Maggie Shayne - Kill Me Again

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.

Before they’d traveled ten miles, however, she was digging her cell phone out of her oversize handbag.

“Turn that thing off.”

She shot him a quick look, probably startled by his deep voice breaking the nighttime silence. “But I have to let the university know I won’t be in for a few days. I’ll just tell them I’m sick. And I have to call Carrie, too.”

“It’s 3:00 a.m., Olivia.”

“I was just going to leave messages.”

“Not yet.”

She turned off the phone, but she frowned at him, and he knew she was going to argue. He could see her gearing up for it in the way her jaw got a little tighter and her eyes a little more intense. He thought she might be about to lose her temper with him. And he found himself looking forward to it.

But then she licked her lips, took a breath and let it out slowly. “I’m not going to tell anyone where we are or what we’re doing,” she said, calmly and rationally. “But if I wanted to do that, and I thought it would be best for me, I’d do it. You need to know that about me.”

Logical. Straightforward. The closest she’d come to losing it had been when she’d thought her dog had been dead on her living-room floor. Threats to her own life seemed to have far less emotional impact on her.

“You wouldn’t have to tell anyone where you are. You wouldn’t even have to make a call. With your cell phone on, anyone with the know-how can track you.”

Her brows went up, and she stared at him, the stubborn intellectual gone. There was worry in her eyes now. Maybe even fear. He decided he preferred the stubbornness. He knew what had instigated the change, though. She must be wondering how he’d come by the knowledge he’d just imparted. She had to be, because he was wondering the same thing.

“I must have done a lot of research—for my writing,” he said, attempting to answer her question before she could ask it. But it rang false to him. It felt like a lie.

“You never wrote any crime thrillers, Aaron.”

“Now how can you be so sure about that?”

She averted her eyes. That was telling, that little thing. Looking away, as if embarrassed or ashamed or lying right back at him. She cleared her throat, lifted her chin a little. “I’ve read everything you’ve written,” she said.

“Oh.” He fell silent for a moment, trying to come up with an answer that would reassure her. This wasn’t going to work if she was going to turn suspicious of him at every turn.

What wasn’t going to work? his mind asked him. You don’t even know what the hell you’re doing, pal.

But he felt as if he knew exactly what he was doing. As if this kind of thing was second nature to him. Running, hiding, going off the radar to get his shit together. To regroup. To strategize.

He gripped the wheel a little tighter and came up with what he hoped was a reasonable answer. “You’ve read everything I’ve published,” he said. “I could be an aspiring thriller writer with stacks of unpublishable crime novels under my desk, for all you know—or for all I know.”

Her head came back around, eyes interested, brows raised, fear erased. “That’s true, you might.” And then she smiled, sighed as if in relief, and shook her head in a self-deprecating way. “That’s got to be it. You know all of the things you do because of research you’ve done.”

“Or books I’ve read,” he said. “Maybe I’m a big thriller fan, even though I write…what would you call it? Sappy, emotional melodrama?”

“I would never call it that, and you shouldn’t, either. It’s not sappy. It is emotional, but not in that way. It’s…emotional realism.”

From the back, Freddy released a loud, long snore that sounded like some cartoon sound effect more than a real dog.

“He’ll sleep for at least an hour now,” she said. “Maybe more, given the tranquilizer.”

But he was still focused on the earlier conversation. “You’ve read everything? You really are a fan, aren’t you?”

She lifted her gaze again. It was a little bit soft, as if he were seeing behind the mask she wore. “I’m more than a fan.”

Alarm bells went off. Was she an obsessed fan? A stalker type? God, that would be an added complication, wouldn’t it? She didn’t seem like that kind, though. “How do you mean?” he asked, his tone cautious.

She shrugged. “If you really feel the way your character Harvey does about life and love and loneliness, then I feel more like a…a kindred spirit, I guess.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I guess I’m only a kindred spirit to Harvey. Either way, you must understand him. Identify with him.”

“So it stands to reason I would understand and identify with you.” He nodded. “I’ve got to read some of my books.”

“I anticipated that, brought some of them along. We can take turns driving if you want to read a little.” She blinked then, as if she’d just thought of something. “You didn’t forget how to drive.”

“I didn’t even think about that.” He looked at his hands on the wheel and nodded. “It was kind of automatic, getting into the driver’s seat. It didn’t even occur to me that I might not know how.” He felt himself smiling and realized it was the first time since waking up without a past.

“Maybe everything you ever knew is still right there, inside your mind,” Olivia said. “Maybe it just hasn’t quite surfaced.”

He nodded. “I hope you’re right about that.”

“So…when do you think it would be safe for me to make those calls? Not that I’m asking permission, of course.”

“Of course. My suggestion,” he said, “would be to wait until we can pick up a new phone or two. The prepaid ones would be harder to trace.”

“So we need to stop somewhere.”

He nodded. “Once it’s daylight. And only if we can get access to some cash. If we use plastic, they’ll trace us.”

“Well, even I knew that much,” she said. “But I think you might be a little overly cautious here, Aaron. It’s highly unlikely anyone is even looking for us yet.”

“Oh, trust me. They’re looking. Those nurses are pretty diligent about waking up patients every hour or so. Mostly to tell them to get some sleep.”

She smiled a little at that.

“Besides, we already know someone is looking. Maybe not the police, not yet. But my shooter’s looking for me, and your housebreaker is looking for you. There’s no question about that. And we don’t know how sophisticated these men are—assuming they’re not the same man.”

“Or how sophisticated the guys who hired them are.”