Kill Me Again, page 9
They crossed the highly polished tile floor in silence, but the second they were outside, he said, “Seriously, Olivia, what the hell kind of mild-mannered professor are you, anyway?”
She kept right on walking. “Look, you have amnesia, right?”
“Yes.”
“So I can’t ask you any questions about your past. About anything, really. Correct?”
“Yes, you know that’s correct, and I know where you’re going with this, but—”
“Then you know I’m going to suggest we keep things fair and even. I can’t ask about your past, so you can’t ask about mine.”
“I don’t think that’s fair and even at all,” he said. “I can’t tell you about my past.”
“And I won’t tell you about mine.”
“Fine.” He unlocked the car and got in, slamming the door.
“Fine,” she said, and got in her side, slamming her own door.
Freddy sat up in the back, his head touching the ceiling, turning to look from one of them to the other.
Aaron started the vehicle. “You don’t need to tell me, anyway. I can put it together pretty much on my own.”
“Oh, really?” she asked, looking at him and wondering if he really could. And then she realized she was acting as if he were her enemy. Probably just because he was male. So she tried to soften her expression, tried to remind herself that he was on her side.
At least, all indications pointed to him being on her side. So far. And he was, after all, the writer she’d admired, the kindred spirit she’d sensed, not a drug-dealing abusive thug.
She lifted her brows and tried to inject a teasing note into her tone. “All right, then, if you’re so smart, go for it. Try.”
He tilted his head slightly to the side, his face confident, his impatience fading. “I know you’ve been beaten up on by a man. You let that slip earlier.”
“Did I?” She didn’t confirm or deny it.
“Now, if I put that together with the fake ID—or maybe it’s the real ID and your current one is fake—and the stash of money and the gun, I’d say you must have run away from an abusive husband or lover. You’re always ready to run again at a moment’s notice, if he should find you. The contents of that box is how you make sure you always can.”
She stared at him, unblinking, and silently amazed that he’d pieced together as much as he had.
“What I don’t get is that little stack of disks. Clearly that’s what the guy in your house was after. What’s on them?”
“They’re…my insurance policy.”
He sighed. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
He was silent for a long moment. “But they are the disks I heard that bastard in your house demanding from you, right?”
“Yes.”
He waited for her to elaborate. When she didn’t, he sighed and said, “All right, where to next?”
“Let’s drive a while. I don’t want to get too far from Shadow Falls just yet. But we do need to find a place to just…chill. Freddy needs to get out of this car, and frankly, so do I. We can pick up some of those prepaid phones on the way.”
“And then?”
“And then…and then I think I’m going to ask you to place a call to my ex for me.”
He lifted his brows. “You sure?”
She nodded. “I’m sure he’s found me. There’s no question. The things the burglar said—”
“He called you Sarah.”
“Yeah.”
“Is that your real name, then? Sarah Quinlan? Like on that Illinois driver’s license?”
God, he didn’t miss a thing, did he? She shook her head slowly, and sat in silence for a time as he maneuvered the big SUV through Burlington and back to the highway. She was debating how much to tell him, if anything. He’d probably given up on getting any answer at all by the time she finally spoke.
“It was my name once. But Sarah Quinlan died. Tommy beat her to death that final night. When I ran, I ran away from who I was as much as I did from him. And when I became Olivia Dupree, I was reborn. My life began that day.” She blinked, thinking how sad it still made her that another life had had to end to enable her own new one to start. “I don’t think of myself as Sarah anymore. I haven’t in a long, long time. So I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t, either. I’m Olivia.”
“Okay.” He reached across and slid his hand over hers.
The touch startled her, and she almost jerked her hand away, but she stopped herself and just stared at his large, male hand covering hers. It felt strong and warm and dangerous, all at the same time.
“I’m not the enemy, Olivia. I’m on your side. Remember that.”
She met his eyes, and she saw kindness there. Not anger. And she felt herself relax a little in response to no more than the warmth of his hand on hers and the matching warmth in his eyes. “I’ll try,” she promised, and she meant it.
Aaron drove until they were near, but not too near, Shadow Falls, and he worried while he did. He was way more intrigued by this woman than he ought to be. It was a bad idea. He was sure of that. It was one of many things that had just seemed to show up in his head automatically. He believed it, too. His gut hadn’t led him wrong so far. And yet, damn, she got to him.
He wanted her, he realized. It was getting worse with every hour he spent in her company. If she’d stayed a boring professor and not revealed the complex woman inside, he might have done all right. But…damn.
The growing attraction wasn’t the thing making him feel so nervous about her, though. He’d been attracted to her from his first glance—which, given the other issues on his mind, had to be saying something. No, it wasn’t that he wanted her. It was that he wanted to know her. Everything about her. Her secrets. Her moods. Her…appetites. The sounds she would make when—
This was a very bad idea.
They stopped at an electronics store for prepaid phones, one for each of them, and started off again, phones in hand. Olivia looked at him, lifting her brows. “I’m beginning to feel like an actual fugitive.”
“Haven’t you always been?”
The smile fled her face, and he regretted his words. She’d been teasing, even a little bit playful, and he’d brought reality down on her like a smack in the head.
Settling back in her seat, her eyes serious, she focused on her untraceable phone and punched in a number. He reached over and took the phone from her, depressed the speaker symbol and handed it back.
She lifted her brows, her eyes questioning him, as a phone rang on the other end.
“You don’t mind, do you?” he asked. “I mean, we’re in this together, right?”
She blinked, and he knew he wasn’t fooling her a bit with that line. She knew he didn’t trust her and wanted to hear both ends of her phone call. Well, too bad. He didn’t trust her, couldn’t afford to. And he didn’t even know why. But he needed her to trust him, so he had to be careful.
“Dr. Carrie Overton.” He’d heard the doctor’s voice before and would have recognized it even if she hadn’t identified herself.
“Carrie, hey. It’s me, Olivia.”
“It’s about time! I got your message as soon as I turned on my phone this morning, and not five minutes later Bryan Kendall was grilling me as to your whereabouts.”
“Did you tell him I had the professor’s SUV?”
“Of course I didn’t. You asked me not to. But I have to tell you, I don’t like this.”
“What’s not to like? I’m fine.”
“Are you with him?”
“Who?” Olivia replied.
“The amnesia guy. The hot one? He disappeared, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know that,” Olivia said. “So obviously I’m not with him.”
“Then why are you hiding from the police?”
“I’m not hiding from anyone. I just want to be left alone for a few days. Is that so hard to believe?”
“Yeah, actually, it is.” Carrie sighed. “But it’s none of my business.”
“Thank you, Carrie.”
“If I get the feeling you’re in trouble, I’ll spill my guts.”
“And I’ll be glad you did,” Olivia said. “But in the meantime, tell me. Did they find out who the mystery patient is yet?”
“They’re trying to get an ID from the serial number on the steel plate in his head. Actually, they already tried once and came up with the name of some guy who died years ago. But the numbers were blurry in the X-ray, so they must have gotten one or more of them wrong. Anyway, the police expect to hear from Westhaven’s publisher by tomorrow, so that ought to tell them once and for all if it’s really him.”
“Makes sense.”
Aaron watched Olivia’s face as she spoke. Mostly she was intent on the phone, or her gaze was turned inward. But just then she looked up and met his eyes, gauging his reactions to what was being said.
“Olivia, I have to ask just once more, why don’t you want Officer Kendall to know where you are?”
“I don’t want anyone to know where I am.”
“Why not?”
Her eyes met his again, and he held her gaze. She didn’t blink or look away as she said, “Because it’s a small town, Carrie. If one person knows I’m off on a romantic weekend with a handsome stranger I picked up in a bar, then the whole town will know it by the time I get back.”
“Handsome stranger? Olivia, you don’t go to bars.”
“Trust me, I do now. I’ve gotta go, Carrie. But just remember, not a word about the SUV to Bryan. I’ll make it right with Professor Mallory later, I promise. I just don’t want my getaway messed up because of this amnesia guy.”
“All right, Olivia,” Carrie said at length. “All right. Have fun.”
“Oh, I intend to.”
She said it as if she meant it, he thought, and she kept her eyes glued to his the whole time. Her lips were pulled very slightly upward at the corners. And her eyes seemed a cross between bravado and nervousness.
She disconnected, then set the phone on the dashboard. “Happy?” she asked.
“Deliriously. Now…are you going to tell me the rest of your story or not?” he asked.
She crossed her arms over her chest and nodded. “Yes. I think I am.”
7
“He was a dealer,” Olivia began.
They’d grabbed fast food from a drive-through window and driven to a boat launch on the Winooski River for a break from the car. They sat in the grass, eating, while Freddy splashed in the water, bobbing for river stones and coming up soaked.
“I assume you don’t mean used cars,” Aaron said.
She nodded. “Nothing major—weed, hash, strictly small-time. But he was a cop, too, so…”
“Your ex-husband—the guy who beat you up—he was a cop?”
She nodded. “I never married him, by the way. We lived together. But, yes, he was a cop. That’s why I couldn’t just get him for assault the first time it happened. No one believed me. He’d set it up, though I didn’t know that at the time. He’d talked about me at work, made me seem flighty, unstable. So when I started asking for help, it was almost as if they’d been expecting it. No one in authority took me seriously. But I wasn’t about to stay and put up with being abused. It’s just not in me, so I had to find another way out. I figured the cops might be able to ignore me, but they couldn’t ignore a few dozen pounds of illegal substances.” She lowered her head, shaking it slowly. “All I needed was time to get away. I just needed him locked up long enough for me to put a safe distance between us.”
He nodded. “I get that. And the disks?”
She drew a deep breath, stared at him, and he wondered what she was looking for in his eyes. He tried to show sincerity and concern. He didn’t know if he was pulling it off. He just knew something was telling him to find out the answers to the question of who she was, so he was doing it. Trusting his gut. He had a feeling it had been important to him…before.
“Names, dates, amount purchased, amount paid, photographs of the transactions.”
“Photos?”
She nodded. “Tommy got photos of every sale, whenever he could manage it. Usually toked up a little with the customers, just so he could. He used to have cameras set up all over the damned house. Hidden in plants and stuff, and no one ever knew the difference. I asked him why, once. He said it was an investment, said those photos would increase in value over time. That they might even be worth a fortune someday.” She shrugged. “I figured if he ever found me, maybe I could use the disks to, you know, pay him off.”
“In exchange for him not killing you,” he said, as if he already knew.
She nodded jerkily. “It was probably a stupid idea. But it felt like something at the time.”
“Hey, something’s better than nothing.”
“Yeah.”
Freddy came trotting up to her just then, dripping wet, and dropped a big round stone in front of her.
“Thank you,” she said with all the enthusiasm she would have used had the rock been a diamond in the rough. “That’s a really nice rock you have there. What do you want for it?”
“Rrrrrrrruff!” said Freddy.
“Oh, okay, then.” She broke a piece of her sandwich off and fed it to him. Then she threw the rock, and he bounded off after it, but he went suddenly still and alert as a rowboat went by on the river. The guy inside wasn’t even rowing, just floating and smiling.
“You know, I’m going to do that someday,” Olivia said. And she sounded a little wistful.
“What, go down the river in a rowboat?”
She lowered her head as if embarrassed. “Sounds dull, doesn’t it? I don’t know, it’s nothing special, but I’ve never done it, and it seems like it would be—kind of soothing. Maybe even a little spiritual.”
Aaron watched her, and he couldn’t help but like her even more than he had before. She talked to her dog as if he were human, and the gargantuan beast actually seemed to understand and hang on every word. And she was embarrassed that her idea of an exciting new thing to do would be to go floating down a lazy stretch of river. Hell, it didn’t sound bad at all to him.
She really did love that dog, though. They were quite a pair. Stunning.
Both of them.
Okay, okay, he was getting distracted. Back on topic. “So you want me to call this ex of yours, you said.”
She nodded. “I need to find out for sure if he’s the one who sent that guy after me. So I’m going to have you feel him out about it. I just haven’t quite figured out how yet.” She tilted her head to one side. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re overlooking the obvious.”
“What’s that?”
“The disks. When’s the last time you looked at them?”
“When I was copying them, sixteen…almost seventeen years ago.”
“So don’t you think you should take another look, and then decide what to do?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s a really good idea.” Then she lifted her head. “Assuming we can find a computer with a floppy drive, much less an operating system that’ll read something this old.”
“We’ll find one. But not until after lunch. Freddy seems to be really enjoying his break.”
After their lunch break, they found just what they needed with the help of the built-in GPS system and a 411 call. Smart-Biz was open 24/7, had 13 branches in Vermont and purported to be the most complete business center in the Northeast. There’s Nothing You Need That We Don’t Have! the cheerful slogan beneath its logo bragged.
“We’re about to find out, Smart-Biz,” Olivia said, when they pulled into the lot.
Freddy was napping off his midday swim, making the car’s interior smell a lot like wet dog as a result. The lady professor who wasn’t what she seemed was going to need to have it detailed before it was returned to its rightful owner, Aaron thought.
They went inside together, leaving the SUV running with the AC on for the dog. Aaron took note of the surveillance cameras as they entered and was surprised that he could tell by looking that they fed into a computer system, not a VCR.
More research, right, guy?
He sighed, brushed the thought away and watched the smiling twenty-something guy on the other side of the counter flash a high-beam smile at Olivia, while pretending not to check out her breasts.
“Can I help you?” the kid asked.
“Oh, I hope so.” She held up a disk. “Got anything that’ll still read this?”
He didn’t even flinch. “You know the software?”
“Probably Word. I don’t know the version anymore, but it’s about sixteen years old.”
He nodded. “No problem. Come on back.”
Olivia shot Aaron a happy look that made him smile a little. And the way the younger man watched her butt as she walked past him reminded him again of his own attraction to her. Instead of dwelling on that, he denied himself the pleasure of watching her hips swing subtly as he followed her into a room in the back that was lined with computers, each one with a chair in front of it.
“Third one on the right ought to have just what you need,” the clerk said. “If you need copies, the CDs are on that wall over there, a buck apiece. Printouts—” he pointed to the bank of printers back in the main room of the shop “—come out of number five. Twenty cents a page. Thirty-five for color. Copy machine is over there, prices are listed. Fax—”
“Okay, okay. We’ve got it. Thanks, pal.” Aaron patted the kid on the shoulder while moving him back in the direction he’d come from.
The clerk stopped talking, looked perplexed; then light dawned, and he got the message. “Oh. Well, I’ll leave you to it, then.”
“Thanks.” Aaron watched the kid until he’d gone back into the shop. Then he turned to Olivia.
