Like a horror movie monster, he could easily rise again. Max didn’t waste another second getting out of there.
She never made it to the front door. The lobby glass shattered with a great boom, something smashed against the front counter, and Max fell to the floor of her office, her arms over her head.
Oh God, Remy’d rigged the place to blow up.
Shouts. Someone called her name. No smoke. No flames. Just Witt. Hands on her, testing her arms, her ribcage, her face, then she was hauled against his hard body and the breath squeezed out of her.
“You all right?” he whispered, and she could have sworn there was a slight hitch in his voice.
“Hmm.” God, he felt good. Safe, solid. And warm.
She put a hand to his chest experimentally. He wore the teal shirt again. Freshly laundered. She closed her lids, burrowed into him. The man smelled good, too. She could have stayed in his arms forever. “You broke the door down?”
“Threw a potted plant into it.”
“Oh.” It was only natural to feel a trace of tenderness toward the first person encountered after almost getting killed. “Plant pots make great weapons,” she mused. Then her eyes flew open. She jerked back. “Remy.”
Witt looked down at her with brilliant blue eyes, but didn’t relinquish his hold on her. “Not moving. Did you kill him?”
“I cracked his skull.”
He rolled his eyes. “Who needs a gun when they’ve got you around? Never occurred to you to let someone be your knight in shining armor, did it?”
“Only if that someone wanted to be a pall bearer, too. If I’d waited for you, I’d be dead.” She gestured in Remy’s general direction. “Shouldn’t you check his pulse or something?”
“After I make sure you’re okay.” Witt ran his hands up and down her torso.
Oh boy, this was way too good. She wanted more. Max wriggled out of his grip. “We oughta call an ambulance. I don’t want anyone to bring me up on manslaughter charges.”
He stared at her a moment longer, those blue eyes of his unreadable—not that Max really tried anyway—then stood and held his hand out to her.
He made her skin tingle. She didn’t like it. Rephrase, she liked it too much. And that was dangerous.
“I won’t bite.”
She might like it if he did. She took the challenge and the hand he offered.
She looked down to Remy sprawled on the floor. “He’s a liar and a killer. We oughta cuff him, and then call the ambulance.”
Witt dropped her hand, turned all cop-like on her, reaching beneath his jacket to pull out a pair of handcuffs. Kneeling beside Remy, he checked his pulse, then rolled him over and snapped the cuffs on.
Sirens sounded in the distance. Witt glanced at her. “Backup. Called when I found both your cars parked outside, and the front door locked.”
“Does this mean he’s not dead?”
“Alive. And soon to be kicking when he wakes up.”
“Good. I want him to live in a tiny jail cell where he’ll learn how to bend over and get real used to being called ‘boy.’”
Witt chuckled. “Still too much TV, Max.”
Lying on his side, Remy’s face was covered with dirt and broken bits of crockery. His knees were close to his chest, fetal-style, his feet rammed up against the filing cabinet, the rope he’d intended to kill her with still coiled around his hands.
She thought of his hands curled around Wendy’s throat.
“He’ll soon learn the true meaning of the penal code.” She dusted her hands off, set them on her hips. “What about Nick?”
Witt’s features turned to granite. “What about Drake?”
“This means he’s free.”
“It means I can’t hold him for murder. There’s a load of other stuff—”
“Hey.” She stopped listening to Witt as another, more immediate thought took over. “How’d you know it was Remy?”
He rose, knees creaking. “I didn’t.”
“You didn’t?”
Amazingly, a flush of red swept across his face. “I—” He stopped, clamped his lips shut.
“You what?”
Remy moaned. They both ignored him.
The sirens screeched, then cut. Within seconds, the cramped office was filled with paramedics, uniforms, noise, bright lights.
Witt looked immensely relieved.
“You’re not off the hook, buster,” she whispered to no one in particular.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Max hadn’t cleaned house in months, at least nothing beyond pouring disinfectant into the toilet and doing laundry. The former she did simply because keeping a clean toilet was one of the basic tenets of life, the latter because she didn’t own enough clothes to last more than a week.
The day after Remy Hackett was carted off to jail for killing Wendy Gregory, Max celebrated by scrubbing the bathroom tiles, sweeping the dust bunnies out from under the bed, and giving Buzzard a flea dip in the bathtub.
Remy’s words resonated inside her head. Repeat, stop, rewind. Making me want her was power, and Wendy craved power. Repeat, stop, rewind.