“Without me, Max, you lose the hope of vengeance.”
Vengeance for his daughter, Wendy, his godchild, Bethany, even his hairdresser, Tiffany, all murdered at his instigation. Vengeance for Angela, too, Angela, a pawn in another of his games. Max’s heart contracted. Vengeance for them all.
She’d find a way, but not by running home to him as if he were her lover and she frightened of losing him.
“Good-bye, Bud.” She could still hear his voice as she let the receiver drop into its cradle. The skin of her face burned, but inside, Max was frozen. She jumped from the bed and pushed the heater to eighty degrees though she was afraid she’d never be warm again.
She could wake Witt, tell him her fears, have him melt the ice from her veins. Maybe she should have.
Bud was her problem. He had been from the moment Wendy possessed Max’s body. Witt couldn’t help her. Even Cameron, who could read her mind, couldn’t fully understand her need to bring Bud down herself. Where Bud was concerned, she was alone.
Chapter Seventeen
It had snowed in earnest overnight. Two inches of the fine white stuff covered the grass, sidewalks, bare tree branches, and the roofs of cars. Snowplows had pulled out before sunup, giving clear main roads to the populace by the time Sunday church services started. Not being church-goers themselves, Max and Witt hit the road heading out of town.
It could have been the new layer of snow that prompted the excursion, could have been a need to face Cameron’s past, or it could have been a ruse to push off the confrontation with Evelyn. Yes, they had one day left before they returned to San Francisco. It didn’t matter. She had to do this. Whatever the reason, Max took Witt on a pilgrimage through the Lines winter wonderland.
“Turn left,” she directed him. The directions came from inside Max’s head, Cameron’s thoughts, she was sure, though she didn’t hear his voice. She sensed the myriad times he’d made the same left hand turn off the out-of-town highway leading to farmlands and gravel roads outside of Lines. Yeah, Cameron’s thoughts, perhaps his memories returning. They certainly weren’t hers. He’d never taken her to his hometown.
Refusing to allow a grudge to get the better of her, Max dismissed the negative judgment. “Left again.”
They’d reached the end of the short extension road that led into the neighborhood. Ahead sat a black and white split-level house, gravel drive visible beneath two sets of tire tracks obliterating the snow.
Witt made the left. Snowplows had not made it to this road yet, but he followed the track already made by other cars. The yards on Max’s right resembled those in Evelyn’s district, large, unfenced, devoid of sidewalks, oceans of snow leading through groves of trees up to wooden and brick houses. The road curved, then curved again and headed down a steep slope until it ended in an oversized cul-de-sac bordered by three houses set far apart and back from the road.
Max wondered why developers hadn’t bulldozed the houses, torn up the yards, and built a subdivision of fifteen houses on mini-lots like they did in California.
“Which one was his?”
She hadn’t told Witt the purpose of this little trek, but the man could never be called stupid. “That one.”
Witt slowed, let the car roll to a stop so they faced the house Cameron grew up in.
Lawn rising to meet the cement front porch, cut away where it sunk to the drive, the garage lay beneath the main part of the house. The structure had been built into a small hill, the basement windows at the back being above ground. Like many basement houses, one half of that lower level had been turned into a rec room.
“I hated that basement.” It was, after all, still a basement, concrete walls disguised with dark wood paneling and chest-high windows on one side. Lights were on whenever it was occupied.
“Thought you’d never been to Lines.”
“I meant Cameron hated it.” Didn’t she? His was the only voice that could have put the idea in her head, his were the only memories she could have felt right now.
“Gonna knock on the door?”
She looked out across the wide expanse of white between the houses. The lots bordered a forest, now stark and white in winter.
She pointed to the forest surrounding the cul-de-sac. “There’s a trail between the houses out into the woods.” Yes, in fact, she could make out a set of footprints leading through the snow. “It goes to a pond where we used to ice skate in the winter.”