“I don’t know.”
She ran a finger over the face so much like Cameron’s. “Her senior picture. How much older was she than you?”
“I don’t know.”
She flipped to the back of the book, looked up his grade. Cordelia would have graduated one year before him. “Were you close to her?”
He took longer to answer, his voice softer, melancholy. “I don’t know.”
Irritated with his litany of I-don’t-knows, she slammed the book shut. “You must have known I’d find the book in this box. Why can’t you remember anything else?”
“I remembered”—testiness laced his words—“because I was with you when you put it there six months after I died.”
According to him, his memory began the day he died. He only remembered things from before as she pointed them out to him. That didn’t help them now. “How the hell am I supposed to find her if you can’t remember a damn thing?”
“You’ll have to go to Lines, Michigan.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
The sun seeped into the room, leaching the glow of Cameron’s eyes with its rays. The cat rose from the bed, stretched his front paws to the sill, then squeezed through the narrow opening she’d left in the window to a branch on the elm tree. Max clutched the yearbook to her chest.
“Can’t I use the internet or something? I can go to the library. I know how to do searches.”
“Not this kind of search. It’s been twenty-eight years.”
They shouldn’t have to go back that far. “Where did she go if she wasn’t in Cincinnati with you?”
“I don’t know.”
Her blood boiled at that hated phrase.
“You need to start in the last place we know she was.” Which was in Lines, Michigan for her senior year of high school.
“I can’t afford a trip to Michigan.” Even though she had once been a CPA and a partner in an up-and-coming firm, she now did temp work as an accountant. It paid the few bills she had. Last week’s assignment ended after two days, she’d spent far too much money on those new clothes in the closet, and she needed another job ASAP to replenish. Money was also a good excuse not to go.
“Use the insurance money.”
Shit. She could not, would not, use the money from his life insurance, the blood money. “You had to die for that cash.”
“I know, and you swore you’d never use it.”
“I won’t.”
“It’s the only way you’re going to get to Michigan.”
She raised a haughty brow. “Then I won’t go.”
Dropping the book into the box and piling the rest of Cameron’s stuff on top, she shoved the whole shebang back under the bed. Climbing to her feet, she dusted off her hands, then brushed her knees clean below her sleep shirt.
His voice wrapped itself around her spine and rendered her immobile. “Do you want to live the rest of your life believing I died because you walked in on the middle of a hold up?”
Only her vocal chords moved, though even that ability shocked her. “Do you mean it was more than a robbery gone bad?”
“It was your vision, Max, only you can say. But I’d be willing to bet there’s a clue in it. Follow it. Find out where it leads.”
*
“You didn’t have to tag along, you know.”
Detective DeWitt Quentin Long propped his feet on his overnighter. “Shoulda said that before you booked the flight for both of us.”
Max squirmed. She’d squirmed for two days since the dream, two days in which to finance the trip out of the blood money fund, two days of hating the fact that she had used the tainted cash. One and a half days since she worked up the courage to speak to Witt about accompanying her to Lines. She’d been afraid he’d say no if she gave him half a chance, and equally afraid he’d say yes. But she needed someone to watch her back—why, she hadn’t been able to answer. It was just a sense. A psychic sense, Cameron said. Who better than a cop? A flesh and blood man rather than a ghost.
Due to the lateness of the hour—Max had chosen a red-eye flight—the bay was a black hole outside San Francisco International Airport. Businessmen and women dotted the waiting area. Few families had chosen to travel this late. After eating dinner in one of the airport restaurants, she and Witt had chosen seats overlooking the dark tarmac.
After a full two minutes and the announcement of their flight for boarding, Witt tacked on, “Not like I had anything to do.”
She shot a glance in his direction. Was that some sort of dig at her? His serene face and neutral blue eyes gave no hint. It was her fault he was on administrative leave, or whatever they called it when a cop is given time off “pending investigation of an officer-involved shooting.”