“A name perhaps?”
“That paper, the one with the flight number on it. She threw it away in the airport before she went back to her car.”
“Maybe it was a different note.”
“It wasn’t.” She rolled her lower lip between her teeth. “Someone put it back in her car. Even she knew it was out of place—or something.” Exactly what had the woman been feeling about that paper being there? Shame. That was all Max could remember.
Cameron interrupted her thought. “Someone?”
“It had to have been her killer.” The windows were up, the morning warm, but Max shivered as if a cool breeze had passed over her. She hadn’t phrased it as a question. “She was followed.” Stalked. Hunted.
The feelings went a long way in suggesting that the man who’d made love to her wasn’t the one who’d killed her.
“Does it?”
“He couldn’t have known where she threw out the note or even that she’d written down the information.”
“Maybe she retrieved the piece of paper.”
“No. I don’t think so. And there’s the condom. They—she and her airport lover—didn’t use one because they were in such a big hurry.” Her clitoris tingled with palpable memory, the heat, the need, the rush. “But there was an opened wrapper on the floor of the car. Someone else must have been there.”
“Maybe they did it again, and that time they used one.”
“No. I’d remember.”
“Just like you remember whose hands were at her throat?”
He had a point. There were so many pieces missing. But... “It’s a feeling. Just like your feeling that we had to come here this morning, couldn’t wait, had to be now.” Cameron’s urgency had thrummed through her. “What is it you know?”
“Feelings can’t be explained, Max, they’re just there. Like visions. You go with the flow, do what they tell you. Mine told me to be here. Yours told you which way to turn in the lot, where to go.”
Max cruised the last aisle. The light post ahead sported a dulled, gray section sign. She’d seen that identifying section letter, too, out of the rear car window. Surrounding the pole, yellow barrier tape flapped in the wind.
Oh Jesus. There really was a car.
A silver Maxima. New. Dealer’s plates still on it, black smudges by the door handles, the windows. A black and white had parked on the opposite side as if on guard, the officer in the front seat blowing steam off a cup of coffee. When had they found the woman? Couldn’t have been too long or the car itself would have been gone.
“Drive slowly.”
“That cop’ll get suspicious.” Still, fascinated, she pulled closer to the line of parked vehicles and took her foot off the accelerator until the car slowed to a crawl.
“What do you feel?”
“I can’t believe this is real. And I don’t feel anything.”
“Way too quick, Maxi.”
“You know I don’t like it when you call me that, Cameron.” He’d always goaded her with the nickname, using it to push her to do what he wanted.
He ignored the comment. “What do you sense?”
Once she let them in, feelings swamped her. “Pain. Anger. Despair,” she whispered, then closed her eyes and put her foot on the brake. “She was incredibly alone.”
“Guess you’ve accepted it was a vision, huh, Max?”
Given no choice, she had. The long-term shuttle lumbered up behind her, its engine vibrating in her chest. The vehicle pulled alongside, then passed her, its windows coated with years of dirt, neglect, and black exhaust.
She wouldn’t have seen the face at the back window if the man hadn’t raised a hand to swipe at the grime built up on the inside. She couldn’t make out his features beyond a set mouth in a long, narrow face, but his intense stare pierced her body.
He shifted his gaze to the dead woman’s car and focused on it as if nothing else existed. One hand pressed against the dirty window as the bus pulled away.
She punched the accelerator.
“What do you feel?” Cameron demanded, hushed excitement animating his voice.
It wasn’t a sight or a sound or a smell. It was something inside her. She knew that man, knew his eyes, pale yet intense eyes, drilling straight through to her inner organs. She could lose her sense of right and wrong in that gaze, lose herself in wanting him, needing him.
Oh my God...the woman wasn’t dead dead. She was living inside Max’s head. All those feelings were hers, not Max’s.
Cameron didn’t comment, asking instead, “Who is he?”
“Her lover,” Max whispered, as much to herself as to Cameron. It wasn’t attraction she felt for the mystery man, nothing so trivial as desire or a man-woman thing. It was as if he knew her every secret, inside and out. And she knew his.