“Which one did it, Max? Open your mind.” Talking things over with Cameron was as natural as breathing, now that she no longer resisted the odd circumstances or her unusual psychic talent. She drew in Cameron’s comforting peppermint scent as it wafted around her small room. He’d been chewing the candies since he quit smoking. Which only happened after his corporeal existence ended.
“But I don’t feel him inside me. Not like the others.” Not like the murdered women who’d died and gone on to possess Max. “How am I supposed to know which one murdered him without a little help from the guy’s spirit?” She bit her lip, pondering. Maybe she only received those so-called messages from women.
She rolled over. Witt’s present sat on the nightstand right next to the clock. She tried not to think about what they’d done in his truck, that overwhelming, potent orgasm. She’d always liked sex, but coming in the space of five seconds with only her nipple in his mouth and his finger on the outside of her slacks? Well, that was a first.
Cool October air blew across her face through the open window. Max lay alone in her twin-size bed, alone except for Cameron’s voice across the room. Even Buzzard the Cat, a stray that had adopted her a couple of months ago, was out prowling. She’d gotten sort of used to his warm furry body tucked against her abdomen.
She almost wished she’d asked Witt up to her room instead of waving him off to discover the facts about Lance La Russa’s murder.
“What’s so bad about not feeling our friend Lance?”
For a moment, she didn’t have a clue what Cameron was talking about.
“You’ve always hated the sensation that someone else’s spirit was inside you.”
Oh yeah. Possession. Of the spiritual variety, not the physical. She stared at Cameron’s glowing eyes in the far corner of her room. It was all she could see of him. His voice inside her head was all she could feel of him, too. Except when she closed her eyes. Then she could pretend he was lying beside her, his arms wrapped around her.
“How am I supposed to figure out what happened to him if I don’t feel his emotions or see what he sees?”
“The only reason you’ve ever felt compelled to solve a crime was when you wanted an exorcism. This time you’re free. Sounds like a blessing to me.”
The blessing was that Cameron had never left her when he died two years ago, something she didn’t want to discuss with him. Not now. Not ever. In case he decided she wouldn’t move on with her life if he didn’t leave her.
“I promised I wouldn’t leave until you’re ready.”
She’d never be ready. This attraction with Witt made Cameron’s continuing presence even more vital.
“You will be ready one day, Max.”
Ready for Cameron to leave? Or for Witt to stay?
Enough of that conversation. “Don’t you think there’ll be more dreams?” She went back to the original discussion, begging him silently to follow her there.
For his own reasons, Cameron did. “I don’t know. Tell me why this vision bothers you so much. You didn’t see or feel him dying. You didn’t even realize he was dead until you heard it on the radio.”
God, he was right. Two months ago she’d been doing everything in her power to get rid of the women possessing her. Now she was complaining that she wasn’t possessed. She’d really gone crazy this time.
“It’s the sex, isn’t it?”
“I’ve had plenty of sex dreams before.” Each of the women who had died and invaded her mind and body—there’d been three to date—had been consumed with sex.
“Didn’t it remind you of something?”
She ignored the little spike of fear his words generated. “No.”
“What about our first time?”
Damn. She shouldn’t even have thought about that. He’d plucked the image right out of her head. He had a habit of doing that when she most especially didn’t want him to. “I don’t remember.”
“You wound me.”
“All right, it was on the desk in my office when we were supposed to be doing your taxes. Satisfied?”
“I certainly was then.”
Her face colored in the dark, though why the hell she should be embarrassed with him, she hadn’t a clue.
“I made love to you on the desk, and we hadn’t even been out on a date.”
Okay, so that was a good reason for being embarrassed. Plus he was a client. “It was just sex. We barely knew each other. Do you have to rub it in?” She rolled to face the window, away from him, and pulled her legs to her chest.
“I fell in love with you that night over my deductions and your calculator.”
They’d been married six months later. So started the best five years of her life. And the prelude to the worst night, the night he was shot to death during a robbery at the corner 7-11. The night she’d watched him die. What his killers had done to her afterwards was nothing compared to that.
“Do we have to talk about this now?” She didn’t want to remember.
But Cameron was talking about something else entirely, and he wasn’t about to let her off the hook. “Did the dream bother you because it reminded you of when we first met?”
“Yes. Now can we stop?”
“Is that why you couldn’t talk about it with Witt?”