Kill Me Again (8 page)

But then the police were pounding on the front door. She'd heard the noise through a haze of pain and thought,
Thank God. I'm still alive. They're here, and I'm still alive.

His own colleagues kicked in the front door of a home no rookie cop should have been able to afford and presented him with a search warrant. When he demanded to know what the hell this was about, they told him they were acting on a tip. And of course they found pounds
of marijuana and hash right where their anonymous informant had told them to look, hidden above a ceiling panel in the master bedroom closet.

She remembered the look Tommy had sent her as they'd cuffed him and dragged him out the door. It had been murderous. And his words couldn't compare with that icy hatred she saw in his eyes, even though her own were beginning to swell by then.

“You did this, didn't you, Sarah?
Didn't you?
”

She'd shaken her head no, backing even farther away from him, bumping into a cop she knew. One she'd tried to tell about the beatings before, but who hadn't believed her. His eyes said he was sorry. “We need to get you to a hospital,” he said aloud. “Did he do this to you?”

She licked her lips and held Tommy's murderous gaze. “I fell,” she said. “And I'm fine. No hospital.” They wouldn't help her before, and she sure as hell didn't need their help now. She was doing this on her own.

She'd had two choices, the way she saw it. Kill him, or send him to prison. Leaving him without doing one or the other first would only have ensured her own demise. And staying wasn't an option. She wasn't the kind of woman who would tolerate being abused. She'd been planning her escape since the first time he'd laid a hand on her—and planning it in a way that wasn't going to get her killed.

At least not right away. But when he got out, if he ever found her…

“I'll kill you for this, Sarah,” Tommy promised as he
was shoved out the door in handcuffs. “I'll fuckin'
kill
you.”

The cops told her she would have to leave the house until they'd finished processing it. She'd been more than happy to comply. She'd already taken the stack of three-by-five floppies Tommy had taken such pride in. Records of his clients, their names, addresses, how much they bought from him, how much they paid for it. There were photos of many of the transactions, too. Invaluable information, Tommy always said. Priceless. So she'd taken them all, and then she'd removed the hard drive from his computer. With the drugs in the house, the police wouldn't need that information to convict him. And she saw no point in causing trouble for his customers. Besides, as closely as he guarded those files, she thought he might want them back someday. He might even
need
them back. So she could use them to bargain with—maybe for her life—if he ever found her.

She'd taken the disks, all her important papers and as many of her clothes as she could reasonably carry. Everything was in the trunk of the car she'd managed to borrow from the wife of one of Tommy's best customers. A woman who'd seen her bruises and guessed their cause. She'd taken the piles of money from his stash in the basement. Not all of it, but a lot. A hell of a lot. And she'd taken one of his guns and a supply of bullets to go with it.

Tommy was going to jail. And while he was away, unable to get to her, she was going to escape. By the time
he got out, she hoped to have a whole new life under way. But as things had turned out, it ended up being an even more complete change than she had ever imagined.

“Your bag,” Aaron said, startling her back to the present. She'd forgotten he was in the room. Hell, she'd forgotten
she
was. She looked up to see him standing behind her, looking over her shoulder, all the items in the box clearly visible.

He whistled soft and low.

She pursed her lips, not looking at him. “Don't ask.”

“Uh…I'm pretty sure I have to.”

“No, you don't.” She scooped out the banded stacks of money, the gun, the bullets, the diskettes, the ID, all of it, and dropped everything into the bag. Then she closed the lid, got to her feet and slid the box back into its drawer. She held the bag in one hand, hiked her purse onto her shoulder with the other and turned to walk out of the bank.

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.”