Kiss Me, Kill Me

Praise for the novels of

MAGGIE SHAYNE

“A tasty, tension-packed read.”

—Publishers Weekly on Thicker Than Water

“Tense…frightening…a page-turner in the best sense.”

—RT Book Reviews on Colder Than Ice

“Mystery and danger abound in Darker Than Midnight, a fast-paced, chilling thrill read that will keep readers turning the pages long after bedtime…. Suspense, mystery, danger and passion—no one does them better than Maggie Shayne.”

—Romance Reviews Today on Darker Than Midnight

[winner of a Perfect 10 award]

“Maggie Shayne is better than chocolate. She satisfies every wicked craving.”

—New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Forster

“Shayne’s haunting tale is intricately woven…. A moving mix of high suspense and romance, this haunting Halloween thriller will propel readers to bolt their doors at night.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Gingerbread Man

“A gripping story of small-town secrets. The suspense will keep you guessing. The characters will steal your heart.”

—New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner on The Gingerbread Man

Kiss of the Shadow Man is a “crackerjack novel of romantic suspense.”

—RT Book Reviews

Maggie Shayne

Kiss Me, Kill Me

This book is lovingly dedicated to the readers who’ve been with me from the beginning, always breathlessly waiting for the next installment, and to the new ones we’ve picked up together along the way. Every word I write, I write with you in mind, wondering what you’ll think, if you’ll like it, if something I toss in for you will make you smile, if you’ll get our inside jokes, if I’ll scare you, if you’ll cry at the end like I did. Every word. Thank you isn’t nearly enough, but I thank you all the same.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Prologue

Sixteen Years Ago

Carrie Overton had known her life was about to change forever. She just hadn’t known how drastically. But when her headlights picked out the shape of a lone woman standing beside her car on the roadside, she knew something was wrong. It was the dead of night in the middle of nowhere. The woman was leaning on her rusty, lopsided car, one arm braced on the hood, the other, cradling her swollen belly. Her face bore a grimace of pain and no small amount of fear. And, in fact, when Carrie flipped on her signal light—though there was no one other than an army of raccoons to see it, she thought—some of that fear changed to visible, almost palpable, relief. The woman—no, she was really little more than a girl, Carrie saw as she drove closer—held up a hand, as if to signal her to stop, though Carrie had already decided there was little else she could do.

She pulled over behind the girl’s car, a primer-colored breakdown-waiting-to-happen, shut her own engine off and got out. The silence of the night struck her as she walked quickly over to the girl. Her shoes crunched on gravel, crickets chirped as if nothing was wrong, and night birds called out noisily every fourth step or so.

“Car broken down?” she asked, almost hoping it was as simple as that, even though every instinct in her body was telling her otherwise. And her instincts were probably better than most, seeing as how she was a doctor. A new one, yes, but a doctor all the same.

The girl met her eyes, and Carrie saw that they were wet. “No. I think I might be in labor.”

Carrie felt her own quick gasp, but just as quickly she grabbed hold of her nerves and replaced them with the quiet calm she had learned patients needed from their MDs. “Lucky for you I came along, then. I’m a doctor.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Nope. I’m on my way to start a new job at Shadow Falls General Hospital.”

“That’s where I’m going, too!” the girl said, but then she whimpered, and closed her eyes and hugged her middle. “God, that hurts.”

“Okay, breathe through it,” Carrie told her. “Like this.” And then she demonstrated, puffing short bursts of air from pursed lips.

The girl obeyed, and in a moment, as the pain eased, Carrie opened the rear door of the girl’s car and helped her in. “Come on, lie down on the backseat, where you can be more comfortable until I get us some help.”

“I think comfortable is impossible at this point.” But the girl moved anyway. Not far, though. She took two steps, then bent double once more, almost falling to her knees this time. She began puffing those short breaths again, and for the first time Carrie felt a real sense of alarm.

Hunkering down to be at eye level with the now-crouching mother-to-be, Carrie asked, “How far apart are the pains?”

“Almost constant,” the girl whispered between puffs.

“Okay. Okay,” Carrie said soothingly. She waited for the pain to pass, and then quickly moved the girl into the backseat. Clearly she was about to deliver a baby. Another birth pang came and went before she got the girl even half-undressed. Then Carrie had to leave just long enough to race to her own car and grab her bag. In seconds she was back, kneeling on the pavement beside the open car door.

“The pains only started an hour ago. I thought I’d have time to get to Shadow Falls.”

“Most women would have,” Carrie told her. “You’re being an exception to the rule today. But don’t worry. I can deliver your baby right here just fine. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Then why am I scared shitless?” the girl asked. “Unhh! Oh, God.”

Carrie tried to project confidence and hide her own nervousness—she’d delivered babies before, after all. Not on deserted country roads in the backseats of barely roadworthy cars, but she didn’t imagine many doctors had. She laid a calming hand on the girl’s bulging belly and felt the baby move inside. It instigated a wave of sadness, but she tamped it down. “It’s a miracle, you know. It’s a miracle you’re experiencing right now.”

“Miracles hurt!” Pant, pant, pant. “Have you ever—oh, hell!—delivered a baby before?”

“Dozens of them,” Carrie lied. She’d delivered three—exactly three—during her residency, but she’d never had to fly solo, without a nurse or sterile tools or gloves, not to mention a backup neonatal team standing by.

“I’d give anything not to have to do this,” the girl moaned.

“I’d give anything to trade places with you right now,” Carrie told her.

“You must be nuts, then—oh, hell, oh, hell, oh, hell!”

“Not nuts, just broken. I…I’ll never be a mom.” Maybe telling her that would make her realize what a blessing this event was. How important. How special.

The contraction passed, and the girl’s expression eased. She studied Carrie’s face. “You can’t have kids?” she asked.

Carrie met her eyes. “Nope. I was born with defective fallopian tubes and—”

“Oh, shit! Something’s happening. I have to push. I have to—”

“Go ahead, push.” Carrie got low and flattened her hands against the bottoms of the girl’s feet so she would have something to brace against. The contraction eased, and the girl fell back, heaving a sigh.

“Relax until the next contraction,” Carrie told her. “Then we’ll push again.”

“It’s odd, me meeting you out here like this,” the girl said.

“We haven’t officially met, though, have we?” Carrie pointed out. “I’m Carrie Overton. Doctor Carrie Overton. And you are…?”

The girl didn’t answer. She was gripped by another contraction, and then another, and the opportunity for conversation was gone, aside from the necessary bits. Breathe through it. Push harder.

It wasn’t long before the baby’s head came into sight. And with the next push, the shoulders began to emerge. “You’re so strong,” Carrie said. “This is going to be over in no time, hon. Two more pushes, maybe three.”

“I want it to be over with now!” the girl cried.

“I don’t blame you. Come on, push with me now.”

The girl pushed, and Carrie talked and comforted, and in short order she was holding a tiny, wriggling baby boy in her arms. He released a series of congested bleats, making her laugh softly. “A boy,” Carrie said. “And he’s got a great set of lungs on him, too.”

“Is he okay?” the girl asked. “I want him to be okay.”

“He’s fine. He’s absolutely…beautiful. God, look at him. He’s perfect.” Carrie sniffled, then tied off the cord, cut it and wiped the baby down as best she could with gauze and sterile water. She suctioned his nose and mouth with a small blue aspirator, wrapped him in her own jacket, and for just a moment held him in her arms, smiling down at his tiny face. When tears burned in her eyes, she blinked them away and gently placed the baby in his mother’s arms.

“You should try to nurse him,” Carrie whispered. She couldn’t speak any louder than that for the tightness in her throat. The idea of never being able to have a baby of her own…it was a constant twisting blade in her heart. She knew she would be a far better mother than her own volatile, passionate, hot-tempered mother had been. “I can hardly wait to see what he weighs,” she added, mentally trying to change the subject.

She helped the new mother clean herself up, got her sitting upright, watched her trying to nurse and then nodded. “Okay, listen. I passed a house a few miles back. I’m going to drive back there, see if I can use their phone to get an ambulance out here for you, and we’ll get you and your little guy to a nice clean hospital where you can recover properly. Okay?”

The girl lifted her face, her expression oddly detached. “I thought doctors all had those car phones nowadays.”

“Not this one. Not yet. Anyway, I doubt it would work out here even if I did. But I’ll be quick.”

“And you’ll come right back here?” the girl asked.

“Right back. I won’t be more than ten or fifteen minutes. And you’ll be fine, I promise.”

“And the baby, too? He’ll be fine, too, alone for that long?”

Carrie tilted her head. “He won’t be alone, honey. He has you.”

“I could fall asleep, or—”

“He’ll be fine. I promise.” Carrie started to back away, but the girl reached out and gripped her hand.

“This was supposed to happen. You finding me here. It was meant to be. I know it was.”

“Maybe so.”

“For sure. I knew a man once. He always said everything happens for a reason. And that if you want something bad enough, it can happen.”

“Well, I’ll bet you wanted help pretty badly. Maybe he was right.”

The girl nodded slowly, her gaze turned inward. “Please hurry back.”

“I promise. I’ll be just as fast as I can.”

“Thank you,” the girl whispered, and she squeezed Carrie’s hand before she let her go.

Back in her own car, Carrie held her tears in check until she got the vehicle turned around and was headed in the direction she’d come from. But then the dam broke, and the insistent tears spilled over. She knew it was stupid, because there were other ways to have children besides giving birth to them. There were lots more babies in the world than there were suitable homes or deserving families.

She drove through the darkness, her eyes peeled for the house she’d passed, squinting to see better through the stupid tears. She was starting a new life, a new job—no, a fabulous career—in an idyllic New England town. She was buying the cutest little house she’d ever seen, and she had every intention of raising kids there someday. The adoption process was slow, slower yet for a single parent with a demanding job—so it would take a long time. But someday…Someday she would have a child, and she would give it the kind of solid, stable home she’d never had. No way was her child going to be uprooted and moved from place to place every time its father got itchy feet. The Overton home would be a permanent one, a solid one, and it would always be calm and quiet. No loud screaming matches. No physical altercations with the neighbors. No temper tantrums from people old enough to know better. None of the drama she’d grown up with.

No. Her child would have a quiet, loving, peaceful existence, and a hometown. She’d always wanted a hometown.

And she was on her way to the one she’d chosen, she reminded herself. Part One of her dream, all but complete. And even though the waiting lists were long, and even though adoption agencies tended to give preference to married couples over single women, she would get her baby someday. She would.

There! There was the house she’d passed.

She flipped on her signal and prayed the place was entirely dark only because it was 2:00 a.m. But there was no car in the driveway, and after at least five minutes’ worth of pounding on the door and jabbing the doorbell repeatedly, she realized no one was home.

Well, all right. She would just bundle the mother and baby into her car, and take them with her until she found a phone. Or maybe she would just drive them the rest of the way to Shadow Falls herself. It couldn’t be more than two hours away.

Returning to her car, she reversed out of the empty driveway and headed back to where she’d left the young woman and her son.

When she got to the spot, however, the primer-colored sedan was gone.

A jolt of alarm shot through her as she drove nearer, wondering if she had the right spot, but she was sure she did. There was her jacket, the one she’d wrapped the baby in, lying in the grass along the roadside, right near where she was sure the other car had been parked. Her headlights picked out the pale green fabric. Carrie pulled over and stopped. Surely that young woman couldn’t intend to drive the rest of the way on her own, could she? She’d just given birth, for heaven’s sake. She needed rest, and the baby needed—

The jacket was moving.

“No,” Carrie whispered. “No. Tell me she didn’t—” She wrenched open her door and hurried out, hopping the slight ditch to where her jacket lay, still wriggling.

Almost afraid to look, she bent and unwrapped the fabric. The tiny newborn lay inside, pink and healthy and squirming.

“Oh, God, she left you. How could she—how could anyone?”

Carrie gathered the baby, jacket and all, into her arms, then felt the rustle of paper as she rose.

A note, written on the back of an old envelope with the address torn off, was stuffed in a pocket of the jacket.

Carrie,

His name is Sam. I hope you’ll let him keep it.

We were supposed to meet so I could give him to you. That’s what I meant by what I said before. You’ve been wanting a baby—and you got one. I’ve been wanting a solution, and you were it for me. This was meant to be. That man I knew was right. I always knew he was special. My Sam is all yours now. And don’t worry. I won’t change my mind about this.

Ever.

The note was unsigned. Carrie folded it and tucked it into her jeans pocket.

Then, snuggling the baby close to her chest, she walked back to her car. She looked up and down the deserted stretch of pavement, but she didn’t see any sign of the girl or her car. No headlights approached, announcing that the new mother had come to her senses.

And then she looked up at the sky, silently asking the stars overhead what she was supposed to do next. As she stood there in the night, a star shot in an arcing path right over her head.

Like an answer. Like a wish.

He cried softly, and Carrie stared down into the open, unfocused blue, blue eyes of a newborn baby boy. She smiled.

“Hi, Sam,” she said softly. “I think maybe…I think maybe I’m going to be your mommy. What do you think about that?” She was almost trying out the notion, testing the words as she said them. But they felt so good, she could barely believe it.

She didn’t know how she would pull this off—find the mother and make it legal, she supposed. Somehow she would find a way. Somehow she could make this work. Somehow…

Somehow, in one night on her way to her new life, her dream had come true. Whoever that man was who’d told the girl that if you wanted something badly enough, it could happen, he must have been wise. A guru or a holy man or something. Because this felt like a gift. Like it really was meant to be.

Bending, she pressed her lips to Sam’s forehead as tears, happy ones this time, rolled down her cheeks. “I’ll find a way to make this work, Sam. I promise. And I will be the best mother you could ever wish for.”

1

Present Day

“Go, Sam! Woohoo!” Carrie pumped her fist in the air when her lanky teenage son nailed the soccer ball with the inside of his size-ten foot, sending it like a bullet past the goalie and into the net. He glanced her way, gave her a half smile that didn’t reach his eyes, then tapped the yellow band on his arm to remind everyone watching who that goal was for.

As she sat down again, Carrie was embarrassed by her outburst. It was inappropriate, given the circumstances.

The game continued, and she looked around at the other spectators. Parents and other locals, mostly, lining the bleachers at the edge of an extensive and well-groomed field behind Shadow Falls Central High. School hadn’t yet started—even though pre-season games and practices had begun for soccer, track and cheerleading.

September in Shadow Falls had a definite scent to it, and a distinct feeling to it, as well. You’d know autumn was coming even if you couldn’t see or hear a thing. The leaves were beginning to turn, though they were nowhere near their peak just yet. The sun was just as bright as it had been all summer long, but not as hot anymore, and the breeze had a brisk snap that was missing in the summer months. Fall was rolling in. You could feel it, taste it in the air.

But there was something besides autumn hanging in the air around Shadow Falls. There was a pall that was hard to miss. A lingering darkness that hadn’t let up for five days. It only grew, in fact. Every day that Kyle Becker didn’t come home, Shadow Falls got a little grimmer, a little grayer.

Even the tourists must know the reason for the town’s unusual melancholy mood by now. It was hard to miss, with the Teen Runaway posters stapled to every telephone pole, fence post and unsuspecting maple tree, and the thrice-daily gathering and dispatching of volunteer search parties in front of the old firehouse, just in case something had happened to him, a possibility no one wanted to contemplate too intently.

Every player on both soccer teams, the Blackberry Chiefs as well as the Shadow Falls Vikings, wore a yellow armband to show unity in hoping the missing sixteen-year-old would come home soon. Five days. Carrie didn’t know what the kid was thinking.

“Nice boot,” someone said nearby.

Carrie looked up to see local cop Bryan Kendall, in uniform, sitting four feet to her right. “It was, wasn’t it?” she said. “How are you, Bryan?”

He shrugged. “Been better.”

“I imagine you’re over your head in wedding plans about now, aren’t you? What have you got, six weeks to go?”

“Just under. But it’s not the wedding plans weighing me down. Though I gotta tell you, I’d just as soon elope and get straight to the honeymoon.”

“I’ll bet.”

“It’s this Kyle Becker thing,” he said.

She nodded, sighing. “The timing couldn’t be much worse, could it?”

“Not much. Tough checking out every stranger in town at the kickoff of leaf-peeper season.”

She nodded in sympathy as she scanned the bleachers, spotting a few unfamiliar faces among the locals, even here. Not many. The tourists preferred winery tours and foliage photo-ops to high school sporting events. But a few of them had discovered the soccer match and settled in to watch. One in particular caught her eye. He sat a few rows down and off to the left, and he was immersed in a supermarket tabloid with Shadow Falls’ latest scandal splashed on its front page.

Dead Woman Misidentified for More Than Sixteen Years.

Anonymous Source Puts Up Half-Million-Dollar Reward for Her Missing Baby.

Carrie closed her eyes, shook her head, wishing the story of her son’s birth mother would just go away already. But it was everywhere. And the idiot offering the reward wasn’t helping.

All those years ago, the dead woman had been identified as one Sarah Quinlan. It was only in the past few weeks that her true identity, Olivia Dupree, had been revealed. That had renewed interest in the case, and the additional information that the dead woman had given birth only weeks prior to her murder had given the story legs.

No one in Shadow Falls had known Olivia was pregnant or heard anything about a baby, but now everyone in the U.S. of A. suddenly seemed to be interested in speculating on what had become of it. Especially with the huge reward thrown into the mix.

Carrie hadn’t known the dead woman’s name when her body had been trundled into her hospital’s morgue for autopsy. But she’d recognized her face. It had been only six weeks since she’d last seen it, after all. She’d been searching Shadow Falls for the young woman, hoping to get her to sign the adoption papers that would officially make Sam Carrie’s own. On that horrible day, she’d realized it would never happen.

She alone knew what had become of the murder victim’s missing baby. He’d just scored a goal on the soccer field, and he didn’t even know he was adopted.

“You know that guy?” Bryan asked.

Carrie blinked and realized that her eyes were still glued to the tourist with the tabloid. He had long, honey and caramel hair, pulled back and held with a black rubber band. He had whiskers, too. Not a beard, exactly. Just a neatly trimmed layer of bristles that was probably supposed to be sexy.

Okay, it was sexy. Just not to her.

He wore jeans, and a T-shirt with several guitars on the front of it and some words underneath, but she was too far away to read them clearly.

“Carrie?” Bryan nudged.

“No, no, I don’t know him. I was just thinking he looks like a hippie.”

“Nah, they usually travel in groups.” He was being funny.

She wasn’t laughing. “So maybe he’s a lone hippie. Can’t say I approve of his choice of reading material.”

“He probably doesn’t care.” Bryan nodded in a direction slightly farther left. “That one’s reading the same thing, but since he’s wearing a buttoned-up suit, you probably don’t find it as offensive.”

She looked beyond the long-haired man to where Bryan had indicated. Another man sat there, light brown hair in a neat cut that seemed a little too short and too severe for his face. It was a nice face, though. He had a deep tan that stood in sharp contrast to his pale brows and even paler blue eyes, giving him a striking appearance. And his suit was impeccable, not to mention expensive.

“It’s just as offensive. Though I’m more surprised to see an intelligent-looking guy like that reading it.”

“I think he looks like an Oompa-Loompa.”

She elbowed Bryan in the rib cage but had to laugh, and it broke a little of the tension. “You’re just not used to seeing sun-worshippers at the peak of their color.”

“The man is orange.”

“He’s not orange. He’s deeply tanned. And he looks harmless. The hippie, on the other hand…”

“Doesn’t look the least bit suspicious to me,” Bryan said.

“Never trust a guy in a ponytail,” she told him. “If you’re still checking out tourists, I’d suggest you move that guy to the top of the list.”