What was so wrong with not wanting to know? “It doesn’t matter anymore.” Yet the idea was like an iron band tightening across her breasts. If he had ... if she knew ... the betrayal would be too great to bear.
A break came in the traffic to the right. She yanked the wheel and pulled over, heading to an exit. She was far from home ... but she hadn’t intended to go there anyway. If she was moving, she could think. But exhaust fumes clouded her head and made her eyes ache. She flipped on the signal. One more lane change, then a quarter of a mile to the exit sign. No one would let her in. Damn, damn, damn, she pounded the steering wheel. How about some courtesy here?
“It matters, you know it matters.”
“I don’t give a fricking damn.” The words spewed out. “You’re dead. I don’t care what happened back then.” But God, she did. The 4Runner was big, four-wheel drive, the car blocking her, to the right and behind, a Honda Civic. She flexed the iron muscles of the SUV and began to pull over. A squeal of brakes, a shrieking horn. Max flipped her middle finger in the rearview mirror.
“You care. Why not admit it aloud?”
“How did we start talking about this?” She clenched her teeth.
“You brought it up.”
“Bud brought it up.”
“You can’t forget what he said. Go ahead, Max, ask me.”
She wouldn’t. “Why did I follow you to the 7-11?”
“We had a fight.”
About smoking, about adoption, about God only knew what else. She couldn’t quite remember despite how many times Cameron had made her talk about it since. “Why did I keep your clothes? As if you’d—” She stopped herself, no longer able to hear the honking of horns or the rumble of engines over the roar in her ears. But she could hear Cameron.
“As if I’d what, Max?”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “As if you’d packed a suitcase.”
“Maybe I did.”
She took a breath, tried to let it out slowly, felt the stutter of it in her throat, her chest. “Were you leaving me?”
He was silent for the longest time, long enough for her to hit the exit ramp.
Then, “Maybe I was.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Cameron hadn’t given her a real answer, only left her with more questions. Damn her own memory, too. Her amazing ability to forget had always been a blessing. Suddenly it was a curse.
He did know, Max was sure. He’d probably known all along. All that stuff he’d fed her about not remembering anything that happened before he died, it was a load of bull. He’d lied then. He was lying now.
She had to learn it all because of Bud Traynor. That was Cameron’s ultimate betrayal.
In that moment, she hated her dead husband with a passion equaling that with which she’d loved him. Hate ate the lining of her stomach, burned in her chest, and squeezed her heart until she felt her eyes would bleed with the pressure.
He’d been leaving her that night. Socks, underwear, shirts. What the hell else was in that damn box she kept? Kept for nothing. Kept to mourn a man who’d been walking out on her.
It was stupid, but her hands were driving, not her head. She ended up cruising her own street looking for Witt’s truck, or a police car, even an unmarked vehicle like the detectives drove, like Witt drove when he was a cop, before she got him thrown out.
The road was empty of suspicious cars. No blue Cameros driven by overzealous, hungry reporters either. She parked the Toyota two doors down. If Witt did come, he wouldn’t know she’d beaten him there as long as she left the lights off.
Alone, in the dark, she’d plot Bud’s demise. Something tactile, something vicious, something bloody. The adrenaline rush shot her body into overdrive. God, what was happening to her?
She kept to the shadows, her grip so tight around her keys, the tines jabbed her flesh. Exposed in the porch light, she unlocked the door, then made the long climb up her short flight of stairs. With Buzzard obviously out prowling, the apartment screamed with silence. The moon, knifing through elm leaves, provided the only light by which to see.
Her nose prickled with Bud’s cologne, as if she’d carried it in her membranes. Damn, his scent still violated her room just as he’d violated her visions, her memories, and her life.
She needed a gun.
Witt had a gun.
“Why don’t you have sex, then steal it while he’s sleeping?”
She swallowed a screech. The end justifies the means.
“I thought you’d like my idea.” How could a ghost sneer?
She was out of options. Witt would get over it. He’d understand why she had to do it.
“Soon you’ll be judging every relationship by what you get out of it. Like Bud.”
Blood-red rage clenched her fists. “I’m not like him.”
“You will be.”
“Fuck you.” She wasn’t like Bud. She never would be. She’d be saving all the other sorry souls before he destroyed them.
“That’s what I said when I got that gun.”
She took a mental step back. “You were going to kill him. That’s why you had a gun with no serial numbers.”