Page 84 of Fortune's Ashes
There were only two items in the drawer. One was a framed photo of Adele Cunningham smiling at the camera with Max’s arm around her. The other was my hairbrush.
ChapterThirty
With shaking hands, I closed the drawer again. When I turned around, I half-expected Max to be standing in front of me with a gun in his hand but he was still in the kitchen. I could hear him bustling around, clinking cups.
I placed a hand on my stomach and briefly closed my eyes. ‘It’ll be okay, Jellybean,’ I murmured. ‘I’ve got this.’ I pulled back my shoulders and marched into Max’s kitchen. It was time to end this dance.
Max, however, had his phone glued to his ear. He was still one step ahead of me. ‘You have to help me,’ he whispered into the receiver. ‘She says she’s already killed other people and I think she’s going to hurt me. She’s got a gun. Please hurry. I don’t know what to do.’
I cleared my throat. Max jumped and spun around. ‘I have to go,’ he muttered into the phone, then he hung up and stared at me.
‘You called the police,’ I said flatly.
He gave me a panicked look but I could tell from his stance that he was anything but anxious. ‘You’ve come knocking on my door in the middle of the night. You said that you’re about to arrested for murder. You can’t blame me for being concerned. I’m sorry.’
‘You told them I have a gun.’
‘Only because I wanted them to come quickly!’ he blustered. ‘I shouldn’t have done that – I’ll tell them the truth when they get here. I’m really sorry, Emma. I don’t want to get you into trouble but I’m a bit scared of you. You said nobody else knows you’re here…’
I folded my arms. Even now, he was determined to lie his way out of this; he even sounded credible. ‘Why would you be scared of little old me, Max?’ I asked softly. ‘We know each other. I’ve seen you almost every day for the last two years. I thought we were friends.’
‘We are!’
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘We’re not. You see, I couldn’t possibly be friends with someone who stabbed a vampire and a werewolf in their sleep thirteen years ago. Someone who murdered the gremlin who’d introduced him to the vampire and threw his body down a well. Neither could I be friends with the sort of person who would kill an innocent man to frame me for his murder, firebomb a police building, tamper with a police car, assault me and pin the blame for it all on a colleague.’
We stared at each other. Behind him, the kettle rumbled as it reached boiling point, sending out clouds of steam, then it clicked off.
Max sighed and ran a hand through his hair then he shrugged. ‘It’s not my fault,’ he said simply. ‘If you hadn’t re-opened that damned cold case into Quincy Carmichael then none of this would have happened. You should have stayed away from ancient history.’
Adrenaline surged through my body. He’d admitted it. He’d admitted itall. ‘Ancient history? You murdered four people, Max.’
His face darkened. ‘I was a different person back then. I’m not like that now.’ Except, of course, he clearly was.
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why Adele and Simon? Everything else you’ve done was to cover up their murders, but why did you kill them in the first place?’
‘I’m not like that now,’ he said again.
Two could play the repetition game. ‘Why did you kill them?’
Max muttered under his breath. ‘I used to have a thing for vampires, alright? Just like you.’
I wasnothinglike him.
‘I joined Quincy’s dating agency to meet some.’ He sniffed defiantly. ‘There are more vamps than you might think who want to get involved with humans. They can feed from us and shag us – it’s win-win for them. And us. You know what it’s like, you get it.’
‘Sure,’ I lied, desperate to play for time until the police arrived as well as hear the truth, at least as far as Max believed it. ‘I completely understand.’
Relief flashed in his eyes. ‘Good. You see? We’re still friends after all.’
Uh-huh. ‘So you met Adele via Quincy?’
‘Yeah. We hit it off and we had a good thing going, but she didn’t want anyone else to know she was dating a human so she kept it quiet.’ He bared his teeth in a snarl ‘At least, that’s what Adele told me. Then I found out she didn’t want to go public because she was dating other men as well, playing me for a fool. I confronted her and it all went wrong. The werewolf she was with attacked me. I defended myself and Adele got in the way. It was an accident – I didn’tmeanto hurt her. Or the wolf. I only wanted them to know how much they’d hurt me, humiliated me. I didn’t set out to kill them. I’m not a psychopath.’
Except he'd confronted them with a knife rather than words. And the only way a human like Max could have overpowered a wolf and a vampire was if they were asleep. He’d killed them in cold blood.
‘So you’re the victim in all this?’
‘Yes!’ He peered at me. ‘Wait. You don’t believe me.’
