Nadine jumped at the sound of her voice.
“You should realize that locking you in means she intends to kill you, too.” Max didn’t care at the moment who she was. She only cared about catching Nadine off guard. That was using her wits. Divide and conquer. Nadine was the weakest member of the duo.
“You’re supposed to be unconscious.” The woman’s eyes were wide, and her fists were still raised and clenched.
“And now I’m not. She’s going to kill us both.” She was surprised at the calm in her voice, the strength.
Nadine’s hands worked spasmodically, clenching and unclenching. Across the small space, Max heard her breathe with short gasps.
“I mean, after all, she made you kill Tiffany.” Max tested, then rose to her knees and smoothed her skirt down over her butt. Nadine took no defensive posture. Her fingers clamped around the pendant at her throat. Her eyes were bright, her pupils dilated.
Max’s heart stuttered. God. There wasn’t a single doubt as to who’d wielded that baseball bat. The answer was in her gaze.
And Max was next.
Unless she did some damn fast thinking and talking. Begging. Screaming.
She was calm. On the outside. Cameron, be proud of me. “You didn’t really want to kill your sister, did you? Not at first.”
Nadine took a hitching breath and stroked her necklace. A heart-shaped locket, like the one Tiffany had worn. “I only wanted to have Jake.”
A man. So simple a reason for murder. So uncomplicated. So terrifying. Max shuddered.
Nadine looked up then. Her nostrils flared, and her eyes narrowed. “You were with Jake tonight.”
Shit. Nadine had a one-track mind. Explanations weren’t going to do a damn bit of good. Max thought fast and came up with a reasonable lie, hoping her voice didn’t shake when she told it. “Right, and I walked out because all he could talk about was Tiffany.”
“She was all he ever talked about.”
“It made me so goddamn mad,” Max pushed. “It was like I wasn’t even there, like he was dancing with her.” The ruse could go either way, save her or blow up in her face as the last seconds of her life ticked away. Max didn’t have a better idea. She was running out of time fast.
A sob. Nadine rubbed her fists against her eyes. “He never even saw me when she was around.”
“She dominated him.”
Nadine hiccupped, then swallowed her tears. “He thought she was special. She was always the special one. Never me.”
“And you wanted to be special so bad.”
“I’m special. I’m special,” Nadine chanted, and then she choked on it, burying her face in her hands.
God help her, Max was putting her life in the hands of a crazy woman. They were both insane.
She pushed to her feet. Her knees creaked and almost gave out. Her vision went out of kilter and turned everything lopsided. Her pulse roared in her ears. It took valuable seconds to clear. “So, beating your sister with a baseball bat was supposed to make you the special one?”
Shock widened Nadine’s eyes, as if she’d never actually thought about the true nature of what she’d done. “No,” she wailed. “It was only supposed to be the sex thing. A lesson.” Nadine huddled near the door.
“Oh, so you weren’t going to kill her, just let someone rape her.” Max moved two slow steps towards the bat in the corner. Use your wits. Be strong. But how long did it take to get video equipment, blue sheets, and Halloween costumes? How many more minutes or seconds did she have? God, oh God.
“I ... we wanted to show her that sex was a tool someone could just as easily use against her.”
“But she liked it, didn’t she?” Tiffany had wrested the control from Nadine’s hands, turned the lesson against her captors. Max could only pray she’d be able to do the same. Successfully. “So you killed her.”
Another sob. “I didn’t mean to.”
The woman was pathetic and driving her into the concrete floor with a hammer of guilt was the only chance Max had. “Well, you sure did a bang-up job. How did you get Jules to participate?”
Too mired in her own misery and guilt, Nadine didn’t even question the things Max knew. “Pippa told him to pick up Tiffany at the Round Up. That it was a game. That Tiffany already knew all about it. Besides, Pippa had used him to do ... things before.”
Pippa? Hell, it shouldn’t have been a surprise, not after the reference she’d overheard. Ariel had been the next intended victim. Ariel was also Miles Lamont’s intended Tiffany replacement. It all made perfect sense, Max should have seen it long before now, but she hadn’t.
“Things? Like murder?”
Nadine wagged her head. “No. Sex things. Pippa made videos of him with ... people.”