings were too complicated to explain. He’d get the wrong idea, think she was interested.

“You mean you don’t have the guts to apologize,” she scolded the way Cameron would have. Then she reached to turn the phone off.

It rang before she could touch it. She picked it up, gaze switching back and forth from the road to it. It was illegal to use a cell phone while driving. It was also a damn convenient excuse not to talk to Witt while at the same time knowing he’d tried to get hold of her.

“And it isn’t a matter of guts,” she said aloud. “I’m letting him cool off.” No sense starting a fight all over again.

The thing started ringing again as she entered the parking lot at the Round Up. This time she didn’t pick it up, didn’t scold, but merely smiled. Immature or not, it was nice knowing the man wasn’t giving up so easily.

The lot was nearly full. She drove down first one aisle, then another, and finally ended up on the side of the building where foot traffic was lighter and light poles fewer. The bright side was that Witt wouldn’t find her car so readily. If he followed.

She tucked her keys in her blazer pocket, along with her license and a few dollar bills she’d need for the first beer. Then, her backside swinging in her short skirt, Max rounded the end of the building. She smiled at Hildie the cashier, held out her hand for the ultra-violet stamp from Marsha, and punched Bubba the bouncer’s meaty arm as she passed. She was tall in her three-inch spikes and had plumped her hair up with a mountain of goo. Bubba towered over her and was twice as wide.

“Hey, Max, what’s up?” he yelled over the music, the jumble of voices, and hooting of laughter from the Barber Chair as some sucker downed shots of whiskey.

Bubba was actually a pussy cat, bald head, beady black eyes and all.
If
you stayed on his good side. “Hey, Bubba, how’s it hanging?”

Bubba grabbed his crotch, gave it a hefty pump, then grinned. “When ya gonna take it for a test drive, darlin’?”

“Soon as you dump Hildie, Bubba.”

“Ah, shee-it, Max. You’re such a damn tease.”

She was. She loved it. He loved it, too. She’d never slept with Bubba or anyone else working at the Round Up. It wasn’t a matter of standards. It was a matter of protection. They were there when she needed them, and she’d needed Bubba a time or two when she bumped and ground a little too hard into the wrong guy.

“I’ll be watching you, little girl, so keep your nose clean.”

Max smiled as she melted into the din and the crowd, then pushed her way to the edge of the bar, found a sliver of space and crowded up against the wood.

“The usual?”

“Yeah, Clyde. Thanks.” She palmed the bartender a five. He slid her Corona across the bar.

The music was so loud she couldn’t hear herself think. That was a good thing. She didn’t have to think about the secrets she’d revealed to Cameron or the insults she’d thrown at Witt.

Men were an alien breed. They just didn’t get it when you tried to protect them. Hell, she’d never made a very good wife. She was the first to admit that. And she wouldn’t make a good whatever it was Witt thought he wanted. She just wasn’t any good at relationships. She punctuated the thought with a slug from her Corona, as if the end justified the means, as if slamming Witt was okay because she wanted to protect him from getting hurt down the road.

Damn it, thinking about the guy had thrown her off her stride, too. In fact, her eyes roaming around the Round Up, Max realized she’d lost her appetite for the one-night stand she’d thought she’d wanted so badly. She’d have gathered up her change and driven off into the sunset if ...

If she hadn’t just made eye contact with Jake Lloyd across the dance floor.

Two things hit her simultaneously. First, she stood in the exact spot Tiffany had been that night as she’d met Jake’s eyes across the same crowded dance floor. And second, she was more than willing to sleep with the man in order to find the answer to even one of her questions.

Like where the hell Nadine Johnson was.

She was willing to do anything if it would help find Jules’s killer.

“How noble of you,” she murmured, then saluted herself with a bottle of beer. The nice thing about speaking for Cameron was that she could be decidedly less harsh on herself than he would have been.

But would you really sleep with him, Max
? Yeah, Cameron would have asked that. The truth was, Max didn’t know for sure. Not until she actually did it.

Jake took his time winding through the throng, stopping here to let his eyes glide over a busty, tight-jeaned girl, stopping there to smile as a woman sidled by him, her ass brushing the front of his jeans.

Watching him, Tiffany panted inside Max. Her temperature rose. Her pulse rate doubled. Her skin flushed. But she didn’t move, didn’t bat an eyelash, didn’t allow Tiffany one iota of acknowledgment beyond those purely physical reactions.

He didn’t chat with anyone and always his gaze returned to Max. He disappeared from view as the music changed and a new set of dancers moved onto the floor for a slow one. Slow dancing was serious. Slow dancing didn’t require technical skill. Slow dancing was for the one you had your eye on. Max knew that better than anyone.

Jake leaned on the bar next to her. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for Tiffany’s killer to walk up and ask me to dance.”

He was prepared for whatever she threw his way. He didn’t fumble, didn’t let a nuance of fear stain his gaze. “Why don’t you take me instead?”

“Smooth answer.” He wasn’t a regular at the Round Up. She would have remembered him if he was. There was only one conclusion; he was there to look for her. Maybe to find out what else she knew. Maybe to screw her. Maybe to silence her. She took up the challenge. “I’ve almost finished my beer. Buy me another.”

The corner of his mouth rose. The half-grin was nowhere near as sexy as Witt’s. “And what are you going to give me for that beer?”

“A dance.” Max lowered her lashes, smiled, then raised her eyes once more to his. “Is there anything else you wanted?”

Fire leaped in his brown eyes. Tiffany shuddered as his gaze clung to the outline of Max’s breasts. Oh yeah, the guy wanted more. He wanted to get laid, in addition to pumping her for information. His ex-wife’s body had been dumped right next to this very place exactly one week ago, and the guy was more than willing to take Max to bed.