“How long did you know about Nick Drake and Wendy?”
He shook his head, admiration glinting in his eye. “Damn, you’re good. I knew when it was just a glimmer in that girl’s head. She was so transparent. Hal told me she got up at four in the morning, because she had so much work to do. Work, my ass. I confronted her. She broke down. She wouldn’t give me his name, but the choices were limited. Unless she’d stooped to one of the boys in the warehouse, which I wouldn’t have put past her. Women find something so attractive about the lower classes.”
“What about Remy?”
“I thought of him first.” He pursed his lips, shook his head. “She didn’t react to his name. Nicholas Drake was a different story. Red face. Couldn’t meet my eyes. She was scared to death.”
“You mean you beat it out of her.”
The look in his eye was a challenge, enough to say, “Yeah? What of it?” Traynor didn’t even bother to comment on it. “I knew it was him.”
“Why the elaborate scheme for getting me to help you and Hal when you already knew?”
He sighed, his lids lowering lazily, satisfied, as if he’d just had his first cigarette of the day. Or an orgasm. “I did it to bring you closer. It’s such a pleasure to take off the mask. You can’t know what it’s like to have to hide behind all that civility.”
She suppressed a shiver of reaction and ignored the desire heating his black eyes. “Even with Hal?”
“Hal especially. I’m grooming him, and it wouldn’t do for him to know too much yet. He’s got years of training left.”
Grooming him for what? The question shuddered down Max’s legs into her toes and left them with frostbite. “I suppose I don’t present any challenge to you at all.”
“On the contrary, you looked at me with those big brown eyes and saw who I was the moment you shook my hand at the cemetery. That’s a first. I want more firsts from you.”
Her nipples puckered. God, it wasn’t even sexual attraction. It was something worse. Something Wendy felt hiding in her closet. A sinful, horrible, uncontrollable wetness between the legs. Fear reaction. Power overload.
He’d bred it into his daughter with years of abuse, a feeling so strong Max couldn’t shake it off. It made her sick. “If I didn’t have such a strong constitution, I’d throw up on your shoes.”
“I’m going to enjoy bringing you to heel, Max.”
She stared, incredulous, her eyes feeling as big as fried eggs. “Yeah right, after you spend a lifetime in prison for engineering your daughter’s murder.”
He laughed, a sound like nails on a chalkboard. “Why would I bother? Wendy wasn’t worth the sacrifice. In the scheme of things, she was nothing more than bugshit on my windshield.”
Wendy’s essence throbbed inside her, robbed her of her breath. “She was just a toy to you.”
“Everyone’s a toy. Even you. But some toys can be so much more fun than others.”
She clenched her fists so tightly, her fingers hurt. If he touched her right now, she’d scream. Or she’d come, and then she’d die because of it. She understood Wendy’s closet dream like visceral punch. This man had manipulated a child’s body into doing his bidding. She’d been susceptible to him ever since. He’d played her, debased her, then made her believe it was all her fault. Wendy had hated herself for that lack of control.
“You’re a monster.”
He gave a crooked half-smile, stroked his chin. “Thank you for the compliment.”
“Nobody can be that bad,” she whispered. “You’re yanking my chain.”
“You’re smarter than that. You know exactly who I am.” He leaned his head to one side, then the other, like an artist sizing up his model. “Hal likes you, but I like you better.”
He put his hand on her arm. The chill bled through her jacket, spread across her flesh. A gush of moisture drenched her panties. She could rush home and shower it all off, but she’d never be clean again.
She jerked away, resisted rubbing her arm, and said coldly, “I’ll kill you if you ever touch me again.”
“I do believe you’d try.”
“You will pay for what you did to Wendy. I promise.”
“I love a game of wits. But remember, I always win.”
He moved past her then, forcing her to turn to the side on the narrow stairway. His arm brushed her breast. Her womb tightened. Readied.
Just as Wendy’s had in the closet when she was thirteen.
Bud Traynor smiled before he disappeared along the second floor corridor. He knew the affect he’d had on her body.
The only thing more evil than what he’d done to the child Wendy had been was making her believe she’d deserved it.
Max understood just how he’d accomplished that, with the evidence of the shameful betrayal of her own body.
Stumbling down the three steps, she fell to her knees and threw up in the shrubbery at the bottom of the stairs.
God, if she kept this up, her body would waste away to a shadow.
And Bud Traynor would win.
Chapter Twenty-Eight