He looked away from her as if he’d heard someone else speaking to him. “She’s not Carson. I can’t tell her,” he said to the voice only he could hear.
“No,” he screamed. “I won’t tell her!”
“It’s okay, Max,” she urged. “You don’t have to tell me anything. Let’s just stay calm and be quiet so they won’t hear us.”
He snapped his mouth shut, surveying the room as if he fully expected to see someone else standing nearby.
“I can’t tell her,” he growled.
His arms tightened around her, and Annette felt the first glimmer of panic.
“Where’s your medicine, Max?” she asked tentatively.
He lowered his mouth close to her ear. “It’s evil. I can’t take it.”
She was going to have to disable him. There appeared no way around it.
“IWill Not Tell Her!”
Annette cringed at the words screamed so close to her ear.
When her ears had stopped ringing, she studied the man’s face. Whatever was going through his head, he was scared to death. “Max, can you show me what you’re afraid of?”
If she could distract him from the voice, that might be helpful.
He stared at her a moment, then started ushering her deeper into the shack. Bedroom. The panic bloomed larger. Images and voices from her past whispered in her whirling thoughts.
She forced the memories away. This was Max ... not her mother’s boyfriend or one of her foster fathers.
The coppery odor of blood yanked her full attention back to the moment a split second before the crimson trailing up the tousled bedcovers registered. As her sluggish brain grappled to wrap around what it all meant, her gaze locked on what was lying in the center of the bed.
Blood. Something gray or black. Long tail.
A raccoon.
Her stomach roiled. The raccoon had been mutilated. Had bled out in Max’s bed. Judging by the odor it had been there a day or two.
She swallowed back a gag. “Max, is that your raccoon?” Damn, anyone who would kill a helpless animal had to be seriously twisted.
“It was in my trash can,” a female voice announced calmly.
Before Annette could crane her neck around and see beyond Max’s shoulder, to see who’d spoken, he started to howl and cry. He pushed Annette away and ran to the corner. He huddled there with his knees to his chest, his arms wrapped around his legs.
Annette faced the woman who had appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
Patricia Drake.
The gun in her hand was the next thing Annette became aware of. Well now, this was certainly an unexpected development. The senator’s wife definitely wasn’t anyone Annette would have considered a threat.
“I couldn’t tell her!” Max cried. “She’s not Carson!”
Patricia sent a glare in the old man’s direction. “Shut up! I need to think.”
Annette mentally shook off the surprise and evaluated her situation. This woman intended to kill her. The certainty with which she understood that reality made her pulse react.
Annette’s mouth went dry.
Could Patricia Drake be responsible for Dr. Holderfield’s death? For the senator’s? Surely she wouldn’t have killed her own husband.
