The truth. For one weak moment, the fear returned. She didn’t want the truth. She’d give anything not to face the truth. She reached out anyway, opened the door, and stepped into the office from her vision.
She entered the vision almost at its end, just as Lance had plunged deeply inside his lover’s body. Max prodded the dream Lance to say the woman’s name, but he was interested in only one thing. His desire and the need to control pounded through Max’s veins. He wanted, wanted everything, yet nothing was ever enough to completely satisfy his appetite. When he came, he screamed. She’d never heard a man make quite that sound. In that moment, she knew he had no power at all, he was at the woman’s mercy. The woman without a name.
The dream died.
Max tried to hold onto it, couldn’t, and instead floated back to the surface, gradually aware of Cameron’s voice. “It didn’t work. He climaxed, and it was over.” Just like a man.
Cameron laughed. “You’re so transparent.”
“Look who’s talking. I couldn’t push past it. Maybe he doesn’t remember the rest.” If indeed the vision was coming from Lance La Russa at all. “You don’t remember what happened to you the night you died. Maybe Lance doesn’t either.”
Cameron remembered nothing about the night he died. He didn’t have to. Max remembered for him. In bloody, living Technicolor.
He considered that for a moment. “Then let’s go backwards. Let’s see where they came from.”
They started over, and this time Max slipped down to the bottom of the stairs in a matter of seconds.
Of the small round tables in the hotel bar, over half were empty. The piano player tinkled out “Stardust”. He’d requested it for her because she loved the song. He wanted it to be playing when she walked in.
The moment he saw her, he knew tonight was going to be special. She took his breath away with each new moment he spent at her side. Or on top of her, beneath her, inside her. Tall, shoulders back, she was graceful in her short, velvet dress and four-inch pumps. The box she carried under her arm held his surprise. He caressed the cool metal of the bracelet in his jacket pocket, fingered the newly made key. He had his own surprise for her.
She slipped into the seat next to him and slid her hand across the front of his pants. Hard as a rock. She smiled, pleased.
“I didn’t get a room tonight,” she whispered in his ear, touching the tip of her tongue inside.
Christ, the woman could make him come just by breathing on him. Or maybe it was the notion that she had something special planned. Once she’d fucked him on a park bench while wearing an ankle-length black leather coat and nothing else. The thrill of exposure had given him premature ejaculation. She’d only laughed, driven him back to the hotel, and fucked him again.
“Don’t tell me where we’re going,” he murmured. Or what exactly she would do to him. The surprise was half the fun. He put his hand on the inside of her thigh, letting his fingers trail beneath the short skirt, stroking the soft flesh of her thigh. Once, while they sat in this very bar, she’d let him finger her until she came. He’d drank in her moans with his mouth. He still didn’t know if anyone, even the bartender serving them, saw, but he liked the idea that everyone might have known.
She slipped away from him, stood, then held out her hand. “Let’s go. Don’t keep me waiting.”
She walked fast; he kept abreast. They didn’t touch. Outside the hotel, the doorman called a cab. Feeling generous, he tipped the kid heavily.
Max lay in the bed, boneless, exhausted, and exhilarated. Oh my God, she’d done it. Unbelievable. She’d never had so much control in a vision, never felt such power. She’d actually directed it, told it where to go.
But was it real?
“What do you feel?”
She felt the rightness of it. If she went to that hotel at that same hour tonight she’d find the same valet. He’d be wearing the same green jacket that matched the green of the hotel carpet. Whether he would remember the man and woman he helped into a cab two nights ago was something else, not that it would matter. Max knew the truth of what she’d seen.
“You are amazing. Now tell me,” Cameron whispered as if he were begging her to touch him with her mouth.
“I think she works that hotel.”
“Works it?”
“As a working girl. The happy hooker.”
“Oh, Max, you do pick ‘em.”
“And behind the valet’s shoulder, the name of the hotel was written on the door in gold letters.”
“Eureka.”
“No. It was called the Embassy.” She gave a sigh heavy with contentment. “I think that’s where we’ll find her tomorrow night.”
If she wasn’t already dead.
Chapter Three
“How did you find me?”
Witt stood by the side of her car, the late afternoon sun bleaching his blond buzz cut in its bright light. “Got the address from your boss.”
Max came abreast of him, leaned with one hip against the car, and covered her eyes. “Oh God, you didn’t tell her you had to arrest me or anything?”