“You don’t utilize the gift God gave you.”
“It isn’t a gift. It’s a disease.”
“That’s a lame excuse, Max. Face your fears.”
She couldn’t even name them, let alone face them.
“You’ll have to label them someday if you want them to go away,” he whispered.
Maybe that’s what terrified her. Not that her fears would go, but that Cameron himself would. For good. As soon as she mastered all her damn “gifts.”
“I have to go someday.”
An arctic cold front gripped her chest. Her protests froze on her tongue.
“I swear it won’t happen until you’re ready.”
She hadn’t been ready that night two years ago when he was shot. She wasn’t ready now. She’d never be ready. For several moments, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even see clearly. Her ears buzzed. Her fingertips went numb.
“Talk to me, Max.”
Finally, she could speak, but what came out had nothing to do with his flying off into the oblivion a final time. Her words seemed almost mundane in contrast. “Tiffany was way more than angry. She could have killed him.”
Cameron’s irritated sigh ruffled her hair. The way she avoided a subject had always pissed him off. “Define ‘him?’”
“Jake maybe? I don’t know.” She scrubbed a hand down her face. “I swear I don’t. I feel her anger, know it’s directed at a man, but I can’t see who.” Her voice trailed off. She was suddenly so tired, as if intimate contact with the inanimate wood door had somehow drained all her energy. Her legs were jelly, her head pounded, and if she stood there much longer, she’d probably do something ridiculous like burst into tears.
“You, Max? Never.” Cameron’s ethereal body flowed over her, held her up when her knees might have buckled.
Neither spoke. Not for minutes. And Max couldn’t banish Cameron’s plain and terrifying promise.
He wouldn’t leave until she was ready. She’d just have to make damn sure she never was.
Chapter Eleven
Max glanced down at the map she’d printed. It hadn’t been a color printer, and she was having trouble following the route. Nadine Johnson lived close, but the route was marred by one-way streets, dead ends, and meandering roads. Sort of like Max’s life at the moment.
It took fifteen minutes to find the complex. She parked at the south end and across the street.
She was calm again.
While physically located only blocks and a few minutes from Tiffany’s, Nadine Johnson’s apartment was miles away in appearance. Gone were the trees, the manicured landscaping, and the garden gnomes. In their place were concrete, rusting carports, peeling yellow paint, and laundry hanging from a second floor balcony. Nadine had crossed the proverbial tracks and lived on the wrong side.
“Why the hell would Tiffany even consider moving in with her when she left Jake?”
“I haven’t a clue,” Cameron quipped.
“Why don’t you ask her? Isn’t her ghost floating around somewhere? Do a little ghost hunting, would ya?”
“Sweetheart, if she could communicate with me, I’d skip that and go right to the heart of the matter, like who killed her. But it wouldn’t work, because we don’t carry memories with us, only emotions.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Just as Cameron didn’t remember his passing, or even many of the details of his life except what she reminded him about. Having a ghost for a husband should have made things easier, but it never had.
“Never?” he breathed close to her ear.
“Okay, so you’ve got your uses.” In the dead of night, when she was the loneliest, the most afraid, she could close her eyes and imagine his touch was real. Even if sometimes—most times—their intimacy ended in a fight.
But no, no, no, she’d never let him go.
The emotion overwhelmed her, as if it belonged to her and Tiffany at the same time.
God, she couldn’t stand it anymore. Max had her hand on the door handle of the car when a white truck flew around the corner and pulled into the lot in front of Nadine’s building. It parked directly across the street from Max’s Miata.
Max’s hand dropped away from the door.
The driver was Jake Lloyd, dressed in a black suit, white shirt, dark tie, and oddly, a pair of workboots. His windblown hair glistened blue-black in the approaching dusk, five o’clock shadow stubbled his chin, and the knot of his tie hung loosely three inches below the customary spot. He climbed from the truck, crossed the lot, and bounded down a walk that presumably led to Nadine’s apartment.
Jesus, he was a hunk. Doable, very doable.
“Doable, sweetheart?”
Max’s gut twisted at Cameron’s taunting tone. The act was something she contemplated at the Round Up. She’d size up, pick out, and get down. “It’s just a term. I don’t do that kind of stuff anymore.”