Secrets 02 - Kill Me Again, page 12
"I was being set up. The real killer was exposed, and he's dead."
"Yes, your, uh--well, I guess mentor is the word, right?"
"Yes, that's the word. Nick and I were good friends, too. Or I thought we were. But again, I was exonerated. Completely."
The man looked up, skewering Bryan with his pale blue eyes. He was sitting back in his chair, one ankle propped on the opposite knee. He dropped his gaze and pored over the file folder for a moment. "He's dead. Makes it a little hard to know anything for sure."
"Doesn't matter. I've been cleared. It's all in the file."
"Mmm-hmm. Okay, so what do you know about Professor Olivia Dupree?"
Bryan lifted his eyes. "You're here about Olivia?"
Assistant Director Modine lifted his head and met Bryan's eyes again, his own curious.
"It's just that the chief said this was about the gunshot victim we brought in yesterday."
The Fed nodded. "Yes, but since she's the only person in this town with whom he had any sort of connection, naturally we want to learn all we can about her. And I was frankly surprised at how much there was to learn. So how well do you know her?"
Bryan didn't flinch as he held the man's gaze. "Barely at all."
"And yet you refer to her by her first name."
Bryan shrugged. "We were in a tense situation together a few weeks ago. Nick DiMarco tried to kill both of us. We survived. That tends to bond people."
"So you have a bond. But you barely know her. Is that what you're sticking with, then?"
"That's the truth."
"I see." Modine made a note. "So you didn't know, then, that Olivia Dupree is not her real name?"
Bryan blinked, saying nothing.
"Her real name is Sarah Quinlan," the other man went on. "She ran away from her abusive live-in lover in Chicago almost seventeen years ago, after buying herself some time to get away by turning him in for dealing marijuana. Took off with a pile of his cash and some pretty valuable documents."
"Why would she do that?" Bryan asked.
Modine shrugged. "Probably figured he'd kill her if he caught her. She lucked out, though. Moved up here where she didn't know a soul. Got herself a roommate who wound up murdered, and with a whole lot of help from a cop with powerful connections, switched identities with the dead girl."
"How do you know about all this?"
"It wasn't hard. She'd never have kept her secret this long if anyone had ever had a reason to take a closer look at her. But no one has. She's led a quiet, uneventful, even boring, life here."
Bryan shrugged. "Maybe it would be best to let her keep on living it."
Modine frowned at him. "Except that she's missing. And so is our guy."
"Yeah, your guy. Do you mind if we talk about him a little more? 'Cause I'd really like to know who he is and why the Feds are so interested in him."
The A.D. shifted his pale eyes back to the notebook, too smart to risk giving away a thing via his expression. "I'm not at liberty to give you any details on that."
"Is he this Aaron Westhaven, then?"
"I'm sorry, I can't say. But let's get back on topic. This Dupree woman, do you know anything about her that might help us track her down?"
"Believe me, there's not a damn thing I can tell you about her that you don't already know."
Modine frowned. Bryan thought maybe the man had noticed the way he was choosing his words, giving away nothing without lying outright. He was worried about Olivia. Her secret was out--unless the Feds decided for some reason to keep it in.
"So Professor Dupree's ex thinks she's dead, then?" Bryan asked.
"He did. We believe he might know the truth now."
"What makes you believe that?"
"I'm not at--"
"--liberty to say. I got it."
"Sorry."
No, he wasn't, Bryan thought. "Tell me this, Agent Modine. If Olivia is with this guy, is she in danger?"
"It's Assistant Director Modine. And, yes, she's in some pretty deep shit if she's running with our amnesiac shooting victim. So if you have any way of tracking her down, please don't keep it to yourself."
Bryan nodded and felt his stomach twist itself into a hard knot. He wanted more information, and this bastard was about as generous with it as Shadow Falls's grouchiest miser, Nate Kelly, was with a dollar.
"You know, I'm going to know who he is soon anyway," Bryan said. Hell, it was worth a try.
The man looked at him, brows raised. "You mean because of the X-ray you sent off to the crime lab? The one showing the serial number on the steel plate in his head?"
Bryan frowned, a little alarm sounding in his mind. This guy was way ahead of him. "Yeah, as soon as we enhance the image a little better, we just go to a Web site, key in the number and it spits out an ID."
"Yeah. Well, you keep working on that." The Fed flipped a card out of his shirt pocket like a magic trick and snapped it down on the table. "You call me if you think of anything, learn anything or hear anything from your pal Olivia."
Bryan didn't bother adding another useless denial. "I will," he said, lying outright for the very first time.
"Great." Modine got to his feet, closing his file folder, tucking it under his arm. "In the meantime, I've instructed your Chief MacNamara to continue the press blackout. I don't want word of any of this leaking at all, if it can be helped." He turned and headed for the door. "I'll be in touch."
Oh, goodie, Bryan thought. He got up and went to the door, too, pausing there to watch Assistant Director Modine stride purposefully through the bullpen and out the far end.
Chief Mac was huffing toward the interrogation room before the department's exit doors swung closed behind Modine.
"Tell me you held your own, didn't incriminate yourself and didn't piss him off, Kendall."
"I did, I didn't, and I might have."
"What did he say?"
"Didn't give away a damn thing." Bryan met the chief's eyes, shook his head slowly. "We need to get an ID on our John Doe, Chief. I think we've got a bigger fish on our hands than we thought. How is the crime lab coming with that head X-ray?"
Chief Mac's bushy white brows arched, making his forehead look like ripples in a pond. "Didn't he tell you?"
"Tell me what?" Bryan was afraid he knew what was coming next. And he wasn't wrong.
"Modine confiscated the film. Even went to Dr. Overton and got the copy she had."
Bryan looked at the floor and shook his head slowly. Then he looked up, feeling a little more optimistic as he thought of one more option. "We'll hear from Aaron Westhaven's publisher tomorrow. At least we can find out if that's who this guy is."
"If it is, he's a lot more than just some reclusive writer," the chief said. "So what did the bald bastard pump you about?"
"Olivia Dupree." Bryan drew a deep breath and knew it might be time for him to tell the chief what he knew about the professor. He was constructing his words in his mind. They would have to go into the chief's office to talk privately, and he would have to explain why he'd kept Olivia's secret between himself, his fiancee and the notorious serial killer who had been a cop and his mentor. And why he had not told his boss, the Shadow Falls chief of police.
It wasn't going to be an easy thing to explain.
And maybe that was why he decided to keep it to himself for just a little bit longer. He didn't know if the Feds would give it away or not. But until they did, as long as it wasn't hurting anyone, he decided he was going to do his best to keep Olivia's secret. Her life here would be over if it came out, so as long as there was a chance it wouldn't, no matter how small that chance might be, he would keep his mouth shut.
"What did you tell him?" Chief Mac asked.
"What could I? He already knows more about her than I do." He sighed. "Look, Chief, why don't we both go home and try to get some sleep, huh? I'm beat."
The chief nodded slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, that's probably the best idea. I'll see you back here in the morning, Kendall. Don't be late."
"Yes, sir."
9
They ate their stew as Freddy munched his own evening meal nearby. Olivia thought the tension seemed to melt away from her companion as the evening wore on. She couldn't quite believe she had been as forward with him as she had. It wasn't like her. Or maybe it was. God knew she'd kept her interactions with attractive males to a minimum. She'd been so badly burned by her relationship with Tommy Skinner that she'd never found the courage to trust a man again. She'd never had the desire to, either.
Until now.
The scars and the fear, it seemed, didn't apply to this man. Oh, she knew how ridiculous it seemed, but she felt as if she knew Aaron Westhaven. She knew his soul, because it came through in his words. In his work. He wrote with such grace, such a deep understanding of the human heart. He wrote about the heartbreak of unrequited love, of love gone wrong, of love lost forever, in a way that no one had equaled since the Bard had penned Romeo and Juliet. She knew this man. Even if the man she was getting to know now seemed to have a lot more going on inside than the one she had thought she'd known. Being with him, spending time with him--it was a revelation. He wasn't what she'd expected.
He was more. Better.
And she was drunk.
Obviously Aaron didn't have the same lack of inhibitions where she was concerned, but then again, he didn't have any way of knowing her the way she knew him. He hadn't read her words over and over again.
Unless...unless he'd actually read the letters she had sent him years ago. She'd shown a little bit of her heart to him in those. Not all of it. But there had been pieces there.
Still, even if he had read those letters, he had no memory of them now. Might not have remembered them even without the amnesia. He must get thousands of letters from admiring readers.
At any rate, the idea of sex with her had made him get tense all over. It showed in his face, came through in his voice. She had felt it wafting from his body in waves. So she decided to defuse the situation, to put him at ease, as he dished up more stew, handed her a bowl and sat down beside her once again.
"You know, I've never been camping in my life," she said. "Not even when I was a kid."
"No?"
"Nope. Chicago wasn't exactly a camping kind of place, you know?"
"I can imagine."
She shrugged, then slapped a mosquito just as it landed on her forearm. "Never thought I was missing anything. But now I see I was. Bugs. And campfire smoke." She moved her camp chair a foot to the left to elude the ribbon of smoke that had decided to aim for her face. Freddy stopped eating to look up when she moved. He wasn't going to let her get far from him. Seeing her settled in her chair, he relaxed and resumed his munching.
"Funny thing about campfire smoke," Aaron said. "It'll pick one person and follow them around the fire all night long. You no sooner move your chair than the smoke changes direction to find you."
As soon as he said it, the gray stream shifted and wafted right into her face again. She waved a hand and blinked her burning eyes. "Sheesh, I think it hates me!" She got up to move her chair again.
Then she stopped in midmotion, just clear of the smoke but still standing up. "Hey, you said you didn't think you'd gone camping a lot. But you have gone. You remembered that, didn't you? That bit about campfires and smoke and--"
He met her eyes, his own animated. "I did. In fact, I remember tents, and a water hole with a rope over it. I remember s'mores and ghost stories, and a bunch of other guys in uniforms of some sort."
"You were a Boy Scout. You must have been." She sat back down.
"I guess..." He shrugged. "How do you like your boil-in-the-bag beef stew?"
"I think it's delicious." She scooped another bite from her bowl and didn't speak again until it was scraped clean, then got up and took his bowl with her to the nearby lake, rinsed them thoroughly and wiped them dry. Freddy abandoned his dish to go with her, but when he went to get into the water, she held up a hand, and said, "No, Freddy. Leave it alone."
He obeyed, but he whined about it.
Aaron remained by the fire, but she felt him watching her every move as she cleaned the dishes.
When she came back, he was still staring at her, and he kept on looking as she went to the tent to put the bowls away.
When she came out, he was standing halfway between the fire and the tent, as if he'd been about to join her inside and then changed his mind.
"I, um...I'm going to wash up and get ready for bed," she told him. "We have a big day tomorrow."
"Do we?"
"Yeah. We're going to try to make a deal with the devil himself."
"This ex of yours, you mean? You still want to do that?"
"Yes. But he is dangerous, Aaron. I ran for my life. That's how bad he is. So if you'd rather I did this on my own, I'll understand."
"I'm not running out on you, Liv. You don't need to worry about that."
She smiled a little. "No one calls me 'Liv.'"
"No? Do you mind?" he asked.
"No. I like it when you do it." She shrugged, then turned and walked back to the lake, toting the little mesh bag of supplies she'd bought at the store. Freddy fell right into step beside her.
"Be careful in the water. Don't forget, you've been drinking."
"I will, don't worry." She paused, eyeing her dog. "Do you think you could keep Freddy with you? I don't want a wet dog curling up with us in the tent tonight."
"Sure, if you think he'll stay. C'm'ere, Freddy. Come on, boy."
Freddy tilted his head to one side, then the other, looking first at Olivia and then at Aaron.
"Say, 'Freddy, come,'" she told him. "And say it like you mean it."
"Freddy, come."
Freddy obeyed immediately, and she felt her chest swell a little with pride. He was such a good dog. And Aaron was telling him so, too. So she continued walking, confident that he could keep Freddy out of the lake.
Part of her wondered if Aaron was still watching as she stripped bare in the star-sprinkled darkness and stepped into the lake to begin her chilly bath. And all of her hoped he was.
She didn't know, though, and thought she probably never would, as she emerged from the cool water far more awake and a little more sober than she had been when she'd gone in. She toweled off, shivering, and pulled on her nightshirt, knowing full well she was going to need a whole lot more to keep warm tonight. She scrambled to gather up her things, and then scurried barefoot back to the tent, shooting inside fast and heading for her sleeping bag.
Two seconds and she was inside, burrowing and pulling it tight around her as she curled up to half her normal size.
"Colder than you thought?" Aaron asked.
She opened her eyes, to see him sitting in the corner, watching her with thinly veiled amusement coloring his eyes. He'd traded the large white bandage on his forehead for a smaller square adhesive strip that was all but invisible behind his dark hair. Freddy was stretched out on the floor, his head in Aaron's lap, even though his own bed was two feet away.
"Pretty cold, once I got out and the night air hit me." Then she frowned. "Where did you find a sleeping bag this big?"
"I zipped two together to make one bigger one. It'll be warmer."
She lifted her brows and peered out at him. "I thought you didn't want to have sex?"
"I...never actually said that."
"So you do, then?"
"I didn't say that, either. I just want us both to be warm. If you're not comfortable with that, then--"
"I'm fine with that." She noticed he had something in his hand, something round and gold. He was turning it over and over. "What have you got there?"
"Pocket watch," he told her. "I had it on me when they found me. Cops checked it out and returned it to me. Said it didn't tell them anything."
She nodded and sat up for a better look.
He slid closer without getting up. The roof was too low for standing upright, anyway. She held out a hand, and he gave her the watch.
Sighing, Freddy got up, too, wandered to his bed and pawed at it as if to smooth it out before lying down--for the night, she hoped.
Olivia drew the watch closer, examining it with care. It was engraved with a pattern of Celtic knots, a shamrock in their center. "Seems to suggest you might be Irish."
"There's something else."
"What?" She looked up at him, her brows furrowed as her fingers felt for the catch, found it and opened the watch up so she could see its face. "I don't see anything else."
"I don't, either. But I feel it."
She inhaled, turned the thing over, looked and looked at it, but for the life of her, she didn't feel a clue coming on. "I don't see anything that could be useful--unless the knotwork spells out a secret message or something." She strained her eyes, but no matter how she tried, she couldn't make a single letter of the alphabet out of those swirling patterns.
Shaking her head, she handed it back to him. "Maybe it'll come back to you. Other things have."
"Yeah." His tone was on the dark side. "Yeah, but I have to tell you, nothing that's come back to me has anything to do with writing or books or..."
"What has? Besides how to drive and what camping is like, I mean?"
He licked his lips, and his gaze turned inward. "That's about it."
She knew it was a lie. His tone was deeper, and he didn't meet her eyes as he said it. "Wait a minute," she said softly, sitting up fully and probing his face. "You have remembered something else, haven't you?"
"I just told you what I've remembered."
"And you were lying."
"And you're an expert on that?"
"Either that or you're a terrible liar."
He shook his head. "Get some sleep, Liv. Disconnect the sleeping bags if you want to. I'm going to go take my turn in the lake."
"Okay." He went, and she set the pocket watch on top of his pile of clothes, and curled back into the sleeping bag to get warm and await his return. She would have to ask him again what he had remembered. She was certain there was something he wasn't telling her.
