Déjà Vu

“We’re not those people any more—those people we once were.”

“But we are,” Trent said. “We have their memories, their souls.”

But not their hearts. At least not hers.

Alaina reached for Trent. This time he came to her, desire catching fire between them.

She was overwhelmed. “I can feel you … what you feel.”

“I can feel you, too.”

“You want me,” she said. “So take me. I want to know what it was like between us.”

Trent shuddered now. She knew him so well. And still she wanted him?

He took her in his arms. “This is your last chance,” he warned her. “Your last chance to leave.”

She shook her head. “You don’t scare me.”

“Then that makes one of us.”

Dear Reader,

Have you ever had a sense of déjà vu? I have. Maybe it’s just because I’m quite forgetful and don’t remember the first experience. But the fanciful part of me would rather believe I really have experienced it before—in another life.

FBI agent Alaina Paulsen has that sense of déjà vu when she meets infamous horror author Trent Baines. But she doesn’t know if the man was her lover in a previous life or her killer. She remembers her past death, a murder so gruesome that she still has a scar. The killer has also carried over into this life, and he’s determined to kill her again. I hope you enjoy reading about Alaina and Trent’s thrilling Déjà Vu!

Lisa Childs

About the Author

LISA CHILDS has been writing since she could first form sentences. At eleven, she won her first writing award and was interviewed by the local newspaper. That story’s plot revolved around a kidnapping, probably something she wished on any of her six siblings. A Halloween birthday predestined a life of writing paranormal and intrigue. Readers can write to Lisa at PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA, or visit her at her website www.lisachilds.com.

Déjà Vu

Lisa Childs

www.millsandboon.co.uk

With great appreciation to Tara Gavin and Shawna Rice. Thank you for everything!

Prologue

Light glinted off metal as a clenched fist lifted a knife high in the air. The blade flashed again as it descended, slicing through flesh until the point plunged deep into her heart. The fist withdrew the knife and blood gurgled out of the wound as her last breath gasped from her lungs.

“You’ll stop loving him now,” the man murmured as he wiped her blood from his knife.

She stared up at him, her eyes still wide with fear even as she died and her spirit left this body….

With the image so vivid in her mind, Alaina struggled to focus on the one in the mirror on the bathroom door. Her image. The steam blurred her features, so that she saw only blond hair and pale skin. She wiped a hand over the fogged-up glass, then dropped her towel.

Her heart pounded hard beneath her breast. She lifted her hand to it and traced the puckered flesh of the scar. While it was on her body, the scar was not hers. She’d had no injury that had inflicted it. She’d been born with it. Alaina had brought the scar with her from a former life. A life, and a death, she remembered only in flashes.

She hadn’t seen enough yet to identify her killer. But somehow she knew that he was still out there—waiting to kill her. Again.

Chapter 1

“Do you want me to call your lawyer?”

Trent Baines spun his chair away from the window that looked out over the thickly wooded hillside, the trees the fresh green of new life, of spring. His hands shaking slightly, he planted his palms on the shiny mahogany surface of his desk and said, “That’s not necessary. I don’t need a lawyer to talk to her.”

“But she’s with the FBI,” Dietrich said, the big man’s deep voice pitched low as if he worried she would overhear him, although he stood close to Trent’s desk and she was on the other side of the doors, at least. Probably down the hall in the living room or foyer. Dietrich was paid well to protect Trent’s privacy.

A grin tugged at Trent’s mouth. “Do you think I’ve done something that puts me in need of a lawyer?”

“I didn’t mean to imply …”

“Do you think the FBI has a valid reason for questioning me?”

“Sir—”

Trent lifted a hand to wave off his employee’s contrition. “I’m just messing with you, Dietrich.”

Anything to get a reaction out of the usually expressionless man—and to distract himself from what awaited him outside the pocket doors of his mahogany-paneled den. Fate.

He drew in a deep, bracing breath and directed his assistant. “Show her in.”

“She’s not alone,” the other man reminded him.

Trent shrugged. “I don’t care who’s with her. I’ll only see her.”

He had already felt her, drawing nearer as she drove up to the estate. Even if he hadn’t had the call to warn him, he would have known she was coming. With a connection this strong, she had to be the one.

He had to be the one. Everything had led her here—to him. Trent Baines had to be the killer.

“He will see you.”

Startled, Alaina whirled away from the window and its fog-enshrouded view of the treetops. How had such a big man moved so quietly back into the living room where he’d left her and Agent Vonner? Then the young man, wearing a suit as dark as Vonner’s, turned to leave again.

Vonner trailed after him and, her pulse racing, she followed Vonner. Their footsteps on dark slate flooring echoed in the two-story foyer through which they passed. On one side of it were the double doors from which they’d entered. On the other, an elaborate double staircase with a cathedral-size stained-glass window on the landing.

As Vonner had commented, the place was a castle. And only one man lived here, with his servants?

The butler or bodyguard—or whatever the young man was—held out a hand as if stopping traffic at the closed pocket doors at the end of the wide hall. “Mr. Baines will only see the woman.”

“Agent Paulsen,” Alaina supplied her name.

“No,” Vonner protested.

“It’s fine,” she said. Her gun heavy on the holster on her belt, she wasn’t afraid for her safety.

The man—Dietrich he had called himself when he’d let them in earlier—began to slide open the pocket doors.

“You can’t see him alone,” Vonner protested and reached out to grasp Alaina’s arm.

She glanced from the fingers crushing the sleeve of her dark suit jacket to his face. Then she arched a brow, uncertain of Vonner’s motives. Did he not want her to get all the glory if they had, at last, found a genuine lead? Or was his concern only for her safety?

Neither option comforted her. In fact, she had been uneasy ever since Vonner had been assigned to the cold case with her. The male agent acted more interested in her than the case.

Vonner released her, but his dark-eyed gaze had gone beyond her to the man standing inside the dark-paneled den. “He’s not old enough …”

To be the killer? Was that what Vonner was about to say?

Alaina stepped away from her partner. As she joined Trent Baines in his inner sanctum, the pocket doors slid shut, closing her inside, alone with him. Despite what her partner believed, she knew Trent Baines could still be the killer. The cold cases they investigated now had occurred before this lifetime of his. Alaina was aware of her other life. Was he?

His gaze met hers, his green eyes burning with an intensity that had heat streaking through her body. Even though several feet separated them, she could feel not just the touch of his stare but the touch of his hands, caressing the curve of her waist, the slope of her hip, cupping the weight of her breasts….

She could feel his skin sliding over hers as she lay naked beneath him, her hands clutching at the rippling muscles of his back. Images flashed through her mind, images of his face as he lowered his head to hers, his mouth touching her lips. But this man didn’t look like Trent Baines, who had dark blond hair and penetrating green eyes. The man in the images had brown hair and eyes, but something about him was eerily similar to Trent, almost as if they were the same man.

Her lips parted, and a shaky breath escaped her aching lungs. Was he the man she had loved or the man who had killed her for loving someone else?

“You feel it, too,” Baines remarked, his voice thick with a sexy huskiness.

“Feel what?” Her heart pounded with fear and emotion.

“The connection.”

Determined to pull herself together, Alaina lifted her chin and arched a brow. “Not a very original come-on. I expected more creativity from a New York Times bestselling author.”

“Are you a fan, Agent …?”

“Paulsen.”

“Do you have a first name?”

“Yes.”

His mouth, his lips full and unsettlingly sexy, curved into a grin. “You’re not willing to share?”

“I don’t think it’s necessary for us to be on a first-name basis, Mr. Baines,” she said. Not when she could already feel his touch, his kiss … “I’m only here to ask you some questions.”

“You don’t want my autograph?” he asked, a teasing glint brightening his eyes. He reached behind him, onto his desk, and lifted a hardcover book. “I’d be happy to sign a copy for you. To your first name.”

“I don’t want a signed book.” Or for him to know her first name. She already felt too intimately connected to him, more intimately connected than she’d felt to any other man she’d met … in this life. “I’ve read everything you’ve written.”

Baines picked up a pen from the leather blotter on his desk and, as if he hadn’t heard her, flipped through the first couple pages of the book. “So you are a fan.”

“I’m an investigator.”

He scribbled something and held out the book to her. She hesitated to step closer, but she couldn’t reach it unless she moved nearer to where he sat now on the edge of his desk. He was tall, like his employee, but his body had the lean, muscular build of a runner. He obviously didn’t spend all his time behind his desk. Yet how had he written so many books, and achieved so much success, at an age she guessed to be close to her own thirty years?

Curiosity overcame her reluctance, and she closed the distance between them. When she grasped the book, he pulled it back, tugging her nearer so that her thighs rubbed against his as she stumbled between his knees. Her heart slammed against her ribs as it began to beat furiously. “Mr. Baines—”

“Trent,” he corrected her, his voice a raspy drawl. “Call me Trent.”

She shook her head, hoping to break the hold he had on her—the one that was more emotional than physical. “I didn’t come here for your autograph. I’m not a fan, Mr. Baines.”

His shoulders rippled beneath his thin black T-shirt as he shrugged. “I have few fans in law enforcement.”

“I’m surprised you have any,” she remarked.

He released the book she hadn’t realized she still held, and advised, “Read the autograph.”

Her fingers trembling slightly, she opened the cover and flipped to the title page, to the masculine scrawl of his signature and the words above it. To Alaina, I feel it, too.

She lifted her gaze from the book to his face. With sculpted features and those sexy lips, the man was beyond handsome. He was fascinating. “You know my name.”

His grin flashed again. “I’m an investigator, too.”

“Your editor called you,” she surmised because she had only been able to track him down through his publisher. The man had gone to extremes to protect his privacy.

“Of course. The publisher makes too much money off me not to take care of me,” he said with glib arrogance. But his green eyes sparkled with amusement, as if he laughed at himself.

“And Dietrich?” she asked, referring to the man who’d shown her to his den. “Does he take care of you, too? Is he your butler or your bodyguard?”

“He’s my assistant.”

“So you don’t do your own research?” she asked, wondering now if she was talking to the wrong man. But then he moved, and his knee rubbed against the side of her thigh. Her pulse raced in reaction and she knew … this was the man. She stepped back, needing some distance between them, needing to not touch him.

“I’m not sure what exactly Dietrich assists me with,” he said, his brow furrowing in confusion, “but it’s not my writing. No one helps me with that.”

Her hand shaking slightly, she closed the hardcover book. “So you’ve done all your own research for this series?”

He nodded. “Do you want some investigative pointers?”

A smile threatened, but she bit her bottom lip. She should have been irritated instead of amused by his arrogance. “I am here because I want some information.”

“What do you want to know, Alaina?”

Her name on his lips lifted goose bumps along her skin and the fine hairs on the nape of her neck. “I want to know how you found out details that were never released to the public.”

He arched a dark blond brow. “Details of what?”

“Of the murders you sensationalized in your books.”

“Sensationalized?” He tapped a finger against the spine of the book she held. “It’s fiction.”

Her stomach muscles tightened in dread. “No, it’s not. Every one of those murders actually happened.”

And one of those murders had been hers.

Chapter 2

“No, no, they haven’t.” Trent denied the veracity of her claim even though he knew she spoke the truth. For some time he had suspected that the images in his head weren’t products of an overactive imagination but memories. Someone else’s memories. “It’s fiction,” he insisted. “Just fiction.” “I have case files—” “I want to see them,” he demanded. He hadn’t wanted to know before, so he had never looked up old news stories or pulled police records. But now he needed proof; he needed to prove that the murders in his books didn’t match the ones about which Agent Paulsen had come to question him.

She shook her head with enough force that one silky tendril of blond hair slipped free of the knot at the back of her head. “That isn’t possible.”

“Why not?” he challenged her. “Are you afraid I’d write about them? According to you, I already have.”

“Yes, it’s like those poor women have been brutally murdered twice,” she said. “Once in reality and then again in your novels.”

Trent squeezed his eyes shut on a wave of self-disgust. “I didn’t know.”

Because he hadn’t let himself believe …

“You had to know. You used too many details,” she said, releasing a shaky sigh. “You used every detail, some that had never been released, details of which very few people were aware.”

“That’s why you’re here,” he surmised.

“Of course. What other reason would I have?”

Because she’d been looking for him, as he’d been looking for her—for the woman with whom he knew he would share this special connection. Yet even as connected as he was with her, he couldn’t feel her emotions like he was able to experience the emotions of others. He had no idea if she was really feeling what he was. The fierce, breath-stealing attraction and heart-pounding desire.

“The police like to hassle me from time to time,” he admitted. “I’m used to it.”

“In your books the serial killer,” she said, her pretty mouth twisting in disgust, “is the hero.”

“I wouldn’t call him a hero.” Complex. Multidimensional. That was what the critics called the protagonist of Trent Baines’s Thief of Hearts horror series.

“But,” she said, “you’ve written him as being smarter than law enforcement.”

That was what tended to piss off the authorities.

Her smoky gray-blue eyes darkened with frustration, and she added, “He always gets away.”

“Didn’t your killer?”

“What?” The faint color drained from her porcelain skin. “How do you know?”

“This killer you’re after,” Trent said even as he wondered at her reaction, wishing again that he could feel her emotions. “You wouldn’t still be after him if he hadn’t gotten away.”

“How do you know I’m after him?”

“You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. We’ve already established that you’re not a fan.” And she wasn’t likely to become one now. Despite whatever they might have meant to each other in another time, he was the writer that law enforcement hated.

“I could just be following up on a case,” she pointed out. “Checking out why you know things that only the killer would.”

He swallowed hard, but the knot in his throat wouldn’t go down. “Only the killer?”

Color rushed back into her face. “Or his victims.”

“But none of his victims could have survived to share their stories,” Trent said. If those real murders were exactly like the ones in his books, in his mind, no one could have survived the brutal attacks, the ritualistic mutilation. But they could have come back, returning from the dead into a new life.

Was that what had happened to him? Had he lived before? Was that why he had these memories that were not his? Whose were they, then? The memories of the killer that Alaina Paulsen sought?

“No, none of his victims survived,” she con firmed.

“How long ago did the murders happen?”

“I didn’t come here to share information with you,” she reminded him.

“You came here to get information from me.” The irony had his lips twitching into a grin. How could a man who had no idea what was real and what was fiction aid in a federal investigation?

“So tell me, Mr. Baines,” she persisted, “how you know things no one else knows about these murders.”

He tapped a fingertip against his forehead. “Imagination, Alaina.” That was what he’d been telling himself the past ten years—that he was only imagining things.

But he wasn’t imagining the connection between him and this woman, this stranger. Needing to touch her, he reached out, but before his fingertips could skim her cheek, she caught his wrist.

“Don’t.” She dropped his arm and stepped back, increasing the distance between them.

But he could still feel her touch, his skin tingling where her fingers had held his wrist.

“You might be able to ignore it, but I can’t,” he said. “There’s something here….” Something in her that pulled at him, that drew him to her. “There’s something between us.”

“Your ego,” she quipped.

He laughed. Sick of adoring fans, he found her attitude refreshing and attractive. But then, he found everything about her attractive. “Alaina …”

“These books,” she said as she lifted the one she still held, “these murders, aren’t from just your imagination. They are exactly the same as the real ones.”

He shrugged again. “Haven’t you heard? There is no such thing as an original idea.”

“I’ve heard that, but the saying I believe is that there is no such thing as coincidence.” She narrowed her eyes. “There’s no way you have all those details exactly the same by coincidence.”

“I don’t believe in coincidence, either,” he admitted. “I believe in fate, Alaina. I think that’s what brought you here.” He stood and closed the distance between them. This time when he reached for her, she didn’t catch his wrist. She didn’t stop him. His fingertips slid along the curve of her cheekbone, then down her neck to where her pulse pounded fast and hard beneath her pale skin. “Fate is what brought you to me.”

Her throat moved as she swallowed. Then her tongue slid out from between her lips, sliding over the fuller bottom one.

Trent leaned forward, drawn to her mouth, to her lips. But before he could taste more than her breath, the doors rattled under a pounding fist.

“Alaina, c’mon,” a male voice called out to her. Trent felt and heard the man’s impatience. “We have to go!”

As close as Trent was to her, just a breath apart, he caught the flash of regret in Alaina’s eyes before she pulled back.

“No, you have to stay,” Trent urged her.

She shook her head and, with a trembling hand, pulled a cell phone from her pocket. “I—I have to go.”

“You will come back,” he said.

“Yes,” she said to his relief, but then she dashed his hopes. “But just because you haven’t answered any of my questions.”

He shook his head. “No, because you won’t be able to stay away from me.”

She didn’t deny his claim. She just pulled open the doors and walked away, joining her impatient partner in the hall, so she didn’t hear his next words.

“And because I won’t be able to stay away from you …”

She turned back, their gazes meeting, holding like he’d longed to hold her. And he suspected that she knew, even if she hadn’t heard him.

“What the hell was going on in there?” Vonner asked.

Fortunately, he had to concentrate on the hairpin turns of the tree-lined road leading away from Trent Baines’s remote hilltop estate in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. So he couldn’t see Alaina’s face, which was certain to reveal everything she felt: stunned, overwhelmed and disappointed. Leaving Trent Baines hadn’t been easy; staying away would probably prove as hard as he’d warned her.

She stared at the facedown book on her lap. His publicity shot added to the mystery surrounding the reclusive author, as his raised hand covered most of his face. Only the strong line of his jaw and wind-tousled dark blond hair were visible around his palm and fingers.

“Alaina?” Vonner prodded her. “What happened in there? What was going on?”

Fighting to steady her voice, she said, “I don’t know what you mean….”

“Why’d you waste so much time?” the dark-haired agent persisted. “He’s not the guy. According to Igor—”

“Igor?”

“His butler,” Vonner explained. “According to him, Baines is only twenty-nine years old. As we both know, the last of these murders happened thirty years ago. Whatever Baines knows about the cases, he probably just figured out by reading old newspaper articles or talking to someone who was around back when the murders happened.”

“But now there’s been another murder.” She reminded him of the call she hadn’t heard because she’d been too distracted. Or captivated.

Trent Baines had nearly kissed her. And she was disappointed that he hadn’t, that they had been interrupted before she’d learned how his lips would feel, how his mouth would taste….

Guilt gripped her now. While she’d been distracted, someone else had been murdered. Brut ally. Ritualistically. The M.O. exactly matched those thirty-year-old cases.

“This murder is further proof that Baines can’t be the killer,” Vonner added. “Because you were with him when we got the call.”

“We don’t know how long ago the murder occurred.” Due to a weak cell signal, Alaina hadn’t heard much of what her supervisor had said except that she needed to quit wasting her time on an unsubstantiated lead.

Only she knew it wasn’t unsubstantiated. Only she knew that Baines had used details that weren’t even in the files of those cold cases. But if she told her bosses how she knew—that she remembered a past life … and death—she’d lose whatever respect and credibility she had in the Bureau. They would think she was as crazy as the killer.

“The guy’s so isolated up here,” Vonner pointed out, cursing beneath his breath as a tire dropped off the edge of the drive onto the loose gravel shoulder. “There are no quick trips for him.”