Kill Me Again

She punched the pillow, lay back down and tried to sleep.

And she did begin to drift off—right up until she heard the unmistakable sound of the French doors swinging open with their telltale creak, followed by footsteps sneaking silently across her kitchen floor.

Aaron tossed and turned, and tried to sleep, but he didn’t have any success at all. Every time someone passed in the hall beyond his closed hospital-room door, he came to attention, watching, listening, waiting, certain it was his assailant, back to finish the job.

It was worse when the passerby did pause near his door, and worst of all when they actually came inside. A nurse wanting to check his vitals or administer meds or adjust the IV or whatever. They came in what felt like fifteen-minute intervals, always advising him to relax and get some sleep when they left. Right.

He wished he could remember something. Anything besides the terrifying vision of committing cold-blooded murder. And he tried. He said his own name over and over in his mind. Aaron Westhaven. Aaron Westhaven. Aaron Westhaven. He tried to visualize his fingers racing over a keyboard, typing the words of some blockbuster. But none of it felt familiar.

None of it.

He drifted off once, only to see himself standing over a lifeless body, looking down at the bloodstained white shirt of a motionless corpse, the smoking gun in his hand, its gleaming barrel still warm. He could smell the gunpowder. The vision was that vivid, that real.

He came awake with a start that had him sitting upright in the bed. Memory? Or nightmare? That made twice now that his mind had filled itself with the image of killing someone. What the hell kind of man was he? Not the sensitive geek Olivia Dupree apparently thought he was, that was for damn sure.

He had to get to the bottom of this mess, and he had to do it now, tonight. He felt like a living, breathing target lying there, and dammit, he knew he was supposed to trust his instincts above all else, though he didn’t know where that knowledge came from. Was it something he’d lived by, or something his injured brain had just made up to fill space?

Fed up, he kicked off the covers, climbed out of the bed and went into the little bathroom off his room, so he could use the mirror there to help him get the bandages off his head.

It still ached, but not as much without the too-tight mummy wrap. Creeping to the door and peering out, he watched the activity at the nurses’ station for a while. Every so often the tall desk would be deserted as the nurses headed in different directions, tending to patients, answering their call buttons.

The place was clearly understaffed.

Good.

He spotted the key to Olivia’s car hanging on a peg near the desk. He’d been at the door, listening intently to every second of the conversation between her and Dr. Overton earlier. He knew about the doc’s kid joyriding in a borrowed SUV, about Olivia leaving her own car there overnight to take the bigger one home. He’d seen the keys get hung up there, and knew what kind of car she drove.

He grabbed the zip-top bag holding his few belongings from the drawer beside the bed, tucked Olivia Dupree’s business card inside it and waited. The stuff in the bag had been examined by the police and returned to him, and it consisted of a pocket watch, a key ring with a rearing stallion on it and bearing a single key with a P engraved on its face, and a packet of Big Red chewing gum. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had to his name at the moment, and he wasn’t leaving it behind.

The next time every nurse was way from the desk, Aaron slipped out of his room, padded along the hall and lifted Olivia’s car key right off the rack. Then he turned and moved farther along the hallway, passing patients’ rooms, peering inside until he spotted a man in a bed who looked to be in the vicinity of his own size and shape. The patient was sound asleep, no nurses hovering nearby. So Aaron ducked into the room, moved quietly to the closet, opened it and saw the man’s clothes stored there just as his own had been.

Ducking into the bathroom, he donned the clothes—jeans, a black T-shirt and a denim jacket—as fast as he could. The running shoes were two sizes too small, so he didn’t bother exchanging his own scuffed but expensive-looking black ones with those. Then he had to watch and wait for the nurses to get busy again before he could slip out of the room, toward the door marked Stairs.

Once in the stairwell, he figured he was home free. He took that route all the way to the ground floor. No one noticed him as he headed toward the exit, or if they did, they didn’t say anything. He didn’t take any more time than necessary, looking as if he knew exactly where he was going, exuding confidence and purpose and probably a hint of impatience.

Finally he was passing through the exit doors, and into the parking lot. And only then did he breathe a huge sigh of relief, followed by a refreshing lungful of fresh, cool, summer night air. It tasted good here, he thought, and wondered if that was something new to him. Maybe he lived in a city.

It took him a few minutes of searching to find Olivia’s car, but only a few. It was the only white hybrid SUV in the parking lot. He hit the unlock button, and it flashed its headlights at him in response.

Moments later he was pulling in to the scarce traffic of a Shadow Falls night.

He gave himself time to get a few blocks away before pulling over again. Then, feeling safe—or as safe as a man who knew someone with a gun was out there looking for him could feel—he took the time to turn on the dash-mounted GPS device. He touched the screen, chose Navigate To and then looked at his selections. Street Address, City Center, Point of Attraction, Home.

Smiling, he touched the word Home.

Olivia Dupree’s address popped up onto the screen, and a female voice said, “Left turn ahead.”

4

Olivia sat up slowly, her heart pounding so hard she would have sworn whoever was in her house could hear it as clearly as she did. “Freddy,” she whispered harshly. “Freddy, where are you?”

But there was no reply.

He wasn’t lying on the floor beside the bed, the way he usually did, so she could let her arm dangle over the side, and stroke his big head until he fell asleep. He wasn’t lying on the bed, across her lower legs, or with his head on her chest, rendering her immobile or in danger of suffocation, either.

Where was her dog?

And who was creeping around in her kitchen?

Olivia reached for the telephone on the nightstand, pushed the talk button and heard nothing but dead air. No landline. Her blood went cold. Had the intruder cut the phone line?

And then her mind went to the place it would have gone sooner if she hadn’t trained herself to avoid it. Her ex-lover, Tommy Skinner. Had he finally found out the truth? That she was still alive and in hiding, living a false life under a false name. A life that felt more real than any other one ever had. Had he finally come, sixteen years later, to exact revenge for what she’d done to him?

She had to get out of the house, she realized, no longer willing to downplay the fear that was trying to keep her alive.

But first she had to find her dog.

She slid from the bed, unconsciously smoothing her red flannel pajama bottoms and white lacy camisole top, and tiptoed to the bedroom door, which stood two inches ajar. She never shut it all the way, so that Freddy could come and go throughout the night. Her cell phone was in her purse, which was on a hook in the living-room closet. Dammit. She didn’t have a gun, either. Not there in the house, anyway. She’d never thought she would need a gun with Freddy around.

She peered through the slightly open door into the living room, and saw Freddy, lying on his side on the hardwood floor. Asleep, she thought—and then the truth hit her. He was lying too still, not moving at all. And he would have heard the sounds that had awakened her far sooner than she would have. She tensed in shock and fear, about to pull the door wider and run to him, but before she could, it crashed inward, hitting her in the head and sending her backward onto the floor. Her forehead screamed in pain, and she felt a trickle of blood there, even as she realized a man wearing a black ski mask was standing over her. Scrambling backward, crablike, she shielded her face with one arm, and went icy cold in terror when he lifted a gun and pointed it at her.

“Stay still!” he barked from behind the mask.

“What did you do to my dog?” She made no effort to keep her voice down.

“Quiet, dammit!” He worked the gun’s action.

“All right, all right.” She stayed still and bit her lip to keep from speaking again. She was shaking from head to toe, yet her mind kept on working. She tried to get a look at him in case she lived through this, so she could give a description later on. Her arm was still blocking her face. She couldn’t seem to convince herself to lower it, so she peeked around it. Her assailant was lean and wiry, not overly tall, though he seemed it as she lay on her back on the floor, looking up into his gun barrel. “Please,” she whispered, unable to keep her mouth shut, despite his threats. “Please tell me what’s wrong with my dog. What did you do to him?”

“Shut up!”

She shut up but kept taking mental notes. He was wearing a ski mask, a black turtleneck, black jeans and black gloves. At first she wasn’t even sure of his skin color, but then she glimpsed it through the eye holes of the mask. He was Caucasian. It was too dark to guess his eye color.

He went to her dresser and yanked open the drawers, raking his hands through her clothes, sending them flying in the process, all the while keeping the gun and one eye on her. He pulled one drawer all the way out and flung it to the floor when he was finished, then turned to her closet.

“What do you want?”

He turned sharply and stared at her. “I told you to shut up, bitch! Do you want to die like your dog?”

“Freddy! No!” She surged to her feet, ignoring him, his threats and his gun, and took one lunging step toward the bedroom door.

Her attacker caught her bodily around the waist, flung her backward onto the bed and leaned over her. “The disks. I want the disks. Where are they, Sarah?”

“Sarah…” she whispered. God, no one had called her that in more than sixteen years. “No, I’m not Sarah. I’m Oliv—”

He swung his gun hand so suddenly that she couldn’t anticipate the blow, and her position on the bed didn’t leave room to duck it, anyway. The side of the handgun connected with her jaw, and her head snapped hard to one side. He straddled her on the bed as stars exploded behind her eyes and lifted the gun again.

But then something—no, someone—tackled him from the side, the momentum carrying him off the bed to the floor. Olivia scrambled off the bed herself, though her head was spinning. Stumbling toward the doorway, she managed to stay upright, to get through it with only one thought on her mind.

Freddy.

He was still there on the floor, and he hadn’t moved. She staggered toward him, then fell half on top of him, hugging his big neck. “Oh, Freddy, come on, baby. Freddy? Freddy!”

The other two crashed into the living room, and she surged to her feet again, racing for the closet and the cell phone she’d left in her purse. The newcomer delivered a series of blows delivered so rapidly she couldn’t have counted them. The intruder’s head snapped back with each one, and she finally realized that her rescuer was none other than the man she had fallen asleep thinking about. Aaron Westhaven.

Even as she watched in stunned awe, he snapped the gun from the intruder’s grasp, removed and pocketed the clip, then ejected the bullet in the chamber. And he did it all in about a half second, while she stood there with the cell phone in her hand. He met her eyes and gave her a subtle shake of his head, telling her no.

Then the intruder ran for it, blowing past her and out through the front door. Aaron ran after him, but she caught hold of his forearm just as he reached the doorway.

“Aaron, please don’t!” she cried.

He stopped in his tracks in the doorway, turned to look at her. But she was focused on Freddy again. Releasing his arm, she returned to her beloved pet. She rubbed his giant head as tears spilled over her face. “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God! Freddy.”

She heard a motor roaring away, and then Aaron was kneeling beside her, his hands on her dog. “He’s breathing. Hey, you hear me? He’s okay.”

She sniffled and lifted her eyes to his. “He’s not dead?”

“No, he’s breathing. His heart’s beating strong. Feel.” He closed one of his hands around hers, enveloping it entirely, and then he pressed it to Freddy’s chest. She felt the powerful, steady throbbing of his massive heart against her palm.

Her mouth fell open, and her eyes closed. “He’s alive! Freddy, come on boy, wake up. Wake up for me now.” She bent and kissed his muzzle, then rubbed his face and ears, but he didn’t respond.

Aaron sighed and then bent closer, running his hands over the dog’s huge body in search of injuries, frowning the entire time as if puzzled. He laid his head on the dog’s side, listening. Then he sat upright again, nodding. “I think he’s fine. There’s not a mark on him. My best guess is that he’s probably been drugged.”

“Drugged? Dammit, it was the steak.”

He looked at her, brows raised.

“He was eating a piece of steak when I got home, and I couldn’t get it away from him.”

“So your burglar fed him some doped meat. Can’t blame him. You don’t break in to a house with a dog this size unless you take some precautions, right? I think he’ll be fine. Can you turn on a light?”

Sniffling, she got up and found a light switch.

Aaron was still looking at her dog, lifting his eyelids, looking at his eyes. “Yeah, he’ll be fine. He’s starting to come around already. It would take a huge dose to do any lasting harm to a dog this size. Hell, he’s almost a pony.” He glanced up at her, and his face changed. “Damn,” he said, and he rose, coming to her, gripping her chin very gently, turning her face. “What did he hit you with?”

“First my bedroom door. Then his gun.” She ran her fingertips over her hurting jaw. “What are you doing here, Aaron?”

“I was feeling like a sitting duck at the hospital. And I overheard you and the doc talking before, so I knew where to find your key and your car.”

“So you just left?” She let him help her to her feet.

“I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“Mind? You probably just saved my life.”

She let him lead her into the kitchen, though she hated to walk away from her dog. But he eased her into a chair that left her a clear line of sight to Fred’s still-prone form. Then he turned on the water, located a washcloth and soaked it, then went to the fridge, where he filled the cloth with ice. “Here, hold this on your jaw.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s not even close to enough to say how sorry I am, Olivia.”

She frowned up at him. “Sorry? About what?”

“Bringing this to your doorstep.” He returned to the fridge, this time in search of something to drink, and brought out two diet colas, opening both and setting one on the table in front of her. “Obviously this has something to do with me. Maybe the killer knew I was supposed to be staying with you, so when he found out I wasn’t dead, he came looking for me here.”

She met his eyes, saw the regret in them, and shook her head slowly. “This didn’t have anything to do with you.” She said it softly, warily, hoping not to have to tell him anything more.

“Yeah, right.” He took the ice from her hand, repositioning it on her face, and then pressing her palm to it again. “You have killers after you, too, right?”

“I’ve been hiding from them for more than sixteen years,” she said softly. His eyes shot to hers, and she held his gaze. “And no, I don’t want to talk about it. But I have the feeling you can understand that, seeing as you’ve been doing the same thing.”

“I have?”

She shrugged. “You do the math.”

He nodded slowly. “So you think this guy was after you?”

“Yes.”

He frowned. “I heard him call you Sarah. He asked about…disks.”

She averted her eyes.

“Maybe if you just gave them to him—”

“I don’t have them here.”

“Just as well, because you can’t stay here after this.”

She looked up slowly.

“He’ll be back until he gets what he wants, or until I render him incapable of unassisted breathing.”

She smiled a little at what she hoped was sarcasm. Having seen him fight, though, she rather doubted it. Smiling hurt, and she winced.

“If I were you, I’d get whatever disks he’s after, so that we at least have something to negotiate with when he returns.”

“What do you mean ‘we’?” she asked, lowering the ice even while raising her head to look into his eyes.

He shrugged. “Look, I’m not comfortable just sitting around doing nothing. I need to get busy figuring out who I am and what I’m doing here, and who the hell tried to kill me. But since I don’t have a clue to go on, I might as well help you with your problem first.”

She frowned as she searched his face. “Th-thank you. I think.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not convinced these incidents aren’t related.”

“You’re not?”

“It would be an awfully big coincidence, don’t you think? I come to town to see you, someone tries to kill me, and only hours later, someone attacks you in your own home. You, the only person in this town with any kind of connection to me whatsoever.”

“That we know of,” she said.

He shook his head. “A sixteen-year-old back-story is a far less likely explanation than a connection to me, given what happened to land me in the hospital. There has to be a link.”

She sighed, lowered her head, but couldn’t for the life of her see how there could be. Freddy moaned then, and she shot out of her chair, every thought that wasn’t about him grinding to a halt. Aaron joined her at the dog’s side, got down on one knee and stroked his big head.

Freddy lay there with his eyes open only slightly, looking miserable.

“Feelin’ a little hungover, are you?” Aaron asked. “Yeah, I know. It’ll pass, buddy.”

Freddy lifted his head weakly, sniffed Aaron’s neck, then lowered it again with an audible sigh. Olivia knelt beside him, too, petting him, nearly weak with the force of her relief.

“He’s a helluva dog,” Aaron said. “He doesn’t look real, he’s so big.”

“He’s the best dog in the whole entire world,” she whispered back.

“I’ll bet he is,” Aaron said with a nervous smile. “I’ll bet you are, Fred.” But then he turned his focus to her again. “That guy’s gonna be back, Olivia. I think we should get out of here, at least for the rest of the night.”

“I should call Bryan.”

“Bryan?”

“Officer Kendall.”

He tipped his head slightly to one side as he studied her face, making her wonder just how badly bruised it was. She must look awful. Silly pajamas, bed-hair, tearstains and bruises to boot.

“Are you and he…?”

“Oh, no. Just friends. Less than friends, really. We were held at gunpoint together a few weeks ago, along with his fiancée, Dawn.”

His brows went up.

“Totally unrelated incident,” she said.

“Busy little town, this Shadow Falls, isn’t it?”

“Lately it has been. What scares me is the way they say these things happen in threes, right? So this makes two. What the hell could be next?”

“Maybe it’s already three—if my killer and your intruder are two different people.” He looked around the room. “I think we should keep this to ourselves for now.”

“Why?”

“My instincts are telling me that I know what to do, and that keeping quiet is it. And I trust my instincts.”

“What if I don’t trust your instincts?” she asked. “What if I have some instincts of my own to follow?” And even as she said it, she knew what those instincts were telling her. Pack up the dog, grab her escape kit from the safe-deposit box in Burlington and run as fast and as far as she could. She had always known this day might come.

Aaron sank back, looking a little daunted. “All right, I’ll try logic, then. We don’t know how that guy found you. We don’t know if he’s related to what happened to me, or if he is, where he’s getting his information. How did he know I was alive, or that I’d left the hospital, or that you were the only contact I had in town? How did he know to come looking for me here? If there’s a leak, it’s got to be either at the police department or at the hospital.”

“I see the logic there, but I already told you, this has nothing to do with you.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“I’m as sure as I need to be. The life I’ve built here is over, Aaron. I hoped I could help you, but I don’t see how I can. I’ve got to disappear.”

He lifted his brows, looking at her as if he’d never seen her before. “You’ve got a whole lot going on under the surface for an English teacher, lady.”

“Maybe I do.”

“Still, you agree that staying here tonight is a bad idea, right?”

“Staying here at all is a bad idea,” she told him. “And you’re right that I need to leave here tonight. But not with you. Just like Harvey Trudeau, I have to do it on my own.”

He frowned as if he couldn’t understand her. “The way I see it, we’re in the same boat here. Someone’s after you, and someone’s after me. Maybe the same someone, maybe not. But dammit, we can help each other.”

She looked at him, her eyes narrowing. “Why would you want to help me?”

He held her gaze for a long moment, letting her look her fill, as if he truly had nothing to hide. “I don’t know. I have a feeling I’m…supposed to.”

She tipped her head sideways, the way Freddy did when he heard a sound and didn’t know what it was.

“Look, you seem to like this life of yours pretty well,” he said. “Why give it up for good if you don’t have to? Isn’t it worth at least trying to stay?”

She thought on that and finally nodded. “What do you suggest…we…do?” The word we felt foreign on her lips.

“Let’s go somewhere else for what’s left of the night. Tomorrow we’ll pick up those disks you’ve got stashed off-site—a smart move on your part, by the way—and then…well, then we’ll figure out our next move.”

She searched her soul but couldn’t trust what she found there. If this man were anyone else—anyone else besides Aaron Westhaven—she would tell him to take a hike, and then she would deal with her own problems on her own terms. But this was Aaron Westhaven. And she wanted to trust him. “I don’t know,” she said softly.

“I just saved your life,” he reminded her. “Remember?”

She pressed her lips tight and sighed.

“Go pack a bag, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, conceding. She started to get up, then hesitated. “Aaron?”

“Yeah?” He was petting the dog again, watching his face, maybe counting his breaths. As if he really cared. And that, all by itself, was telling her just about all she needed to know about the man. When Freddy lifted a paw weakly and then placed it on top of Aaron’s knee, it told her even more.

But Aaron was looking at her, awaiting her question. So she asked it. “How do you suppose you learned how to fight like that? Or…how to handle that gun the way you did? I mean, you took it apart as if you really knew what you were doing.”

He nodded. “I know. I’ve been wondering about that myself. It sure doesn’t seem like the kind of thing a reclusive writer would be all that good at, does it?”

“No,” she said softly. “No, it really doesn’t.”

Aaron knew a handful of things as he watched her head into the bedroom to pack her bag. He knew that he had come to this town to see her. He had no doubt about that. That knowledge had become more and more fixed in his mind, and he considered the fact that he’d had her business card proof positive of it.