Kill Me Again, page 27
“And you copied them without him knowing?”
“You don’t think I trusted him, do you?”
“You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”
“Bullshit. I’m here for me, not him. I want this over with—for myself. Understand?”
“Fine.” Corinne walked away from the closed door, her heels clicking on the concrete floor. “So we’ll let you go and kill Adam, then. Leave the disks on your way out.”
Her bluff must have worked, because he heard Olivia gasp. She collected herself quickly and said, “I didn’t come here to leave without him.”
“I didn’t think so.” Corinne shifted to face Bruce. “Kill them both.”
“That’s what I said from the beginning,” he reminded her. Then he turned to Olivia. “The disks?”
She must have handed them over, Adam thought, judging from what he heard. Then she spoke.
“Go ahead and kill us,” she said. “The press and the attorney general will get every name and face in those files. Go ahead. The discs go out the minute I’m reported missing.”
“That gives me a good day, maybe even two, to go to your house, rifle through your papers until I find out who your lawyer is, go to his house, and shoot him between the eyes,” Bruce said. “Hell, even a desk jockey like me could do that in a couple of hours. You’re making this too damn easy.”
He took her by the arm and marched her across the room toward Adam’s door. Corinne hurried ahead of them, and he heard her playing with the padlock. He twisted and writhed, snaking his chair away from the door to save himself from being clocked in the chin with it.
He made it just in time. The door swung open, Olivia was shoved inside so hard she stumbled and fell, and then it slammed closed again. No one had even noticed him lying on the floor.
Olivia pushed herself up off the concrete and lifted her head, so her hair curtained her face. Then, slowly, she looked to the side and spotted him lying there, staring at her.
He met her eyes, which filled with tears the second she looked back.
“Oh, my God, they beat the hell out of you.” She helped him right the chair. And then she smiled. She actually smiled. “Thank God, Adam. Thank God they beat the hell out of you.” She pressed her palms to either side of his face and kissed him square in the middle of the duct tape.
Then she found the edge and started peeling it away. Several strands of his hair came with it, roots and all, and he thought maybe his jawline lost some of its day’s growth of whiskers. But that was nothing compared to the layers of skin he lost from his lips as she yanked the tape away.
But then she was kissing them again, so he decided he really didn’t mind.
He was confused as hell about why she’d done an about-face toward him, and hoped to God the two of them were going to live long enough for him to figure her out. And…then he stopped thinking and just felt the tide of relief mingled with desire that rushed through him at the pressure of her mouth against his. God, it was good, and he had been craving this and not even realizing it—not until right now. Now every muscle relaxed as she whispered soft things against his lips, things he couldn’t hear and didn’t need to.
Finally she backed away just a little, her eyes closed, as if she were feeling too much emotion to look at him just then. He felt her trembling as she moved around behind him and began tugging at the handcuffs.
“What the hell are you doing here, Olivia?” he asked, craning his neck to try to see her as he spoke, so he could read her face. Or maybe just so he could keep drinking it in. God, he was glad to see her. And yet he wasn’t, because it meant she was going to die with him. And of all the many things he’d fantasized about her doing with him, dying was not one of them.
“That bastard said he was going to kill you.”
“Yeah, and for all you know, I was sent to kill you. So why did you come?”
She stopped working on the cuffs and leaned closer, her breath near his ear. “I had to make a decision, Adam. I had to decide whether to believe what the evidence in your apartment was telling me, what Bryan was telling me, what even you seemed to believe—or to believe what my own heart and soul were telling me about you.”
“Bryan knows who I am, then?”
“He thinks he does. But he’s wrong. I know you, though.” She gave up on the cuffs and came back around to the front, where she knelt on the floor, her palms pressed to his thighs, then looked up at him and leaned forward. “The man I’ve been getting to know these past few days is a good man. He’s not a murderer. There is something down deep inside every person, something very basic, at their core. It’s what determines how someone acts when the chips are down and choices have to be made. It’s the heart of every human being, and it’s either good or bad. I’ve seen your heart, Adam. I’ve felt it, and I know it, and you are good. You are. That’s what I choose to believe.”
“That’s a pretty big leap of faith. A pretty big risk.”
“If I’m wrong, it’ll be a devastating one. But if I’m right, then this decision to believe in you despite all the evidence is the most important leap of faith I will ever take. I’ve weighed my options, and I’ve decided that I’d rather risk heartache for a shot at the best thing I’ll ever find than protect my heart and never know love.”
His throat went dry.
“And that’s what this is, you know,” she said, holding his eyes. “You do know that, right? I’m choosing to believe in you because I love you. And I’d rather be in love with a good guy than a killer. So I’m choosing to believe that’s what you are, and I’m hoping to God I’m not making a huge mistake.”
He stared at her, stunned right to his soul. He knew she was waiting for an answer, a sign, something. And yet he was speechless.
Her eyes started to moisten, and she looked away fast, scurrying behind the chair to begin yanking on the wood, trying to free him, talking way too quickly. “I know it’s a lot to take in all at once,” she said. “But it would do me a world of good if you’d give me some kind of answer.”
“I’m just…I’m stunned, and I’m—”
He gave up on speech and stood up, chair and all. Then he moved away from her and swung the chair into the nearest wall. It crashed to bits on the floor around him.
Quickly Olivia wrested the broken piece of it from the cuffs. Free of the chair, he sat on the floor and slid his cuffed hands over the backs of his legs, then his feet, until his hands were in front of him.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’ll be okay.”
“So?” She sat on the floor and looked at him. “Don’t you have anything at all to say to me?”
“Thank you seems like way too little.”
The frown that marred her face let him know that she thought so, too, but he was damned if he could form words. The enormity of what she had done for him was so overwhelming that he was all but speechless. He didn’t know where to begin.
She lowered her eyes then. “You’re right. It is.” And then she appeared to be trying to dislodge a large lump from her throat. “Well, let’s see about getting out of this mess, then.”
She got to her feet and, turning away from him, moved to the door, testing the knob, running her hands up and down its surface, feeling the hinges.
Adam’s legs had fallen asleep from being still for so long, and they prickled now with a thousand unseen needles. He stomped, shook one leg, then the other, even while noticing how she was keeping her face averted, avoiding his eyes as she pretended to be busy.
He moved closer, but she still kept feeling up the door, like some secret escape hatch was going to open if she just looked hard enough.
“I’m not a hit man,” he told her. “I want you to know that right now, before anything else happens. I was only posing as one.”
That got her to turn and face him again. She searched his eyes.
“I know this is going to sound farfetched, but since you believe in me without any reason to, maybe you’ll be willing to take my word for this part of it, too, until I can show you the proof—and I will be able to show you proof, Olivia. Assuming we make it out of here alive, anyway.”
“I want to believe you,” she whispered.
“I’m an undercover FBI agent,” he said. “A very specialized one.”
Her brow creased. “Posing as a hit man?” she asked.
“I know how it sounds. Believe me. I know. But it’s the truth. I pose as a hit man known as Mr. Adams. And Adams has a great reputation in the underworld by now. So I get hired on to take people out, but instead I stage the hit, fake the mark’s death, then hustle them into a government relocation program.”
“So someone did hire you to…to murder me?”
“That’s what I was told.”
“Who?”
He nodded at the doorway. “Didn’t you recognize her? That’s the wife of the good senator. She wants to be first lady one day, and nobody is going to tolerate a president and first lady who are on film buying marijuana, much less toking their brains out—in her case from a five-foot bong.”
“I thought the woman in that photo looked familiar. But who’s the man with her?”
“My boss.”
Her eyes widened as they met his.
“Bruce Modine. He and Corinne met when he was with the Secret Service.”
“And they’re lovers?” she asked.
He nodded. “I don’t know the rest. But I can put at least some of it together.”
“So can I,” she said. “My lovely ex must have tried to blackmail her or her husband.”
“And she turned to her lover for advice on how to handle it,” Adam elaborated.
“If you’re banging someone in the FBI, you’d definitely run a blackmail attempt by them,” she agreed. “So then she paid Tommy the hush money he demanded, and in exchange, he told her where she could find the disks with the evidence on them. He told her about me. He was telling us the truth about that.”
Nodding, Adam went on. “Bruce wouldn’t have had any trouble at all finding a legitimate hit man to do the job for his lady friend. But something must have gone wrong. Probably a leak. Someone else in the Bureau must have learned there was a hit being taken out on you and informed him. If he hadn’t sent me in to fake your death and relocate you, it would have looked fishy. That was his job. So he did it. But he told the real hit man about it, or had her tell him. His job was to kill us both and get those disks, clearing her husband’s path to the White House.”
“And his wife’s path to being first lady. My God.”
She nodded slowly and met his eyes. It seemed there was more she was waiting to hear from him. But he could see she’d accepted what he’d told her so far. He could see it, he just couldn’t quite believe it.
“You look like you believe me.”
“I’m choosing to believe you. I’m not being stupid, I want that clear. If you’re playing me, I’ll find out soon enough, but dammit, Adam, I want to believe you.”
“I swear to God, Olivia—”
“You don’t have to swear. But dammit, Adam, it would be nice if you’d—” She bit her lip to cut herself off, shook her head hard.
“What?”
“Never mind. Let’s just get out of here, okay?”
“How do you suggest we do that?”
“First we need to get out of this room,” she said. “Then I have a secret weapon. All I have to do is, uh, unleash it. So to speak.”
He met her eyes and felt hope for the first time. “Freddy?”
She nodded.
“Where?”
“Basement. He’s being quiet and staying still, just like I told him, but that won’t last forever. And if they find him…”
Adam felt the blood rush from his face to his feet, and went to the door, pounding on it. “We want to make a deal! Do you hear? We’ll get all the copies for you.”
No answer. He pounded again. “Corinne, come on. You don’t even know about the copies that are being mailed to the opposing party’s leaders tomorrow.”
Staccato clicks came closer, and Corinne said, “What the fuck are you talking about now, Adam?”
“Open the door. We can do this like adults. Look, I’ve got secrets in my past, too. So does Olivia, as I’m sure you know. You smoked some weed. So what? It’s not that big a deal. Not like murder. We can come to an understanding here.”
There was a sigh. “I’d be an idiot to let you live.”
“You’d be an idiot to murder two people, only to have the truth come out anyway, getting you twenty to life or worse for your trouble.”
“Ignore them, Corinne,” Bruce said.
“Yeah, ignore him,” Olivia shouted. “I’ll be laughing in my grave when you go down in a public train wreck tomorrow afternoon, taking your unsuspecting husband with you.”
“They’re bluffing,” Bruce said.
“He doesn’t even know those disks exist, does he, Corinne? What do you think he’ll do when he finds out what you’ve been up to?” Olivia went on.
The lock turned, and the door opened. Corinne was standing there with a gun pointed at Adam’s chest.
Sighing so loudly it was almost a growl, Bruce stomped past her into the room, gun drawn. “Back up, Adam,” he said, aiming the gun at his forehead.
Adam took two steps back. No need to make waves at this point.
“You,” Bruce said to Olivia. “Come here.”
She stepped forward. Bruce grabbed her, twisted her around and pulled her back against him, one arm around her chest and his gun to her temple.
“Now we can talk.”
“I don’t know,” Olivia said. “I don’t really feel like talking now. I feel like screaming.” And then she cut loose with a shriek that should have had Bruce’s ears bleeding.
He quickly clamped a hand over her mouth, cussing at her while ordering her to shut the hell up, but she bit him hard. And when he jerked his hand away in response, she screamed again.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Bruce demanded, even as Corinne marched right up to Olivia and slapped her hard across the face.
She stopped screaming, but it didn’t matter. The message had been delivered. And it took all of three seconds before they all jumped, startled by a sound that could only be compared to a wrecking ball demolishing a condemned building with its first and only blow.
Wood cracked and splinted. The already rickety basement door didn’t fly open—it exploded into a thousand bits, some the size of toothpicks. And then, from the midst of the splinter-starburst, came what looked like a rampaging bear.
19
Bruce spun around, still holding Olivia to him. The skinny brunette shoved past them and leveled her gun at Freddy. But Olivia reacted instinctively. Leaning back into Bruce, she drew both knees up, then kicked out for all she was worth, landing a double-barrel blow to the small of Corinne’s back and putting her on her knees. She never got a shot off before her gun was on the floor.
“Call him off! Call him—” Bruce didn’t get to finish, because he’d turned his weapon away from Olivia’s head, attempting to aim it at her best friend instead, and the instant he did, Adam hit him like a speeding semi, taking him down, and Olivia along with him, even as a shot rang out.
There was a horrible cry, a yelp that tore at Olivia’s insides as she fought to disentangle herself from Bruce’s grip. He tried to hold on to her—she was peripherally aware of him pointing the gun at her again and realized that he was speaking, probably something threatening. It had no impact. She was flailing her arms, kicking her legs, twisting her body, and there was nothing he could do to stop her. She knew she landed at least a blow or two before getting free, and then she scrambled to her feet, racing to where Freddy had fallen.
Adam and Bruce were entangled in deadly combat as she fell to her knees beside the dog. There was an ominous hole in his chest, right between his front shoulders, and blood pumped from it in time with his heartbeat.
“No, no, no,” she moaned, pressing a palm to the wound to stanch the bleeding. “Hold on, boy, just—”
She broke off with a grunt of pain, as a pair of hands gripped her by the hair and jerked her backward. She landed on her ass but bounded to her feet, swinging at the woman who’d attacked her. She hit Corinne hard, barely seeing her, reacting purely to the surge of adrenaline.
A fist connected, then another, then a foot, and then she was straddling Corinne, pounding the woman’s head repeatedly into the floor. “Hey. Hey!” Adam said. “Enough. You’re gonna kill her.”
Olivia only glanced at him long enough to see that he was now standing, holding a gun on the prone and badly beaten Bruce. She looked back at Corinne just long enough to see that she was no longer conscious. And then she was scrambling on all fours across the floor and pressing her hands to Freddy’s wound again.
“He’s bleeding, Adam! Do something!”
“Already am.”
Another sideways glance told her that he was on a cell phone—calling for help, she hoped.
“There’s been a shooting. A federal officer is down. Shooters have been disarmed. We need police and an ambulance. And the name of an emergency vet. We’re at…” He shot her a look. “Damn, what’s the address here?”
“The old cheese factory building,” she told him. “They’ll know it. Everyone in Shadow Falls knows where it is.”
He repeated the information into the phone, then hung up even while the dispatcher was advising him to stay on the line. Moving toward Bruce, he waggled the gun. “Handcuff keys. Now.”
“Go to hell,” Bruce said.
“You hurt my woman, and you shot my dog, pal, and it’s taking everything I have not to put a bullet in you for that. Just give me a reason.”
Bruce got the keys from a pocket and offered them to Adam. Rather than take them, Adam held out his arms, pressing the gun to the man’s forehead. “Unlock them.”
Bruce obeyed, and the minute they sprang open, Adam snapped them around Bruce’s wrists instead. Then, moving quickly to Corinne, he assured himself that she was out cold before he tucked the gun into his pants and joined Olivia on the floor beside Freddy.
