She felt like the idiot killer in a B-movie who kept talking until the good guy rode to the rescue. “I can’t allow you to hurt anyone else.”
With a deep breath, he puffed up his chest and rose to his full height where moments before he’d stooped, fingers extended toward his gun on the floor. His eyes shone, reflecting the beam of the flashlight still sitting on the crate. “You are my destiny, Max. You truly are. I’ve wanted you from the moment I first saw you. Perhaps subconsciously I knew you would be the mechanism of my death. Perhaps I’ve welcomed it.”
“You’re my destiny,” she whispered.
“You want me in hell, but to send me there, you have to step into it yourself.” He held out a hand. In the dim light, his gray hair turned dark, the lines of his face disappeared into shadow, and he could have been the BJ that Cameron knew almost thirty years ago. The devil that held his hand out to a family and destroyed them.
Max’s fingers numbed. Bud glanced at his watch. “You don’t have much time, Max. Dennis will be here soon. I have to be dead before he arrives. Or you’ll have to fight us both at once.”
“It’s a little after one, Bud, plenty of time.”
“Don’t dawdle, Max. Take the bull by the horns. Do it.”
His words drowned in the roar of her ears. She shook her head to clear it. The gun wavered. She trued it up. Her upper lip grew wet with the idea, the need, to shoot, shoot to kill. She’d thought about his death, dreamed about it, planned it, wanted it.
His voice went on relentlessly. “I believe in the afterlife, Max. We’ll be together. Send me there. I’ll wait for you.” He sighed, an erotic sound. “We’re so alike. You don’t even know it. But we are.”
He stroked the air with a finger. She felt it as if he’d actually stroked her breast. Moisture beaded on her brow, bled down into her eyes. She wanted to kill him, oh yes, she did, if for no other reason than to shut him up.
“I know you’re capable of pulling that trigger. I admire it. No one, not my daughter, not Cameron, no one has been capable of what you are, Max. I envy that. You could accomplish so much more than I ever will. I wish I had time to teach you what I know.”
She swallowed, his voice a refrain she couldn’t get out of her head. “I’m not like you.”
“If you aren’t now,” he whispered, “you will be after tonight, Max. First me, then Dennis. You can take us both down. It seems easy, doesn’t it?”
Easy, yes, pop off a round right at his heart. Watch the bright red blood explode. A tap of a finger, hardly any effort at all.
He took a step closer, the muzzle of the gun now inches from his chest.
Her arm shuddered. She imagined an eruption of blood spewing from his forehead. Like Cameron. Brains and tissue splattering the machinery behind him, globs dripping down the metal.
“God, I see the lust in your eyes, Max.” A mirror image shone in his. He licked his lips. “You want to kill me so badly, don’t you?” His voice mesmerized.
Yes, she wanted his death. For all the wrongs committed. She wanted him to pay, even for the things her uncle had done, for the child he’d forced her to murder when she was thirteen, for everything men like them had stolen.
Her mouth tasted of cotton wool. The swallow she took barely soothed the dry membranes of her throat. First Bud, then Bootman. She’d lie in wait, a man’s dead body at her feet, his blood and guts soaking her shoes.
“Yes, that’s it.” He read her thoughts in her eyes, on her face. “Never tell me you don’t understand me. That’s why I frighten you, Max.”
There was only him and the gun in her hand. Nothing else existed. With another small step, the gun rested against his shirt.
“Go ahead, shoot me. Seal our fates together.” He raised his arm, drew a finger down her cheek, her skin shriveling beneath the touch. “You are my reflection, Max.”
She thought of Cameron saying one day she’d turn out like Bud. She couldn’t breathe. She thought of making love with Witt that very night. Her vision dimmed. She thought of Ladybird and Horace. Her blood pounded inside her head.
Cameron wouldn’t ask for their help in a plan to murder Bud.
He would never expect her to avenge his death by committing murder. He didn’t truly believe she had anything in common with his murdering uncle.
“I’m not like you, BJ Tyler.” She wasn’t sure where the voice came from. It didn’t sound like her, yet the pain of uttering the words tore the inside of her throat.
His lips moved almost in a kiss. “Pull the trigger, Max.”
Cameron wouldn’t use Ladybird. He wouldn’t use her.
Killing Bud had never been the plan.
“I’m not like you,” she mouthed, Bud’s plan as clear as Cameron’s. Reverse psychology. “I’m not like you.” Her voice grew stronger. She knew what Bud wanted to accomplish. To force her to back down by making her realize if she killed him, she was as bad as he was. “No matter what I do, I’ll never be like you.”