Of course not, because he’d lie. It would never be one hundred percent with him.
“Would you do it if you knew I wouldn’t lie, couldn’t lie,” he whispered as if she uttered the words aloud.
Would she? If it meant Bethany could rest, that they all could rest, that she, herself, could go back to her comfortable life before women started dying in her dreams and possessing her body in her waking hours? Blessed freedom again. She yearned for it, dreamed of it, and ached with the need for it.
“Would you, Max? If I answered your every question?”
She was terrified the answer might be yes.
Chapter Thirty-Three
She couldn’t remember getting in her car. She couldn’t remember driving home. Couldn’t remember unlocking the front door and scrambling up the stairs, nor getting to the bathroom. She only knew she’d made it to the toilet before she stuck her finger down her throat like an old friend.
She retched until her head pounded and her chest burned, until she’d lost every ounce of food and fear and fury. She lay exhausted on the floor, the cold tile against her hot cheeks. Her eyes wouldn’t stay open. Her limbs felt numb. Her stomach alternately cramped and eased. She felt nothing, no emotion, no thought, no question. She felt only her body, the tenderness with each swallow, the ache behind her eyes, in the back of her neck, the hard tile floor along her right side, the cool air of one shoe off, and the tightness of the other shoe on her toes.
Lastly, the taste of truffles like Bethany’s mother used to make. With raspberry sauce. Despite the spasms in her belly, the imagined scent of chocolate calmed, caressed, and comforted. As it always had.
Cameron’s voice was a faint noise in her drumming ears. Faint, but soothing. Oh so soothing. She imagined she could feel his hands on her arms, feel him pick her up off the floor of the bathroom onto his lap, wipe a warm washcloth over her face and her throat, finally to hold a glass of water to her lips.
She opened her lashes a millimeter and stared into Witt’s blue eyes. “Oh God.”
“No, just me.”
Just Witt. Always Witt. Only Witt. She closed her eyes again. “I don’t think I can handle the phone calls tonight.” It was the closest she’d come to begging for his help.
“Came by to tell you Schulz canceled them. Didn’t figure they’d learn anything new.” Witt smoothed the still warm cloth across her brow, one arm holding her tight against him, his t-shirt soft against her cheek. “Why ya crying, sweetheart?” Only Cameron had ever called her sweetheart. Until now.
“I’m not crying,” she whispered. “They’re puke tears.”
He gently wiped them away. “I know. Max Starr never cries.”
“That’s right.” She had the terrible sense that she wasn’t like other people. She had no feelings. She didn’t hide her tears; she simply wasn’t capable of them.
“Why ya sick?”
“I ate too much.”
The cloth was gone, now his fingers traced her eyebrows, the line of her nose, then her lips. “So much you got sick?”
Lying snug and safe in his arms, she debated telling him the truth, deciding in favor of it. Food had not been a problem for only Bethany and Jada. Perhaps it was her own history that allowed her to understand the two of them. “When I was a high school kid, I kinda used to do a little bingeing and purging stuff. I guess having Bethany hanging around got to me a little more than I expected.”
“Bingeing and purging?”
“Technical terms. You stuff yourself, then you puke it all back out.” She skipped the laxative alternative. Too much information he didn’t need.
“Lovely.” She heard his grimace.
She raised her lids only enough to see him through the slits. “So what do you think of me now, Detective?”
He was silent so long, she had to close her eyes again.
“Remember I told you there were things I’d seen and things I’d done?”
“Bad things.” Very bad things. She didn’t want to hear and didn’t want to share. Not that. Not the bad things. She could never return the trust enough to tell him hers. Not the worst stuff. Never.
“Was a beat cop in San Francisco. Shitty neighborhood. Drugs and guns and whores and fathers who beat their kids and wives black and blue.” The band of his arm across her back stiffened, his fingers stilled on her face. Then she felt him relax again. “I watched this girl grow up. Sweet little black thing with pigtails and the whitest teeth I’d ever seen. Gave me a Jolly Rancher whenever she saw me. Never saw her when she wasn’t smiling. One day it all changed. Just like that, night and day. She musta been thirteen or so. Got a call one night, her apartment. Father had beaten the living crap out of her. He said she was a whore, and she was pregnant.”