“You mean you think I killed him.” He wasn’t displeased. He enjoyed her questions, her accusations, actually invited them.
She stared him down.
“Really, Max, do you think I actually need to kill someone myself?”
No. He could manipulate anyone into doing anything, even killing themselves. All the while they’d think it was their own idea. It made her blood coagulate in her veins. Who had he manipulated into killing Bethany? Her sister, her mother, her courier boy? Or his own alter ego, Achilles?
She could ask. He would only smile again. She hated that smile.
“What happened to all his money from the law partnership?” Max looked distinctly at the small duplex in the less than gracious neighborhood Virginia had probably been used to. “Why didn’t his wife get it when he died?”
He rubbed his jaw, a ghost of a smile still on his lips. “I believe he might have had a gambling problem. The estate was a shambles.” He held his hand up, like a priest making an offering. “I had to loan her money for this modest home.”
“You mean you stole all Walter’s money.”
“I’m honored you ascribe me with such abilities. I steal a man’s money, his family, even his life. I get away with it.” He leaned down at her. “I even get his daughters in the bargain, don’t I, Max?”
She tried to hide the shudder that seemed to come from deep inside. “I never said it was something to be proud of.”
He regarded her through half closed lids, holding the tip of his chin in his fingers. “How’d you do it, Max?”
“How’d I do what, Bud?” She gave a slight nasty inflection to his name.
“How’d you get Bethany’s sex line number?”
Her eyes popped wide. She hadn’t believed he’d be so open about it. Nor had she been prepared for the sudden switch in conversation. He’d probably planned it that way to throw her off balance. She decided the truth could do no harm. “I asked the police to let me do it. How’d you do it?”
He gave her that special smile, using half his mouth, the smile that made her think of a hungry tiger ready to pounce on the oh-so-unaware gazelle. “How’d I do what, Max?”
If she could play the game long enough, she knew she could figure it out. “How’d you stop the trace?”
“A little device. Would you like to search my house for it, Max?”
He was saying something, she was sure. Either that he knew exactly why she’d wangled that dinner in Jada’s home, or that he believed he could tell her everything, and she still wouldn’t be able to touch him. Maybe both. “Once is enough.”
He sighed. “Oh, Max, don’t you know once is never enough? Some people have to keep coming back again and again. It’s an addiction. They never get enough.”
“Like you with Bethany, calling her every night, asking her to see you, teasing her, taunting her.”
“I was waiting for her to figure out who I was.”
“Maybe she did. Maybe she was still playing the same sick game you taught her as a child when you invaded her room at night.” She took a deep breath, either that or suffocate, but her lungs couldn’t seem to process enough oxygen.
“Do I make you nervous, Max?”
He terrified her. She hated the way he said her name almost every time he uttered a sentence. It was a violation, a manipulation. “You make me want to puke.”
“The operative word is want. I make you want, Max. Look at your nipples.”
She refused to fall into his trap by looking down. “Why is it so important that I want you?”
He blinked slowly, the smile on his lips just as slow to grow. “I’m merely stating fact. I can smell it on you.” He leaned closer, breathed deeply. “I could hear it in your voice last night when we talked. A soft sigh here, a faint groan there.”
“That was me gagging on your every word.”
“Is that why you kept on playing the game, Max?” he whispered, his breath ruffling her hair. She shivered against the insane warmth of it.
“I did it so they could have enough time to trace you.”
He stepped back, his eyes dark outside the circle of lamplight. “I like the way you fight me, Max, the way you fight yourself. It’s such a challenge. But you know that, don’t you? You know a good challenge is my little addiction.” He licked his lips. “Tell me, Max, would you go down on your knees and suck me off right in front of your boyfriend’s mother’s house if you thought it would get you the proof of what happened to my dear, sweet, luscious Bethany?”
The evening’s meal rolled over and threatened to explode back up her esophagus. He’d tried the very same trick on her once before. She hadn’t fallen for it then, she wouldn’t now.
“Slow to answer, aren’t you?” He wagged a finger. “I really don’t expect you to answer at all. But I do know you’ll think about it in your dreams tonight. Think, Max, if you had a one hundred percent guarantee you’d learn the truth.” The smile reached his cheeks, created lines and hollows in his face. “Would you do it?”