CHAPTER SIX
Max snuck a glance at his passenger and wondered when he’d lost control of the situation.
Who was he kidding? He knew the catalyst of his demise was the moment he first saw Crystal and the blood rushed from his big head to his little one. Even dressed in a simple hoodie with jeans, she was as stunning as any of the beautiful models his father used to bring home.
Crystal was a manipulative, fearless, pain in the ass who refused to be swayed. For some reason, instead of being annoyed, she impressed the hell out of him. Not even his psychotic, badass voice that he used to intimidate his online gaming foes seemed to cause so much as a twitch of unease in her. She demanded to be heard and didn’t let up until she got her way. If she wasn’t careful, sooner or later her attitude was going to land her in deep shit with no way out.
Well, if she insisted on tagging along, her safety was in her own hands. He wasn’t her keeper and he had a death to avenge. He’d take whatever information she discovered. But if she fell behind, she’d stay behind.
“So,” she said with a sigh. “Are we going to leave, or are you just going to stare at the dash all day? You do have a lot of dials and switches there, so I understand if you can’t figure out how to make it start.”
He leveled his most ferocious glare at her, to which she responded with a grin that brought out the dimple in her cheek.
He snapped his teeth together and did his damnedest to ignore the alluring swirl of cinnamon heat that coiled in his belly. So that was how this was going to play out between them. He was either going to end up throttling her or seducing her.
Good times ahead.
The engine caught with a growl with a flick of his finger. The vibration shimmied along the metal frame and acted like a defibrillator that jolted his soul, reminding him that he was alive and kicking. He toggled a paddle on the steering column and let the engine rev under his foot.
Crystal watched him with an expectant glow on her cheeks. The light in her topaz-colored eyes danced as she experienced the build-up of energy with him.
It wasn’t lost on either of them that at any second he was going to let his foot off the pedal. In the span of a heartbeat they were going to begin a journey that could change their lives forever. Tighter and tighter, the tension grew like a band across their chests just waiting to snap.
Vroom. Vroom, vrooooom.
The brakes released. Tires squealed as the Beast rocketed down the road, throwing them back in their seats with the g-force.
Crystal tossed her head back and laughed. The melodic notes skipped down his neck to tickle his spine as her fingers tightened on the arm rests with a white-knuckled grip.
Max’s lips twitched at the pure joy in her laughter. Hey, a man did love to show off his car.
Sure. He was still pissed she knew all about his past. Those were his own personal demons, and if he wanted to share them with anyone, that was his prerogative.
On the other hand, the fact that she knew so much about him was kind of liberating. He didn’t have to hide who or what he was. He wouldn’t have to play nicey-nice and apologize for his behavior, because she already knew the kind of man she was traveling with. If she willingly put herself in his company, then she best be prepared to handle what he dished out. And oh, he could dish out the cold shoulder with the best of them. If only…
If only she weren’t so damn appealing.
Sleep the night before had been nonexistent as he recalled the softness of her curves when he had had her pressed against the wall. His expensive mattress was just too firm and far too empty in comparison. And those lips of hers. He bet she tasted as sweet as the cinnamon rolls she served in her shop. Yeah, sweet and sinful.
In the darkness of his room, he imagined Crystal sliding her kiss-swollen lips over his heated skin. The mental pictures had driven him to the point where he had to take himself in hand to release the pent-up desire she invoked. To see her again with a lust-addled mind would have been begging for trouble. Not only would they have never left the parking garage, he’d probably have ended up in handcuffs facing assault charges.
No, he liked to think he was more in control of his urges than some sex-crazed beast, but facing her with a clear head better suited his needs, which meant allowing his fantasies to take flight during the night and coming so hard the walls of his mountain home shook.
Unfortunately, that plan backfired. While his desires had been temporarily sated, he was left feeling empty and starving for the real thing.
He didn’t like that feeling. Wanting. Wanting led to needing, and needing led to being used.
When he was a child that lesson had been drilled into his psyche as he busted his ass trying to please others, desperate and hungry to live up to the Madden name. A near-impossible task, truth be told. As he grew older, the need for acceptance had turned into Fuck off, who needs you anyway. And when his telekinetic powers came in—screw it, it was time to shut out the world for good. He was a loner, always had been, always would be. It was who he was, and how he functioned best.
Crystal wasn’t like the other women Max had known who could be swayed with a charming smile or an expensive bit of something shiny. She was charmingly tenacious when she wanted her way, and that made her dangerous to his resolve.
This little road trip was going to remain strictly business, even if he had to strap his erection down with duct tape. They were going to find out what was in Portland, then he’d drop little Miss Hot Lips off at the airport to make her own way back to her cushy life of snickerdoodles and frothy milk. That’s all this would be. Business.
“I see you have a healthy respect for the speed limit.” She nodded at the speedometer that hovered at ninety miles per hour while they blazed down the freeway.
“If a car or a cop gets in my way, I move them.”
“Move them?”
He let the wicked curl of his smile answer for him.
“Handy little talent there.” She laughed again and relaxed in her seat.
Now that she was effectively trapped in the car, the time had come for some answers. “Tell me about your powers. Did you always have them?”
Her instant silence he expected, but he was not going to let her off easy. He’d pull over and wait her out if she refused to talk. She owed him some information in return for digging into his past.
Several long minutes passed before she took a deep breath. “When I was a kid, I was very intuitive. Like, this horrible sense of dread would come over me and I would just know in my gut when something was wrong. Or I’d know what the weather was going to be like, better than the guys on TV, and dress accordingly, or I’d know which route had the better traffic. I just knew things. But I didn’t need to be psychic to know when my dad would drink. It was all of the time, which led to him being unemployed a lot, and he would take out his anger on my mom.”
She picked at her fingernails as she spoke, her body hunched over as if to protect herself from reliving the past.
“After high school, I went to the University of Washington on scholarship. One day, in the middle of class, this feeling of anxiety came over me that was so terrible, I ran out of class and raced home. My dad was beating my mom. She had finally decided to leave him and he didn’t take too kindly to the news.
“I had barely made it through the front door when I saw him break her neck. Killed her. As her body fell to the ground, I felt it. A surge. It was like a million fireballs racing up my body, from my stomach to my brain. It hurt so bad that I thought I had been burned. I was dizzy and he just stood there and he kept yelling at me, blaming me for killing her. You see, I was the one who had convinced her to leave, and he kept screaming that he would make me pay for that.”
She took another deep breath.
“That was when I had my first real vision. I saw him beating my sister Tina, who was twelve at the time, and strangling her in front of me as my punishment. It was so vivid, so clear. I lived it, even though it hadn’t happened yet.” She paused for another breath and licked her lips. “Then he rushed at me for real. I grabbed a knife from the butcher block on the counter. He ran right into it. Nailed him right in his sternum.” Her hand floated up to rub the center of her chest in an absentminded gesture.
“Then I had another vision where I was stabbing him over and over. Blood flying everywhere. I wanted so badly to do it. Let out the nineteen years of hell he put my family through.” She chuckled with derision and shook her head. “I was so close to losing it, I had actually ripped the blade out of his chest and laughed when he screamed. I had the knife, in my hand, ready to plunge it back in, when something inside of me woke up. And I realized that to take such pleasure in his death would make me just as bad as him. So I put the knife down and the vision changed, and I saw myself and Tina at a women’s shelter. By then all of the screaming had drawn the attention of the neighbors and someone called the police.”
“What happened to him?” Max asked. Anger on her behalf roughened his voice.
“He died,” she replied, killing the plans he was already formulating for revenge if the asshole had managed to survive. “Charges weren’t brought against me. Self-defense and all that. But.” Her breath hitched. “I lost my sister. Once we made it to the shelter, she was taken and put into a foster home. Child services thought it best for her not to have any contact with me while the investigation was going on. By the time I was cleared, she had disappeared into the system.”
“They wouldn’t tell you anything? Just separated you like that?” He snapped his fingers.
“Yep. Just like that.”
“And you haven’t seen or heard from her since?”
“Nope. I had no idea what city they might have taken her to. I searched school websites for years like some sort of stalker, hoping to see a picture of a team or activity that she might have been a part of. I was never able to find her.” Her smile trembled at the corners as she turned toward him. “We’re not so different, huh?”
Max tightened his grip on the steering wheel and said nothing. He knew what she was getting at.
Mile after mile passed as memories of the night his mother died whirled in his mind. It was as if the scenery they flew by were blurred images of his past and not the endless chain of small towns along I-5.
He was old enough now to realize his mother had suffered from a depression she hid with gin and painkillers. The perfect image had come with a price. And when it came to ambition, the politician’s daughter was so far out of her wealthy and charismatic husband’s league there hadn’t been a way in hell she could’ve kept up with his demands.
To the outside world Daria Cassini Madden hadn’t a care beyond fashion or status, but Max knew different. Behind the brittleness of her smiles and the trembling of her alcohol-medicated body he saw her longing to be considered as more than a pretty face with excellent connections, no matter how blasé she had acted toward his father. She never gained the knowledge or gathered the courage to break out of the mold she had been born into. So she had drifted on a platinum cloud of privilege and ignorance with only a few glimmers of sunshine and affection she reserved for her only child on the rare occasion she was sober.
When the elder Madden had stopped hiding his affairs and had begun to bring his mistresses home, the carefully constructed shell around Daria finally crumbled.
Ten minutes. Ten minutes was all the time an eighteen-year-old Max had needed to gather the last of his remaining things from his parents’ home and move away for good from their constant arguing and his father’s continued insistence that Max work for him. As long as he was under his parents’ roof, the chance to have a life considered anything close to normal was as much of a pipedream as the US no longer being dependent on foreign oil.
What if he had gotten there sooner? What if he hadn’t made such a production out of moving out? Honestly, he didn’t think either of his parents had noticed his absence. And even now he doubted if they ever had.
It was either fate or misfortune that had the entire Madden family under the same roof at the same time that fateful night. As he had approached the second-floor landing, he had heard the sounds echoing down the marble hallway. A man grunting in a steady rhythm. The sporadic slap of leather followed by a woman’s passionate screams.
Max knew the woman was not his mother. It had been months since his parents had stopped sleeping in the same room and his mother moved to a suite closest to the stairs. Her bedroom door had been wide open. Every light in the room blazed brightly, leaving her in a spotlight, center stage.
She sat at her dressing table, or rather her body was resting on the ornately cushioned stool. Her dark hair fell in disarray around her shoulders and her skin had been scrubbed free from all makeup. Without the heavy contouring, the blank expression on her face made the hopelessness of her appearance even more frightening. The mask of Daria Madden was no more, destroyed, leaving a hollow shell. The haughty, pretentious, magnificent woman he had known but still loved was no more.
By the time Max realized what was happening, it was too late. She had lifted the gun that had been resting in her lap out of his sight, and pointed it at her temple, pulling the trigger in less than a heartbeat.
As the sound of the gunfire echoed, electricity traveled along his spine and out the tips of his fingers in a powerful current. As he ran to her, he flung out his hands, suspending her limp form in the air until he got close enough to wrap his arms around her. Blood soaked through his clothes as he rocked her back and forth, all the while screaming to the heavens.
Why had she given up? Why hadn’t he been enough to live for? The injustice of it all, the waste that she had allowed her life to become, had churned in his gut like acid, burning his insides until it boiled over with a scream of rage.
A shockwave had rippled out from him, shattering every window in the house. Mirrors exploded, the walls buckled as the floor undulated like the surf in a storm.
His powers were born.
Max swallowed hard as he blinked the road before him into focus.
Crystal had seen all of that in his memories. Seen his mother take her own life.
Just how did her powers work? Had she watched the atrocity as if it were a movie, or had she witnessed the horror through his eyes? Could she feel what he felt? Could she breathe under the crushing weight of utter helplessness that he was too late? That he was lacking?
Maybe she didn’t have to. He flicked a glance in her direction as he remembered that she too saw her mother die.
She was right. They had more in common than he thought.
“Does your sister have any powers?” he asked, bringing the subject back to her and away, far far away from him and his past.
“No. At least that I know of. When I try to read her future, or see where she might be, all I see is her becoming a teacher.” A grin stole across her lips. “For her sake I hope she doesn’t develop any. Especially the power to see the future.”
“Why not? Seeing the future must be pretty sweet.”
“You would think so,” she drawled in a way that suggested it was anything but. “Free will is a fickle bitch.”
“How so?”
“Do you think the butterfly effect only affects those who can time travel? And don’t give me that look,” she admonished when he snorted. “Time travel isn’t that far-fetched, considering what we can do. But the theory holds as true for the future as it does with the past. One change. One tiny, little, insignificant change in any person’s life can alter a vision. Then there are the times when you work your ass off to influence a different course and the result is the same. Or what if you do find a way to alter the future and something worse happens as a result? Say you see your child is playing soccer, and they’re injured during a game and become paralyzed. So to stop that, you take them out of soccer and enroll them in guitar lessons. Then one day they’re walking to their lesson and are hit by a car and killed. What if, what if, what if?” She threw her hands up then sighed, leaning her head back. “It’s the what-ifs that will keep you up at night. Trust me. It’s a whole lot easier to go through life without knowing what’s going to happen next.”
“I guess so,” he murmured, even though he wouldn’t mind having a little foresight himself. Then again, he hadn’t walked in her shoes.
They fell into a companionable silence for the rest of the journey and made excellent time as the Beast ate up the pavement like a strip of asphalt taffy. Crystal was an excellent passenger. She kept their pit stops short and asked before touching the dials on the car, as if he’d let her. When he refused to change the channel to the Broadway satellite radio station, her pout was kinda cute, not that he noticed.
They rolled into Portland just before noon, and the thrum of anticipation heightened all his senses. The sun seemed to burn brighter, turning the leaves neon green against the dark gray skyscrapers. The taste of expectation coated his tongue as smooth and sweet as chocolate. In the closed confines of the Ferrari, Crystal’s cinnamon scent heated his blood, threatening his concentration. One more reason why he had to dump her luscious ass the moment he had the chance.
“Where to?” he asked.
“Take that exit,” she directed. “Then the one after that. Turn here and park over there.”
Max pulled into a slot and turned off the car. The sudden quiet was deafening after the growl of the engine during the long trip. As his hearing returned to normal, he looked around, not understanding why exactly they were at that specific location.
Before them passed a small version of a 1950s silver passenger train. The riders in the open compartments smiled happily as they trundled by. Once the train passed, he saw through the chain link fence and trees to the other side and spotted…was that a giraffe?
“Is this a joke?” He frowned.
“We’re here,” she sang.
“Crystal, this is the zoo.”
“I know. Wow, you are as smart as they say.”
That dimpled smile of hers was really starting to piss him off.