Max contemplated Bud’s death. “Does it count as murder if it’s a really bad guy like ... Hitler or Castro or ... Ted Bundy?”
“You know what you have to do, my love.” Cameron’s voice was a murmur in her ear, a breath on her nape, but Bud had tainted the endearment. “Why are you trying to justify it now?”
She lost focus on the bumper in front of her, almost hit the chrome, but slammed on her brakes—Sutter’s brakes—just in time. “Why aren’t you telling me that I shouldn’t kill him?”
“Changed your mind?”
“Hey.” She pointed as if he were standing right in front of her. “I know why I think it has to be done. It’s out of character for you”—being a former prosecutor and all—“to turn vigilante.”
“Remember that dream?”
She still didn’t want to talk about it. “What dream?”
“Don’t play games. Remember the closet.”
A shiver ran through Max’s body, the proverbial walk over her grave. It hadn’t been about the closet, but about the things hidden inside it. About Wendy and her father. About ... Max’s own uncle.
“Remember the first time you had the vision?”
That vision of Wendy’s father. Bud Traynor. Oh yes, she remembered it well. Thirteen-year-old Wendy wanted the father Bud had never been. She’d wanted love. Instead she’d gotten pain, abuse, and degradation. Max could still feel first Bud’s fingers, then his penis, inside Wendy’s body, taste Wendy’s tears at the corners of her mouth, hear the horrible names he called her, as if the child were to blame for the horrific crimes of the father.
“You vowed to kill him then.”
Could it be only three months ago?
“Why are you doubting yourself now?”
Dammit, why did he always twist out of her questions? “That’s still about me, Cameron.” She stabbed her finger to her chest. “Why I want him dead. I can’t believe you want me to do it.”
“You want me to stop you, to make the decision for you, to say it’s okay if you don’t follow through.”
She puffed out a breath. “You actually want vengeance.”
“I want what you want.”
She’d say it for him. “You’re thinking about vengeance, for Cordelia, for yourself, for what he did to you.” She’d left too much room between the 4Runner and the chrome bumper in front. Mr. Nose shot over, cut her off in mid-roll, forcing her to tromp on the brakes again. “Shit.”
“I’m thinking about you and how you’re going to save your soul, set yourself free.”
Saving her soul wasn’t the issue. Meeting her destiny head on was. The whole thing made her head ache.
Maybe the whole issue was about Cameron’s freedom, not her own. Pain flared in her chest. Maybe he needed vengeance to free himself from the earthly plane she’d trapped him in.
He didn’t deny the thought
Please don’t let it be that.
All alone in that terrible silence, she realized she had nowhere to go. Odds were high Witt had staked out her apartment. If not him, plenty of other cops would have the same idea. Of course, Riley Morgan, newshound, could put in an appearance. She needed a place to lay down, a place to think, a place to formulate a plan.
“You need a gun, Max. You need Witt. Go home.”
“You know something I don’t,” she snapped. He had his own agenda. “That’s why you’re pushing me.” She didn’t trust anything she couldn’t understand, not even from Cameron. She no longer trusted him to stay with her. “You knew who Bud was that night I broke into his house.” Only a couple of months ago, that night seemed a lifetime away. “You knew what he’d done to you. That’s why you broke the glass on Evelyn’s picture. You knew.”
“It was a momentary lapse. Back then, I didn’t know why I did it.” Several times after they’d been to Bud’s house, she’d asked why Cameron had broken the picture of a woman he didn’t know. She’d assumed it was Bud’s wife. Cameron had failed to reveal the woman was also his mother’s sister. His aunt. Family.
A motorcycle whizzed down the center, making Max jump. “Don’t lie to me, Cameron.”
“Why don’t you believe me?”
Because she now remembered all the warnings he’d given, all the times he’d said he couldn’t move on until... She’d always thought the until was about her being able to let go. But maybe it had always been about Bud, about this moment, about vengeance. The traffic crept forward, an endless stream of red lights.
“Did he really have you followed?” Jesus, she wished she hadn’t asked the question.
“He said he did. That’s all I know.”
“Did he see...” She found it hard to breathe and clamped down on the words.
“You mean was I having an affair?”
“I wasn’t going to ask that.” She’d rather die than ask.
“You don’t want to know.”