Kill Me Again

“I should probably call her, though. She won’t say anything if I ask her not to, but I don’t want her to think I’ve been abducted by an amnesiac shooting victim—”

“You don’t think that’s what this is, do you? A kidnapping?”

She met his eyes. “If I did, I wouldn’t be going. Besides, if you try anything with me, Freddy will eat you.”

He shot the dog a quick look and nodded. “I bet he would. All right, good, then. You can call the doc later, though. We should get a move on before they figure out I’m not in the hospital. This is the first place they’re going to come looking.”

She nodded and set her overnight bag on the floor of the backseat. Then she found the release and folded those seats forward, making even more room for Freddy.

Moving to the rear, she arranged Freddy’s bed while he stood patiently, front feet still inside the SUV, watching her every move.

“I know, boy. I know.” She got behind the dog and, bending, cupped her hands to give him a boost up. He lifted one hind foot into her cupped hands and pushed off as she lifted.

“Hey, no, let me—” Aaron began.

“I’ve got this.” She put a little more effort into it, and Freddy got himself in, turned around three times and sank gratefully onto his bed with a sigh.

“Good Lord, woman, how much does he weigh?”

“Two hundred, give or take. Most of the time he gets in and out with a lot less help from me. Unless he’s really tired or doesn’t feel like going.”

“Or he’s under the influence of a tranquilizer,” Aaron said. Then he held up a piece of plastic, with part of a label clinging to it. “I found this near the outside of the fence—right there.” He pointed, and handed her the plastic.

She eyed it. “Ace-prome—huh?”

“Acepromazine. It’s a tranquilizer, commonly used in veterinary offices. It would take a big dose for a dog this size, hit him within an hour, and probably last for three or four. That timing fit with what happened here tonight?”

“Like a glove,” she said. “How do you know about veterinary tranquilizers?”

He shrugged. “Damned if I know. House all locked up?”

“I need to run back in for a couple more things.”

“I should pull your car into the garage. It’ll make everything look more normal.”

“You still have my car keys?” she asked.

“Left them in it—got distracted when I heard you cry out.”

“Okay. Grab some dog food from the bag out there while you’re at it, will you?”

“I’ll just bring the bag. In case we need to be gone longer than anticipated.”

A little shiver worked up her spine as the voice of doubt—the one she’d been actively suppressing—whispered a bit more insistently. What if, just what if, this man wasn’t what he seemed? “Maybe I should let Carrie know now that—”

“Let’s just get going, okay?”

She tipped her head to one side, suddenly less sure about him than she’d been before. “Maybe I should give this a little more thought, Aaron.”

He glanced at her, frowning, but then his frown eased and his face softened. “Hey, I don’t blame you. You don’t even know me.”

But she felt as if she did. And yet…something wasn’t quite right about all this.

“Then again, neither do I, at the moment,” he went on. “But, Olivia, someone tried to hurt you tonight. And it wasn’t me. Someone tried to hurt me, too. If the two incidents are related, then we have a common enemy. Even if they’re not, we both have someone after us, and we both want to find out who it is and make it stop so we can get back to our respective lives.”

She thought about that for a moment. It did make sense.

“Aside from the fact that someone else came after you, if I wanted to hurt you, I could have done it by now, couldn’t I? With Freddy tripping out on acepromazine and the phones dead? I could have taken either vehicle and been long gone before anyone even found your body.”

Her eyes flew wider as she shot him a look. “You don’t need to be so graphic.”

“I’m not your enemy. I may not know who I am, but…I know that.” He shook his head. “Look, I need to get out of here. I feel that right to my gut. I need to get somewhere safe, so I can stay alive long enough to figure this mess out. And I really don’t want to leave you here alone with some crazed lunatic still out to get you. But I will, if that’s what you want.”

Her throat was dry. She lowered her eyes, her mind whirling, as she realized she didn’t know what the hell to do. Trust him? Or stay home?

But the thing was, she couldn’t stay home as if nothing had happened. The new life she’d created, the new identity she’d claimed, the way she’d been living for the past sixteen-plus years—it was gone now. All of it. Someone knew her secret. So it wasn’t a secret anymore. Even if she let Aaron go without her, after the attack she’d already reached the conclusion that she would have to take off.

And she was rapidly reaching another one. She needed to face Tommy and get things over with once and for all. But she wasn’t so sure she could take him on all by herself and live to tell the tale. At least with Aaron at her side she would have one ally. For a little while, anyway. And while she hated to drag him into her mess, she supposed she could repay him for his help by helping him solve his own mysteries.

Aaron sighed, glancing nervously at the road, as if expecting someone to show up at any moment. The police? The killer? The intruder? She didn’t know. Maybe he didn’t, either.

“All right, stay here then, Olivia,” he said at length. “I’ll leave you the gun. You can tell your friend the cop I stole the car.” He leaned in. “Come on, Freddy, ride’s off.”

“No.” She said it quickly, her decision made. “No, I’m coming with you. I’ll go get what I need and lock up.”

He seemed relieved. Turning, he closed the liftgate as Olivia drew a deep breath and headed back into the house. She closed the door behind her, set her jaw and walked calmly to the telephone stand for a notepad and pen. Then she scribbled a simple note for Bryan.

Dropping out of sight for a few days. Past lives catching up to me. Everything’s okay so far. Just need some time. I’ll call you in a few days, and that’s a promise. If I don’t—things have gone very wrong.

Best, Olivia.

She left the note on the coffee table, with a paperweight on top to keep it from drifting off. Bryan would find it if he decided to come looking for her. He would understand what she meant. “Past lives”—he would know that meant Tommy. He would know to come looking for her if he didn’t hear from her. He would know what to do.

She’d worked too hard to stay alive all this time to just put her hard-won life into the hands of any man now—even if that man was Aaron Westhaven. She needed to take some precautions of her own, and she didn’t particularly care if her favorite writer liked it or not.

She hurried to the kitchen to lock the back door and secure the dog door. Back in the living room, she grabbed her handbag and jacket from the closet, then headed out the front, locking the door behind her.

She paused on the step, looking through the darkest of nights at the sleeping town where she’d built her new life. Shadow Falls had been her salvation. She hoped to God she would be alive to return and reclaim her life there. But she had a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach that nothing was ever going to be the same again.

Aaron. As he drove, he couldn’t get his head around thinking of himself by that name. It didn’t feel any more familiar to him than Jack or Joe or a hundred other names he could think of. Then again, he’d spent a lot of time in his hospital room running through every male name he could think of, and none of them had sent any sparks of recognition sizzling through his head. None of them.

Still, he was worried. “Aaron” didn’t seem to fit. The persona of a novel-scribbling loner felt like a suit that was a couple of sizes too tight. And the dreams or flashbacks or visions he’d had of himself with a gun in his hand and a body at his feet certainly didn’t seem to reflect the life of a reclusive novelist.

And now he had a sidekick.

Bringing Olivia with him probably hadn’t been the brightest idea he’d ever had. She was bound to be a problem. Oh, she might seem like a staid, boring, highly intelligent professor, but she was clearly something else entirely. She had her own baggage, her own secrets—big, deadly secrets—hiding in her eyes, not to mention lurking in the shadows of her home last night. He’d heard her attacker call her Sarah and demand that she give him “the disks.” What the hell was that about? Was the reserved intellectual actually leading a double life? Who was she really? And why had he come to Shadow Falls to see her?

It had to be related to what had happened to him. She had to be involved somehow. And sticking with her was the only way to find out how. Staying alive while he did it was imperative, so hitting the road was the only solution.