Читать книгу Kill Me Again - Maggie Shayne - Страница 10

Olivia packed her only two pairs of jeans into an overnight bag, along with a few other essentials, all the while telling herself it was insane to take off in the dead of night with a stranger.

But it wasn’t insane. It might have been for anyone else. But not for her. For sixteen years she’d been living with the knowledge that this day might come. And now it had. No one here knew about the diskettes. She’d taken them from Tommy as some kind of lame, poorly thought out insurance policy when she’d run away all those years ago. And no one knew her name was Sarah, either. No one from this incarnation, anyway. All that was coming from her past life—the one she’d left behind.

She had to run. And as for going with Aaron, well, he wasn’t really a stranger to her. Besides, he needed her help.

Decision made, she zipped her bag and returned to the living room to find Aaron and Freddy both missing.

Frowning, she looked around at the demolished room. Only it wasn’t. Aaron had picked everything up, restored order while she’d been getting dressed and packing her things. She heard his voice outside and realized they hadn’t gone far. She picked up Freddy’s dog bed and opened the front door.

Aaron was standing at the back end of the dusty-but-impressive Expedition. The tailgate was open, and Freddy was standing with his front feet up on the carpeted floor of the cargo hold, and he wasn’t budging. He was just looking at Aaron expectantly, as if he ought to know what came next.

“Um, Aaron, that’s not my car.”

He looked up as if startled. “I know. And you’re a fast packer.”

“It’s going to be a short trip. I hope.”

He nodded and returned his puzzled look to the dog. “Is there some kind of command you use to get him to jump the rest of the way in?”

“No. It’s just that he’s so big.”

“And that matters why?”

“He’d have to get a running start to jump all the way in, and in my car he bangs his head on the roof. So he refuses.” She eyed the Expedition. “He would probably never hit his head in this one.”

“Would you believe that’s why we’re taking it?” he asked.

She sent him a look that told him she would not.

He shrugged. “I didn’t think so. But I did overhear you talking to the redhead about this baby. No one knows you have it, right?”

“Only the redhead—er, Dr. Overton.”

“Good. She’ll never know we’ve taken it, and it’ll take your cop friend longer to sound the alarm if your car is still here,” he said.

“I should probably call her, though. She won’t say anything if I ask her not to, but I don’t want her to think I’ve been abducted by an amnesiac shooting victim—”

“You don’t think that’s what this is, do you? A kidnapping?”

She met his eyes. “If I did, I wouldn’t be going. Besides, if you try anything with me, Freddy will eat you.”

He shot the dog a quick look and nodded. “I bet he would. All right, good, then. You can call the doc later, though. We should get a move on before they figure out I’m not in the hospital. This is the first place they’re going to come looking.”

She nodded and set her overnight bag on the floor of the backseat. Then she found the release and folded those seats forward, making even more room for Freddy.

Moving to the rear, she arranged Freddy’s bed while he stood patiently, front feet still inside the SUV, watching her every move.

“I know, boy. I know.” She got behind the dog and, bending, cupped her hands to give him a boost up. He lifted one hind foot into her cupped hands and pushed off as she lifted.

“Hey, no, let me—” Aaron began.

“I’ve got this.” She put a little more effort into it, and Freddy got himself in, turned around three times and sank gratefully onto his bed with a sigh.

“Good Lord, woman, how much does he weigh?”

“Two hundred, give or take. Most of the time he gets in and out with a lot less help from me. Unless he’s really tired or doesn’t feel like going.”

“Or he’s under the influence of a tranquilizer,” Aaron said. Then he held up a piece of plastic, with part of a label clinging to it. “I found this near the outside of the fence—right there.” He pointed, and handed her the plastic.

She eyed it. “Ace-prome—huh?”

“Acepromazine. It’s a tranquilizer, commonly used in veterinary offices. It would take a big dose for a dog this size, hit him within an hour, and probably last for three or four. That timing fit with what happened here tonight?”

“Like a glove,” she said. “How do you know about veterinary tranquilizers?”

He shrugged. “Damned if I know. House all locked up?”

“I need to run back in for a couple more things.”

“I should pull your car into the garage. It’ll make everything look more normal.”

“You still have my car keys?” she asked.

“Left them in it—got distracted when I heard you cry out.”

“Okay. Grab some dog food from the bag out there while you’re at it, will you?”

“I’ll just bring the bag. In case we need to be gone longer than anticipated.”

A little shiver worked up her spine as the voice of doubt—the one she’d been actively suppressing—whispered a bit more insistently. What if, just what if, this man wasn’t what he seemed? “Maybe I should let Carrie know now that—”

“Let’s just get going, okay?”

She tipped her head to one side, suddenly less sure about him than she’d been before. “Maybe I should give this a little more thought, Aaron.”

He glanced at her, frowning, but then his frown eased and his face softened. “Hey, I don’t blame you. You don’t even know me.”

But she felt as if she did. And yet…something wasn’t quite right about all this.

“Then again, neither do I, at the moment,” he went on. “But, Olivia, someone tried to hurt you tonight. And it wasn’t me. Someone tried to hurt me, too. If the two incidents are related, then we have a common enemy. Even if they’re not, we both have someone after us, and we both want to find out who it is and make it stop so we can get back to our respective lives.”

She thought about that for a moment. It did make sense.

“Aside from the fact that someone else came after you, if I wanted to hurt you, I could have done it by now, couldn’t I? With Freddy tripping out on acepromazine and the phones dead? I could have taken either vehicle and been long gone before anyone even found your body.”

Her eyes flew wider as she shot him a look. “You don’t need to be so graphic.”

“I’m not your enemy. I may not know who I am, but…I know that.” He shook his head. “Look, I need to get out of here. I feel that right to my gut. I need to get somewhere safe, so I can stay alive long enough to figure this mess out. And I really don’t want to leave you here alone with some crazed lunatic still out to get you. But I will, if that’s what you want.”

Her throat was dry. She lowered her eyes, her mind whirling, as she realized she didn’t know what the hell to do. Trust him? Or stay home?

But the thing was, she couldn’t stay home as if nothing had happened. The new life she’d created, the new identity she’d claimed, the way she’d been living for the past sixteen-plus years—it was gone now. All of it. Someone knew her secret. So it wasn’t a secret anymore. Even if she let Aaron go without her, after the attack she’d already reached the conclusion that she would have to take off.

And she was rapidly reaching another one. She needed to face Tommy and get things over with once and for all. But she wasn’t so sure she could take him on all by herself and live to tell the tale. At least with Aaron at her side she would have one ally. For a little while, anyway. And while she hated to drag him into her mess, she supposed she could repay him for his help by helping him solve his own mysteries.

Aaron sighed, glancing nervously at the road, as if expecting someone to show up at any moment. The police? The killer? The intruder? She didn’t know. Maybe he didn’t, either.

“All right, stay here then, Olivia,” he said at length. “I’ll leave you the gun. You can tell your friend the cop I stole the car.” He leaned in. “Come on, Freddy, ride’s off.”

“No.” She said it quickly, her decision made. “No, I’m coming with you. I’ll go get what I need and lock up.”

He seemed relieved. Turning, he closed the liftgate as Olivia drew a deep breath and headed back into the house. She closed the door behind her, set her jaw and walked calmly to the telephone stand for a notepad and pen. Then she scribbled a simple note for Bryan.

Dropping out of sight for a few days. Past lives catching up to me. Everything’s okay so far. Just need some time. I’ll call you in a few days, and that’s a promise. If I don’t—things have gone very wrong.

Best, Olivia.

She left the note on the coffee table, with a paperweight on top to keep it from drifting off. Bryan would find it if he decided to come looking for her. He would understand what she meant. “Past lives”—he would know that meant Tommy. He would know to come looking for her if he didn’t hear from her. He would know what to do.

She’d worked too hard to stay alive all this time to just put her hard-won life into the hands of any man now—even if that man was Aaron Westhaven. She needed to take some precautions of her own, and she didn’t particularly care if her favorite writer liked it or not.

She hurried to the kitchen to lock the back door and secure the dog door. Back in the living room, she grabbed her handbag and jacket from the closet, then headed out the front, locking the door behind her.

She paused on the step, looking through the darkest of nights at the sleeping town where she’d built her new life. Shadow Falls had been her salvation. She hoped to God she would be alive to return and reclaim her life there. But she had a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach that nothing was ever going to be the same again.

Aaron. As he drove, he couldn’t get his head around thinking of himself by that name. It didn’t feel any more familiar to him than Jack or Joe or a hundred other names he could think of. Then again, he’d spent a lot of time in his hospital room running through every male name he could think of, and none of them had sent any sparks of recognition sizzling through his head. None of them.

Still, he was worried. “Aaron” didn’t seem to fit. The persona of a novel-scribbling loner felt like a suit that was a couple of sizes too tight. And the dreams or flashbacks or visions he’d had of himself with a gun in his hand and a body at his feet certainly didn’t seem to reflect the life of a reclusive novelist.

And now he had a sidekick.

Bringing Olivia with him probably hadn’t been the brightest idea he’d ever had. She was bound to be a problem. Oh, she might seem like a staid, boring, highly intelligent professor, but she was clearly something else entirely. She had her own baggage, her own secrets—big, deadly secrets—hiding in her eyes, not to mention lurking in the shadows of her home last night. He’d heard her attacker call her Sarah and demand that she give him “the disks.” What the hell was that about? Was the reserved intellectual actually leading a double life? Who was she really? And why had he come to Shadow Falls to see her?

It had to be related to what had happened to him. She had to be involved somehow. And sticking with her was the only way to find out how. Staying alive while he did it was imperative, so hitting the road was the only solution.

Before they’d traveled ten miles, however, she was digging her cell phone out of her oversize handbag.

“Turn that thing off.”

She shot him a quick look, probably startled by his deep voice breaking the nighttime silence. “But I have to let the university know I won’t be in for a few days. I’ll just tell them I’m sick. And I have to call Carrie, too.”

“It’s 3:00 a.m., Olivia.”

“I was just going to leave messages.”

“Not yet.”

She turned off the phone, but she frowned at him, and he knew she was going to argue. He could see her gearing up for it in the way her jaw got a little tighter and her eyes a little more intense. He thought she might be about to lose her temper with him. And he found himself looking forward to it.

But then she licked her lips, took a breath and let it out slowly. “I’m not going to tell anyone where we are or what we’re doing,” she said, calmly and rationally. “But if I wanted to do that, and I thought it would be best for me, I’d do it. You need to know that about me.”

Logical. Straightforward. The closest she’d come to losing it had been when she’d thought her dog had been dead on her living-room floor. Threats to her own life seemed to have far less emotional impact on her.

“You wouldn’t have to tell anyone where you are. You wouldn’t even have to make a call. With your cell phone on, anyone with the know-how can track you.”

Her brows went up, and she stared at him, the stubborn intellectual gone. There was worry in her eyes now. Maybe even fear. He decided he preferred the stubbornness. He knew what had instigated the change, though. She must be wondering how he’d come by the knowledge he’d just imparted. She had to be, because he was wondering the same thing.

“I must have done a lot of research—for my writing,” he said, attempting to answer her question before she could ask it. But it rang false to him. It felt like a lie.

“You never wrote any crime thrillers, Aaron.”

“Now how can you be so sure about that?”

She averted her eyes. That was telling, that little thing. Looking away, as if embarrassed or ashamed or lying right back at him. She cleared her throat, lifted her chin a little. “I’ve read everything you’ve written,” she said.

“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.