God, he was ridiculously cute. She’d never been partial to blond hair, blue eyes, and big, big hands. Until now. Not that this was a love thing. After all, she’d known him only a few weeks, and the first week of that she’d been his prime suspect in another murder case.
It was obvious they were having some sort of Mexican stand off, and she’d have to make the first move. Max fluffed her short, dark hair in the mirror and checked that her light make-up still accentuated her brown eyes. Climbing out of her red Miata, she slammed the car door, looked both ways, then crossed the street, high heels clicking against the concrete.
She didn’t realize Witt’s mouth was hanging open until she leaned into the window of his car.
“What?” She looked down at her suit. “Have I got mustard stains or something?” Damn, she knew that pretzel-on-the-run at the mall was a bad idea.
“A new suit.” His voice was rather choked.
“Well ... yeah.” She couldn’t very well meet his mother in one of the black pantsuits she wore for work every day. This one had a skirt.
“You went shopping.” Wonder tinged the words.
“Yeah. I’m a woman. I shop.” Except that she hadn’t been shopping in almost two years, not since she quit her job as a CPA at the age of thirty and took up temping. Not since the day her husband Cameron died.
“You’re wearing that to my mother’s?” Witt was practically bug-eyed.
She stepped back, spread her arms, looked down again. “What’s wrong with my outfit?”
“Nothing.” He swallowed. “Not a damn thing.”
It was the first suit she’d bought in those same two years. The first skirt she’d worn in the same amount of time except the one she donned when she went out for a night of dancing at Billy Joe’s Western Round Up. This skirt wasn’t anywhere near that short. Well, there was that slit from mid-calf to mid-thigh. That did seem to be where his gaze was fixed.
“Didn’t know you had legs, Max,” he whispered with a note of reverence.
A tingle shot across her belly. She ignored it. The man was a liar. He’d seen her at the Round Up. Then again, he’d been a tad pissed that night, and she’d been tangled in a flock of two-steppers on the dance floor. “Detective, we’ve got work to do.”
He sighed, and pushed his door open. “Yeah. Your vision.”
God, he was tall. Even with three-inch spike heels and the fact that at five-foot-six, she wasn’t exactly petite, he still towered over her. He wore her favorite charcoal suit, black shirt, and red tie. There was something about black and red on a hunky blond cop that did her in. He smelled good, too. What was that aftershave? The scent drove her crazy. Especially when she sat in the cab of his truck. In the dark. Alone with him.
“What happened this time?”
Damn, he always interrupted when the fantasy was getting good.
She told him all, start to finish, including the phone sex, though she stopped short of any explicit details. She especially pointed out that the woman’s favorite, and definitely most important, caller was someone who called himself Achilles. Witt took the psychic vision thing much more easily than he had the last two times. Like a duck to water. Like a bird to sky. Like a homicide detective to forensic evidence. Hmm, they really had come a long way.
“Then he conked her on the head,” she finished.
Witt leaned back against the car door, crossed his arms, and lasered her with his baby blues. “He?”
“I’m assuming the murderer was the guy on the phone. Her Achilles.”
“Call could have come from anywhere in the country. Anywhere in the world, for that matter. Odds are against her killer being a guy from the sex line.”
Max remembered the elusive sound of Kitty-Kat paws, a noise that could have been soft-soled shoes, and the man’s lie about the cell phone. A little voice—maybe Cameron’s—warned her not to get too cocky about her abilities. Last time it had led to disaster. “It’s a hunch.” She closed her eyes. Tested it. “It feels right. He knew where she lived. I think he was actually in the house.”
Witt gave her that point and moved on. “When’d the murder occur?”
“I don’t know. Maybe last night.”
“Where?”
“Over there.” She pointed to the neat, blue-trimmed house beyond her car. “And Witt?”
He waited expectantly.
“The address is 452.”
Silence. He straightened away from the car. His blond brows pulled together. Finally, after an interminable minute, “Don’t do this again.”
“Don’t you see—”
“Yeah, I do.” His features hardened. “Another murder. Another victim. And that number tying them all up in a nice, neat, little package.”
“But—”