Dead to the Max (Max Starr Series, Book 1, a paranormal romance/mystery)

by Jasmine Haynes

  DEAD TO THE MAX

  BOOK ONE IN THE MAX STARR SERIES

  Jasmine Haynes

  Copyright 2010 Jasmine Haynes

  Cover design by Rae Monet Inc

  This is copyrighted material. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author. This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  Previously Published through Liquid Silver Books, 2003.

  Author Note: This book contains explicit sex

  Summary

  Thirty-something, down-on-her-luck accountant Max Starr has the unfortunate gift of being psychic, a newly-discovered wrinkle in her already messed-up life. Her husband, Cameron, is dead, killed in a botched 7-11 robbery two years ago. In her grief, Max has cut herself off from friends, moved out of her San Francisco home in favor of a studio apartment, and dumped her flourishing career as a CPA to do temp work.

  Now Max has developed an annoying penchant for attracting the spirits of murdered women. Okay, they possess her. And to exorcize them, Max must unmask their killers. But how?! By stepping into the void their deaths created, taking their jobs, befriending the loved ones they left behind. Max goes wherever she has to go and does whatever she has to do, with a lot of help from the ghost of her late husband Cameron and hunky and very enticing Detective Witt Long.

  In Dead to the Max, Book 1 in the Max Starr series, Max steps into the shoes of a murdered accountant and starts to learn that even supposedly boring accountants can have secret lives and secret desires. Max just has to hope the secrets she uncovers don’t get her killed, too.

  Dedication

  To Ole, for always believing in me

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to everyone who made Max Starr possible. Rose Lerma, Pamela Britton, Cherry Adair, and Susan Plunkett, my first critique group who lived through those early drafts and helped make the stories shine. Linda Eberharter and Mike Feury of Liquidsilverbooks, who first took a chance on Max. The LSB girls who were with me through the whole process, Jenn Mason, Terri Schaefer, Dee Knight, Cheryl Clark, and Moni Draper. And to my Aqui support group, Bella Andre, Shelley Bates, Jenny Anderson, you girls keep me sane! To Rosemary Gunn for putting together my graveyard photos into some really cool covers. Thanks to everyone else not mentioned who helped me on this long journey. And to the Max fans who emailed me to say they fell in love with Max, Witt, Cameron, and the cast of characters in the Max Starr books. I couldn’t have done it without all of you.

  Prologue

  She’d dressed in a long, black skirt and white blouse, flawlessly pressed. She was perfect. The perfect daughter, perfect wife, and perfect employee.

  Tonight she longed to be the perfect lover. They’d stolen quick, furtive moments together, but this was the first time she would have all night with her lover. Her body hummed, with anticipation, with guilt, with fear.

  She’d parked her silver Maxima in the farthest corner of the San Francisco International Airport long-term lot, then caught the shuttle bus to the terminal building. She’d done everything he asked. Except wait outside the terminal. She wasn’t supposed to pace in front of the arrivals monitor, trying to decide if she liked the anxiety, the foreboding.

  She slipped her wedding band and sapphire engagement ring into the inside pocket of her leather purse. His plane was five minutes late. Checking the arrival time for his flight one last time, she crumpled the bit of green paper with the flight information he’d given her, threw it on top of an already full trash can, then walked to the lounge area to take a seat.

  His gaze swept her as he stepped off the escalator outside security, and her heart sank to the toes of her sensible pumps. The glare he shot made her tremble. Was he pissed? Had she ruined everything?

  Two confused, blank-eyed children clung to his big hands.

  His estranged wife met them, ready to take his kids from him.

  He neither kissed nor touched the pretty, plump blonde. Her sole purpose was to pick up the children after they’d returned from a visit with his parents.

  His hands now empty and his bag slung over his shoulder, he walked several steps behind them. His wife chattered at the children and ignored him. Clusters of travelers engulfed them until they disappeared in the throng surrounding the baggage carousel.

  She lingered in the waiting area another ten minutes, then rose, dragging her leather purse up her arm to her shoulder, and headed for the front doors, a lump in her throat. Once outside, she stood at the curb for the next long-term bus. He was at the other end of the island, the way they’d arranged. His wife had unknowingly played into the scheme, telling him she’d pick up the kids but he’d have to take a taxi.

  She wondered why he and his wife still played this silly game.

  The night had cooled. Her silk blouse was thin, but the heat from rumbling buses swept beneath her skirt and set her on fire. She could feel the hot lick of his gaze as if twenty feet didn’t separate them, his anger and desire a potent combination.

  Need, hunger, dread, and excitement formed a squirming package in her stomach. Butterflies. Spontaneous combustion.

  He sat in the back of the bus, she in the front. They neither spoke nor looked at each other. The ride to long-term was the longest ten minutes she’d ever known. Finally they turned down her aisle. She couldn’t believe she was doing this, couldn’t imagine stopping it now. Wouldn’t stop it even if her life depended on it.

  She exited from the front of the shuttle, he from the rear, the overnight bag now in his hand. Pulling out her keys, she pressed the remote alarm.

  The bus pulled away. Her heart hammered.

  His bag was on the ground beside them and his hands were up her skirt before she had the car door open.

  He dragged her into the back seat. She spread her legs over him, straddling his thighs. The roof of the car scuffed her hair. Tugging on his zipper, she took him in her hand. He sucked in a breath; in the past, he’d always initiated. There wasn’t time to fish the condoms out of her purse. When she slid down onto him, he groaned, but he didn’t take his eyes off her face.

  She’d never been so wet, so vocal, or come so willingly in her life.

  Three power-thrusts later, he came.

  She screamed.

  Chapter One

  She screamed out her orgasm. Tears gummed her lashes and rolled down her cheeks. Hands circled her throat. From the floor of the car, the rumpled bit of green notepaper, the one she’d thrown away, taunted her, and the empty condom wrapper shouted her shame. How had it come to this?

  In that moment, before fear gripped her, before instinct took over, when her guilt was strongest, she welcomed Death. Welcomed it as the life was choked from her, welcomed it until her eyeballs ached and colors exploded behind her lids. Until blood from her bitten tongue leaked down her raw, bruised throat. And then her body fought for survival.

  She tore at the fingers, shrieked, twisted, kicked, scratched, and punched. And still she couldn’t drag in a breath. Terror fisted around her heart and squeezed. Fear of death. Fear of life. Fear like she’d never known. Not even the night someone put a bullet in Cameron’s head.

  Max Starr woke clawing at her throat, Cameron’s name breaking the thrall of th
e dream. Blood drummed in her ears. Her heart pounded against the wall of her chest.

  But she could breathe. Oh God, she could breathe, sweet, clean air smelling of early morning, green leaves, and hope. She was here, in her bedroom, where she belonged. Safe.

  “Are you all right?” Cameron’s voice, not spoken but inside her head, comforting, familiar, the way a dead husband’s voice should be, the only way a crazy, grieving widow should hear her husband’s ghost. But she’d have given anything to feel his arms around her right now. For real, not just in the erotic dreams he brought her.

  Sometimes fantasies weren’t enough.

  Like now, when her throat still ached. She lightly caressed the flesh, her fingers cool, her skin tender with residual effects of the nightmare.

  “It was a dream,” she murmured for both their benefits. Maybe her worst nightmare—except for that night two years ago when Cameron was killed—but still just a dream. After a deep inhale, then a long sigh, the tension dribbled out her fingertips and the soles of her feet.

  Physical, reality-based sensation returned—sheets tangled around her legs, her back stuck to the cotton. She pushed the bedclothes aside to let cool air from the open window blow across her naked body. In the elm outside her window, the stray black cat gave a pathetic mewl. She shouldn’t have fed it yesterday, but knew she’d do the same thing today. Her racing heart eased into a steady, normal beat.

  “That was a vision, Max, not a dream.” Cameron’s voice again, always with her, inside her.

  It had been his name that woke her. It wasn’t part of the dream, vision, whatever it was; his name was something she’d interjected into a reality that didn’t belong to her. Even now she sensed remnants of another’s strong emotions inextricably linked with her own.

  In the dark corner across the room, dear departed Cameron’s eyes flashed. Despite the two years since his death, those glittering points of light, all she ever really saw of him, still gave her a little jolt, part excitement, part fright. The red tip of his spectral cigarette glowed. He’d loved them when he was alive. They’d been the death of him in the end, not by cancer, but by gunshot at the corner 7-Eleven where he’d gone to buy his last pack.

  That was all Cameron was now, sparks of light the same color as his eyes, that damnable glow of his cigarette, and his voice inside her head. Nothing more.

  “Please don’t start with the psychic stuff. It’s way too early.” Max rolled over to squint at the digital clock. Five a.m. She had another hour before the alarm went off, but she knew she wouldn’t sleep again. Sitting up too quickly, she wrapped her fingers around the edge of the twin-size mattress as a wave of dizziness blurred her vision. She swept the feeling aside and stood, her legs weak beneath her.

  “Sit,” Cameron urged. “Give yourself a minute to recover.”

  “What’s there to recover from?” Her shrug belied the lingering effects of terror, shame, and resignation. “I’ve had worse nightmares.”

  But none so tangible as this, right down to the coppery taste of blood at the back of her throat. Max slipped back down on the bed, her head spinning. Such a strange sensation. She didn’t feel quite...alone in her own body.

  “That was a vision, Max.”

  No. “I’m not psychic. I prefer to be called crazy.” It was easy to say. Even flippant.

  “What about that little girl? You led the police right to her body. I think that would be construed as psychic, not crazy.”

  Damn. She’d been calming down. Sort of. Cameron’s words in her head started the anxiety all over again. “I walked by. I saw her feet in the bushes.”

  “You climbed a barbed wire fence because you thought you heard a child crying. Then you saw her feet.”

  “Climbing the fence was a short cut.” But to what? She hadn’t known then, didn’t know now. She’d simply felt a compelling urge to do it.

  “And how’d you know who killed her? You led the police right to him.”

  A trail of goose bumps raised the hair on her arms. She didn’t know how. And she didn’t want to talk about it. That was a year ago. She’d put the whole thing behind her.

  “Ever considered this has something to do with my death?” The room cooled around her, the perspiration on her skin chilling. Cameron went on. “You never had visions before I died. Now you hear me, even though no one else can." His voice gentled. "You opened a door when you couldn’t let me go, Max. It’s too late to shut it now. You heard a dead child’s cries. Now you’re seeing that woman’s last moments on earth. You know she’s dead.”

  She had two choices, make a joke or pick a fight. She chose the former. “By jove, I think you’ve got it, Watson.” She shook her finger at him, and the next joke died on her tongue. What came out was stark reality. “Watching your husband get shot by thugs, planting him in the ground, and throwing a few clods of dirt on his coffin does something to a person.”

  In fact, it drove a person crazy. That’s just what Max wanted to be. She didn’t want psychic. Crazy was better. Crazy meant that she could keep on talking to Cameron as if he were alive, that she could swear he was there in her bed every night, making love to her, filling her body full to its last empty corner. In sane moments, she craved real hands on her, but she’d never give Cameron up. Being crazy meant he was hers forever.

  She didn’t have to say any of those things aloud. He knew her thoughts, lived in her mind, her soul. He knew her.

  “What a pair we are, Max. You’re slowly dying. And I’m already dead.” He shed his tears for her in his voice, in his words, in the pitiful cry of the cat outside.

  His voice in her head was a blessing and a curse. A blessing because even in death he’d never left her, a curse because her life had stopped that night in the 7-Eleven market. She’d been there. She would never block out that memory. She would always live with it.

  She knew she had to let him go one day, yet every night she prayed he’d still be there in the morning. She couldn’t imagine what life without him would be like, didn’t want to imagine it.

  Max tested her legs, almost surprised to find that enough feeling had returned to support her.

  Grabbing her short robe from the straight-back chair beneath the window, she pulled it on, skirted the bed, and headed to the bathroom. Her studio apartment was small. With five steps, she was there.

  The interior of the bathroom was dark except for Cameron’s phosphorescence. After two years, she should have been used to the way he moved faster than her eye could follow.

  Max flipped on the light, and his glow vanished.

  Like a bad omen, a crack, running the length of the medicine cabinet mirror, bisected her face. Dark pouches clung beneath her eyes, fine red veins traced through the pale skin of her cheeks. Her dilated pupils almost obliterated the brown irises. Her dark hair stood on end. Party hair. Or fright.

  “You’ve lost more weight, Max.”

  He was right. She looked worse than if she’d pulled an all-nighter on a tricky audit. She rubbed beneath her bloodshot eye, then moved to one side of the mirror’s fissure.

  Holy hell. Long reddened furrows, just short of bleeding, stood out on the flesh of her neck. She started to shake from the inside out.

  “Cameron?”

  “Yes, my love?”

  She ran a hand down her throat, the phantom roar of jet engines in her ears. “If that dream was real”—staring at her injured throat, she realized that wasn’t such a big if—“then the woman’s body is somewhere in the long-term parking lot at San Francisco Airport.”

  * * * * *

  “I don’t know why we’re going on this wild goose chase.” Max wished she’d never mentioned the airport. The eensy-teensy bit of alarm she’d felt had faded with the morning sunlight. She’d relegated her “vision” back to the dream realm. But Cameron wouldn’t let it alone until he’d gotten her into her car.

  “Guess an eensy-teensy bit of alarm is why you wore a turtleneck on a warm day to cover the marks on your throat. Ho
w about trying the word panic?”

  Max ran a hand through her short, no-fuss hair as she took the airport exit. Okay, so she had felt a touch of panic. She was better now.

  It was early, a little after six a.m., but traffic around the airport boxed her in like peak rush hour. Two yellow taxis honked as they vied for the same spot in the right lane, and the thunder of jets overhead rattled the frame of her red Miata. Cameron had bought the convertible for her the year she’d made manager at KOD; Kirby, O’Brien, and Dakajama. The year before he died, when she was on the fast track and life was still normal. Before KOD meant Kiss of Death.

  “You have a psychic gift you can’t ignore.”

  “If anyone is psychic around here, it’s you.”

  He laughed. “I’m dead. Psychic is all that’s left. But you’re the one who hears ghosts.”

  Which was only another indication she was just plain crazy. “Well, you’re the one who acted weird right before you—”

  “Died?”

  It should have gotten easier to say it aloud, but the word still tied up her insides. “For days before, maybe even weeks, you acted strangely.”

  “I can’t remember.” According to Cameron, he couldn’t remember anything. Except that he’d died. That he’d loved her. That he still did.

  Her heart contracted with not being able to see or feel him next to her. She’d brought this uncomfortable conversation on herself. “Maybe, subconsciously, you knew something was going to happen to you.”

  “Maybe that’s why, when it finally happened, I couldn’t leave you. We’re tethered, Max. I can’t get more than twenty feet from you without feeling like I’ve ceased to exist even in this insubstantial form.”

  Max bit her lip, but the small pain didn’t cure the much larger ache of losing him. “I’m going to be late for my interview,” she muttered, hoping to end the subject she should never have brought up in the first place.