Kill Me Again (7 page)

“Oh.” He fell silent for a moment, trying to come up with an answer that would reassure her. This wasn't going to work if she was going to turn suspicious of him at every turn.

What wasn't going to work?
his mind asked him.
You don't even know what the hell you're doing, pal.

But he felt as if he knew
exactly
what he was doing. As if this kind of thing was second nature to him. Running, hiding, going off the radar to get his shit together. To regroup. To strategize.

He gripped the wheel a little tighter and came up with what he hoped was a reasonable answer. “You've read everything I've
published,
” he said. “I could be an aspiring thriller writer with
stacks
of unpublishable crime novels under my desk, for all you know—or for all I know.”

Her head came back around, eyes interested, brows raised, fear erased. “That's true, you might.” And then
she smiled, sighed as if in relief, and shook her head in a self-deprecating way. “That's
got
to be it. You know all of the things you do because of research you've done.”

“Or books I've read,” he said. “Maybe I'm a big thriller fan, even though I write…what would you call it? Sappy, emotional melodrama?”

“I would never call it that, and you shouldn't, either. It's not sappy. It
is
emotional, but not in that way. It's…emotional realism.”

From the back, Freddy released a loud, long snore that sounded like some cartoon sound effect more than a real dog.

“He'll sleep for at least an hour now,” she said. “Maybe more, given the tranquilizer.”

But he was still focused on the earlier conversation. “You've read
everything?
You really
are
a fan, aren't you?”

She lifted her gaze again. It was a little bit soft, as if he were seeing behind the mask she wore. “I'm more than a fan.”

Alarm bells went off. Was she an obsessed fan? A stalker type? God, that would be an added complication, wouldn't it? She didn't seem like that kind, though. “How do you mean?” he asked, his tone cautious.

She shrugged. “If you really feel the way your character Harvey does about life and love and loneliness, then I feel more like a…a kindred spirit, I guess.”

“And if I don't?”

“Then I guess I'm only a kindred spirit to Harvey.
Either way, you must understand him. Identify with him.”

“So it stands to reason I would understand and identify with you.” He nodded. “I've
got
to read some of my books.”

“I anticipated that, brought some of them along. We can take turns driving if you want to read a little.” She blinked then, as if she'd just thought of something. “You didn't forget how to drive.”

“I didn't even think about that.” He looked at his hands on the wheel and nodded. “It was kind of automatic, getting into the driver's seat. It didn't even occur to me that I might not know how.” He felt himself smiling and realized it was the first time since waking up without a past.

“Maybe everything you ever knew is still right there, inside your mind,” Olivia said. “Maybe it just hasn't quite surfaced.”

He nodded. “I hope you're right about that.”

“So…when do you think it would be safe for me to make those calls? Not that I'm asking permission, of course.”

“Of course. My
suggestion,
” he said, “would be to wait until we can pick up a new phone or two. The prepaid ones would be harder to trace.”

“So we need to stop somewhere.”

He nodded. “Once it's daylight. And only if we can get access to some cash. If we use plastic, they'll trace us.”

“Well, even I knew that much,” she said. “But I think
you might be a little overly cautious here, Aaron. It's highly unlikely anyone is even looking for us yet.”

“Oh, trust me. They're looking. Those nurses are pretty diligent about waking up patients every hour or so. Mostly to tell them to get some sleep.”

She smiled a little at that.

“Besides, we already know
someone
is looking. Maybe not the police, not yet. But my shooter's looking for me, and your housebreaker is looking for you. There's no question about that. And we don't know how sophisticated these men are—assuming they're not the same man.”

“Or how sophisticated the guys who hired them are.”

He frowned. “You think someone hired that man to break in to your house, don't you? And you have a good idea who.”

Her face went serious, and she gave a nod. “I can get us plenty of cash.”

“ATM?”

She frowned at him. “Wouldn't
they,
whoever
they
are, pick up on that faster than they would be able to track a cell phone?” she asked, and he wasn't sure if it was just him, or if she was starting to sound a little impatient. “And wouldn't it look fairly suspicious if I took a big chunk of cash out of the bank on the same night
you
went missing?”

“See? Even you've read a few thrillers.”

“I read widely. I'm an English professor, after all.”
And then the stuffy facade wavered a little. “And I watch the occasional episode of
Law and Order
.”

He glanced over at her, caught her sheepish expression as she admitted to what had to be a guilty pleasure, and for just an instant he got caught up in the way her thick black lashes framed her chocolate-brown eyes. A few crow's-feet appeared at their outer corners when she smiled, but he got the feeling she hadn't smiled a lot in her life. Then he forced his gaze back to the road, a feeling in the pit of his stomach telling him he had just been looking at the biggest potential complication of all.

She was gorgeous. And he was attracted to her. He
had
to stop letting those facts catch him by surprise.

“Once people realize that you vanished on the same night I did, there's going to be plenty of cause for suspicion, believe me,” he said, getting his head back on topic.

“Maybe not. I can be convincing on the phone, and I left a note at the house for Bryan in case he shows up and—”

He hit the brake pedal, jerked the wheel and brought the SUV to a stop on the shoulder, raising a cloud of dust behind them and sending Freddy sliding. “You left a
note?
”

Her brown eyes went slightly wider, and she clenched her jaw so tightly he thought her teeth must be grinding against each other. She nodded once, as if she'd just reached a firm decision, and closed her hand around the
door handle as if she were getting ready to calmly step from the SUV in the middle of nowhere.

He drew a slow breath. “What did you write in the note?”

“None of your business.”

“It
is
my business, since my life is on the line here, too.” But her jaw was still firm, and she wasn't meeting his eyes. Her nostrils flared just a little, and he thought of a skittish horse getting ready to run flat out. He drew a deep, slow breath, calmed his tone and spoke to her the way he imagined someone would need to speak to that horse.

“I shouldn't be snapping at you. Up to now you've helped me a lot. And I've helped
you,
too. But I need you to know that I'm scared, Olivia. I'm scared that guy who tried to kill me will find us and try again, and maybe succeed this time. And dammit, I don't know what kind of life I'd be leaving behind, but I don't think I'm ready to die before I even find out.”

Her face softened just a little. She blinked, and her hand relaxed its grip on the door. “I didn't give anything away in the note. I'm not an idiot,” she said.

“No one would mistake you for an idiot, Olivia. But…just to ease my mind, would you please tell me what you wrote? Word for word? Please?”

She blinked twice as she remembered. “I think…‘Dropping out of sight for a few days. Everything's okay. Just need some time. I'll call you in a few days.'”

He sighed, nodded and put the SUV back into gear as
he wondered if she was leaving anything out. He sensed she was. That gut instinct again. He hoped it wasn't leading him on a wild-goose chase.

“So it didn't give anything away, just like I said. No harm done.”

“Except that he'll call out the National Guard if he doesn't hear from you in a few days.”

“That was the entire point,” she said. “It's the bad guys we're running from, remember?”

He thinned his lips, realizing that kindred spirit or not, this woman didn't trust him. Maybe she didn't trust anyone.

He put the SUV into motion again. “Look, we're in this together. Could you maybe tell me what you're doing next time?”

“I'm not used to answering to anyone. I'm not sure I want to be.”

She sounded pissed off. He glanced at her and knew he'd hit on a touchy subject, having a man trying to control her. He needed to come off much less alpha male than he was currently managing. She wanted a reclusive bookworm; maybe he ought to try to give her one. “I probably overreacted,” he said. “I'm tense and frustrated, and I know you are, too. I didn't mean to scare you.”

She nodded. “Just don't let it happen again, Aaron.”

The words were delivered with a cold firmness he hadn't even glimpsed in her until then. He looked at her.

“I mean it,” she said. “I
won't
be around a violent man.”

“
Violent?
I didn't lay a hand—”

“A hot temper is a hot temper. Your reaction was violent. I do not tolerate violence in any man, Aaron. I won't.” She lowered her head, shaking it slowly. “Not ever again.”

If she'd punched him in the face, he wouldn't have felt more thoroughly put in his place—or shocked. Clearly she'd been subjected to violence at the hands of a man before. He disagreed that barking a question and bringing the SUV to a sudden halt were evidence of violence, but she clearly thought otherwise. And he felt a touch of remorse at making her think he was capable of violence, then thought that was a surprising thing for him to feel.

She was as flighty as a hunted animal—admittedly with good reason. But she had a core in her that had to be solid steel. He'd seen it in her eyes just then.

“I won't let it happen again,” he said.

She nodded. “If you do, it'll be the last conversation we ever have.”

After several minutes of driving in silence, he decided he didn't like the tension that had sprouted between them. It was of no use to him. In fact, it would work against him. He had to put her at ease again. He decided to try to divert her attention to a different subject.

“So if you're not going to an ATM, where is this cash coming from?”

“I have an…emergency fund.”

He thinned his lips. “Now you sound like the one with an uncanny knowledge of how to disappear.”

She shrugged but didn't explain why she had such a fund, or why she didn't keep it at home, which made him even more curious.

“I have a safe-deposit box in Burlington,” she said. “It's an hour from here. Take the next right, then get on the highway.”

“All right.”

“And now that you've pissed me off, I'll add that if you want to stop me from calling Carrie Overton, you're going to have to use that gun you took from my attacker.”

He shot her a look, blinking.

“Besides, if you think they're not going to call Carrie when they find you missing from the hospital, you'd better think again. At the very least, she'll be talking to Bryan the minute she gets to work in the morning, and believe me, Carrie Overton's workday begins way earlier than we can get into a bank, empty my safe-deposit box and go buy prepaid cell phones.”

He kept on driving, trying not to show his surprise.

“She'll tell them I've got Professor Mallory's car, Aaron. Unless I talk to her first.”

Dammit, she was right.

At length he glanced her way, gave her a nod. “It shouldn't matter. We haven't gone very far yet, anyway. Go ahead and leave her a message. Keep it short, and turn the phone off after you finish, okay? Please?”

She nodded once, then dialed as he drove, and he thought again that there was a lot more to this woman than he had first imagined. She might look like a mild-mannered English teacher with a boring life and a dog as her closest companion. An introverted, probably repressed woman who kept the world at bay and her hair in a tight bun.

But all of that had peeled back a little further just now, and he'd glimpsed a frightened tigress hiding underneath, crouched and ready to spring. He'd unintentionally poked that cat with a stick and gotten a taste of her temper for his trouble. If cornered, he thought, she would come at him with claws and teeth bared, fan of his alleged work or not.

He wasn't worried that she posed any real threat to him. But he knew for sure it would be easier to deal with the bookworm than the beast, so he intended to do whatever was necessary to ensure that the beast stayed caged.

P
olice Officer Bryan Kendall arrived at Shadow Falls General Hospital at 3:32 a.m. It had been three quarters of an hour since a nurse had phoned him at home, waking him from a restless sleep to tell him that the mystery patient had vanished from his bed.

He went straight to the nurses' desk, where a blonde who looked too young to be in charge of much of anything greeted him. Her tag read Kathy Curry, R.N.

“Officer Kendall,” she said. “I'm sorry to wake you at home, but I was told to call you directly if anything happened.”

“That's what I asked for,” he said. “And fortunately, my fiancée is very understanding. So what happened?”

“We don't know. I checked him at two, and everything was fine, but—”

“You personally?” he interjected.

“Yes. I've been the only one taking care of him this shift. But when I went in to get his 3:00 a.m. vitals, he was…gone.”

“Has someone searched the hospital?”

“Security has been all through the place. Still checking, but so far there's no sign of him.” She came around the desk and walked briskly toward the missing patient's room, leaving Bryan to try to keep up. Nurses, he thought. They walked like they were doing time trials for the Indy 500 or something.

He caught up to her at the door, and they both went inside. Bryan took a quick look around. “Did anyone report seeing anything suspicious? Did he have any visitors?”

“No, Officer Kendall, nothing like that.”

“Did they check the parking lot?”

She nodded.

“Has Dr. Overton been notified?”

“Not yet. I thought I should talk to you before deciding whether to wake her.”

“Okay. Look, I want this room closed off. No one in or out until I get a forensics team in to go over it. Got that?”

She nodded.

He pulled out his cell phone, then paused. “Is it okay to use this in here?”

“Yeah. The cell companies finally made it into the twenty-first century. Cell phones don't interfere with pacemakers anymore.”

“Took them long enough.” He put in a call, waking Chief MacNamara, though he hated to. The man was a bear when he didn't get enough sleep.

“Kendall,” the chief growled when he picked up. “What?”

“Sorry, Chief. I'm at the hospital. Our shooting victim has vanished. I figured you'd be madder if I didn't call than if I did.”

“Hmmph. You figured right. So did he leave on his own, or was he taken?”

It was the first question Bryan had asked himself, as well. “I don't know for sure, but it looks like he left on his own. No one saw anyone hanging around his room. No visitors since the professor left him. His clothes are still in the closet. Shoes are missing, though. Window's locked from the inside. Hospital's being searched, but so far, no sign of him.”

“You get a positive ID on him yet?”

“I have a call in to the publisher, but it's the weekend. Doubt I'll hear back until Monday.”

The chief sighed. “What's your plan, Kendall?”

“Get some guys out here to dust the room for prints, check for traces of blood, gunpowder residue.”

“It's a hospital room. There'll be prints everywhere. Traces of blood, too.”

“They keep them pretty clean, Chief.”

“Still…”

“They're going to close off the room until we clear it. Meanwhile, I want to head out to Olivia Dupree's place.”

“Why?”

“Because she's the only person we know of with any
connection to him, and the last visitor he had before he vanished.”

“A damn flimsy connection,” Chief Mac replied.

“But the only one we have.”

With a slow sigh, the chief said, “Okay, go ahead. Order a team to go over the room, and check with Dupree personally. Keep me posted.”

“Done.” Bryan disconnected and clipped the phone to his belt, then turned to Nurse Kathy, but she'd vanished. Heading into the hallway, he met her coming toward him, her steps rapid and silent, her hands bearing a large manila envelope.

He pulled the door closed, touching the edge of the wood, not the knob. “Put up a sign or something until I can get a team in there, okay?”

She nodded. “I thought you might be able to use this,” she said, holding the envelope a little higher.

“What is it?”

“His head shot. Come with me.”

He followed her into an empty room, and she pulled the X-ray from the envelope and slapped it onto a panel on the wall, then flipped a switch to turn on the backlight.

“How's this going to help?” he asked with a frown, staring at the illuminated human skull.

“The steel plate. You can see the serial number. Right here,” she said, pointing it out for his untrained eye. “And…?”

“It'll be in a database. We can get a positive identification with this.”

He lifted his brows and took a second look at the nurse, his opinion of her rising. She might be young and pretty, and she might walk as if her feet were on fire, but she was sharp, too. Smart, quick, efficient. Probably all good qualities in an R.N. He squinted at the numbers, which were so blurry he could barely make them out, then looked at her again. “Is there a way to enhance this?”

“Not here. But maybe you have something in your…crime lab, or its Shadow Falls equivalent.”

“There is no Shadow Falls equivalent. But I can send it out. Can I keep this?”

“Yes. In fact, I made this copy for you.” She took the X-ray down, slid it back into its envelope and handed it to him. “Should I call Dr. Overton?”

He shook his head. “Why wake her? There's not a damn thing she can do here that can't wait a few more hours. I'll be in touch. Thanks for this. You've been a big help.”

“You're welcome.”

“Remember, we're still keeping this quiet.”

“It won't stay quiet for long. Not with a forensics squad dusting the room for prints,” she said.

He sighed, lowered his head. “As quiet as possible, then.”

She made a zipping motion across her lips.

Bryan tucked the envelope under his arm and headed for the elevators.

He drove straight out to Olivia Dupree's place. The house was dark, and the doors were locked up tight. Her car was in the garage. Nothing looked out of place or suspicious. And he hated to wake her in the dead of night, but he was worried. Olivia had a past she'd been dodging for sixteen years. He and his fiancée, Dawn, were the only people in this town who knew the truth about that past and the dangers it posed to her present—hell, to her
life
—if it ever became common knowledge.

And no one knew for sure who this missing patient was. Admittedly, it looked as if he was probably the reclusive author Olivia had been expecting. But Bryan didn't think authors were generally targeted by professional killers. Better to wake Olivia for nothing and be safe than wait for morning and be sorry, he thought.

Besides, she would want to know the guy was missing.

He went to the front door, rang the bell and waited. When there was no response, he rang it again. After the third try, he started getting that feeling he got when something was wrong. Even if Olivia were out cold, Freddy would have been at the door the second he heard the chimes. So he tugged his cell phone off his belt and dialed her number.

He couldn't hear the telephone ringing beyond the front door. No ringing. Nothing.

He now had probable cause to think she might be in
danger. And he didn't think Olivia was likely to mind too much, anyway, if he went inside uninvited. He went around back, through the gate into the fenced-in yard, and then crossed the deck to the French doors in back. Much easier to break in that way.

It took some doing, but he managed to break the security latch on the dog door, and then he crawled inside.

“Olivia?” he called. “Olivia, it's Bryan!”

No answer.

“Freddy! Freddy, come here, boy!”

Nothing. No heavy paws tromping toward him. Not even a plaintive whine or playful snort.

He went through the house quickly, his heart in his throat as he entered her bedroom, praying he wasn't going to find her body lying on the mattress. Echoes of ghosts past whispered up and down his spine as he scanned the room.

His prayers were answered. No body in the bed. Olivia wasn't there. She wasn't anywhere.

Returning to the kitchen, he resecured the dog door from inside, then went to the living room, so he could leave through the front and lock up behind him. But he paused when he saw the note on the coffee table, held in place by a clear acrylic paperweight with a sunflower inside it. He read it, but it only worried him more. A few days away. Past catching up with her. It was worded so that he would know what she was talking about but no one else would. Not unless they knew the entire story.
She wouldn't have written it that way if she'd been forced to leave a note. At least, he hoped not.

Still, this wasn't feeling good at all. “Where the hell are you, Olivia?”

 

Olivia directed Aaron to the First Community Bank of Burlington, Vermont, and he pulled into the parking lot in the rear, found a spot and killed the engine. She dug through her handbag to find the safe-deposit key, then turned in her seat to stroke Freddy, promising to come back soon. She didn't even object when Aaron got out of the car and walked with her.

They followed a well-kept sidewalk around to the front of the brown brick building. The bank was surrounded by yellow-and-gold floral explosions. Marigolds, daisies and other flowers she couldn't name blossomed in abundance, and she felt the same twinge she always felt upon seeing a beautiful garden. Jealousy. She'd always wished she could have a green thumb. For her, plants tended to just…die.

Aaron opened the heavy glass door and held it for her. She went inside and up to the counter. The bank had only just opened for the day. To kill time before it did, the two of them had pulled onto the shoulder of a secluded side road and taken a nap right in their seats, then driven on to the city. And, she thought, she used the term
city
loosely.

She hadn't expected to be able to sleep when they stopped, and she'd been right. She'd drifted off a few
times, only to wake with a gasp and a start within a few minutes. She guessed her adrenal glands were still pumping that fight-or-flight response through her veins. She'd taken pity on her poor canine, since she couldn't sleep anyway, and let him get out and romp in a nearby meadow while she sat in the tall grass and watched him. After a while she'd joined him in his running and jumping. She found a good-size branch on the ground and threw it to give him something to chase and shake and, eventually, chew into smaller pieces.

Freddy had still been restless in the SUV, even after an hour's playtime. Which Aaron had slept straight through, she'd noted. He'd been through a lot, probably needed the rest.

Now, at the bank, Olivia felt sorry for leaving Freddy in the SUV again so soon and vowed not to take too long.

A smiling woman at the counter greeted her with an overly cheerful, “Good morning! How can I help you today?”

“I need to get some things from my safe-deposit box,” Olivia said. Then she wondered if she looked as grouchy as she sounded, and tried to paste a semipleasant expression on her face.

“Number?”

“Three-seventy-two.”

The woman vanished from behind the counter, then reappeared a moment later and opened a half door, motioning Olivia to follow her.

Olivia went through the door, Aaron following her. She'd wondered if he would. They accompanied the teller into a room with a wall of locked drawers, a table and a couple of chairs. Olivia inserted her key into her box.

The teller inserted her own key into the second slot, then pulled the box partway out. “There are complimentary sacks on the wall there.” She nodded at a hook on the wall, where plastic drawstring bags with the bank's logo on them hung at the ready. “Help yourself if you need one.”

“Thanks.”

The teller left the room. Olivia lifted the hinged metal lid and looked inside the drawer. Then she turned to meet Aaron's eyes. He stood behind her—no view of the box's contents from there. She said, “Would you get me one of those ‘complimentary sacks,' please?”

He smiled a little at her use of the cheerful clerk's terminology and turned to get the bag.

Olivia set the box on the table, sank into a chair and reached inside, touching items she hadn't handled in more than sixteen years. Her driver's license was in there. Faded and long expired. God, had she really been that young? The round-cheeked face staring up at her, the name Sarah H. Quinlan underneath it, barely resembled the woman she was now. She moved the license aside and found her birth certificate underneath. Below that, her Social Security card, a passport and several banded stacks of cash, each one holding five grand. And under
neath all of that, a stack of three-by-five floppy disks and a little black .38 special with a box of bullets beside it.

In a flash she was back in Chicago on the day it all went down. She remembered the timing—how close it had been.

Tommy had had a rough day on the job, and came home with beer on his breath and coffee stains on the shirt with the Chicago P.D. emblem over his heart. She knew right then it was going to be a bad night.

And it had been. The worst one yet. She remembered hoping she hadn't waited one day too long to put her escape plan into action. It wasn't ten minutes before he'd lost his temper and found some excuse to start hitting her. She tried to remember what infraction she'd committed to set him off that last time. Right, right. She'd left the outdoor light on all day.

She'd been pretty sure her life was over that night. That all her plotting had been for nothing, because he'd kept on punching even her after she'd gone down, and he didn't usually do that.