“Let me teach you about power, Max. How to get it, how to keep it. How to bind your two lovers to you for all time. I know what you want, Max. You’re so like me we could have come from the same womb, the same egg.”
She shook her head again, more violently, the crackling now in her ears, inside her head. That kind of power over either Witt or Cameron was anathema. Her belly tossed and quivered. She wasn’t like Bud … never. Never.
“I taught Angela everything she knows, Max.”
She squirmed and wriggled, feeling the stuff finally coming loose, her arms suddenly free, then her legs.
“I taught her better than her father did. Better than your uncle taught you, Max.”
She wanted to scream, but though her mouth was suddenly freed, no sound came, no denials, nothing. She twisted and rolled from the table he had her lying on, her hip bone crunching painfully as she hit concrete.
“Let me teach you, Max, like I taught my daughter Wendy, like Bethany.” He laughed then, harsh and dark. “Like I’ll teach Julia when I’m ready. And oh, Julia needs it so.”
Max opened her eyes to bright light and Traynor standing over her. “I could teach you to bring any man to his knees. Even me. Wouldn’t it be worth it, Max?”
She jerked, almost screamed, then moved, her former bindings rustling as she pushed them aside to free herself completely.
Then she saw what it was. Videotape. Miles and miles of tape. The room was filled with it. Traynor waded through it. Before she could stand, it covered her head like water rising to drown her.
A hand reached out to grab her arm, pulling her from the morass. Her gaze traveled the arm, to the shoulder, to the face. She gulped air.
Lance La Russa stared down at her with dark, glaring eyes. His fingernails broke through the flesh where he held her. In his other fist, he clutched a wad of mangled videotape.
She clawed her way to the surface, broke through the layers of dream, then dug her fingertips into the mattress to prove she was still in her bed.
Before, after a bad dream or a vision, Cameron had always talked to her, calmed her. But now he watched in silence, his glowing eyes outside her window, like a phantom who hadn’t been invited in.
He was still pissed at what she’d done to and with Witt. Or rather, what she hadn’t done. Apologize.
But no matter how screwy her behavior, she wasn’t like Bud Traynor. The dream had been pretty self-explanatory, except for the videotape. What did it mean? She suddenly shuddered. Old videotape as a metaphor for a video camera? No, it couldn’t be. She hadn’t taken the room Angela offered. And she’d been the one to suggest Hammerhead’s car. They couldn’t have been caught on camera. No way.
She felt sick to her stomach anyway. Until she remembered Lance’s face and his tensed fist. The tape had something to do with him, she was sure. If not, he wouldn’t have appeared in the dream. Everything had meaning in one of her visions. Everything. She just had to figure it out. Lance had been imploring her to do something. Yes, that was the dream’s meaning.
Some slip of memory pressed insistently on the edges of her mind. Video. Bud. He’d said something ... something ... yes! At the Belladonna, Bud had intimated he’d captured Julia on video with him. “Something like that,” had been his exact words.
But what difference would that make to Lance? Why would it anger him? If she knew one thing about Lance, it was that he really hadn’t cared what Julia did. Certainly a video wouldn’t have led to his death.
Dammit. Why did these dreams have to be so confusing at times?
There was only one way to find out the answer. Rolling over, she eyed the luminescent clock. Three a.m.
Reaching for the phone, she stabbed in the now memorized number.
Bud answered on the first ring, as if he’d truly been a part of the dream and was waiting for her call. “Hello, Max.”
“I want that DVD.” She figured taking the offensive would best net results, as would letting him think she knew what was on it.
He sighed, a sexual sound. “Tomorrow morning. Ten o’clock. My home.”
She curled around the phone. She’d been to his house once. She’d hoped never to go again. “You meet me somewhere.”
“Now how are you going to watch it without a DVD player?”
How did he know she didn’t have one? Had he violated her sanctuary? Bastard. “I’ll watch it at Witt’s.” She liked throwing that at him.
“You don’t think I’m going to give it to you, do you, Max? If you want it, you have to watch it with me.” He paused. “Or steal it from my home like you did the last one.”
Either way, she’d have to enter his house. “I’ll bring Witt with me.”
He laughed, a cruel sound. “Do you really think he’s going to stick by you after the way you used him tonight, Max?”