Vengeance to the Max Read Free

beneath the bed.
    “It’s time to feel again.”
    Max had done more than enough feeling to last a lifetime.
    Outside the dawn lightened the sky from pitch black to shades of gray, the tree by her window outlined in relief. On the street, a car engine turned over, then roared to life. Max dangled her legs over the side of the bed, her bare feet touching the cold floor where the throw rug had slid away. Reaching out with her toes, she grappled it to her.
    The room was stark. She hadn’t needed much when she’d moved from the condo where she’d lived with Cameron. Taking the studio already furnished, she hadn’t added much to the contents.
    “You’ve got a bed too small for Witt to fit in—”
    “Are you trying to palm me off on another man?”
    Cameron had damn near succeeded. Witt crept into her life like a parasite she couldn’t get rid of, like Buzzard the stray who kept coming back. They now had this weird sort of symbiotic connection she craved. The most terrifying aspect of it was that she didn’t even find it all that terrifying anymore. She kind of liked having Witt around. She even liked Ladybird, his mother.
    A wave of nausea traveled through her belly. She’d thought admitting she and Witt had a relationship would mitigate the fear. She’d thought fear would be a thing of the past. Fear of losing Witt. Fear of losing Cameron. Fear of the latest damn vision.
    She stuffed down the emotions. She would stop being afraid of her own damn shadow.
    Cameron went on, listing the flaws in her life. “You’ve got some black suits for work, a couple of shirts, some shoes—”
    Again, she jumped in. “What about all those new clothes I bought?” And what about her beautiful black suede pumps with the four-inch heels? They weren’t mere shoes, they were—
    “You bought that stuff in order to draw out a killer.”
    “Not the shoes. And it doesn’t mean I’ll chuck any of it.”
    “A chest of drawers, a refrigerator,” he catalogued. “You don’t even have a DVD player.”
    “Or access to the internet,” she snapped. He made Spartan living sound like a disease.
    “But you kept the box, didn’t you?” His whisper-soft voice in her head made her chest tighten until it hurt to breathe.
    “That was the zinger you wanted to hit me with all along.”
    “Look in the box.”
    Kneeling on the floor, she lifted the bedspread. The box, a black lump in the near darkness, hid beneath the bed along with dust bunnies and musty air. Max sneezed. The bunnies made a run for the back. She touched cardboard with the tips of her nails. Drawing it to her, she got a good grip and pulled it all the way out.
    A shipping box with the label torn off, flaps folded one under the other, it smelled old and moldy, as though the bottom had gotten wet at one time.
    “Open it,” Cameron urged.
    She reached to her bedside lamp, turned it on, and looked at the box. Cameron was so good at pushing her to do what she didn’t want to do. He’d pushed her into following those visions of murder to their natural conclusion. He’d pushed her at Witt. And now this box. Was there a point in fighting him? In the end, she’d do it to shut him up.
    Pulling up one flap, the others came apart on their own. Stale air washed over her as if she’d opened long buried treasure.
    Treasure was what it held, Cameron’s favorite things, the ones she hadn’t been able throw out, sell, or give away. With a reverent hand, she held still above the first item in the box. Warmth spread across her palm, through the bones of her arm, as if a piece of Cameron had remained with his things.
    On top lay his favorite CD. Romantic music for cold and stormy nights before a fire. Johnny Desmond singing standards on his album Blue Smoke . Max had grown to love it because of the rhapsodic look it produced on his face. She’d saved it, but she hadn’t listened to it since he died.
    The CD now on her lap, she pulled out the next jewel. What else but a book, Lost