Kill Me Again (24 page)

Adam had been sent to Shadow Falls to murder her. And as she stared unseeingly at that desk with tears of fury burning in her eyes, she spotted a small stack of what looked like old mail fanned out on a corner of the desk. Recognition burned through her, along with
humiliation. She was staring at the letters she had written to Aaron Westhaven.

He'd never even received them. This…this fraud, this hired
killer,
had intercepted them somehow and used them against her. Used her love of Westhaven's work to get close to her.

She turned around slowly, stared straight into his eyes and whispered, “Who hired you, Adam?”

“I don't know,” he said.

“Was it Tommy? He's known where I was all along, he said. And those letters! Some of them are years old. How on earth did you get them?”

“I don't remember.”

“You don't remember? You don't fucking remember?”

He shook his head slowly, then pressed his hands to either side of it. “Dammit, I'm trying.”

“Not hard enough, you aren't.” She spun again, snatched the pile of envelopes, yanking the paper out of one at random and shaking it at him. “Look at this! It's practically coming apart at the folds. How many times did you read this, Adam? How many times? And did you psychoanalyze me, figure out just what kind of man would appeal to me most? Or did you just intuitively know what to do, what to say, to get me to trust you? To sleep with you? To fall in love with you?”

“Olivia, I didn't—”

“So what's it going to be, Adam? You going to finish
the job? Collect the other half of that money? What did you do with the first half, anyway?”

“It's—” He turned his head to look back into the bedroom, and she saw the satchel lying on the bed. He must have just found it. It was unzipped, banded piles of green bills spilling out of it.

“So pick a weapon and let's get this over with,” she said. Tears were pouring from her eyes like water from a fountain. “Or do you want me to pick one? Here, how about this?” She yanked a gun off the wall without even looking at it and handed it to him. “Go ahead, do your job, Adam.”

H
e didn't answer. He didn't know what to say. He couldn't believe he was a killer. It wasn't fitting together in his head the way everything else had done. It didn't make any sense. There wasn't that feeling of, “Of course! I should have known!” hitting him.

He couldn't be a killer.

And even if he had been once, he wasn't anymore.

Olivia pushed past him, stomping through the office into the bedroom, where, pausing, she bent over the bed. “I'm taking enough to cover what we've spent on this asinine wild-goose chase. I should take it all,” she said, picking up a stack of bills. “It's my life it paid to have snuffed out.”

“Don't take any of it.”

She shot him a hate-filled look.

“I'll have to give it back to have any hope of calling off the hit…once I figure out where it came from, that is.”

“Good luck with that.” She threw the money she'd
picked up onto the bed, turned and strode past him to the front door. “Come on, Freddy! Goodbye, Adam.”

Freddy got up and loped to her side, then stood there looking miserable at the thought of leaving again when they'd only just arrived.

“Olivia, dammit, whatever I was, it's not what I am now. Whatever I intended to do—” He reached her, gripped her shoulders and turned her around to face him. “I'm not going to hurt you. I could
never
hurt you, Liv.”

She stared through her burning tears into his beautiful eyes and wondered how a lying thug could seem so damn sincere. “You've known for a while now, haven't you, Adam?”

He lowered his thick lashes. Despite everything, her belly knotted with need. And then he gave a jerky nod. “I've suspected, yes. And I tried to tell you that.”

“You did tell me. I just didn't want to believe you.”

“I didn't, either. I
couldn't
believe it. I thought—I thought there must be some other explanation.”

She sniffled, blinking back a fresh rush of tears. “How can I believe you now? How can I know for sure that this entire amnesia thing was anything but an act, some elaborate trap I was stupid enough to walk right into?”

He shook his head slowly. “What would be the point? If I was going to kill you, why wait? Why not just sneak up on you and do it?”

“I don't know. And I can't afford to stick around long enough to find out. Goodbye, Adam.”

She pulled free, but he pulled back. He jerked her hard against him, bent his head and kissed her mouth. Tears rolled so thickly that she tasted them on her lips, and on his, as well. He fed from her, cupped her cheeks, and finally, finally, lifted his head slowly, staring through unfocused eyes into hers. “There's something between us, Olivia. You were right about that.”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures, don't they, Adam? I can't believe you'd say that now, just to keep me here.”

“That's not what this is, and you know it.”

“I don't think I know anything anymore.” She pulled free of him, half-blinded now by the flood of her tears, and felt for the knob. “I'm taking the Lincoln.” She held out her hand for the keys, and after one look at her adamant expression, he handed them over. “Freddy, come!” she commanded, and her dog loped along beside her as she ran for the elevator. No keycard necessary to go down, luckily. She hit the button, and the doors opened instantly. She stepped inside, and Freddy sat down beside her, patient and loyal to a fault. She punched another button and waited for the doors to slide closed, slowly shutting out the blurred image of Adam's face, the regret and the unspoken plea in his eyes, as he stood there in the doorway.

 

Adam didn't chase after her, and he didn't beg her to stay. He just stood there and watched her go. What could he do, after all? What could he say? He couldn't
even deny that her conclusions were correct. It was all falling into place in his mind, clicking in like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. He'd been hired to kill Sarah Quinlan. He'd been provided with mail that had been intercepted from her for years, apparently, though by whom, he didn't know. Probably Skinner, no matter what the man had said. He'd been paid half his fee up front. He'd studied the letters she had written to Aaron Westhaven with the intent of posing as the man in order to get close to her. He knew the plan. There was no denying it. He'd apparently intended to do it—to take money for murdering an innocent woman.

He turned and walked back into his apartment, hating himself with every breath he drew. He wondered what other foul secrets his past life was waiting to reveal. And systematically, he began searching every nook and cranny of the place. He found a locked drawer full of phony driver's licenses and passports. Every one of them bore his face, or some version of it, above an alias. In some he was heavier. In some he wore eyeglasses. In some he sported a beard or sideburns, or a moustache or goatee, or some combination thereof. In some his hair was long; in others his head was shaved. The names had nothing in common. They didn't rhyme or begin with the same letter. Adam was closer to Aaron than to any of the others, but that was clearly only coincidental.

He slammed the drawer closed to keep himself from obsessively examining the stamps on the various passports to see where he'd been. No time. He had to figure
out who'd hired him and try to call off the hit. If it wasn't already too late. Someone had tried to kill him, too, after all. And a second man had been dispatched to Olivia's right after that. He no longer had any doubt what that man had been intending to do that night.

But who had hired him? And how were things connected? If he'd been hired to murder Olivia, why would the man who hired him then have decided to kill him? To keep him from being able to tell anyone who'd paid him, maybe? Hell, it made as much sense as anything else. If only he could remember now who his employer had been.

He went through his bedroom, through his closets and drawers. But he didn't find a hell of a lot that would tell him anything about who he was. Who he'd been. No journals or diaries. No photo albums. No notes.

He had no idea what the hell to do next. The memories were returning, but not fast enough, and not in any logical order.

And then he noticed that his phone machine was blinking.

He hit the button, then grabbed paper and a pen so he could write down anything that seemed important or might provide a clue.

There was only one message, but it was a stunner.

“Adam, it's Bruce. I've been in touch with the authorities in Shadow Falls, so I know what happened. You're probably very confused right now, but don't believe anything until you've spoken to me. I'm the only person in
the world who knows as much about you as you know about yourself. I'm the only one who can answer the questions you have right now. You've got to come in, Adam. You've got to come in. Call me. If I tell you the number, you'll never know it's for real, but you'll be able to figure it out. I'm counting on that. Don't do another damn thing until you call me.”

 

Olivia couldn't believe she'd been such a fool. She'd known it was a mistake to trust a man she didn't know anything about. She'd spent the past sixteen years not trusting anyone with the truth about herself. And then she'd broken her own most important rule, the one she'd lived by, and given her secrets away to a killer.

He wasn't Aaron Westhaven. Aaron Westhaven had never even received her letters. God, when she thought back on the things she'd written…The way she'd talked about his work and how much it had meant to her, the way she had connected with it. And she
had
connected with it. Westhaven's interpretation of human nature rang truer than ever to her now. He knew love was false and fickle and downright self-destructive. Every time Harvey let himself fall, he wound up paying a terrible price for it. And she knew that, dammit. She
knew
that was how it was in real life, because it had been exactly that way for her. She'd loved, or thought she had, and she'd nearly died because of it. She'd paid with her own identity, her own name, in exchange for her freedom. She'd learned that lesson the
hard way, dammit, and there was no reason why she should have had to learn it all over again.

Except for her own stupidity.

She'd let herself fall, and fall hard.

And the results were just the same the second time.

She got out of the elevator and strode through the lobby, her dog keeping pace at her side. Poor Freddy, looking up at her as if to ask what was wrong. She must be vibrating with pent-up frustration, humiliation and hurt.

Mostly hurt.

She'd actually let herself believe the man might feel something for her, too. What an idiot.

She nodded to the doorman but didn't answer any of his friendly questions as she passed. No, everything wasn't okay, but that wasn't any of his business. No, there was nothing he could do to help her. There wasn't anything anyone could do. She just needed to go home.

God, she wanted to go home.

She wondered if she would be able to stay in Shadow Falls, or if the new life she had built for herself would be lost to her forever, just like the old one had been. Would she have to start again somewhere else? A new name, a new career, another new life? Where was she going to find another conveniently dead woman, someone with no family or friends to ask questions, whose identity she could steal?

She got to the car and opened the back, though her hands were trembling. Thankfully, Freddy obeyed her
command to get inside, even though he must be so sick of cars by now that he could hardly bear it.

“I promise, I won't drive you anywhere again for a week, boy,” she told him. Then she leaned in and stroked his face. “I love you, Freddy.”

He licked her cheek. And she let the tears flow into his fur as she buried her face against his neck. “Never again. Never again, boy. It's just me and you for good. I mean it.”

She closed the hatch and moved around to get behind the wheel, started up the engine, fastened her seat belt, then laid her head on the steering wheel and cried as if her heart were broken.

In fact, she thought it was.

 

Come in,
the message had said.
You have to come in
. How the hell was he supposed to come in when he didn't know where
in
was? Or who the hell Bruce was?

And then something occurred to him, and he started digging though desk drawers, moving from one room to the next. He already knew he didn't have a phone book or appointment book anywhere. But he did find a drawer full of cell phones in the weapons room. All of them untraceable, he bet.

He flipped one open, and searched the directory. And just as he'd hoped, he found a listing for Bruce. Just that, nothing more.

Saying a small, quick prayer, he put the call through.

A man answered on ring number three. “Yes?”

“I'm, uh…calling for Bruce.”

“Adam? Adam, is that you?”

“Yes.”

“Thank freaking God. You have no idea how worried I've been. Where are you?”

“I… Look, I don't know if I'm comfortable telling you that.”

The other man was quiet for a moment. “You still don't know who you are, do you?”

“I have…some idea.”

“I doubt that. What phone are you calling from?”

“A cell. I seemed to have a supply of them around.”

“Of course you do. You need them. It's safe to assume it's secure. So listen, and listen carefully. I don't have time to go into a lot of detail here. But I can tell you what you need to know most, and that's this. You work for the FBI, Adam. Same as I do. I'm your boss.”

He frowned. “The FB—”

“You're an undercover operative. You pose as a hit man, get hired, then fake the job and relocate the supposedly dead victim someplace where they can start a new life. You're the best there is.”

He blinked as the meaning of the man's words sank in. “Then I wasn't going to kill Olivia Dupree?”

“No! Hell no. You were going to fake her death and get her safely relocated.”

“Who wanted her dead? Who hired me?”

“Part of the job was trying to find out. It was all done
through third parties. You've been playing along, hoping to figure out who was the money behind the job. But getting her safe in the meantime was the main goal.”

Adam nodded. “And something went wrong?”

“Yeah, something went wrong. Your cover was blown before you ever got to her. The bastard who hired you must have found out you were a Fed and sent someone to take you out before you could get to Olivia and tell her that she was in danger. The shooter was supposed to take her out once you were out of the way.”

“And that someone is still after me?” Adam said. “And Olivia?”

“Exactly.”

Adam nodded, but his eyes shifted toward the door. “I have to go after her. I have to—”

“Not alone, not on your own. No more of that. You've nearly gotten the both of you killed trying to play it solo, my friend. You come in. Meet with me, and we'll make sure you're safe and pick her up, too. It'll be fine. Just come in.”

“What if this asshole gets to her before we do?”

“Where is she now?” Bruce asked.

“She's on her way back to Shadow Falls.”

“That's where I am. Been trying to steer the local yokels away from too much info. What's she driving?” Adam hesitated.

“I'll have some of our guys catch up with her, make sure she's safe until we can get all this cleared up. So what's she driving.”

Adam lowered his eyes. “Black Lincoln.”

“Okay. We'll intercept her. Where's she coming from?”

Adam blinked. “You don't know where I live?”

“Hell, you don't tell anyone where you live. You've got the landline jumping through so many hoops it's untraceable. God, I can't believe you've really forgotten everything.”