She snorted, feigning indifference. “I wouldn’t bother running from you. Tell me how you knew.”
“Why whisper, Max?” His voice dropped a seductive note—seductive to anyone but her, the only person alive who knew the full extent of his evil nature. “He is there with you, isn’t he, Max?” He moaned. “I can almost smell the cum on your breath.”
“Fuck you.” Her skin, chafed and raw from her overzealous scrubbing, flamed in the dark. This time, heart thudding against her chest, she replaced the receiver gently when she wanted to slam it down with all her might.
The phone rang again.
She snatched it up before the second ring.
“Don’t hang up on me, Max,” he said quickly. “I’ll tell you how I knew.”
She waited. The temperature in the room seemed to have dropped ten degrees. Cool air sneaked in where the blankets had pulled away when she’d rolled to answer the phone. She resisted the urge to snuggle back down into the warmth. Too intimate.
Bud gave in to her silence. “Your sunny little boss, Max.”
“Liar.” Sunny would never—
“Her charming, helpful receptionist, then. I see them as a package, Max. The buck stops with the boss, you know. I hope he spends my hundred dollars well.”
One hundred dollars? Roger, that creep. Charming, he wasn’t. Unemployed, he would be, as soon as Max told Sunny. He was going to need that hundred bucks.
Now it was back to why. “Say what you called to say or I’m hanging up and unplugging the phone.” Her back had begun to ache from the curled position over her hunched knees.
“I missed you, Max. What have you been doing? Visiting relatives, introducing the new beau, seeking approval?”
There was something new in his voice, a serious, questing note, one she’d never heard before, not from him. He’d always exercised the ultimate man-on-top tone. So what was this? Could it be jealousy? God forbid. What then? She decided to tell him the truth, at least as much as was logical. There could be no harm in that, and it might net her a few clues.
“We’re visiting Cameron’s relatives.”
“Casting off the old to bring in the new. Do I hear wedding bells in your future, Max?” The question taunted, but the tone was once again off. He wanted to appear light. He came off worried.
“Are you scared you won’t be able to get to me anymore, Bud?” He’d always claimed one day she would be his, beg to be his. “That’ll happen over my dead body.”
“Such a delightful body, too.” He blew a breath into the receiver. “I’m sorry, Max, don’t hang up.” He was mocking now.
“I won’t hang up because I want to know why you called.”
He was quiet, as if debating how to answer. She’d caught him off guard by admitting the truth, in a way daring him to admit his own truth. “You scare me when you go away, Max.”
She laughed aloud, then clamped a hand over her mouth. She cocked her head, listened to utter silence from the next room. Mustn’t wake Witt. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“When you go searching for answers, Max.”
She wriggled in the blanket, trying to pull it more tightly around her. It was no longer intimate; it was protection from him. He couldn’t know about the vision, about the missions to find Cameron’s sister. “What answers do you think I’m searching for?”
“To the past, the present, and the future, Max.”
“Oh, what an enigma you are,” she scoffed. “You tracked me down simply to let me know you could.”
He sighed, a sound of consummate pleasure. “Max, we’d be good together. You know me so well. And I know you, inside and out. Dump the detective. Give up your quest. Come home to me.”
“Since you know so much about my trip, you know I’m coming back Monday.” It stood to reason Roger had told him.
“Not come back, Max, come home. To me.”
“Dream on. Your touch makes me sick.”
“It makes you hot, Max, and you’re scared to death.”
She gave her own sigh, one of boredom. “I’ve had enough of this verbal battle. I’m tired, and I’m going back to sleep.”
“Come home before it’s too late, Max, before I have to—” He cut himself off.
“Before you have to what?”
He didn’t say. “Come home to me, Max. Last chance.”
She put her face against her knees, muffled her laughter with her blankets. The man had lost his mind this time. He’d molested his own daughter. He’d pushed her into that last risky situation, and she’d wound up dead, murdered, not by his hand, no, but Max blamed him all the same. He’d engineered his best friend’s suicide. He preyed on his godchildren. He manipulated the people in his life as if they were chess pieces. He blackmailed, he lied, he controlled. He was evil. And he actually believed his threat would scare her.
“Thank God it’s my last chance. I gladly give it up”—she clenched her teeth—“because now you’ll be out of my life.”