Secrets Amoung The Shadows (9 page)

"A second cell phone?"

"Not that I know of. Nothing I'm being billed for."

"Surely you'd have noticed if you had an extra cell phone lying around." She realized she was helping Eliot build a favorable argument instead of trying to be neutral. Against everything she knew to be right, against everything she knew to be safe, she was letting her emotions lead her.

Eliot grinned wryly. "He'll be talking to the man who might have killed Kay, too. Who do you think is in the most danger? I'm the one who dreamed about doing it. How can you explain that dream if Wayne did it?"

"I don't know," Leanne admitted. "Mental telepathy is a proven fact, and psychics sometimes have dreams or visions of a murder." Was she doing it again, trying to exculpate Eliot, or was she being fair? It was getting harder and harder to differentiate. "I'm not saying that's what happened to you. But we do have a lot of questions that we can't answer until we learn more facts."

"Fine. When do we do that? When can you get me in during regular hours so somebody else will be here and we can do more hypnosis?"

He'd just given her the opening she needed. "Eliot, I'd like your permission to bring in a colleague. The gentleman I'm thinking of is retired from private practice. In fact, I took over this practice from him. I used to work with him. He's a brilliant man and has a great deal of expertise in the field of multiple personality disorder. More than I do." Not to mention that the presence of another doctor—especially Thurman—should get her back on track as far as objectivity.

"No." Eliot's answer was firm and immediate, and his features hardened to granite. "You told me anything I said to you would be confidential. I could have never told you so much if I'd known you planned to share that information with your colleagues."

"Eliot, please. I don't plan to tell anyone except another doctor. You make it sound like some kind of a gossip fest. If you went to a doctor for a physical problem, you wouldn't be upset if he needed to consult with another doctor. If you don't want me to, I won't. The decision is yours. But if I have to wait to work you in during regular office hours, it's probably going to be a couple of weeks."

Eliot seemed to be undergoing an inner struggle, a fact that didn't surprise her at all. From the beginning, he'd appeared reluctant to tell her everything. Naturally he would hesitate about her bringing in an unknown third party. After what he'd admitted about his teenage relationship with a girl who'd betrayed his confidence, such hesitation was to be expected. He probably found it difficult to trust anybody.

"All right," he finally said, rising from the chair. "Go ahead. In the meantime—" He looked down at the gun on the lamp table. "Take that home with you. Lock your doors and windows. And promise me, if I should try to hurt you..."

She shook her head, knowing she couldn't make any such promise. "I'll lock my doors and windows."

"And take the gun home with you."

She looked at the black metal object lying on her lamp table. That's all it was, she told herself. Metal molded into a certain shape, wooden grips on the handle. Material that could just as easily have been part of the table on which it lay. Inert. It could only cause harm if a person used it.

"And take the gun home with me," she agreed, not sure she really meant it.

He nodded, satisfied, and left.

This time, she noted, he didn't ask her to go to dinner. He might still want to, but now he was convinced that a murderer lived inside his head, and he was determined to protect her from that person.

As he'd observed, things didn't look good. Even so, she had to withhold a decision until she could be positive.

The one major fact that still didn't fit was his failure to lose time. Multiples frequently blinked and found it had changed from dawn to dusk, from Monday to Wednesday. Their clothes were different, they were in a different place. They lost not only the memory but the time spent making the memory.

Which didn't necessarily mean he was innocent. The evidence that he was guilty of murder was quite compelling. The evidence pointed to one of two possibilities. He could have a dangerous alter ego or he could be a cold-blooded murderer who was using her—her and her compassion for him, her attraction to him—to establish a defense of insanity.

She wasn't sure which was worse.

***

Greta ran in excited circles while Leanne filled her bowl with dog food. "Calm down, little one. You're not exactly starving. In fact, the vet tells me it wouldn't hurt you to join Weight Watchers."

She set the bowl on the floor, and Greta pounced on it, tail wagging furiously as she crunched.

The doorbell rang. Leanne started at the sound—a sign of her tension. Greta's head lifted from her bowl, she sniffed the air, and the fur on her back stood erect. The hair on the back of Leanne's neck stood up, too. She wasn't sure if it was nerves after everything that had happened lately or Greta's reaction to someone at the door that caused it. Whatever the reason, she felt distinctly uneasy.

Greta growled as she followed Leanne to the front door. Leanne flipped on the porch light and peered through the viewer. Eliot stood there, gazing downward at the
Welcome
mat as if blinded by the sudden burst of light.

Reflexively, without thinking, she flung the door open. "Eliot, what are you doing here? Has something happened?"

But when the man lifted his head and smiled at her, when she saw his face, she knew it wasn't the same Eliot who'd come to her office. She stepped backward involuntarily. Behind her Greta growled ominously. She had to restrain an impulse to slam the door, bolt it and lock herself in her bedroom.

"No, nothing's wrong," he said, smiling, and it was Eliot's smile, a slight dimple forming in one cheek, but at the same time, it was different. This smile sent a chill down her spine rather than warmth around her heart. "I just thought, if you hadn't eaten yet, we could order a pizza," he continued, peering over her shoulder. "Are you going to invite me in?"

Greta barked sharply. Leanne jumped and gasped at the sound. She reached down to pick up the little dog. From the safety of Leanne's arms, Greta bared her tiny teeth at him. Leanne understood the impulse.

"Mr. Kane," she said sternly, stroking the dog's head, trying to calm her, "you know how I feel about our doctor-patient relationship. I think you should leave now."

She started to close the door, but he caught it, holding it open. Her heart pounded wildly, and she briefly wished she'd brought Eliot's gun home with her to threaten this intruder.

The man's smile slipped a little. "Leanne, I'm not asking you to sleep with me. Fine. If you don't want me in your house, let's go to a public restaurant and just sit at the same table while we eat. You know I'm attracted to you, and I think you feel the same way about me. We're two adults. Why shouldn't we get together?"

Attracted? To him? She felt faintly nauseous that this monster knew how she felt about Eliot. She forced herself to smile back at him. "Because I'm your doctor."

"That didn't keep you from spending almost two hours alone with me in your office last night. That's an awful long appointment, don't you think?"

Alone
? "Dealing with Bruce Hedlund is not exactly a typical appointment." She watched him closely for his reaction.

A puzzled expression crossed his face, but he quickly covered it with the smiling mask.

That was intriguing. He seemed to have incomplete memories of the previous evening. She found her fear and revulsion abating as scientific curiosity took over.

"We did a good job of dealing with him together." His comment sounded weak and confused.

"That was very kind of you to stay until his brother came to get him," she said, deliberately feeding him erroneous information.

"I'm a kind guy."

"Yes, you are. And now, if you'll excuse me, after our session today, I'm really tired. Good night." As an afterthought, as a test, she added, "Edward."

He jerked backward, his expression startled. She took advantage of his confusion to slam the door and bolt it behind her.

Edward
. The man had definitely responded. Were they getting closer to confirmation of a diagnosis of multiple personality disorder? It was hard to imagine that Eliot could have faked this latest episode. The man on her porch had seemed like a totally different person—like the person who'd watched her from across the street last night.

Such a diagnosis could lead to only one conclusion. Since a second personality would be just another aspect of his own, that would almost certainly mean Eliot was a murderer.

Chapter 8

He strode angrily off her porch and went to his car. How could she possibly have known he wasn't Eliot? What had he done wrong? He'd mimicked that idiot perfectly.

She'd known, and she hadn't wanted anything to do with him. That was going to stop. He was damn tired of Eliot having it all. It was his turn.

He slammed his car door and drove away, tires squealing.

This hadn't been a good encounter. She knew he wasn't Eliot. She rejected him. She refused to let him inside, and she mentioned an event he hadn't known about. How had he missed the scene in her office with somebody named Bruce? Was Eliot regaining control? He had to pay more attention.

He parked the car in his garage. It wouldn't happen again. None of it. So what if Leanne could tell them apart? Nobody else could, and she wasn't going to be alive much longer.

***

Eliot awoke with a start and a chill as the hatred from his dream washed over him. A strange voice brought him upright in his chair, instantly awake, his gaze darting around the room.

Could he have gone to Leanne's house, tried to force his way in, hoping to find the opportunity to harm her? Had it really happened, as his dream about killing Kay Palmer had really happened, or was it only a dream—a warning—like the first ones about killing Kay Palmer and the one about killing Leanne?

But this dream had been crystal clear. It seemed that the ones that hadn't happened—yet—were out of focus and blurred, more like an illusion and less like reality. This one had had the clarity of an event actually happening.

He tried to control his panic, tried to reassure himself that she could be out or asleep or screening her calls. But he couldn't rid himself of an image of her lying in her bed, eyes wide in death.

"Leanne, it's Eliot. I just want to know if you're all right. I'm coming over there to check on you. If you're okay but don't want to see me, leave a note on the door. I just need to know you're all right. I had another dream."

Adding the request for a note, admitting the possibility that she might be avoiding him, might have cause to fear him, grated through him in a way that was physically painful. He didn't want anyone to fear him, especially not Leanne.

He looked around for his shoes. At least they were where he remembered leaving them. He yanked the laces tight, reliving every moment of that dream, worrying about Leanne's safety. If he'd done anything to her—

He couldn't think about that. He hadn't hurt her in the dream. He'd wanted to, but she'd slammed the door in his face.

So where was she? Why wasn't she answering her phone? Surely she wouldn't just ignore him. He was, after all, her patient, and he didn't think Leanne Warner was the type of doctor to ignore a patient.

However, she'd been frightened in his dream. The memory of the fear in her eyes tortured him. He didn't want her to fear him. He wanted to see her eyes soothing and calm, the way they'd been when he'd first met her, or alert and piercing as when she listened to him and computed every word he said, or bright and alive and echoing the unexpressed desire he felt for her.

No, he corrected himself, not the last. He couldn't deny that Leanne was a damned attractive woman, and he wanted her as a woman—what man wouldn't?—but his relationship with her was doctor-patient. It had to be that way.

When he thought of her as a woman rather than a doctor, he regretted all the things he'd told her. And right now he had to be honest with her, trust her. She was his only hope, his only possibility of finding sanity, of discovering if he had murdered a woman, if he would have to spend the rest of his life in prison.

If he was planning to murder her.

Grabbing his keys, he started out the door then realized he didn't know where Leanne lived. He looked at her card again, but while it had her office phone number and address, it contained only her home phone number, not her home address.

He threw his keys onto the coffee table in disgust then sank back into the recliner, head in his hands.

Damn! The part of him that wanted to harm her knew where she lived, but the part that wanted to save her didn't. He searched his mind frantically. The knowledge had to be there. If he could access it for evil, why couldn't he access it for good?