Kill Me Again (21 page)

He looked at her slowly. “The FBI.”

She nodded. “And if you aren't Aaron, then I can only think of one reason why a stranger would show up in town looking for me.”

He blinked, but it wasn't anything he hadn't considered himself. “You thought I was working for Tommy Skinner.”

She nodded. “I had to consider the possibility.”

“It would explain my…unusual skill set.”

“Yes, it would. But Tommy didn't know you.”

“No. He didn't recognize me, that's true. But he
claimed he wasn't out to get you, that it was someone on those disks.”

She nodded. “The senator?”

“Or someone else who's wealthy and powerful, but maybe not famous enough for us to recognize the name. Or maybe someone we haven't gotten to yet. Someone who hired me to do his dirty work.”

Sighing, she said, “I don't believe it. I don't believe you were sent to Shadow Falls to hurt me. I just don't. I
know
you.”

He felt sick to his stomach with guilt, because he
did
believe it.

“But I did consider it at first,” she went on. “So I told Bryan about the meeting. I thought…I thought he would arrest Tommy and take you back to Shadow Falls, and maybe I could finally figure out the truth.” She didn't look at him as she lowered her head, bit her bottom lip. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

He nodded as he took everything in. Then he said, “I wasn't entirely honest with you, either.”

“You weren't?”

“No. I, um…I didn't trust you any more than you trusted me, Liv. I told you the meeting was set for midnight, but it wasn't. Skinner wasn't early, he was right on time. I set it for eleven-thirty, then told you twelve. It was almost automatic, but partly, I wasn't sure you wouldn't do just what you did, or even try to go without me and handle the whole thing yourself.”

She sighed, and it sounded like a sigh of relief. He
looked her way, and she did look easier. “I guess we've both messed up a little bit. And it nearly got us killed.”

He nodded.

“There's nothing else,” she said. “I've got no more secrets from you.”

“That's good to know.”

She said nothing, waiting, he knew, for him to reciprocate in kind. But he couldn't. The dreams, the snippets of memory, his belief that he was some kind of a hit man…those were things he still couldn't bring himself to tell her. She believed in him. She
wanted
to believe in him. And he found himself in a quandary, because he wanted her to believe in him, too. It mattered to him what she thought of him.

She was asking him to open up, to tell her everything. But he had to hold back, just for a little bit longer. Just until he was sure.

Something had changed in him, back there at that abandoned old farm. When Skinner had been holding her, hurting her, pressing that gun to her head, when he'd thought she might not leave that starlit midnight meadow alive, something inside him had altered irreversibly, he thought. Every thought, every instinct, every skill, every
molecule,
in him had joined in one goal, and one goal only. To keep her alive. To protect her. To save her.

He hadn't spoken a word, and minutes had ticked past. Finally she nudged him. “Is there anything you haven't told me?”

He nodded.

“Are you going to?”

“Yes. Yes, I am. But for now, just the one thing. I think my name is Adam, because I had a dream, and in the dream, a man was calling me by that name.”

“Does it
feel
like your name?” she asked.

“Yeah. It does.”

“Adam. That's nice.”

“Thanks.” He drove, saying no more.

“Was there anything else to the dream? Any other revelations?”

“No.”

She tipped her head to one side, and when he glanced at her, she looked worried. She said, “You know what I find fascinating, Adam?”

“No, what?”

“That we've only known each other for a short time, but I can already tell when you're lying.”

She drew a deep breath, sighed and reached down beside her seat. A moment later she apparently found what she sought, because her seat reclined slowly, and she leaned back, closing her eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly. “After all that—?”

She opened her eyes. “I'm…I'm relieved.” Then she sat up a little. “Tommy's going to be locked up. He can't hurt me anymore. I faced him down, and I won. And maybe someone is still after me, or maybe Tommy will try to hurt me from behind bars, and maybe my secrets will be revealed to the whole world. But I feel like I can face anything now. I'm going to be okay.” She smiled.
“I've got my life back.
You
gave me my life back. Thank you for that…Adam.”

She leaned her head back and closed her eyes again. Adam kept driving. The FBI was looking for him. He'd evaded the police. He had a steel plate in his head that belonged to a dead man. And he didn't know who the hell he was—or what. Only that he was accustomed to violence, to evasion, to deception, to weaponry, to combat, to escape—and to killing.

He was scared to death of what he would find when he got to that address in Philadelphia. There would be no more hiding the truth from her—or from himself—then.

 

She felt the car come to a stop, the cessation of movement making its way through her sleepy brain and into her consciousness. Then the sound of the motor died, too, giving way to a silence broken only by a soft whine from Freddy.

She opened her eyes, picked up her head and turned toward Aaron—no, Adam. She had to get used to that. “Are we there?”

“No. I found a pet-friendly motel. I can't drive any farther without a few hours' sleep.”

She nodded, surprised that she had fallen asleep, with all that had happened. And she'd obviously slept for a while, too. Beyond him, the sky was growing pale with the approach of dawn. “What time is it? Where are we?”

“We only have a couple of hours to go. I just thought—we don't know. The Feds might be watching the place, if they have the address, too.”

“Then wouldn't it be better to arrive in the dark?”

“We'd never spot them in the dark. They have the advantage if they're surveilling the place, waiting for us to show. So we go by in the daylight, surveil it ourselves a little, see if it's being watched before we go inside.”

She narrowed her eyes on him. “You say that with a lot of confidence.”

He glanced at her quickly. “Yeah. I've told you. I trust my instincts,” he said. “They haven't led us wrong so far.”

“Oh. I was wondering if it might be because you've remembered something more.”

“It's not.”

She nodded, but she still looked at him
hard,
as if she could see the truth seeping from his pores. It made him want to avert his face.

“Do you, though? Remember more?”

“No.” A dream wasn't exactly a memory, was it? So he wasn't really lying to her. Just leaving out some things. “I'll book us a room. We'll keep paying cash.”

“We've got plenty,” she said.

He nodded and reached for his door handle. But her hand on his shoulder stopped him, made him turn back to face her again.

“I'm putting a lot of trust in you…Adam.”

“I know.” He held her eyes for a long moment. “And
I know what a huge thing that is for you, to trust a man. I don't take it lightly.”

She nodded. “Get two rooms,” she told him. “But only if they have an adjoining door.”

He guessed her trust in him only went so far. She must have no interest in any further sex with him now that she knew he wasn't her favorite writer. He lost a little bit of respect for her, knowing that. Wasn't he the same guy he'd been before she knew? Hadn't he just saved her life, gotten her out of a hellish situation without a scratch on her smooth, copper-kissed skin?

He got out of the car and went inside, feeling insulted and a little bit pissed off. But he made the request she'd asked him to, and returned with two room keys, marked 3 and 4. He slapped them onto the dash and drove to the parking spot in front of Room 3.

“You're tired,” she said.

Like she cared. “Yeah, I'm tired.” Did that sound a little sarcastic? A little snippy?

She frowned at him, but when he didn't even return her gaze, she shrugged as if in helplessness, grabbed a key off the dash and opened her door. Then she went to the back and opened Freddy's. “Come on, boy. You poor thing, cooped up in there all this time. Come on, baby. Come on.”

Freddy rose, stretched and stepped down from the rear. He looked around, and so did Olivia. But there was nothing to see but the blacktopped parking lot and the sidewalk that ran in front of the rooms. Every other room
had a tree growing in front of it from a circular hole in the otherwise unbroken pavement. There were flowers surrounding each tree. Pansies and petunias in thick, lush bunches, so thick you couldn't see the ground beneath them, their purples and yellows soothing somehow.

“That's really pretty the way they—Oh.” She stopped speaking as Freddy walked purposefully up to the flowers and lifted his leg to water them.

She grinned, shaking her head, and looked at Adam.

He didn't share her private amusement, though. He just unlocked the door to
his
room, then walked back to the Lincoln to grab their luggage—and then realized they didn't have any. It was all still in the Expedition.

Freddy came running back to Olivia at her call, and the two went inside through the door Adam had just opened.

He shook his head and followed.

“Look, Adam, there's a dog bed—and dishes, too!”

“Yeah.” He glanced at the padded doggy bed on the floor. Brown plush, thick and cozy, and he thought it would only hold about half of Freddy's massive body. Fred preferred to be in bed beside his doting owner, though, so it probably didn't matter.

“And a back door. I need to see if…” She crossed the room toward the door in question as she spoke, flinging it open and looking outside. “Oh, this is perfect, I didn't realize. Freddy, come!”

The dog loped to her side and peeked out, and she
stretched out her arm and pointed. “Go outside. Run, Freddy, run!”

With a happy “woof,” Freddy bolted.

Curious to see that what had made the dog so happy, Adam opened the door to the second room, a twin of the one they were in, and joined her in the doorway. Behind the motel, a grassy lawn stretched out in either direction, completely surrounded by a shiny new chain-link fence. A wooden stand in a far corner held a trash can, a few scoopers and a sign that read Clean Up After Your Pet.

Freddy was running from one end of the lawn to the other, pausing to sniff at places where other dogs had left their scents, then spinning around and galloping off again so fast he nearly tripped over his own legs.

Adam couldn't help but smile at the dog's antics. His attitude relaxed a little, and he turned to look at Olivia. She was leaning in the doorway, watching her dog with the most loving expression on her face.

Imagine her looking at me that way.

Whoa, where the hell had that come from?

He shook himself, blinking, not sure what had come over him.

“I guess that second room and adjoining door were unnecessary after all,” she said softly. “Freddy will be happy right out there.”

He frowned. “The second room was for
Freddy?
”

She looked up into his face, her brown eyes dancing. “Oh, hell. You thought I wanted it for me, didn't you?”

He nodded.

She smiled a soft, romantic smile that was designed, he was sure, to make him turn to mush. He was not, he told himself, a mushy-turning kind of a guy.

“You thought I only slept with you because I believed you were my favorite writer. And that now that I know better, I wouldn't want to be with you again. Which would make me a pretty lousy person. Is that what you think of me, Adam?”

Her hand had curled around his nape, her fingers moving lightly over his skin, and he was fighting the urge to close his eyes, tip his head back and moan softly.

“I don't know what I was thinking. Just that it wasn't me you wanted. It was him.”

“It was you.” She stared into his eyes to emphasize the words, then went on. “Freddy's been cooped up for days now. I just thought with two connected rooms, he'd at least have a little room to romp. And a bed of his own, since we left his in the other SUV. That's all.” She leaned up a little, brushed his mouth with her lips. “And I have to admit, I thought the notion of giving the big lug a bed all to himself would give us a little more room for…whatever.”

His lips curved into a smile that felt a little crooked and a little goofy, but he didn't care. He stopped arguing with himself about what was wise and slid his arms right around her waist, pulling her close. And then he bent his head and kissed her, long and deep. She opened her mouth to him and their tongues mated, and he knew
she still wanted him, maybe more than before. He could tell by the way she arched her hips against him. He was hard before the first kiss melded into the next.

He reached out to close the door. She caught his hand and stopped him, muttering an explanation between kisses. “I want him to be able to get back in when he's ready.”

“He'll be fine.”

She shook her head beneath his mouth. “It's a new place. He'll be scared.”

The notion of a two-hundred-pound mastiff getting scared almost made him laugh, but he didn't want to ruin the mood. Whatever Olivia wanted was perfectly fine with him, as long as she was going to give him another taste of her glorious body and another round of her enthusiastic passion.

Turning her toward the bed, he shuffle-walked with her, never breaking the contact of their lips. At the bed, she fell backward, pulling him down on top of her, and they made out like a pair of horny teenagers.