In the silence, jumbled voices tumbled through Max’s head.
Do it, do it. She’ll never let you have Jake. She’ll take everyone and everything from you just like she always has. She’ll laugh at you. She’ll tell you all the things Jake loves to do to her. She’ll never stop, never, not until she’s dead.
She did not recognize the voice as Pippa’s, but she recognized the contempt, the quiet, manipulative tone. The power. The evil.
Do it, do it. She’ll take your husband. She’ll take the salon. She’ll take everything, and she’ll laugh at you while she does it. She’ll want you to watch. She’ll get him to ask you to watch. She’ll never stop until she’s dead.
Voices clamored inside her. She couldn’t tell male from female. She couldn’t tell when Pippa’s words became Bud’s. She couldn’t tell when Jake became Miles. She didn’t even pretend to understand it beyond the fact that Pippa’s motive had been the same as Nadine’s. Only the method had been different.
Beyond the door, footsteps grated on concrete.
Time had run out. “Nadine?” she whispered, hoping she’d said enough. Praying she hadn’t said too much.
Keys jangled over the sound of Max’s heartbeat.
“Is she still unconscious, Nadine?” Pippa’s calm voice through the door. Chills skittered down Max’s back like spiders.
Nadine swallowed and looked straight into Max’s eyes as she lied. “Yeah.”
A key scratched at the lock. Max managed to stumble to the door. The handle turned. Nadine scurried away into a corner. And Max raised the bat over her head.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Twelve hours had passed since Pippa had walked through that door, but Max still heard the thud of the baseball bat as it connected with flesh and bone. She felt it when she closed her eyes.
God.
“You’re a menace to yourself.”
Max gritted her teeth and screwed in the last bolt on her new medicine chest. Arguing with Cameron was not what she wanted to do on a Sunday afternoon. Especially not when the night before she’d been clobbered over the head, consumed endless terrifying minutes waiting to die in a cramped little wine cellar, spent half the night answering Detectives Scagliomotti and Berkowsky’s endless questions, and the other half avoiding Witt’s scowling looks. The sun was coming up when he’d brought her home.
“I’m alive. No thanks to you.”
“I sent Witt, didn’t I?”
“He got there after I’d already incapacitated Pippa.”
“You mean after you whacked her in the stomach with the baseball bat and ruptured her spleen.”
“I didn’t have much choice, considering the alternative.”
“You were damn lucky Nadine fell apart.”
“I was damn smart. At least give me some credit.” She didn’t tell Cameron she’d gotten through by imagining he’d been there with her. It would have gone to his head.
She set the screwdriver down and closed the door of the medicine cabinet. Her face in the mirror was whole and uncracked.
“You’d get some credit if you hadn’t rushed off to screw your brains out, then sicced Bubba on Witt after a disgusting display on the dance floor that had Nadine gunning for you.”
“Don’t be so crude. And how was I to know she was watching?”
“Witt ought to lock you up for your own safety.”
Cameron’s anger vibrated in the air. She could almost see him, a shimmering, undulating mass of pissed-off ghost.
“I can take care of myself, thank you very much. I’ve been doing goddamn well at it for two years now.” Which was a lie, and she knew it. She’d been floundering since that day.
He changed in the blink of an eye, as if he’d read the thought, and became a soft translucent rainbow that she would never have seen if she hadn’t been watching the metamorphosis. “I was scared shitless we wouldn’t get there in time.”
So was she. “I’m sorry.” For so many things, mostly for never insisting he quit smoking long before he went down to that 7-11.
“It was fate, my sweet.”
“Fate didn’t make me grind up your last pack in the garbage disposal.”
He laughed. “Hothead.”
She didn’t deny it. The guilt was as fresh as the day she’d flipped the switch and sealed their fates by forcing him out to the store to feed his habit.
“Being there was my fate, Max. Not your fault. If it wasn’t for a pack of cigarettes, I’d have gone into that 7-11 for something else. Everything has a purpose. Don’t scare me like that again.” His words were a soft whisper through her hair, a caress along her cheekbone, a kiss against her lips.
She confessed with her eyes closed. “I’d already decided I wasn’t going home with anyone before I even walked into the Round Up last night.” Well, she had. She just hadn’t admitted it to herself until the second she’d seen Witt. “I’ve lost my taste for it.”
“Maybe you’re healing.”
“I’d like to think of it more as growing up.” Healing made it sound like there were wounds that needed treatment.