Her eyes widened, spoke to him.
“People are so easily manipulated. All I needed was a little time to show you what he was. A private investigator’s report. A little nudge here. A little nod there. You would have killed him in a rage over his affairs.” The word cut like a newly sharpened knife. He knew it and enjoyed it. “So much cleaner, Max. I wouldn’t have had to keep track of those imbeciles all these years.” He tapped the gun to his own chin. “I should have killed them after the job was done.”
“Not your style,” she croaked. And Cameron’s style wasn’t affairs.
“No, I agree. And neither is this.” He pulled his head back, staring at the gun in his hand. “So messy, Max. Killing them. Planting Cameron’s things to point to you.”
Manipulation was his preferred modus operandi. But he was stuck with what he’d created. With Max in the cross hairs.
“I found the ring.” As if it made a difference now when he had her all the way.
He smiled. “Your implication being that it no longer presents you a problem. Don’t worry, Max. This new plan works so much better.” He stroked the barrel down her cheek. “I never wanted it to come to this, my darling.” He breathed deeply, orgiastically, as if she’d caressed his balls. “My God, Max, you don’t know how sorry I am to have to kill you before we can be together.”
Maybe he truly was sorry. It no longer mattered. Tonight, one of them was going to die.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Yes, tonight, one of them would die. Max didn’t intend to be the victim. She didn’t know how she’d make it happen, but tonight would be Bud’s last night on earth, not hers. “This confrontation was destined to happen the day you killed Cordelia.”
“It was night, actually.” There, Bud admitted it, before God, before Cameron who hovered somewhere close in the night.
“A pillow over her face?” she asked.
He heaved a great sigh and moisture glistened in his eyes. “The moment I saw that beautiful little girl, I knew Cordelia would never let me have her.” He tilted his head to regard Max. “Not the way I wanted her.” Max wished she’d killed him that afternoon at Belladonna’s. Her fingers ached for it. Bud went on without a care. “Cordelia was a fighter. She wasn’t like Madeline.”
“Who wouldn’t marry you but still turned a blind eye to your affair with her daughter.”
“Cordelia loved me.” He shook his head. “What do you find wrong in that?”
He was incapable of understanding. She touched the barrel of his gun as it pointed straight at her. “Now you want me to take the final step in all this by killing ... Dennis?”
His nostrils flared. His voice dropped. “Vengeance, Max. It can be yours for everything he did to you.”
“You were the one who told him to kill Cameron.”
“I didn’t tell him to rape or beat you. He did that on his own.”
Poor Bud. He believed he knew her so well, yet he didn’t have a clue. She would gladly have died that night. What Bootman had done to her had never been the worst.
A car engine roared to life, close by, right outside the door. Bud jumped, took two steps back, and turned.
Max recognized the rumble of the old Rolls. Bud didn’t. In the three seconds afforded her by his shifting attention, she pulled Witt’s gun from her pocket and aimed it at the back of Bud’s head. She could have wished for the melodramatic click of the trigger being cocked, but a Glock didn’t work that way. Instead she said, “If you don’t want me to blow your fucking head off, I suggest you bend down slowly and put your gun on the floor.”
Surprise didn’t register in his eyes as he turned. “It could be Dennis, Max. We can take him together.”
“It isn’t Dennis. Put the gun down.”
He did exactly as she said, and when it was on the floor and out of his hand, he laughed. “I don’t usually make this many stupid mistakes, Max, but you’ve nonplussed me from the beginning.”
“Bo—” she cut herself off. No need letting Bud know the ways in which Bootman had affected her. “Dennis was an instrument, Bud. You’re the scourge of the earth.”
He eyed the steadiness of the gun in her hand. “Why, Max, I do believe you intend to kill me.”
She tilted her head and imitated him. “Why yes, Bud, I believe I do.” Then she snarled. “For Cameron. For Wendy. Cordelia.” She went through the list. Bethany, Walter, Jada, and Virginia, the whole damned Spring family. And on and on. For all the ones she didn’t know about. “For Angela.”
“You were too partial to that girl, Max.”