“Such as?” She didn’t really want to know.
He was silent a moment, his jaw shifted as he considered her. “Not yet, Max. Not now. Don’t think you’re ready.”
She laughed. It came out like a bark. “Now who’s chicken?”
“Maybe both of us.”
“I really hate it when you get all serious.” She thanked God he was chicken, because he was also right on the mark. She was definitely not ready for him. She wasn’t sure she ever would be.
She turned without going into the bedroom, padded back down the hall, and stopped just inside the living room. She felt like a school kid who’d just been asked a question by the teacher. A question she didn’t know the answer to. Her knees were weak, her chest was tight, and her fingers were starting to tingle. Plus, she still had to face what was on that stolen disk.
“Uh, what about that popcorn you were going to make?”
“Sit. Stalling won’t make it any easier.” His voice was soft, right next to her ear, sending a shower of sparks down her spine. He had seen right through her, in more ways than one.
Somewhere near the ceiling over the fireplace, Cameron laughed at her.
She settled into the corner of the couch, kicked off her tennies, and pulled her knees to her chin. Witt grabbed the remote, then sat beside her.
She looked down her nose at him. “Do you have to take your half out of the middle?”
He grinned. “My TV, my DVD player, my couch. I’ll take my half anywhere I want.” And with that he sidled inches closer and draped his arm along the back of the sofa, close enough for her to feel the warmth of his skin. “Wouldn’t be so much fun poking at you, if you weren’t so prickly all the time.”
He pointed the remote.
“Wait.”
His hand thunked to his thigh. “What’s wrong now?”
She swallowed. She could have said she had to go the bathroom. Or that she needed a glass of water. Or wanted to blow her nose. All the tactics of a little kid who didn’t want to go to bed.
Or watch a scary movie on TV.
Be a big girl, Max. It might have been Cameron. Then again, it might have been an echo of her own voice. “All right. Play it.”
He aimed. The TV came on with a soft blue glow, the machine whirred, and Tiffany Lloyd sat, bound and gagged, on a chair in a small blue room.
Max tasted the rag, oil, and gasoline, and nearly retched. She drew her heels up closer to her butt, as if that could somehow distance her from Tiffany’s sensations.
The walls behind Tiffany’s head were covered with blue fabric, circles the circumference of a water glass denting the surface. It looked like some sort of sound baffling. A naked bulb hung from the ceiling above her head. She sat on a plain wooden chair. Her feet and legs were bare. She wore the short, tight skirt and white tank she’d had on at the Round Up the night she’d died. Her hands were behind her, and the rag had been stuffed in her mouth.
Max gagged as the scent of gasoline slipped into her nostrils and the taste dripped down her throat.
Witt paused the picture. He didn’t look at her, staring instead at Tiffany frozen on the screen. Then he licked his lips, as if his mouth had gone dry. “It’s your vision, isn’t it?”
She didn’t miss that one. Vision. No problem saying the word this time. “Yes.”
He turned toward her, his blue eyes now a confused gray. “You really saw it all, didn’t you?”
She wished to God she hadn’t. “Yes.”
He hadn’t believed after all. Well, the evidence was right in front of him now.
He put his hand on her icy foot, infusing warmth back into her skin. “I’m sorry.”
It was important to make him say it out loud. “For what?”
“For not believing in you one hundred percent.”
She stared at him without saying a word. Waiting.
He gritted his teeth. “You want me on my knees, Max?”
“You’d probably put some sort of sexual connotation into it.”
He smiled. Her heart flipped over and started doing the two-step. She preferred his innuendoes to watching Tiffany. Anything but that damn video.
But he switched off the pause, forcing her attention back to the screen, her only comfort being his hand on her foot. Warm and solid. Real.
On screen, a black-gloved hand reached out to pull the rag from Tiffany’s mouth.
She was beautiful. Max wasn’t quite prepared for her impact. It was like looking in a mirror for the first time and seeing what other people saw. She’d felt Tiffany inside her, became her in the visions, had seen pictures, but she’d never looked at the other woman. Long golden hair spilled over Tiffany’s shoulders and across her full breasts. Her legs were crossed primly at the ankles, bound with cord, but her skirt rode high to reveal her thighs. Men would die for a taste of those thighs. And Tiffany knew it. Her lips, even devoid of lipstick, were full and red. Her skin was creamy, not a single blemish, and her eyelashes, long.