“Could certainly help ya there.”
Help? She didn’t need it. Did she? She thought, for just a brief moment, of asking him to go with her. Not for protection or anything. Just because ... cops could be good to have around in a jam. No, no. She could get out of her own jams, thank you very much. She’d been doing it on her own for a very long time.
Max pointed at his truck. “Go.”
Witt laughed, completely unfazed by the order. “When you fall, Max, you’re gonna fall hard.”
“Fall for you? Hah. You’re dreaming.” Men, they were insufferable, conceited pigs.
“You’re right, I am dreaming. Damn near all the time. And you figure prominently in every one. Lemme know when you’re ready to join in.”
“Not in this lifetime.” But her knees weakened as she watched his red tail lights drive off only minutes later. Tiffany snickered deep inside her.
God, she was a goner for sure if she didn’t find Tiffany’s murderer before the damn woman gave in to Witt’s cute repartee.
Max drove like a maniac, which wasn’t saying much since she believed speed limits were a function of one’s driving ability. And she was a damn good driver. Ten minutes later, she climbed the stairs to her studio, changed into a dark sweatshirt, a pair of jeans, and sneakers. For some odd reason, her hands shook and she had trouble tying her laces.
Buzzard twined himself around her legs, begging for another can of cat food. She’d left out a bowl before leaving for work and had given him another handful of crispies when she walked in the door. He’d wolfed those down and wanted more. There was something about creatures that had been starved. They never got over it, could never get enough to satisfy them, and could never quite believe that starvation wasn’t lurking just around the corner.
Ten minutes after she’d arrived at her apartment, she was ready to leave again. The Mag-Lite was in her car, Witt’s cell phone in the glove compartment, and a pair of black gloves she used for cold morning drives lay on the seat beside her. She pulled onto the freeway heading north to Bud Traynor’s house. Though she had never been there, she knew the location well.
She’d done her third pass past his place when she finally admitted she was scared. Scared shitless.
What if he had an alarm system? What if she got caught? What if she found nothing of use? What if he came home early?
The last thought gave her the shakes.
“I’m with you, baby.”
She felt like crying, as if she hadn’t heard Cameron’s voice since the night he walked out of their apartment for his appointment with destiny. And the wrong end of a gun.
She parked the car half a block down, as far as she could get from the nearest street light, and watched for ten minutes. Only one car rolled by, and the driver ignored her. She tugged the gloves on over her suddenly numb fingers—the last thing she needed to leave were fingerprints—then shoved the Mag-Lite up her sleeve in case she encountered anyone taking a dog for an evening potty break. Gloves were one thing since the late September night had a chill to it, but a flashlight would look far too suspicious.
She opened the car door. “Let’s do it.”
She saw no one. The houses were large, set back from the road with big expanses of lawn and landscaping, the lots separated by high rows of hedges or wooden fences. Traynor’s house, a colonial style complete with columns, was dark except for a front porch lamp. The houses on either side had lights in the windows, as did the neighbors across the street. She walked quickly up his driveway to the fence at the side where she saw a gate. Reaching up, she found the latch on the inside, let herself into the backyard, and shut the gate behind her.
She stopped in the darkness to catch her breath, to let her heart slow to a normal beat. What the hell was she doing here? Why had this seemed like such a good idea when she’d been out in the light of day?
She crept along the side of the house, came to the corner, and peered around it. The dark, manicured yard was rimmed with bottle brush trees. A high deck hugged the house. French doors led to the interior.
Pulling the flashlight from her sleeve, Max tested the wooden steps. They creaked loudly. The noise couldn’t be helped. Sneaking in a half-crouch along the edge of the house to the doors, she tapped the end of the Mag-Lite against the pane nearest the door handle. Glass tinkled on the tile. Reaching inside, she unlocked and unlatched the door, pushing it open a foot. Not another sound broke the quiet.
She ran back down the stairs, around the house to the front, and watched the street through the sliver of gate she opened. If he had a perimeter alarm, she’d have been dead meat the minute she entered the yard. If there was an inside alarm, it was certainly a silent one, and therefore most likely connected to a service that would dispatch the police.