Read Online Desperate to the Max by Jasmine Haynes - Free Book Online

born with a barren soul. She’d certainly managed to have a barren life except for those few short years with Cameron.
     
    * * * * *
     
    It was quarter to eleven, and Max lay wide-eyed in her single bed. Buzzard snuggled against her side. She was a morning person, early to bed, early to rise, her bedtime no later than nine, even when she had no temp job to go to in the morning. She hated to wake later than seven. It felt like the day was half over and wasted. She liked to lay in the dark and watch the sun come up, as if with the new day came new hope. If she was disappointed that this day ended the same as the last, there was always a chance the next one might be better.
    A stereo played softly in someone else’s room, but that wasn’t what kept her up. The traffic on the nearby freeway had softened to a slow dribble. That hadn’t kept her awake either. Nor did the occasional passing car, or the screaming match next door that had just ended. Max could sleep through anything.
    Anything except Bethany Spring. Bethany had been a night owl. She’d stayed in bed until one in the afternoon, heavy drapes pulled across the bedroom windows to keep out the bright light. She didn’t start to feel alive until her phone began to ring at midnight. Midnight, when Bethany Spring turned into Cinderella.
    The Cinderella in the prurient fantasies of lonely, desperate, hungry, horny men.
    Then again, Max’s insomnia could have been caused by the three jelly donuts she’d wolfed down. They writhed in her stomach like maggots. Bad thought, it almost made her barf. She needed to barf. She’d probably feel one hell of a lot better if she did. She could stick her fingers down her throat and get rid of the squiggling donut mass ...
    Damn. Bethany again. She’d obviously been bulimic at one time or another.
    “Right, and like you never were,” Cameron scoffed out of the darkness. Apparently ghosts didn’t need sleep.
    “I was a teenager. All teenagers half-starve themselves and stick their fingers down their throats when they’ve eaten too much. I did not have an eating disorder, if that’s what you’re implying. Making yourself throw up is part of being a teenager.”
    “Was it? Did all your friends do it?”
    She didn’t recall having many friends. “Sure. We all did. I’m trying to get some sleep here, do you mind?”
    Sleep wouldn’t come even without Cameron’s voice.
    Max turned to look at the clock. Ten forty-six. About the time Bethany started thinking about running her bath, where she soaked in fragrant bubbles, then powdered, petted, and prepared herself. The time when Bethany blossomed.
    What would her callers think when she didn’t answer at midnight? Would there be one of them who never called at all, one who knew she wouldn’t answer?
    Max bolted up in bed, covers falling to her waist. Buzzard mewled and stared up at her, bleary eyed.
    Jesus. Someone should be monitoring those calls. As of right now, the police most likely didn’t have one single clue as to Bethany’s nocturnal activities. They wouldn’t even think about the phone sex angle or that maybe one of her clients had broken into her home and whacked her. Witt certainly couldn’t tell them. By the time the cops hit on that slant, they would be too late to catch the killer. If indeed the killer had found Bethany through her sexual proclivities.
    “What are you thinking, Max?” Cameron’s eyes glowed in the corner of the room like a fire-breathing dragon. The excitement was unmistakable, vibrating in his voice the way the arrival of a new case in the D.A.’s office had kept him up all night when he was alive.
    “I’m thinking of going for a drive,” she whispered.
    “You’re going to break the seal on Bethany’s front door.”
    “Back door. I don’t want to be seen.”
    “And then?”
    “Then I’m thinking that I’d recognize his voice—”
    “Achilles?”
    “Of course. If he calls tonight, that’s a good indication he wasn’t the