His heat pulsed in the air around her, seared her flesh. Silence pounded against her ears. A car whooshed by outside. She didn’t want to know the answer. It might just mean another murder to lay at Traynor’s doorstep.
“He’s going to notice that you broke it,” she whispered.
“Yes. He will.”
“Cameron, what aren’t you telling me?”
“There’s a DVD in the player,” he said instead of answering. “Get it.”
God, he scared her. His slight phosphorescent glow shimmered in the darkness and seemed a terrifying part of it. She swallowed, then turned to the 54-inch big screen TV. Bending down to the player on the shelf, she pushed the open button with a gloved fingertip. When the tray opened, she grabbed the disk, and hit the button again to close it.
“Stick it down your pants and cover it with your sweatshirt.”
“Why?” But she did as he ordered.
“Because he’s here.”
A key grated in the lock. The front door opened, and the hall light came on.
Covered by relative darkness, Max scampered back and slipped down on her haunches next to the side table. Her heart pounded. Her breathing was loud, so loud that she was sure Bud Traynor would hear.
Oh God. Oh God. Maybe if he went upstairs, she could sneak out the front. Please, please don’t go to the back. He’d see the broken glass on the floor.
He was humming. And then he came into the den.
Max held her breath. The edge of the DVD cut into her belly as she hunkered down. He stood there on the threshold with his head tilted to one side, his chin slightly up. His hand was on the light switch. He didn’t turn it on, instead he sniffed the air.
Oh God. She wasn’t wearing perfume. She never wore perfume.
But like a predator stalking her, he’d picked up her scent.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Bud Traynor sang into the dark.
Oh, Jesus.
Chapter Nineteen
I won’t leave you.
She knew Cameron wouldn’t leave, but right now she wished to God she’d brought Witt with her. Someone big. Someone tough. Someone alive.
No fear. Show no fear. If she did, Traynor would be on her like a rabid dog.
She stood and held her hands in the air. “Busted,” she quipped, hoping that with the cover of darkness, he couldn’t see her white-knuckled grip on the Mag-Lite.
“My darling Max, what a pleasant surprise.”
She dropped her hands and moved out from the corner. And then she saw them, the tell-tale digital lights on the player she’d turned on. If he noticed, if he remembered he’d turned it off, if the disk in it held something truly important, if, if, if ... The plastic warmed against her belly—calling to him.
Standing less than three feet from him, the player blazing just to their right, she was paralyzed by fear. Fear of his discovering the DVD on her. Fear of him.
Pull yourself together. Buck up, kiddo. Be strong.
Cameron’s words or her own—it didn’t matter. They were the truth. Her only armor against Traynor was a facade of indifference.
He stepped fully into the room, pushed back the jacket of his black tux, and rested his hands on his hips. His tie hung loose around his neck, falling across the ruffled shirt. He’d had his white hair trimmed for the occasion—she wondered by whom, since Tiffany was dead. She’d guessed his age to be mid-to-late fifties, though she’d never asked and didn’t care.
With his sophisticated looks, money, and the Cadillac he drove, some women might find him irresistible.
Inside her, Tiffany started to preen. How the hell could she fight the evil outside as well as the evil within? The how of it didn’t matter, she simply would.
Traynor flipped on the overhead light, and the DVD display faded into the background. Thank God.
“Cat got your tongue?” he asked.
She cocked her head to the side. “I suppose your first question is why am I here.” She almost straightened her shoulders defiantly, but caught herself in time. He might very well see the top edge of the disk poke against her sweatshirt.
“I don’t need to ask.”
He was a master of the smug smile. He was a master of all sorts of smiles, ones that could manipulate, terrify, or flay the flesh from his daughter’s backside.
His eyes skimmed her body from head to breasts to hips to thighs. Something flickered in the depths of his black eyes, and she thought for a minute he might actually search her. “I presume you’re here to plant evidence or otherwise implicate me in the murder of Tiffany Lloyd.”
She laughed. It was Tiffany’s laughter. “I don’t think I need to plant evidence, Bud.”
How the hell did he know she had an interest in Tiffany? Someone at the shop must have talked. And why the hell wasn’t he searching her? He acted like a man with a lot of things to hide, but nothing to fear.