Max pulled onto her street, parked, and turned off the engine, sitting for a minute in the quiet. She had to go back until she found the answers, until she knew Angela wasn’t in danger.
“Trying to save her, Max? Since when did you decide she wasn’t Lance’s killer? Remember. She’s wearing that bracelet.”
A couple of quick questions from Cameron, then poof, he was gone again, leaving Max to wrestle with answers she didn’t have.
Climbing from the car, she whispered, “I don’t want her to be the killer.” And she truly didn’t believe Angela was. She had no motive. She’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hadn’t she?
Unlocking her front door, she stepped in and screamed.
Witt sat on the third step of her inside stairs.
“Trying to wake the neighbors?”
“I hate it when you pick my locks.” She should have argued the point last night, but he’d mussed up her thinking when he climbed into bed with her. And that whole “living on the edge of orgasm” thing had left her feeling itchy and twitchy rather than clear and sharp. She was sure seeing Bud Traynor’s number on Angela’s phone had something to do with that.
Max closed the door behind her, the cool air from outside snaking into the small hallway. Darn, Witt looked good. He’d left his jacket in his car, and the dusky outline of his nipples against the white fabric of his shirt quickened her pulse. If she’d been wearing panties, they’d be soaked. As it was, her inner thighs were sticky with his effect on her.
“Checking up on me to make sure I came home?” She tried for nonchalant, but feared her tone gave her away.
Her surveyed her with an enigmatic gaze. With only the porch light through the window on his face, she couldn’t read him. “Followed you here,” he said.
She gasped. “No way.” That would mean it had taken less than five minutes to park and break into her house. She couldn’t have been sitting in her car longer than that. “I didn’t see you.” She bit her lip. “And you left the Embassy over an hour before I did.”
“Didn’t think I’d leave you all alone with the big bad she-wolf, did ya?”
Terrifying that she actually liked his protectiveness. Shades of Angela and Hammerhead. “Angela isn’t a she-wolf.”
“She’s carnivorous.” His eyes were certainly carnivorous as they climbed from her stilettos to her legs to the short skirt.
Max crossed her arms when his gaze rose to the level of her chest. “If you believe that, why haven’t you turned her into the San Francisco PD yet? After all, she’s wanted for questioning about Lance’s murder.”
“No one knows who that witness was. After all,” he mocked her, “she was wearing a mask.”
Max didn’t like the way he threw her own phrasing back at her. She couldn’t get a lock on him, couldn’t decide if it was anger, frustration, or lack of interest that flattened his tone. “You and I both know Angela was with Lance.”
“You know that. I need hard evidence.” He widened his legs, leaned forward on his elbows, and looked up at her, undaunted by the fact that sitting on the stairs, he’d physically put himself in the one-down position. Witt would never be metaphorically one-down with anyone. “What’s she told you about La Russa?”
Max moved her shoulders, half-nervous shrug. “We haven’t gotten to that yet.”
He looked pointedly at the lighted display of his watch. “Already been four days since the murder. What’s taking ya?”
Damn, she’d been asking herself the same question. It didn’t feel any better coming from Witt. “I haven’t found a lead-in.”
He snorted. “Never needed a lead-in before.”
This time she rolled her shoulders. His eyes tracked the subtle movement of her breasts beneath the white shirt.
“I don’t believe she has a motive,” she said. “Lance was going to set her up in an apartment.”
“Maybe there’s more going on. Haven’t asked her anything important yet, have you?” he said knowingly.
“I’ve been getting under her guard.” She sounded irritatingly defensive.
“I ask again, what have you learned from her?”
“Bud Traynor knew Lance. And he paged Angela tonight while I was there.”
For a moment Witt said nothing, his hands hanging loosely between his knees, then he blinked, shifted, and moved into the shadow of her body. “Traynor knew them both.” He let out a sigh. “Ergo, Traynor’s behind the killing.”
She knew what his next words would be, the same words Cameron always used. She attacked before he got them out. “I’m not obsessed with him.”
Softly he said, “Yeah, you are,” then added after a telling pause, “and maybe you should be.”
God. He agreed with her. Would wonders never cease. “Do you know if he has an alibi?”
His lips curved in a slight smile. “Guess where he was.”
“The benefit with Julia La Russa and Baxter Newton.”
He shot her with his finger. “Bingo. You’ve done your homework,” he added, obviously assuming she’d read about Baxter’s relationship to the deceased in the paper rather than met him in person.