The house was large and in one of the better Peninsula neighborhoods. Painstakingly trimmed shrubbery, neatly edged lawn, and freshly loamed flowerbeds. Hal loved order, but he’d pay to get it. Wendy, on the other hand, had reveled in the dirt caked beneath her manicured fingernails and the sun warm on her back. She’d loved the colors of flowers, the scent of them, loved knowing they flourished under her tender care.
Max closed her eyes. The name of the game was using people. Max wanted to use Hal to lead her to Wendy’s killer. Hal wanted to use Max to lead him to Wendy’s lover. Nothing wrong with that. People had agendas all the time. The only difference was that Max wasn’t above nailing Hal if he’d been the one to kill his wife.
His black car was parked in the driveway. Interesting that Wendy got the Nissan and he got the expensive Lexus. She rang the bell on his long, low house and waited, watching as heat rose off the boulders in his rock garden.
Footsteps echoed in the tiled entryway on the other side of the door. Standing on the pebbled porch, she was at a good six-inch disadvantage when he opened the door. Hal stared for a long moment, then a smile split his face, a purely raptorial grin that raised goose bumps along her arms.
Not that the man came even close to frightening her. He was a weasel, and she knew how to handle weasels.
“Max, how nice. Bud and I were just talking about you.”
“Bud?”
There were weasels, and then there were evil monsters like Bud Traynor, a force that even a man like Witt Long might not know how to handle. Max didn’t think she stood a chance.
Sweat slicked her palms, and her one and only thought was to run. Hard, far, and fast.
Chapter Eighteen
Bud Traynor. Not good. Max wasn’t prepared to deal with Wendy’s men in tandem. Wrong. She wasn’t prepared to deal with Bud on any level, alone or otherwise, at least not now. She needed more time to analyze her own feelings, her own reaction, not just Wendy’s.
Hal pulled her inside. The house was cool and air-conditioned musty, the air fetid as if something green and alien grew in the ventilator. Sick-house syndrome. Her heels clattered on the tile.
A sudden waft of peppermint floated beneath her nostrils, a soft sigh caressed her nape. Give ’em hell, Max. Cameron. She should have known she’d never be alone. She straightened her shoulders.
She’d wanted Hal’s reaction to Lilah’s death. Now she’d see Bud’s as well. Too bad the detective had tipped them off. It would have been a coup to see their initial surprise. No matter, Max was at least as good at battering them as Witt could be. Especially because they wouldn’t be expecting it.
They rounded the edge of a paneled wall, and Max followed Hal down two steps into the most gorgeous room she’d ever seen. Of course, it wasn’t the room itself, but the floor-to-ceiling windows, the sparkling blue of the sun on the water in the kidney-shaped pool outside, and the rhododendron bushes. Wendy loved their brilliant color in the spring. The room screamed of life, of Wendy. She’d sat on the soft leather couch with a steaming cup of tea, morning light bathing her face. She had renewed her energy in this very room and thought many times of leaving Hal.
And of leaving the man sitting on that same camel-colored leather sofa.
Love, duty, and fear. Wendy had wanted the first. Bud Traynor had inspired only the latter two.
Max shivered in the too-cold atmosphere. Hal’s fingers on her back urged her into the room, closer to Wendy’s father. Her skin shrank from the light touch.
Wendy hid inside her as Max marched into that emotional dungeon with each step she took, deeper into the Gregory home where Bud Traynor waited like a poisonous snake ready to strike, ready to immobilize and swallow her whole with minimal effort, as if she were a terrified mouse. The way he’d done with Wendy.
Bud was about to find out that Max was of a different ilk. Wendy, too, was going to find out just exactly who was in control of Max’s body.
“Mr. Traynor.” She nodded. “I hope I’m not intruding.” She didn’t care if she was.
“Of course not,” they both chimed at once, Bud with a reptilian gaze that Hal, his back to his father-in-law, couldn’t see. Without a doubt, they’d been discussing her. She knew it through Bud’s dark, assessing gaze. She wondered if she’d bitten off more than she could chew, then immediately quashed the thought. She would not let this man get the better of her before she even started.
“Would you like a drink?” Hal asked, his shoulders slightly rounded. He seemed to shrink in significance when in the same room with Bud Traynor.
“No,” then, after a slight but definite break, “thank you.” She added it merely for politeness, and the pause was for Bud, to let him know it meant nothing more. Not fear, not trepidation, simply choice.
“But we can’t drink alone.” Bud held his glass up. Sunlight shone through the ice cubes and the colorless liquid. Gin and tonic in the summer. Rye and ginger in the winter. Even at the age of eight, Wendy’d always had his drink ready when he got home from work. God help her if she hadn’t.