Max - Bey Deckard Page 0,23

you really angry with me, Doc?” asked Max softly.

“Yes.”

“How angry? Angry enough to fuck me again, or shall I go put on another pair of your wife’s panties?”

With a low moan, barely audible, Crane crushed his eyes closed. He was still trapped in the nightmare. After a moment he muttered: “The red ones… Go put the red ones on.”

7

Très Malade

Monday, August 15th

Crane hunched over his phone, obsessively checking and rechecking his messages and emails while Mary made herself some toast in the kitchen. He was unbearably tense—though he’d spent the previous day scrubbing and cleaning, he was paranoid that Mary would find some minute traces of the feast Max had cooked. As a precaution, he’d even taken all the evidence of Max’s presence, bagged and double-bagged, and secreted it into the bottom of a neighbour’s trash can down the block. However, he wouldn’t rest easy until the garbage was picked up the next day. And even then… Crane clenched his jaw and tried to force his mind to stop going in circles. Mary’s dress and three pairs of panties had joined the empty champagne bottle and the leftover ingredients in the trash. Ripped, stained, or both, they had been beyond saving. What would she say when she saw the dress was missing?

Crane forced himself to take a deep breath. It might be months from now—he couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn it. Yeah, plenty of time to come up with a plausible story.

“Mind if I have the rest of the coffee?” Mary asked. She stood at the counter in her nurse’s scrubs, her thick brown hair pulled back in a bun. There was a crumb on her top lip, and her big hazel-green eyes were sleepy still. They’d been together almost twenty years, married fifteen of those, and he still found her adorable. He smiled at her and shook his head.

Adorable. Honest. Sweet. Caring. Patient… so patient with him. Loving. Everything Max was not. For a second he thought about what it would be like to wrap his arms around Mary and confess everything. Tell her every sordid detail. Beg her for forgiveness. Sob in her arms.

The lump in his throat cut off his breathing and his pulse raced. No, he was too terrified, too trapped… trapped? He was only trapped by his own willingness to be a victim of Max’s fascination with him. A laugh bubbled out of Crane, and he caught it, rubbing a hand over his mouth and eyeing his wife warily as she put her plate in the sink.

“You okay, honey?” Mary asked him as she came over to ruffle his hair. “The fever hasn’t come back, has it?”

“I don’t think so,” he said in a meek voice. “Maybe?”

“I shouldn’t have left you alone for the weekend,” Mary said with a headshake. “If you were feverish enough to send me those bizarre text messages… God, I wish you’d called the hospital—”

The doorbell startled the both of them—a horrible loud buzzer that Crane had yet to replace—and they locked eyes in confusion for a moment before Mary went to go see who was at their door at quarter past seven in the morning.

What if it’s Max? Crane struggled to his feet, but as he walked towards the door, he heard a man speaking in rapid French. Mary replied with something too quick for him to understand, but she called for him a moment later. “Dennis! I need you.”

Terror sucker-punched him hard when he saw the police uniforms. He felt faint.

Mary turned to him, her brows high. “Honey, when was the last time you saw Mr. Bertrand?”

Crane broke out in a sweat as he shrugged at her.

The police officer on the left, a beefy man with a gap between his front teeth, let loose another torrent of Québecois French that went well over Crane’s head.

“S’il vous plaît… uh… lentement, s’il vous plait. Anglais?” Mary and he were from Ontario, and while she was fluent enough to get by, Crane had barely passed the French exam required by the OQLF for his license to practice in the province.

The two officers shared a look, and the skinny one on the right frowned at him.

“When did you see Monsieur Bertrand? Was it diss weekend?” he said in accented English.

“No… No, I don’t think so,” Crane replied, the blood singing in his ears. “Why? What’s happened?”

“He is… eh… missing. His… eh… belle-fille, she don’ hear from him two days. You see?”

It was like the floor dropped out from under his feet.