Kill Me Again (2 page)

He got up and plodded away, sinking onto his super-size doggy bed as if his heart was breaking.

Olivia took momentary pity on her best friend, and snapped on the TV, tuning it to Animal Planet. Freddy seemed marginally placated. Then she tossed the remote onto the highest shelf in the room to keep him from eating it and headed for her hybrid SUV.

Fifteen minutes later she was standing in front of the nurses' desk at Shadow Falls General, asking for Dr. Carrie Overton. A hand on her shoulder made her stop in midquestion, and she turned to see a face she knew, though not the one she'd been expecting. She stared up at the tall cop. “Bryan. I almost didn't recognize you in your uniform. Must seem good to have it back, hmm?”

“Better than you'd believe,” Bryan Kendall said. “How have you been?”

“Good. Good.”

“And that horse you call a dog?”

“Moping that he didn't get to ride along, but otherwise good. You and Dawn should stop by and visit him.” Then she frowned and asked, “What are you doing here?”

“Same thing you are,” he said.

That reply made her brows go up. “The police are involved in this?”

Bryan nodded, his face serious. “Yeah. I'll explain what I can while we wait for Dr. Overton. Right now
she's busy reaming out her kid for taking the car without permission.” He nodded to the left, and Olivia saw the stunning redhead, wearing a white lab coat and a stethoscope, apparently in midlecture. Her audience consisted of two teenage boys with their heads hanging low.

Carrie glanced up, and Bryan beckoned her over. She pointed sternly, directing the boys to a pair of chairs, then called over her shoulder as she came through the glass door, “Do not leave that spot until I come back.”

Then she took a breath, smoothed her fiery curls and approached them. “Thanks for coming, Olivia. Did you fill her in yet, Officer Kendall?”

Olivia shook her head as Bryan said, “No, not yet.” Then, with a sympathetic look at the boys in the other room, he added, “You know Sam and Kyle probably saved the guy's life by finding him, right?”

“That's no excuse,” Carrie said. She looked at Olivia again. “The mystery patient is this way. Will you take a look at him for me?”

“I don't know what good it will do,” Olivia began, following as Carrie walked briskly down the hall, stopping outside a door with the number 206 on it.

“Why not?” Carrie asked.

There was a window beside the door, the blind open just enough to reveal the man in the bed. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, his head swathed in bandages. “Because I've never actually seen—Oh.” Olivia lost her words somehow, and her breath with them, as her gaze
slid from the white bandages on the man's head to his face. God, he was beautiful. She hadn't expected that.

“Do you know him?” Bryan asked.

“Not by sight,” Olivia replied. She thought she ought to face Bryan while speaking to him, but she couldn't take her eyes off the man in the bed. His were open, and they were soft eyes. Their color was green or maybe brown. She couldn't tell from this distance. But they were dark and striking, as was the way they turned down slightly at the outside corners, giving him an inherently sad expression. And while his age surprised her—as did her instant reaction to his good looks—the pain and stoic, steadfast endurance expressed by those eyes didn't shock her in the least. She'd
expected
him to be strong, she realized.

“Olivia?” Bryan prompted.

She blinked and cleared her throat. “I've never actually met him before. But I'm fairly certain I know who he is, and that he was on his way to see me.”

Bryan tensed a little. He was one of the very few people who knew Olivia's secrets. And inviting a stranger to her home wasn't something he would expect her to do.

“It's a long story,” she began.

“Just give us the digest version for now,” he said.

She nodded. “He's a writer, an author, as well-known for being reclusive as for his work, which is, to put it mildly, brilliant. His name is Aaron Westhaven, although as closely as he guards his privacy, it's probably
a pseudonym. He doesn't do public appearances, doesn't even allow himself to be photographed, and doesn't want anyone to know he's in town.”

“Why was he coming to see you?” Bryan asked.

“I invited him to speak at a fundraiser at the university.”

“And he agreed?” Looking more coplike than ever, Bryan was frowning now.

“Yes, he did,” Olivia said. “I was stunned, really. But there were strict stipulations. We were doing this as a secret-guest, by-invitation-only thing. He insisted on no press, no publicity. Just a private lecture, with wine and cheese and him as the guest speaker. He was supposed to stay at my place—more private than a motel or an inn.”

“And you agreed to that?”

She met Bryan's eyes, saw the disbelief in them. “It was my idea. And the university agreed to every condition. Getting him at all was a real coup, Bryan. He's special. His work…it's meant a lot to me. I even used to write to him. Not often. I mean, I'm not a drooling groupie or anything.”

“I would never mistake you for a drooling groupie, Olivia,” he said dryly.

She acknowledged that with a nod. “He never wrote back, probably never even saw my letters. But still, I felt—” She turned her gaze back to the man in the bed. “I felt as if I knew him in some small way, through his
work. I felt we were on common ground about some things.”

“Uh-huh,” Bryan said, the way you say it when pretending you understand something you actually don't.

Olivia read his face, then frowned, turning to Carrie as what should have been an obvious question occurred to her. “He's conscious. Why aren't you asking
him
all these questions?”

Carrie lowered her head. “We
have
asked him. But he can't give us any answers. He, um…well, he says he doesn't remember.”

Olivia felt her eyes widen. “You're saying he has amnesia?”

Carrie bit her lower lip and nodded deeply.

“You think it's for real?” Bryan asked. “I thought that kind of thing only happened in daytime dramas.”

“I don't have any reason not to believe him,” Carrie said. “I'm sure it's temporary. I hope so, at least. Amnesia is rare, and
permanent
amnesia, really unusual. Then again, with a head injury like this, it's impossible to tell.”

Olivia looked at him with his head all wrapped, and more obvious questions came to her, the first of which was, “What happened to him? Car accident?”

Bryan said, “He was shot.”

Her head snapped to the side fast, and she searched Bryan's face.

“He was shot in the back of the head from fairly close range.”

“Like…an execution?” Olivia whispered.

“If he didn't have a steel plate in the back of his skull, he'd be a dead man,” Carrie explained. “As it is, there was remarkably little damage. It's amazing, really, how lucky he was.”

“You can say that again,” Bryan agreed. “And if your son hadn't been practicing his driving skills on that deserted back road, we might not have found him in time.”

He was, Olivia thought, obviously trying to help the kid out. Not knowing Carrie Overton as well as she did, he wouldn't know how much she adored her son. He probably feared she would be too hard on him—which was, to Olivia, kind of funny. Or would have been under other circumstances. If anything, Carrie tended to let Sam off too easily.

Carrie rolled her blue, blue eyes. “He insists Kyle was driving.”

“Well, he's not stupid, and he doesn't want a ticket,” Bryan said. “Being that he's taking his driving test in—what did you tell me—a week? Yeah, I'm sure he was trying to get some practice in. But since I can't prove it, I'm not going to ticket him.”

“That's quite all right, Officer,” Carrie said. “Because
I
intend to
murder
him.”

Or at least ground him for a weekend, Olivia thought.

“The question remains,” Bryan said. “Is this man the reclusive author Olivia believes he is?”

“May I see the card you found on him?” Olivia asked.

Carrie pulled the business card from her breast pocket and handed it over. It was smudged with black.

“What's all over it?” Olivia asked, wrinkling her nose.

“I had to dust it,” Bryan said. “No usable prints. It's useless to us.”

Olivia flipped the smudged card over, saw her own handwriting on the back and nodded. “Well, this is the card I sent to Aaron Westhaven. I have no doubt about that.” She looked into the room again, and this time found the man staring back at her, his expression curious now that he'd noticed the three of them looking at him as if he were a specimen in a zoo.

“Maybe he knew this could happen,” Olivia said, very softly, almost speaking to herself. “Maybe that's why he's always been so private, because he knew someone might come after him if he were out in the open.”

Bryan met her eyes, and they shared a silent exchange. He knew that was how
she
felt. He knew there was someone who would probably kill her if he ever found out she was still alive. He knew she wasn't even using her own name, and hadn't been for the past sixteen years. And he probably thought she was projecting.

She shook her head. “So what do I do but convince him to come out into the open, and the minute he does, he gets shot. God, I feel terrible.”

“You didn't
convince
him. You invited him. You
didn't even expect him to accept. And he was free to say no,” Bryan said.

Carrie nodded her agreement. “Will you talk to him, Olivia?” she asked. “He's completely in the dark here, and none too friendly—though I don't blame him, given his situation. Even if you've never met him, you know more about him than any of the rest of us do. It has to help a little.”

“Of course I'll talk to him.” Olivia held the man's steady gaze through the glass. “I've been waiting years for the chance to talk to him.” His eyes were fixed on hers, and they were intense. A little chill whispered up her spine. She should have known he would be beautiful. Anyone who could write the way he did had to be beautiful inside and out.

“All right, you go talk to him, then,” Bryan said. “Call me if anything comes up. Meanwhile, I'm going to get back to the station, make some calls, figure out who his publisher is, or his editor, or his whatever. There must be
someone,
somewhere, who knows this guy.”

“Wait.” Olivia turned to Bryan. “Am I right in assuming you didn't catch the person who did this to him?”

Lowering his head, Bryan pushed a hand through his hair. “We don't have a clue. Not even a bullet casing. The bastard took it with him.”

Olivia was worried by that. “Mr. Westhaven doesn't want publicity about his visit here. And I can't help but think it's pretty obvious now that he has good reason for that. Can we keep this quiet, at least for now?”

Bryan nodded. “I think that's probably best. I'll talk to the chief, but I expect he'll agree. Dr. Overton?”

“Confidentiality is what we do best around here, Officer Kendall. As far as I'm concerned, he's still Patient John Doe.”

“Can I keep this?” Olivia asked, holding up the business card.

“Yeah. Go on in. I'll call you later,” Bryan said.

“I'd like a word with you, Olivia, on your way out,” Carrie said.

Olivia nodded and turned to the patient-room door. Her heart was lodged in her throat—because how was she supposed to anticipate her first conversation with someone she'd admired so much for so long, especially under these conditions? She was nervous, not wanting to make things worse for him. But she supposed any information would be welcome, so she opened the door and walked into his room, then crossed to his bedside.

“Hi,” she said. “My name is Olivia. And I'm pretty sure yours is Aaron.”

A
aron.

He'd expected a rush of memory to flood into his brain once he knew his name. But it didn't. There wasn't even a mild sense of recognition. Not of the name she spoke. Not of the woman, either. And he didn't see how any conscious, breathing male could forget a woman who looked like she did.

She was a classic beauty. Dark brown eyes and thick black lashes. Sun-kissed skin, sable hair, even if it was all bundled up. She had a slender body and luscious, full lips. And best of all, she didn't even seem aware of her looks. She didn't dress to show them off, that was for sure.

Beyond that, though, she was the first person who'd walked into this room that he felt glad to see. He was actually interested in talking to her. The others had been boring. Not one of them had any useful information to share, but they'd all been full of questions he couldn't answer. Doctors, nurses, cops.

Damn, he hated cops.

He didn't know how he knew that, or why he hated them, but he knew it was true. It had to be true, as uncomfortable as he'd been with the one who'd been in here grilling him.

Someone had shot him.
Shot him.
He closed his eyes and thought, yeah, that sort of thing would tend to make a lot of people ask a lot of questions. Personally, it made him feel sick.

And now there was this…Olivia. She wasn't a medical professional—unless she was a shrink. And she wasn't a cop. He knew that for sure, though again, how he knew was a mystery.

“Olivia,” he said, repeating her name and waiting to see how it felt on his tongue. Familiar? Sadly, no. “Are we…lovers?” he asked.

Her eyes widened, and the word
no
burst from her lips before she could give it any thought. A rush of heat suffused her cheeks, and she didn't meet his eyes.

He lowered his head as if disappointed, and said, “So we're just friends, then?”

She frowned at him, tipping her head to one side and searching his face as she finally caught on. “Are you
teasing
me? A man in your condition?”

“My condition isn't all that bad. Doc Redhead out there tells me I'm fine. Aside from the fact that the only thing in my head right now is a massive ache, I actually feel pretty good for a guy who just took a bullet. And no, I wasn't teasing. Not entirely. I was hoping to God they
finally found someone who knows me. Intimately.” He sighed heavily, told himself to quit with the self-pity and get on with this. “So how
do
you know me, Olivia?”

“I don't,” she said. “I'm sorry, but we've never actually met.”

Nodding, and trying not to literally deflate in disappointment, he said, “Figures. It's just about in keeping with the way my day's been going, I guess.”

He pursed his lips and reminded himself that this poor woman wasn't the one who'd shot him. Then again, how could he even be sure of that much?

He looked at her again, and thought, no, she wasn't the kind to put a bullet in a man. Not like that—not in the back of his head. She was stiff, kind of wary, maybe a little repressed, but not mean. Not a killer.

“Why don't you sit down, Olivia, and tell me about myself?”

“I'll try.” She moved to the chair beside the bed and adjusted it to a position she liked, a little closer, angled toward him so she could see his face. Then she sat down, her lithe frame folding itself into the chair in a smooth, easy motion. She crossed her legs at the ankles, leaned her knees to one side. “I didn't expect you to be so…”

“What? Grouchy? Sarcastic? Getting shot in the head will do that to a guy. Sorry I'm not pouring on the charm.”

“I understand that,” she said. “It's just that your books are so—”

“My
books?
”

She bit her lip, then nodded and shifted in the chair. “Maybe I'd better start at the beginning.”

“Maybe you'd better.” He sat up in the bed, though he'd been told not to.

“Okay.” Smoothing her skirt over her nicely shaped thighs, she seemed to organize her thoughts. “Okay,” she said again. “I'm Professor Olivia Dupree. I teach English over at the State University of Vermont's Shadow Falls campus. Shadow Falls—that's where you are now. I've been here for sixteen years, and I've been helping to plan this year's summer fundraiser series for—”

“Excuse me.” He held up a hand, and she stopped speaking. “I really do want to know all about you at some point, Olivia, but right now, could you get to me?”

She held his gaze, and hers went stony. “Not if you keep interrupting.”

So, she had a bit of a temper. Good. He liked that. She wasn't as tame as she appeared. Sighing, he felt around in the covers for the remote, then pressed a button to raise the bed so he could lean back without being entirely prone. His head felt loads better than when he'd been sitting upright, and he made a mental note that the redheaded doc had been right about that.

“Where was I?”

“Summer fundraiser for something or other,” he said.

“Short-term memory is all right, then?”

He met her eyes, saw the sarcasm, figured he had it coming. “I'll try not to interrupt again.”

She nodded. “It's all relevant, I promise.”

He nodded at her to continue.

“I've been reading Aaron Westhaven for years. He's known to be very reclusive, very private. Still, I used to write to him once a year or so at a P.O. box that was listed in his first novel.”

“And you think I'm him?” he asked.

She lowered her head and lifted her brows at the same time, sending him a look that told him he'd interrupted her again.

“Sorry,” he said. “Continue.”

“I never heard back, and the address was missing from all the future books. But I kept writing. Every time a new book came out, I would read it and send a letter. I liked to think of him—you—getting my letters personally, not along with the piles through the publisher. I liked to think of…you reading them with the same eagerness I felt whenever I got the newest novel.”

He was frowning as he watched her go on. Her eyes actually lit up as she talked about a man she'd never even met. Until now. Maybe.

“I guess I should say thank you,” he said. “And, uh, maybe apologize for never writing back.”

She shrugged. “Don't be silly. What celebrity answers his own fan mail?”

He shrugged. “A recluse can't, by definition, be a celebrity, can he?”

“Of course he can.”

“Well, celebrity or not, it seems rude as hell to me.”

She smiled a little. “If you
are
him, you can apologize to me later.”

He was beginning to hope he was, so her doubt jabbed at him a little. “You're not sure I'm him, then?”

“I'm fairly certain,” she said. “It's just that Westhaven is
so
reclusive. No public appearances, no known photographs, even—”

“Damn,” he muttered, shaking his head.

“What?”

“Aaron Westhaven is an asshole, that's what.”

Her eyes widened, and she'd risen from her chair before he'd stopped speaking. “He is—
you
are not!”

“If I'm him, I am. I mean, who do I think I am? Shakespeare? Where do I get off, anyway?”

“You are
not
an…an asshole,” she said, stumbling a bit over a word he was certain she'd never uttered in her life. “If you'll let me finish my story, you'll begin to see that.”

“Fine. Finish the story.”

She smoothed her hands over the seat of her skirt, forcing his eyes to follow, and sat down the way he imagined royalty would.

“All right. So, despite…your…understandable reluctance to answer what must have seemed like fan mail, I decided to write again, asking
you
to come and speak at the annual summer fundraiser lecture series for the English department. To my surprise, I received a response this time. An acceptance.”

“I said yes?” Then he rolled his eyes at his own
question. “I guess I must have. I'm here.” Then he thought about it a bit further, because her explanation didn't make a lot of sense. He wondered what reason she might have to lie to him, then wondered what reason anyone would have to
execute
him. And then he wondered if the two things were related.

He looked her up and down slowly. No. She
really
wasn't the type.

“So if I'm famous and I agreed to come to town to speak, why didn't anyone know who I was?”

“Your terms were explicit and a little extreme,” she said, averting her eyes. “We were only allowed to advertise a secret special guest speaker and had to promise not to tell anyone it was you. We had to make the event by invitation only, and we were told to invite only the top one hundred most generous contributors among our alumni. No more. So there's been no press announcement or publicity around this at all. With it being limited to invited guests only, advertising wasn't necessary.”

He was watching her, and it occurred to him that he was looking for signs she was lying and not finding any. And that was an odd thing to catch himself doing, wasn't it? As if he was accustomed to being lied to, as if he knew what it looked like. “So I'm famous enough to get away with those kinds of bullshit demands?”

She shrugged. “The university agreed to all of it.”

“So that's a yes, then.”

“I sent you my business card, with my unlisted number and home address handwritten on the back,”
she said, pulling the card from her pocket and handing it to him.

“So you have my home address?” he asked quickly, a gusher of hope rising in his chest.

“No, I sent it to the P.O. box. That was the only return address on your reply to me. Sorry.”

He felt the disappointment but tried not to let it show by focusing on the card she'd handed him, turning it over as he checked it out. “Did they find any prints on it?”

“How did you know that was fingerprint dust?”

He shrugged, handing the card back to her. “Isn't it?”

“Well, yes, but I didn't know that. Neither did Dr. Overton.”

“The redhead?”

“Yes, the redhead,” she said.

She sounded a little exasperated with him, and he found that mildly amusing. She was so staid and tucked in, he found he enjoyed ruffling her a little bit.

But she was staring at him, awaiting an answer. He sighed. “I don't know how I knew. I don't know anything. Remember?”

She nodded, taking the card from him and setting it on the table beside his bed. Then she snatched a few tissues from the box there and used them to wipe the black smudges from her fingertips.

“So you're sure that's the card you sent me.”

“I certainly haven't sent anyone
else
that information,” she replied.

That caught his attention, because it was such an
adamant
reply. As if it were ludicrous to think she might have given her personal info to anyone else.

Maybe it was. There was more to this woman than had been apparent at first, he thought.

She seemed to try to pull her focus back to the matter at hand. “To get back to the subject, Mr. Westhaven was due to arrive today.”

“Arrive where?” he asked.

“My house. He—you—were going to use my guest room. But he never arrived. And my card, the one I sent to him, was on you when the boys found you.”

“Along with the pocket watch and key ring they found on me, it's the sum total of my worldly possessions at the moment.”

“Still, that's why it's fairly obvious that you're him.”

He nodded. “If I
am
him, I still say I sound like a pompous prima donna. Making you people jump through all those hoops just to get me to visit for an afternoon.”

She shrugged, but her puzzled frown was genuine, he thought. “It seems clear that you have reasons to guard your privacy.
Big
reasons. Reasons that go way beyond just being a prima donna, Aaron.”

It was odd, being called by a name that didn't feel like his own. It felt odder still, that her point sounded right on target.

“Most people who've heard of it probably think your reclusiveness is about privacy or shyness, or that it's just
a publicity stunt, a big-time author being eccentric and arrogant and getting away with it.”

She'd given this a lot of thought, he mused. She'd probably been justifying this ink-Nazi's egomania ever since she'd decided to worship him from afar. “Uh-huh. And what do
you
think?”

She shrugged. “The first time you stuck your head out in the open, someone tried to blow it off. I'd say you knew that could happen, and
that's
why you play the recluse. To keep yourself alive.”

He nodded slowly. “You know, I think you just might have a point there. Now, would you do me a favor and grab my clothes from the closet?” As he spoke, he shoved his covers back.

She frowned at him. “Why? What are you going to do?”

“Leave.”

She got up again. “You can't just leave,” she said.

“No, what I
can't
do is just stay here. Hand me my stuff, will you?”

She nodded, the motion jerky, and turned to open the closet. She pulled out a suit and held it out, looking it over. “Too bad,” she said.

“What?” He was reaching for the hanger, but she shook her head and put it back in the closet. “It's an Armani, but it's completely ruined. Blood, dirt. There's no saving it.” Then she bent down. “Shoes look all right, though.”

He let his head hit the pillow and sighed. “I can't stay here. It's not defensible.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, someone just tried to take me out. I was shot in the back of the head, all my ID was taken and my body was dumped in the middle of nowhere. That was a hit. A professional hit.”