“You’re afraid.”
She rolled her eyes, flipped absently through the pages of the appointment book, and pretended that her pulse hadn’t jerked just a little. “Of what?”
“You don’t want to feel sorry for her. You want to keep on hating her, so you can continue denying that all the powerful, sexual, and overwhelming feelings rushing around in you actually belong to you.”
“They don’t.”
“Why do you think she got a foothold inside your beautiful, chaotic mind?”
“Because I’m possessed.”
“Because you’re so much alike.”
“We’re not,” she shouted, catching herself a second before her fist pounded the glass countertop.
“Sex is power. You’ve admitted that’s what you feel. Tiffany was all about sexual power. That’s the ‘something, something’ you couldn’t pinpoint a few minutes ago. That’s why she died.”
She took offense that he voiced it, resented that he was right and that he knew her fears better than she did. “I don’t like feeling her inside me, Cameron. It’s different than last time, with Wendy.”
His lectures and his pushiness often annoyed her, but there were also times she was glad Cameron could read her mind. It saved on having to explain how she zipped from one thought to another. Cameron just understood.
“Stepping into Wendy Gregory’s shoes worked for finding her killer, but it almost got you killed,” Cameron said.
She flapped a hand. “That’s history. I’m talking methodology here. I empathized with Wendy. Tiffany’s different.” Max grabbed the front of her shirt. “She’s in me. But we’re not bonding.”
“Run with her, you’ll find the reason she chose you to help her.”
“I don’t want to work with her. She wants to control, to take over. I can feel it.”
“And you need to be in control.”
“Yeah, I do.” She paused. “And I’m stronger. I’ll win.” Brave words, she wasn’t as confident as she sounded.
“Maybe that’s what you need to learn, Max.”
“How to win?”
“No, sweetheart. You need to learn that you don’t have to be in control to win. Right now you don’t even know there’s a difference.”
“You’re harping.” And pissing her off because she was once again afraid he might be right.
“I hate it when I harp.” Cameron knew exactly when to stop pushing, though he’d never been able to do it when he was alive. “Why don’t we look in the big guy’s office?”
“Now? I have to catch any customers coming in that didn’t get a call.”
A sudden gust rustled the pages of the appointment book. “Look. They got hold of everyone this hour.”
“I don’t have a key.”
“Why are you fighting this? Wasn’t that the idea when you turned down a jaunt to her funeral?”
She didn’t know what bugged her. She was suddenly tired. She was on Tiffany overload. She wanted out. There were a hundred reasons.
“And the biggest one is DeWitt Quentin Long, isn’t it?”
She gritted her teeth. “We already went over this.”
He dropped a tone, his voice soothing inside her head. “Let’s not fight, my love. Let’s find answers. Solve this so you can get rid of Tiffany—and concentrate on Witt.”
The cash drawer went ka-ching and popped open, hitting her lightly on the hipbone. “How’d you do that?”
“I do have more capabilities than merely breaking a few mugs at appropriate times, you know.”
She picked the key ring from the penny bin and jingled it. “Isn’t this breaking and entering?”
Cameron brushed aside her twinge of guilt with a waft of peppermint in the air. “You have the key. Miles left you in charge.”
“What am I looking for?”
“Anything. Everything. Jake Lloyd’s address, since you won’t go look for him at the funeral.”
Ahh, now she understood the plan Cameron had in mind. Sort of. “Why would his address be in Miles’s office? He never worked here.” She stared at the key ring. It brought up thoughts of Snake the wino and his locker key.
“I’ll bet Tiffany had Jake listed as next of kin.”
“They’re divorced.”
“Divorce didn’t matter much to them, now did it? After all, she banged him in the bathroom at the Round Up.”
She closed her fist around the bunch of keys. “If we get caught, you’re dead meat, Cameron.”
“Actually, I’m dust.”
Ignoring him, she punctuated her statement with the slam of the cash drawer, rounded the end of the counter, and headed back past the restroom towards the office in the rear.
Before she reached her goal, Max stopped in the center of the hall. Voices surrounded her—hushed echoes of past conversations, a decibel below her ability to make out the words.
“What’s that?” she whispered.