Kill Me Again, page 23
“Absolutely, sir. You can count on my discretion, as always.”
“Thanks. Has anyone been here looking for me. Asking about me?”
“No, sir. No one.”
“You let me know if anyone does, okay?”
“Immediately, sir. As always.”
Adam nodded and said, “Thanks for going above and beyond,” one hand automatically slipping toward his pocket, before he remembered he didn’t have any cash there.
But before he could confirm that, Billy was holding up a hand and shaking his head. “No need, sir. You go on, get some rest. I hope you feel like yourself again soon, sir.”
“Thanks, Billy.”
Billy nodded, reached inside the car and pushed the P button, then backed out again as the doors slid closed.
The car swept them upward at a rapid, nonstop pace that made Freddy tense and whine up at Olivia. Then it stopped smoothly, and the doors opened again to reveal a foyer of sorts. A couple of claw-legged, brocade-covered chairs flanked a sofa table with no sofa. A huge arrangement of fresh flowers took up most of the tabletop, reflected in the high mirror behind it.
Freddy bounded out of the elevator, spun to look back at it and released a small woof, as if telling it off. Adam stepped out more slowly and stood for a moment staring at the door to his home. It wasn’t as ornate as he’d expected. Just a plain, darkly stained, rich wood grain door with layers of shellac making it shine.
He jumped when the elevator doors slid closed behind him, too intent in his contemplation of the door to have noticed anything else. The doorway to his life. The portal to his past. All of his memories, and the truth about who and what he was, lay beyond that door. And suddenly he was cold to the bone and nauseated to boot.
Olivia’s hand slid up his arm to rest on his shoulder. “You’re scared, aren’t you?”
He looked down at her. “I don’t want to walk in there and find out that I’m a piece of shit.”
“A piece of shit wouldn’t be bothered by finding out he was one,” she said.
He frowned. “You’re going to need to translate that.”
“I mean, if you were a piece of shit, you wouldn’t be worried about it. You wouldn’t care. The fact that you want to be a good person tells me that you are one.”
“Maybe I am now. Maybe I wasn’t before.”
“I don’t think people really change all that much. You are who you are, memory or not.”
“I don’t think that’s true. Look at you. Would you be who you are without your memories? Hell, your past has formed your entire life. Even your identity.”
She held his eyes. “You’re delaying the inevitable.”
“Okay.” He took out the key and walked right up to the door, feeling as if he were about to unlock a cage that held a deadly beast. He didn’t know why he was so unsure about what he was about to find. He already had a pretty good idea, didn’t he? Of course, he was hoping there would be a logical explanation for all of it. That he wasn’t going to turn out to be a hired thug who killed for money. But he was pretty sure that was exactly what he was. Or what he’d been. And then he would lose her.
And he cared about that, he realized slowly.
He put the key into the lock, turned it, heard the tumblers fall. Closing his hand around the doorknob, he twisted it and pushed. The door opened a few inches. He paused and looked down at her. “Whatever we find in here, Olivia, I want you to know that I…I like you.”
“You like me. Gee, thanks.”
“I care about you. I’ve become really invested in making sure you’re safe. And I would never hurt you, not on purpose. Whatever I might have been in the past, whatever I might have done…or planned to do…those things are true. And they’ll remain true. I’m not faking anything here. Okay?”
She frowned deeply at him. “Okay.”
He steadied himself, lifted his chin and opened the door.
Olivia tried to calm her nerves as they stepped inside. Part of her expected some gorgeous blonde model with legs up to her neck to come prancing out of a bedroom wearing one of his shirts.
That didn’t happen. Thank God.
He walked in ahead of her, and for a moment she was more interested in watching his reactions than in looking around the place herself. Freddy had the opposite notion, quickly moving from room to room to check things out for himself.
Olivia saw that the ceiling opened up via skylights to the building’s roof, so sunlight poured in like the cascade from Shadow Falls. The place was decorated entirely in an African tribal theme. Authentic masks and wildlife photography lined the walls. There was a lioness and her cubs moving through the tall grasses of the Serengeti. There were graceful giraffes bowing to drink from a water hole. The end table was a kettledrum with a sheet of glass over the goatskin drumhead. One entire wall was lined in books. The interior foyer spilled into the living room, where brown leather furniture was draped with orange and green throws, and pillows that added splashes of yellow to the mix. She could see through to the kitchen, which was huge and entirely done in stainless steel and black. Black granite countertops. Stainless-steel double sink and appliances. Recessed lighting. An island delineated the boundary between kitchen and dining room, and a stairway led up between the two rooms.
She wondered where the stairs led. Onto the roof? She looked at him, half expecting him to tell her, but his expression stopped her. He was standing still, his gaze moving slowly over everything around him, his eyes wide at the power of the emotions surging through him.
She moved closer, sliding her hands up his broad chest. “Adam?”
“It’s coming back. It’s just…so much.” He didn’t meet her eyes. His own were jumping from one thing to the next. “That kitchen has state-of-the-art everything because I cook. I’m a gourmet cook, in fact. I love it. It relaxes me.”
She smiled broadly. “That’s fantastic, Adam!”
He shot her a quick look, nearly beaming. “Yes, Adam. That’s my name, I’m sure of it now. Adam Selkirk, but I don’t give it out. Everyone here knows me as Mr. Adams.”
“And why is that?”
“My work—if people knew where to find me, I’d end up…dead.” He frowned. “But why?”
“Just take it slow. Come on, show me around.” She closed her hand on his upper arm and walked him into the kitchen, admiring the rack with the cookware dangling from it, the well-filled spice rack, the brick oven in the wall and the flat-topped range built right into the counter.
“Where do these stairs go?” she asked.
“Breakfast nook.”
“Breakfast…” She looked curiously at him, then went up the stairs to a landing closed off by a steel door. She unlocked the bolt and pushed it open, Adam right behind her.
A warm, heavily scented breeze gusted right by her face as she blinked into the sunlight. She was on the roof. Potted plants stood around a tiny square table and two chairs. A red-and-white striped umbrella for shade lay furled nearby. Flowering plants were everywhere, spilling their fragrance into the warm air.
“You have your own little haven up here,” she said.
“Yeah.”
She went back down the stairs, sensing he needed a moment alone to process the myriad thoughts that must be racing through his mind, and looked around the kitchen, then headed back into the living room and through a door on the far right wall. It opened into what looked like a small den, with an archway at the far end and a bedroom just beyond that. The den held bookshelves, a spotless desk and a computer. More wildlife photos in here, though she had yet to see any dead creatures, mounted on the walls. Thank goodness.
She walked far enough inside to peek into the bedroom. His bed was a California King, neatly made up as if waiting for his return. The bedding was a tribal art pattern of lines and angles in vivid colors. The curtains were white, the walls sky-blue. And the dog was lying right in the middle of his mattress.
“Freddy, get down,” she told him.
He sighed but obeyed, front legs first, hind ones splayed as he slowly dragged his body to the very edge, lowering those big back feet to the floor only when he had to. Then he lay down on the plush carpet and looked up at her with long-suffering eyes.
She could see a door that must lead to the bathroom. But she was more interested in the den. She moved behind the desk just as Adam, having finished his inspection of the rooftop paradise he’d created, came in.
“Remember anything else?”
“It’s like a flash flood.” He sounded distracted. “Almost more than I can…” He held up a hand as his voice trailed off, and wandered through into the bedroom.
Olivia rifled through the desk drawers, finding ordinary items like paperclips and staples, printer cartridges and paper. She flipped on the computer, then crossed the room while waiting for it to fire up and went to check out the closet.
“The bathroom has two doors. One leads back into the living room,” he called.
“This is a really nice place, Adam.”
She opened one of the closet’s double doors and looked inside. It was deeper than it was wide, with shelves and clothes bars on both sides, and a lone hook right in the center of the back wall, which held a single bathrobe. Not two, one. And no women’s clothes, either. In fact, she hadn’t seen a single sign of a female presence in the entire place.
She frowned. There was something wrong with the closet, though. It was odd enough to have a clothes closet in the den, but that bathrobe? It belonged in the bedroom, or maybe the bathroom.
“Where did you go, Liv?” he called. She heard his footsteps coming toward her. “Olivia? Wait up, don’t—”
She spun to face him, lost her balance and grabbed the robe to steady herself. The hook gave at the pressure, and the wall swung away.
“What the—”
“Olivia, don’t!” He sounded almost panicked.
But she was already moving into the newly revealed opening, and as soon as she stepped through, lights came on. A motion sensor?
She stared around her. The room was small, maybe four by six or so. But it wasn’t the size or the motion-sensitive light or the hidden entrance that made her jaw drop. It was the racks upon racks of weapons. Shotguns, rifles, handguns. There were small guns that would fit into a pocket, and one so big she didn’t know what it was even intended to kill. And ammunition. Boxes and boxes of ammunition.
Adam was standing in the doorway now. “Olivia, please come back out here.”
“No.” Her eyes widened and slid to the only spot that was clear of weaponry: a small desk, with a chair in front of it. On the desktop was an eight-by-ten color photograph of her. A large sheet of paper, its edges torn unevenly, lay beside it. Across her face, in silver marker, was this mathematical problem:
$500,000 up front
+ $500,000 when it’s done
= $1,000,000
She felt everything inside her go icy cold. There was no way to misunderstand what she was seeing. This was the arsenal of a professional killer. A killer who had been offered a million dollars to murder her. A killer who had apparently been paid half already.
Adam had been sent to Shadow Falls to murder her. And as she stared unseeingly at that desk with tears of fury burning in her eyes, she spotted a small stack of what looked like old mail fanned out on a corner of the desk. Recognition burned through her, along with humiliation. She was staring at the letters she had written to Aaron Westhaven.
He’d never even received them. This…this fraud, this hired killer, had intercepted them somehow and used them against her. Used her love of Westhaven’s work to get close to her.
She turned around slowly, stared straight into his eyes and whispered, “Who hired you, Adam?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Was it Tommy? He’s known where I was all along, he said. And those letters! Some of them are years old. How on earth did you get them?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember? You don’t fucking remember?”
He shook his head slowly, then pressed his hands to either side of it. “Dammit, I’m trying.”
“Not hard enough, you aren’t.” She spun again, snatched the pile of envelopes, yanking the paper out of one at random and shaking it at him. “Look at this! It’s practically coming apart at the folds. How many times did you read this, Adam? How many times? And did you psychoanalyze me, figure out just what kind of man would appeal to me most? Or did you just intuitively know what to do, what to say, to get me to trust you? To sleep with you? To fall in love with you?”
“Olivia, I didn’t—”
“So what’s it going to be, Adam? You going to finish the job? Collect the other half of that money? What did you do with the first half, anyway?”
“It’s—” He turned his head to look back into the bedroom, and she saw the satchel lying on the bed. He must have just found it. It was unzipped, banded piles of green bills spilling out of it.
“So pick a weapon and let’s get this over with,” she said. Tears were pouring from her eyes like water from a fountain. “Or do you want me to pick one? Here, how about this?” She yanked a gun off the wall without even looking at it and handed it to him. “Go ahead, do your job, Adam.”
16
He didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t believe he was a killer. It wasn’t fitting together in his head the way everything else had done. It didn’t make any sense. There wasn’t that feeling of, “Of course! I should have known!” hitting him.
He couldn’t be a killer.
And even if he had been once, he wasn’t anymore.
Olivia pushed past him, stomping through the office into the bedroom, where, pausing, she bent over the bed. “I’m taking enough to cover what we’ve spent on this asinine wild-goose chase. I should take it all,” she said, picking up a stack of bills. “It’s my life it paid to have snuffed out.”
“Don’t take any of it.”
She shot him a hate-filled look.
“I’ll have to give it back to have any hope of calling off the hit…once I figure out where it came from, that is.”
“Good luck with that.” She threw the money she’d picked up onto the bed, turned and strode past him to the front door. “Come on, Freddy! Goodbye, Adam.”
Freddy got up and loped to her side, then stood there looking miserable at the thought of leaving again when they’d only just arrived.
“Olivia, dammit, whatever I was, it’s not what I am now. Whatever I intended to do—” He reached her, gripped her shoulders and turned her around to face him. “I’m not going to hurt you. I could never hurt you, Liv.”
She stared through her burning tears into his beautiful eyes and wondered how a lying thug could seem so damn sincere. “You’ve known for a while now, haven’t you, Adam?”
He lowered his thick lashes. Despite everything, her belly knotted with need. And then he gave a jerky nod. “I’ve suspected, yes. And I tried to tell you that.”
“You did tell me. I just didn’t want to believe you.”
“I didn’t, either. I couldn’t believe it. I thought—I thought there must be some other explanation.”
She sniffled, blinking back a fresh rush of tears. “How can I believe you now? How can I know for sure that this entire amnesia thing was anything but an act, some elaborate trap I was stupid enough to walk right into?”
He shook his head slowly. “What would be the point? If I was going to kill you, why wait? Why not just sneak up on you and do it?”
“I don’t know. And I can’t afford to stick around long enough to find out. Goodbye, Adam.”
She pulled free, but he pulled back. He jerked her hard against him, bent his head and kissed her mouth. Tears rolled so thickly that she tasted them on her lips, and on his, as well. He fed from her, cupped her cheeks, and finally, finally, lifted his head slowly, staring through unfocused eyes into hers. “There’s something between us, Olivia. You were right about that.”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures, don’t they, Adam? I can’t believe you’d say that now, just to keep me here.”
“That’s not what this is, and you know it.”
“I don’t think I know anything anymore.” She pulled free of him, half-blinded now by the flood of her tears, and felt for the knob. “I’m taking the Lincoln.” She held out her hand for the keys, and after one look at her adamant expression, he handed them over. “Freddy, come!” she commanded, and her dog loped along beside her as she ran for the elevator. No keycard necessary to go down, luckily. She hit the button, and the doors opened instantly. She stepped inside, and Freddy sat down beside her, patient and loyal to a fault. She punched another button and waited for the doors to slide closed, slowly shutting out the blurred image of Adam’s face, the regret and the unspoken plea in his eyes, as he stood there in the doorway.
Adam didn’t chase after her, and he didn’t beg her to stay. He just stood there and watched her go. What could he do, after all? What could he say? He couldn’t even deny that her conclusions were correct. It was all falling into place in his mind, clicking in like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. He’d been hired to kill Sarah Quinlan. He’d been provided with mail that had been intercepted from her for years, apparently, though by whom, he didn’t know. Probably Skinner, no matter what the man had said. He’d been paid half his fee up front. He’d studied the letters she had written to Aaron Westhaven with the intent of posing as the man in order to get close to her. He knew the plan. There was no denying it. He’d apparently intended to do it—to take money for murdering an innocent woman.
He turned and walked back into his apartment, hating himself with every breath he drew. He wondered what other foul secrets his past life was waiting to reveal. And systematically, he began searching every nook and cranny of the place. He found a locked drawer full of phony driver’s licenses and passports. Every one of them bore his face, or some version of it, above an alias. In some he was heavier. In some he wore eyeglasses. In some he sported a beard or sideburns, or a moustache or goatee, or some combination thereof. In some his hair was long; in others his head was shaved. The names had nothing in common. They didn’t rhyme or begin with the same letter. Adam was closer to Aaron than to any of the others, but that was clearly only coincidental.
