Pippa forced Jules to make sex videos? She couldn’t think about that now. Later. If she got out of here.
First, she had to deal with Pippa on her own territory. Calm down. Her heart pumped too fast. Be strong. Her legs threatened to give out beneath her. Pippa Louise Lamont was no pushover. She was no Nadine. She was cold, calculating, and manipulative. Bud Traynor’s perfect stooge. Confident enough to think she was in control and evil enough to make Bud’s suggestion her own sadistically brilliant plan.
Oh God, Cameron, now what?
Too quickly, Max took three steps to the bat. Nadine didn’t notice, but everything around Max dimmed when she moved. Her legs wobbled. She stared longingly at the blurred shape of the weapon now standing less than four feet away.
Keep her talking; get to that damn bat.
“Just what kind of game did Jules think he was playing that night?”
“Tiffany used to tease him. Sometimes ... she let him watch her ... doing things. Sometimes she let him touch her.”
“She enjoyed corrupting him,” Max finished for her. “And Pippa had you kill him because he’d realized what happened that night wasn’t a game.”
“No. I’d never hurt him.” Strident. Angry. The huddled form suddenly stood straight, arms rammed down to her sides.
Panic welled up inside Max and turned her gaze red-rimmed. She’d pushed too hard, too fast, and lost the war. But she didn’t have time to find another way.
“Right, you’d never hurt him. But you beat your sister to death with a baseball bat.” Another step. She now stood between the bat and Nadine. Max pointed to it. “And that’s the bat, isn’t it?”
Nadine’s eyes went wide and wild. She crumpled, fell against the door, and slid down until her knees hit her chest and her butt slammed the floor. Fresh tears streaked down her cheeks. She sobbed. Her breath came in gasps. “I ... I ...”
“If you didn’t kill Jules, then Pippa did. And when she’s done with me, she’s going to kill you. You know that, don’t you?” Push, push, push, she had no time, no other ideas.
“What does it matter?” the woman sobbed against her knees, her fingers manipulating the necklace at her throat like a rosary.
It mattered a helluva lot, because Max didn’t want to die. Not here. Not now. Not like this.
“What matters is that you’ve got a chance to have one less death on your conscience.”
Nadine sniffled, looked up with a question in her eyes.
“Mine.” Max tapped her chest. The bat was within reach. She grabbed it, felt the weight of it in her hands, knew that she could heft it and bring it down on Nadine’s head before the woman could do anything more than put her hands up to ward off its descent.
But she didn’t. Nadine was almost beaten without the final blow.
The woman’s fingers moved at her throat. Praying.
Max clutched the wooden bat to her chest. “That’s Tiffany’s locket, isn’t it?”
A sniffle. “I ... I switched them.”
Which was why the one Snake had couldn’t be linked to Tiffany. That necklace was the connection between Nadine and her sister’s murder.
“Why would you do that, Nadine?” If she could understand that, Max knew she would understand everything about the reasons Tiffany died. And the way she could save herself. She waited, holding her breath.
“I ... I don’t know.”
It wasn’t the answer she wanted. “Did you switch them before or after she was dead?”
Nadine sniffled. “After.”
“What does Tiffany’s locket say, Nadine?”
The woman had the saddest brown eyes Max had ever seen. Like a whipped puppy’s. Like Jules when Pippa yelled at him. Nadine turned the locket, held it away from her, and read the words aloud, softly, with tears in her voice. “To Daddy’s special little girl.”
Max swallowed past the knot of fear in her throat. “What did yours say?”
Nadine pulled her lower lip between her teeth. “Nothing.” A tear slipped from the corner of her eye and trailed down her cheek.
Guilt lay buried deep inside Tiffany’s sister. Wearing Tiffany’s necklace was a penance, a reminder, a talisman, and just a touch of hope for a woman-child who had never been special. Did she even know how lucky she was? Didn’t she know what happened to special little girls? What bad daddies did to their special girls? Bud Traynor’s daughter had known. Max’s gut twisted.
But she used the guilt against Nadine, kneaded it, expanded on it. “Pippa’s going to make you do it all over again, Nadine,” Max pushed, though she had no idea what Pippa had in mind. “She’s going to film my death, then she’ll either blackmail you with it, or she’ll have to kill you, too.”
She stared hard into Nadine’s brown, swimming eyes.
Max held the bat out in front of her, resting the end on the floor. Rusty brown stains covered the wood. “Can you do it again, Nadine? Can you hit me with it until I’m dead? Like you did your sister?” She bet her life the answer wasn’t yes.