Free Vengeance to the Max by Jasmine Haynes

the dark.

     

     

    Chapter Seven

     

     
    Witt, ensconced before a glowing monitor in the Lines Library, typed in the names from Cameron’s yearbook. Happy as a clam, the man was at home with a computer, which made Max wonder how much time a cop spent pounding the streets for answers versus pounding the keyboard. His task, though she hadn’t specified Cameron as the organizer, was to search on every single person who signed Cameron’s book. If there was no last name, he would flip through the book and search on anyone with that first name. Should be enough to keep him busy the rest of the day.
    He’d let her sleep for a couple of hours. Despite her exhaustion, it had been more than enough. Max slept like the dead, or the deeply fulfilled. They’d shared something. She couldn’t say what, maybe didn’t want to say it. Not yet. It was enough to admit to herself that she’d shared something important with him.
    Kinky and sick are the products of a warped mind .
    What they’d done together seemed the furthest thing from sick and kinky. She’d keep telling herself that until she truly believed it heart and soul. She would believe it.
    Atta girl , Cameron whispered. Now go do the obituary thing .
    Nothing like a ghost to bring you back to earth.
    The hum of clicking keys and flipping pages filled the library. The old building had been refurbished with institutional blue-gray carpeting the color of Witt’s eyes on a bad day and rows of tables equipped with a reading light in the center. None of the lamps had bulbs. Perhaps the city had run out of money. The floor-to-ceiling book stacks, their metal as yet unscratched by careless hands, provided a sound barrier from the clicking computer keys and the soft voices of the three librarians as they answered questions.
    Max waited her turn. The library provided no card files, having replaced them with computers and lookup tables. She, therefore, had no idea where the dead newspaper files would be. She’d decided to begin the search with the date of Cameron’s yearbook and move forward. His sister had obviously been alive and well at the time her picture was taken.
    “May I help you?”
    Startled—she’d been in the midst of an almost palpable memory of Witt between her legs, one which had her panties turning embarrassingly damp—Max lurched forward when the gray-haired lady beckoned her a second time.
    “What can I do for you?” Cat’s-eye glasses with sparkles in the rims swung on a beaded chain around the woman’s neck. Her hair, the color of steel wool and appearing equally as coarse, lay in a cap of tight curls on her head. Over her breast, attached to her green dress, perched a name badge. Evelyn. An old-fashioned name. Anywhere between seventy and eighty, her face was a blanket of lines filled in with a layer of makeup. She had a tiny nose, a snub thing she pointed in Max’s direction, this time clearing her throat.
    “Uh,” Max managed, “I’m looking for old newspapers.” She gave the woman the year, watched amazed as the lined features tensed and the gaze behind the cat’s eyes turned inward.
    “What a year,” she murmured.
    In that moment, a spark of familiarity struck Max. Could it be? Could she be ... ? But no, that would be too coincidental, and there really wasn’t a trace of Cameron in that countenance. Especially with that nose.
    Max shook off the feeling. “Where can I find the old stuff?”
    The woman also seemed to do a mental shrug, focusing once again on Max, her face softening. “We’re having everything scanned so we can load it all on the server, but I’m afraid the daunting task hasn’t been completed yet. What you’re looking for is still on microfiche.” She bent her head and looked at Max over the tops of her bifocals. “If you want the Lines Gazette, that is.” As if Max might dare to ask for something else, like the Chicago Tribune or the New York Times.
    “Yes, I definitely meant the Lines Gazette.” Max’s heart