“Cameron taught me.” With a legal gun that time.
He handed it to her. “Don’t pull the slide until you’re close. There’s no safety, but—”
“I know, I know. There’s a little trigger inside the big trigger, and it won’t go off till you push that in.”
He regarded her, jaw flexing, and let the gun lecture go. “Do what you have to do.”
She held the instrument of Bud Traynor’s death in her hands, and all she felt was weariness. It would be over soon. That was all she had left.
Witt squeezed her hand to the point of pain. “Don’t come back to me dead.”
“I won’t.” She’d do her damnedest not to. Putting the gun back on the bed with extreme gentleness, she looked at him. “What if you need this yourself?”
“I’ve got a feeling you’re gonna need it a helluva lot more than I am.”
He cupped her cheeks and chin in his big hands, his gaze roaming her face, then lowered his mouth to hers. His kiss was sweet, savage, and reached down into her bones. The roughness of his clothing imprinted against her bare skin. Her fingers memorized the set of his shoulders, his arms.
“Get dressed.” A touch of something less than anger flared in his eyes. “I’ll drive you to your car or whatever the hell it is you’re driving.”
“What about Ladybird?”
Only his mouth moved, the planes of his face otherwise expressionless. “Call me psychic, but seems to me her emergency’s over.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Max was scared shitless. Her hands trembled on the steering wheel, and her heart quaked in her chest. Her foot moved involuntarily on and off the accelerator, making her speed as jerky as she felt. She planned to stow Witt’s gun in the waistband of her skirt and use the long black blazer to hide it. Right now, the thing lay on the seat beside her, magazine loaded but not ready to fire. Her eyes hopped between it and the freeway in front of her.
Witt had given her one of his looks when she got into Sutter’s Toyota, then he’d left her with a kiss and no words. What else was there to say? He’d said it all.
Why the hell did she have to do this on her own? Because Cameron told her to?
She should have at least asked Witt to help her wear a wire. Or back herself up with a small recorder in her pocket. Something to nail Bud with besides her word.
“A recorder or a wire isn’t going to stop him,” Cameron whispered. “This is between us. You, me, and BJ.” BJ, they were back to that. For Cameron, maybe he’d always been BJ, never Bud. “Does it matter what I call him?” Cameron said, then went on, “You’ll miss the exit.”
“No, I won’t.” She veered to the right, hitting the cloverleaf too fast. The 4Runner shimmied, then found its footing. Her Miata would take the ramp at twice the speed.
“I thought you’d left for the nether regions.” She was glad he hadn’t.
“I’d never intended for you to do this alone.”
She thanked God he hadn’t since he’d made her leave Witt behind.
“He’ll be waiting for you when you get back.”
Yes, but would he be able to touch her with the same passion after she’d killed a man?
“Trust in him,” Cameron whispered.
She did. About a lot of things. This wasn’t one of them.
The traffic was nil at half past midnight, not even a cop car. She waited for the left turn arrow. “Am I going to kill Bud?”
“Do you want to?”
She closed her eyes. “I’ve always hated those people who stand outside the prison walls and cheer when they get the news of the latest execution.”
“I sense a but.”
“God’s let me down a lot. I don’t think I can leave this one to him to take care of.”
“But you don’t relish it.”
She thought of Wendy hiding in the closet, knowing what was to come, knowing her father would torment her mind and abuse her body and make her think she liked it. She thought of the bullet hole blossoming in Cameron’s forehead. “I feel kind of sick because I do relish it.”
“The light’s turning.”
Max snapped to attention, the signal already on yellow. She punched through on the tail end, not that it made any difference. The road was empty.
Second right. First left. Right side, warehouse, driveway.
Max sailed past, noted the various cars parked along the road, and pulled over a block ahead. No Cadillacs like the one Bud drove. If Bootman was here, she wouldn’t have clue. Unless she tried a little psychic trance.
“No time,” Cameron snapped, his urgency bleeding through.
“Shouldn’t I at least know what I’m walking into?”
“You’re walking into the lion’s den. What more do you need to know?”