Kill Me Again (9 page)

“All right, Olivia,” Carrie said at length. “All right. Have fun.”

“Oh, I intend to.”

She said it as if she meant it, he thought, and she kept her eyes glued to his the whole time. Her lips were
pulled very slightly upward at the corners. And her eyes seemed a cross between bravado and nervousness.

She disconnected, then set the phone on the dashboard. “Happy?” she asked.

“Deliriously. Now…are you going to tell me the rest of your story or not?” he asked.

She crossed her arms over her chest and nodded. “Yes. I think I am.”

“H
e was a dealer,” Olivia began.

They'd grabbed fast food from a drive-through window and driven to a boat launch on the Winooski River for a break from the car. They sat in the grass, eating, while Freddy splashed in the water, bobbing for river stones and coming up soaked.

“I assume you don't mean used cars,” Aaron said.

She nodded. “Nothing major—weed, hash, strictly small-time. But he was a cop, too, so…”

“Your ex-husband—the guy who beat you up—he was a cop?”

She nodded. “I never married him, by the way. We lived together. But, yes, he was a cop. That's why I couldn't just get him for assault the first time it happened. No one believed me. He'd set it up, though I didn't know that at the time. He'd talked about me at work, made me seem flighty, unstable. So when I started asking for help, it was almost as if they'd been expecting it. No one in authority took me seriously. But I wasn't about to stay
and put up with being abused. It's just not in me, so I had to find another way out. I figured the cops might be able to ignore me, but they couldn't ignore a few dozen pounds of illegal substances.” She lowered her head, shaking it slowly. “All I needed was time to get away. I just needed him locked up long enough for me to put a safe distance between us.”

He nodded. “I get that. And the disks?”

She drew a deep breath, stared at him, and he wondered what she was looking for in his eyes. He tried to show sincerity and concern. He didn't know if he was pulling it off. He just knew something was telling him to find out the answers to the question of who she was, so he was doing it. Trusting his gut. He had a feeling it had been important to him…before.

“Names, dates, amount purchased, amount paid, photographs of the transactions.”

“Photos?”

She nodded. “Tommy got photos of every sale, whenever he could manage it. Usually toked up a little with the customers, just so he could. He used to have cameras set up all over the damned house. Hidden in plants and stuff, and no one ever knew the difference. I asked him why, once. He said it was an investment, said those photos would increase in value over time. That they might even be worth a fortune someday.” She shrugged. “I figured if he ever found me, maybe I could use the disks to, you know, pay him off.”

“In exchange for him not killing you,” he said, as if he already knew.

She nodded jerkily. “It was probably a stupid idea. But it felt like something at the time.”

“Hey, something's better than nothing.”

“Yeah.”

Freddy came trotting up to her just then, dripping wet, and dropped a big round stone in front of her.

“Thank you,” she said with all the enthusiasm she would have used had the rock been a diamond in the rough. “That's a really nice rock you have there. What do you want for it?”

“Rrrrrrrruff!” said Freddy.

“Oh, okay, then.” She broke a piece of her sandwich off and fed it to him. Then she threw the rock, and he bounded off after it, but he went suddenly still and alert as a rowboat went by on the river. The guy inside wasn't even rowing, just floating and smiling.

“You know, I'm going to do that someday,” Olivia said. And she sounded a little wistful.

“What, go down the river in a rowboat?”

She lowered her head as if embarrassed. “Sounds dull, doesn't it? I don't know, it's nothing special, but I've never done it, and it seems like it would be—kind of soothing. Maybe even a little spiritual.”

Aaron watched her, and he couldn't help but like her even more than he had before. She talked to her dog as if he were human, and the gargantuan beast actually seemed to understand and hang on every word. And
she was embarrassed that her idea of an exciting new thing to do would be to go floating down a lazy stretch of river. Hell, it didn't sound bad at all to him.

She really did love that dog, though. They were quite a pair. Stunning.

Both of them.

Okay, okay, he was getting distracted. Back on topic. “So you want me to call this ex of yours, you said.”

She nodded. “I need to find out for sure if he's the one who sent that guy after me. So I'm going to have you feel him out about it. I just haven't quite figured out how yet.” She tilted her head to one side. “What do you think?”

“I think you're overlooking the obvious.”

“What's that?”

“The disks. When's the last time you looked at them?”

“When I was copying them, sixteen…almost seventeen years ago.”

“So don't you think you should take another look, and then decide what to do?”

She nodded slowly. “Yes, that's a really good idea.” Then she lifted her head. “Assuming we can find a computer with a floppy drive, much less an operating system that'll read something this old.”

“We'll find one. But not until after lunch. Freddy seems to be really enjoying his break.”

 

After their lunch break, they found just what they needed with the help of the built-in GPS system and a
411 call. Smart-Biz was open 24/7, had 13 branches in Vermont and purported to be the most complete business center in the Northeast. There's Nothing You Need That We Don't Have! the cheerful slogan beneath its logo bragged.

“We're about to find out, Smart-Biz,” Olivia said, when they pulled into the lot.

Freddy was napping off his midday swim, making the car's interior smell a lot like wet dog as a result. The lady professor who wasn't what she seemed was going to need to have it detailed before it was returned to its rightful owner, Aaron thought.

They went inside together, leaving the SUV running with the AC on for the dog. Aaron took note of the surveillance cameras as they entered and was surprised that he could tell by looking that they fed into a computer system, not a VCR.

More research, right, guy?

He sighed, brushed the thought away and watched the smiling twenty-something guy on the other side of the counter flash a high-beam smile at Olivia, while pretending not to check out her breasts.

“Can I help you?” the kid asked.

“Oh, I hope so.” She held up a disk. “Got anything that'll still read this?”

He didn't even flinch. “You know the software?”

“Probably Word. I don't know the version anymore, but it's about sixteen years old.”

He nodded. “No problem. Come on back.”

Olivia shot Aaron a happy look that made him smile a little. And the way the younger man watched her butt as she walked past him reminded him again of his own attraction to her. Instead of dwelling on that, he denied himself the pleasure of watching her hips swing subtly as he followed her into a room in the back that was lined with computers, each one with a chair in front of it.

“Third one on the right ought to have just what you need,” the clerk said. “If you need copies, the CDs are on that wall over there, a buck apiece. Printouts—” he pointed to the bank of printers back in the main room of the shop “—come out of number five. Twenty cents a page. Thirty-five for color. Copy machine is over there, prices are listed. Fax—”

“Okay, okay. We've got it. Thanks, pal.” Aaron patted the kid on the shoulder while moving him back in the direction he'd come from.

The clerk stopped talking, looked perplexed; then light dawned, and he got the message. “Oh. Well, I'll leave you to it, then.”

“Thanks.” Aaron watched the kid until he'd gone back into the shop. Then he turned to Olivia.

She was looking at him with her brows raised. “What?” he asked.

“You were unnecessarily rude to him, don't you think?”

“We
do
have urgent business and a need for privacy, don't we?”

She nodded, then sat down, took out a diskette and
slid it into the floppy drive, which whirred and buzzed. In moments a no-doubt ancient version of Word opened up, showing the list of the documents on the disk.

They were named according to a meaningless alphanumeric code, probably generated at random by the computer Tommy had used to create the file.

And then she opened the first one, a chart with names, dates, column after column of personal information and records of drugs bought in years gone by.

Olivia scrolled down the list, reading name after name after name.

And then she came to a stop at one that was very familiar. “Oh, my God.”

Aaron leaned closer. “Phil Gainsboro,” he whispered out loud. “Is that
Senator
Phillip Gainsboro?”

“We'll have to look at the photos to be sure. But if it is…”

“They say he's planning a presidential run. He's the pundits' current top pick to win the Republican nomination in the next primary,” Aaron said.

“That's who he is now. We don't know who he was seventeen years ago. But if this
is
him, he was buying weed from my boyfriend. Inordinate amounts of weed, as a matter of fact.”

“He wasn't just using,” Aaron said softly. “He was dealing.” He licked his lips. “And if he knew you had this information, there's no doubt in my mind he would have the resources and the connections to send a hit man after you.”

“So it was either him or Tommy.”

“Don't be too sure just yet, Olivia.” Aaron nodded at the screen. “He's not the
only
name on this list. There might be others with just as much to lose. We're going to need a printout.”

“I agree. But go stand by the printer so no one else sees any of this.”

He looked at her quickly. “There's no one else in here.”

“It's open to the public. Anyone could walk in at any time. Do you really want to draw attention to what we're doing by running across the room to beat some curious snoop to the printers?”

He just looked at her. “You know,” he said at length, “if you don't want me ordering
you
around, maybe—”

“You're absolutely right. I keep forgetting that I don't hate you.”

“Huh?”

“I'm sorry. Please, go out by the printers? I'd feel better if you did.”

“Sure. No problem.” He crooked a brow at her. “That wasn't so hard, was it?” Then he headed out to the printers.

 

By the time he returned, Olivia had inserted each of the five floppy diskettes and hit the “print all” command for each of them. And she'd been opening and looking at the files on the computer as she did. Some of them were downright amusing.

She had also secretly burned the contents of all five disks onto one DVD, then made three more copies of that DVD and buried them all in the bottom of her handbag. As she did, she felt the handgun resting in the bottom and shivered a little.

She didn't think she needed to protect herself from Aaron Westhaven. More, she didn't
want
to think it. But life had taught her that you took precautions anyway. He was carrying a weapon, so she was, as well. She'd taken it from the bank sack and tucked it into her purse without Aaron's knowledge. Her attacker could try for her again. It paid to be prepared.

So that was what she was doing. Being prepared. If Aaron tried to steal the diskettes from her, now that he knew how valuable they were, she would have copies. If she were forced to turn them over to Tommy or Senator Gainsboro, she would have copies. If either of them seemed likely to kill her for what she knew, she would tell them she'd left copies with someone who would send them to the press or the U.S. attorney general if she vanished. She didn't know what good any of that might do her, but she would have those copies, just in case having them could save her life.

She felt guilty, keeping secrets from Aaron. But she shouldn't. She didn't
really
know him. He wasn't
really
the long-lost friend he sometimes felt like. Almost as often, he felt like a complete stranger to her.

A stranger, yes. But one she wanted to know better. Much better.

She closed her eyes briefly as that thought flashed through her mind. What was she doing, allowing herself to feel…
that way
…about a man she didn't even know? A man she might not be able to trust? Was she falling into the pattern she thought she'd banished long ago? Was she letting herself be drawn to another man who would hurt her in the end?

Aaron rejoined her with a stack of printouts, some of them on photo paper, all contained in a blue Smart-Biz file folder. “Ready?”

“Ready.” She removed the final floppy from the drive and returned it to the bag. “Were you
looking
at those photos as they came off the printer?” she asked.

He grinned at her. “Did you see the one of the chick sucking on that five-foot bong?”

She nodded. “It looks pretty bad, doesn't it?”

“Yeah, but not bad enough to kill for.”

“I swear I knew her,” she said. “But I'm damned if I can remember any details.”

“Hey, join the club.” He grinned. “So where do we go from here?”

“You're asking me?”

“You're running this show,” he said.

Her brows rose. “Since when?”

“Since we decided to deal with your disks, burglar and mysterious past first, and my hit man, identity and even more mysterious past second. Hell, I've got nothing to go on but a pocket watch and a key, after all.” His eyes were warm when they met hers. “Besides, I'm starting
to want to find your answers almost as badly as I want to find my own.”

She frowned and tried not to let her heart turn to mush at the casually spoken declaration. “Why?”

“I don't know. I guess I'm getting into the mystery. And maybe starting to like you a little.” He lifted a hand, and touched her hair, then pushed it gently off her forehead. “You've got bruises from that asshole last night. And I keep thinking about that other asshole, from your past. Hurting you back then. Maybe trying to hurt you again now. And I gotta tell you, professor, it bugs the hell out of me.”