“Just do what I tell you. I’d come if I could, but I can’t.”
He had a job to do. Debbie Doodoo had probably hated that she always came in second. Max didn’t like his dictatorial tone either, but she let it go for the sake of more important matters. “Don’t you get it, Witt? This means Achilles had to be the one who killed her.” Like she’d tried telling him in the beginning. “No one else would even know she was dead.”
“That doesn’t explain how he knows who you are. I’m gonna have that patrol car sit outside your house all night long.”
She’d rather have had him there. She’d even share something, the way he wanted her to. She’d even have sex with him. Again. “Achilles isn’t ready to do anything yet. He’s still wanting to play.” Like a cat with a mouse.
She heard shouting, someone calling his name. “I gotta go.” He didn’t need to say they’d found something. “Wave out the window when the car comes so they know you’re okay. Call you in the morning. Don’t do anything stupid, Max.”
Then he was gone.
She wondered if she should have told him Achilles and Bud Traynor were one in the same.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Max made it back inside the old Victorian. The patrol car came. Max waved. It stayed. Cops would do anything if another cop asked them to. They took care of their own. She flopped back against the pillow and closed her eyes.
She’d get him. In the morning, they’d have those calls traced to Traynor’s phone. Then the bastard would be all hers.
“Sleep, perchance to dream,” Cameron whispered in the darkness above her.
“I don’t want to dream.” She’d had enough of dreams. Now she wanted to lay awake planning every detail of Bud Traynor’s downfall. The panic had receded, even if it wasn’t Witt in that patrol car outside. She could think now, plan.
“You’re afraid to dream.”
“Wouldn’t you be?” If he had to see a woman die, had to relive a child’s terror.
“She wasn’t exactly a child in your dreams, was she?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Liar. She did know. Exactly. He was talking about the phone call. He was talking about the dream she’d had almost two months ago. The dream about Bud Traynor and his daughter, Wendy. The closet dream. The dream Achilles had repeated almost verbatim.
Bud had punished his daughter for having a birthday party. The bastard hadn’t even wanted her to celebrate her birthday. Wendy had had two friends over despite his object— Max gasped.
“What is it?”
From the tension in his voice, Max knew Cameron had already read her mind. He still wanted the words. “The two friends were Bethany and Jada.” She bit her lip. “Jada was the one who told Bud.”
They’d never been friends again. Wendy, Jada, and Bethany had lived their pain alone.
Dear God, from the moment she’d first dreamed Wendy’s death, everything had been connected. With Bud Traynor at the center.
“How did he know it was me on the phone?” He had known that first night, as she’d told Witt, she was almost sure. The answer was easy. Traynor was the devil, and he knew everything, especially knew the right words to turn her inside out and upside down. As if remnants of his daughter’s spirit still lived in her along with Bethany.
“He wants you to think that. He wants you to believe he’s the devil incarnate. Because he knows it’ll weaken you. But he’s just a man. And you can beat him, Max.”
“I know I can.” But how?
“There’s a clue in Bethany’s dream, the first one. Find it.”
“She didn’t even see who killed her.”
“Take control of the dream and make her turn around.”
The idea didn’t terrify her nearly as much as it once had.
Cameron kept talking. She barely listened. His voice in the quiet of night was hypnotic. She felt herself falling, falling, falling. Like Alice down the rabbit hole. Where she ends up, nobody knows.
Max ended up in Bethany’s dream. The house, the scent of peaches, the smoothness of freshly bathed skin, the taste of chocolate, the sounds of pleasure.
All the while, Max stood in the background, not a participant, but a watcher, an observer.
“Are you wet?”
“God, yes.”
“Put a finger inside yourself. Does it feel good? Come for me. I want to hear you come.”
Bethany cried out. Max knew it was because he wanted her to as much as her own orgasmic delight.
“I want to see you, Helen. Now. Tonight.”
Ah yes, this was when Bethany got frightened. The fear was there in her voice, the clenching of her fists. “You know we can’t do that.”
“I can’t stand it anymore. No one has to know.”
She sat up, put a hand to her chest. Protective. “It’s better this way.”
“Helen, please, I must see you.”
“No, it’s not possible.”
“Helen.” His voice changed infinitesimally. Forceful. Angry. “I know where you live.”