“I know you want to avenge his death, bring his killer to justice—”
She slashed her hand through the air. “I wanted to stop the killing in the first place. Why didn’t you at least let me know it might be him? I could have stayed with him, protected him.”
“I didn’t know. Not then. Not until it was too late.”
“What the hell good is it being a goddamned ghost if you can’t save people? What the hell good is it being psychic if I couldn’t help Jules?”
“You don’t make things happen, Max. You can only pick up the pieces when it’s over.”
“That’s so easy for you to say. You didn’t look in his eyes while he was alive. He was an innocent. He didn’t deserve that.”
“Then find his killer.”
“I don’t have any idea who it is.”
“Take the masks off in your dreams.”
“I can’t do that, damn it. I tried ...” She caught her breath and ratcheted down the tension. Rolling her bottom lip between her teeth, she bit down hard, then went on as if Cameron had never mentioned the masks the killers wore in Tiffany’s video, the masks Max had failed to wrench from their faces in her dream. “Seems like a really big coincidence that Jules died after Bud Traynor let me find that disk. Maybe he set it all in motion.”
Cameron said nothing.
Her heart pounded. “He did, didn’t he? After I was at his house. He had Jules killed because I got too close, and Jules knew something that pointed to Traynor. Am I right?”
The thought was untenable. It made her responsible.
The least her dead husband could do was tell her she was wrong. Quell her panic.
Still he didn’t answer.
She almost hated him then.
“I’m taking a bubble bath.” Maybe she’d drown herself, like the rat she was.
“Listen to the message first.”
Instead of fighting him, instead of screaming at him, she stabbed the button on the machine. Witt’s voice. “Call me on my cell number. I’ve got news.”
Call him. He had news. She did, too. Jules was dead, dead, dead, and it was her fault. It no longer mattered that Witt could find out the time of death. She knew it would be after midnight. She knew it would be too late to save her from culpability.
She erased the message, didn’t call him back, and ran the shower. Cameron did not ask her why she’d changed her mind and opted for a shower instead, but she smelled him as he waited outside the curtain. Lemon tea. He’d always made her lemon tea after they’d had a fight. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it only pissed her off more. Tonight, it almost brought her to her knees.
Tell me it isn’t my fault, Cameron. For once she wanted, needed him to read her mind. If he had, he didn’t answer. She hated him a little more.
Once dry, she dressed in a short black skirt and white shirt, selected a red tie from the rack and laid it across the chair.
“Where are you going?”
“Where do you think?” He knew. It was where she always went dressed like this.
“Why?”
“Because I feel like it.” She pulled a mirror from her voluminous bag and dashed her lips with crimson. Her hand shook. She hadn’t worn lipstick in weeks. She never wore makeup except on her nights out.
“You’re not going to pick up a man.”
“Is that a question or an order?” She didn’t enjoy taunting him. Not this time. She simply didn’t know any other way. If she stayed home, she’d lay on that single bed, close her eyes and see Jules. His dead eyes staring up at her.
“Getting laid isn’t the answer. It’s like a drug for you, Max, like some sexual power fix.”
She rolled her lips, then tucked her lipstick away.
“I happen to like the drug. Tonight I’m going to get fucked by a no-name man I’ll never see again. A real man.” Somehow, it just might wash away the feel of Traynor’s eyes on her last night, the glitter in their black depths. The knowing. But she’d give anything if Cameron had another answer, another way out.
“Call Witt. Tell him what happened. He’ll find a way.”
Nope, not good enough. It was too late for Witt. Way, way too late. And too frightening. She went on the attack, having no idea where the words suddenly tumbling out of her mouth came from. “My, you certainly have a lot of faith in your rival.”
“My rival?”
She knotted her tie around her neck. “Of course. Wasn’t it him I turned to this morning when I had the bad dream? And I have been having so many erotic dreams about him.”
“Do you expect me to feel jealous?”
“Are you?”
“I’m dead. I don’t feel jealousy.”
Pulling on her black blazer, she twisted the verbal knife she’d stuck in his ethereal ribs. It was better than twisting it in her own gut. “So, you don’t care if I crawl into bed with him?”
“This isn’t about sleeping with him.”
“I wasn’t going to sleep. I was going to take his huge cock in my mouth, suck him, swallow him, then spread my legs and take him inside me, fu—”