by Lisa Childs
“I wanted to talk to you,” Graves said, his dark eyes glinting with amusement. “I granted you access for this case, so I could get a fresh perspective.”
“That’s why?” Trent asked. “I wondered why you gave me access.”
“You and everyone else,” the director said with a short laugh. “Agent Vonner thinks I’m crazy.”
“Are you?”
Instead of being offended, the older man laughed. “I don’t know what to think about any of this,” Graves admitted. “It was supposed to be a cold case.” His dark eyes narrowed as he studied Trent’s face. “But it didn’t stay a cold case.”
“Do you think that’s because of my books?” he asked, although he didn’t really need confirmation.
Graves nodded. “Probably. You gave someone the horrific idea.”
Trent sighed as the guilt pressed more heavily on his chest. “Yeah, I think so, too.”
“So I’m curious about those books,” Graves said.
“You said you were a fan.” Which had surprised Trent because so few people in law enforcement enjoyed the horror series.
The director laughed again, but his dark eyes remained cold with suspicion. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Then I don’t understand.” Trent dropped into a sling-back leather chair in front of the man’s desk. “Why give me access?”
“Maybe I am crazy,” Graves allowed, “or maybe my curiosity’s getting the better of me.”
“What makes you so curious about my books?” Trent wondered aloud.
“I was there thirty years ago,” Graves admitted. “I was on the case back then.”
“With the detective?”
He nodded. “I was the liaison between the local police department and the Bureau. I was there,” he repeated, his voice echoing the frustration he must have felt during the serial killer’s first reign of terror, “and I don’t know some of the stuff you know, that you wrote about in your series of books. So, yeah, I’m curious. How do you know so many details about what happened? Who’s your informant?”
“My informant?”
“Someone had to give you all those details. Is it Detective Kooiyer? Or the reporter … I can’t remember his name.” Graves leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers over his protruding belly. “Hell, I guess it could have been Dr. Rosenthal.”
“Dr. Rosenthal?” Trent thought of the Bureau coroner he and Alaina had left a short time ago, before Trent had driven her back to her apartment and made certain she locked herself inside.
“Rosenthal was with the city morgue back then,” Graves remembered, “doing his internship. I’m sure it’s a case he never forgot.”
Trent’s head pounded as he pondered all the suspects he had never considered before. Because he’d been convinced he was the killer.
But what if Alaina was right and the killer was still alive, still living his murderous life? Then who had Trent been that he remembered so many details of the murders?
“What about Detective Kooiyer?” he asked. Even though he had no respect for the man, he kind of hoped Alaina was right. “Have you kept in touch with him?”
Graves rubbed a hand over his face. “Kept in touch? I’ve kept looking for him.”
“You don’t know where he is?”
“No one knows,” the director said, then narrowed those dark eyes with suspicion, “except maybe you.”
Trent shook his head. “I’ve never met him. Tell me about him.”
“He disappeared—” Graves shook his head in disgust “—both him and his wife, which was the craziest thing.”
“You think they just ran off together,” Trent asked, “or that something happened to them?”
Graves sighed. “I’d like to think that something happened to them.”
Trent nearly gasped his surprise at the director’s callous admission.
“I prefer it to the alternative,” Graves explained, “that they deserted their young son. Then they wouldn’t have been the people I thought they were.”
An image flashed through Trent’s mind of a giggling toddler being lifted high in his arms. The boy’s pudgy face creased with a big smile, his brown eyes bright with joy, as he stared down at him. Of course, that didn’t mean the child had been his son. If he’d been the killer, as the detective’s friend, he could have been a doting uncle. “What happened to their son?”
The older man shrugged. “Some family must have taken him in. I don’t remember.”
And he obviously didn’t care. But Trent cared. And so would Alaina—if he told her. But first he had to get back to her, had to make sure she was safe. Then he would decide if she could handle any more guilt; she already blamed herself for too much of what had happened then and was happening again.
Trent glanced at his watch. “So why’d you call me here tonight?”
“Vonner wants to bring you in for questioning.”
“Is that what this is?” he asked. “An interview?”
Graves laughed. “I asked my questions, but you never really answered them.”
“I don’t have any answers for you,” Trent admitted. “But when I do, you’ll know.”
Graves nodded and waved a hand, dismissing him.
Finally.
“So you decided to open the door to me,” Trent said as he stepped inside her apartment.
Alaina lifted the gun from behind her back and showed him that she’d been prepared to defend herself. “Make you feel better?”
He grinned. “Yeah. I have to remind myself that you can take care of yourself.”
“Of myself? Yes.” She sighed, the guilt overwhelming. “But I haven’t done a good job of taking care of other people.” She should have known that if his victims could find one another in this life, the killer could find them, too. And she’d made it a hell of a lot easier for him with her website.
“Is this it?” he asked as he stared at the laptop she’d left open on the breakfast bar. He leaned over and studied the screen. “Déjà Vu?”
“Yeah. I started the website so that I could find other people like me, people with memories of another life.” So that she hadn’t felt so alone and like such a freak.
“I didn’t know about this,” he said.
“You wouldn’t have looked for it. You denied that your memories were really memories, probably like most people do.” Except for those women who had posted on her site and had admitted to having unexplained scars, too. But they, like her, had remained anonymous, in order to protect themselves from more rejection or prejudice. How had he found them?
“You posted a warning,” Trent said as he read the flashing banner.
She shivered, knowing that it wasn’t enough.
He read it aloud. “‘Two members of this site have been recent victims of the same murders that claimed their past lives. Take precautions.’”
“Maybe I should have had you write it,” she admitted. “It would have made more sense.”
“I don’t know how else you could have said it. You got your point across.” But then he read the rest and turned back to her, his green eyes filled with concern. “You want them to contact you if they feel they’re in danger or if they suspect anyone of following them? Alaina, you’re going to lead the killer right to you.”
“It might be the only way to protect the other women who are still out there.”
“What about you? Who’ll protect you?” he demanded.
“I can protect myself,” she reminded him. “I only wish …”
Her guilt and frustration struck Trent. “It’s not your fault,” he assured her. “It’s not your fault. And now you’re doing everything you can to protect them, including putting yourself in danger.”
“It’s too late. Too little.” Her voice cracked with the tears she’d been fighting. “And it is all my fault.”
He pulled her into his arms. As ever, passion flared between them, but he offered her comfort instead. He just held her as she cried, her fists clutching hi
s shirt.
Trent intended to share with her the information he’d learned from the director, at least some of it. He wasn’t sure he could tell her about her son and not destroy her. But he couldn’t tell her anything he’d learned about potential suspects for the old murders, either, not right now. She couldn’t handle thinking any more about the murders tonight. She shouldn’t be thinking at all, because all that chased through her mind was guilt and regret.
As he’d been able to earlier, at his house, he could read her emotions now. The connection between them was so strong, so unbreakable.
She lifted her face to his gaze. Even with her skin blotchy with tears, her eyes red, she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever known. He wiped away the last traces of moisture with the pads of his thumbs.
“You are in danger, too,” he reminded her. “You need to be careful. It could be anyone.”
“It’s not you,” she insisted. “I won’t believe that it’s you.”
“I don’t know who I was,” he warned her again. “But I know who you were.”
“A tramp,” she said.
He shook his head. “Everything. You were everything to me, and I think you are again. I can’t lose you.”
“You won’t,” she assured him, offering him comfort when she needed it so much herself. “You won’t lose me….”
Trent didn’t just think it anymore; he knew. He loved her.
Her eyes widened with surprise, as if she felt it. He wouldn’t give her the words yet, not with a killer after her and another killer potentially inside him. But he could show her how much she meant to him.
He leaned down and pressed his lips to her swollen eyelids in a tender kiss. Her breath shuddered out soft and warm against his throat. Then her mouth pressed against his neck, to where his pulse throbbed with excitement at her closeness.
Her fingers grasped his T-shirt, then dragged it up his torso and over his head. She ran her hands over his hair, smoothing the strands she’d disheveled. Then she touched his shoulders, arms and chest, her palms warm against his skin. “Trent …”
“Shh …” he murmured against her lips, brushing his mouth across hers. She parted her lips and the tip of her tongue darted out to touch his. He slid his tongue across her bottom lip, in and out of her mouth.
She moaned, her neck arching. Then she pulled back and urged him, “Take me to bed.”
His body shuddered with the overwhelming need to connect with her physically as well as emotionally. But he pulled back, reining in his tenuous control. “Alaina, you’re exhausted.”
She shook her head. “I will always want you,” she insisted, “even when I’m dead.”
He shuddered again, with foreboding over her declaration. Even when she was dead …?
Earlier she had denied the danger he knew she was in, but she must have accepted that it was true. Imminent even.
“Trent …” She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, then lifted her legs and wrapped them around his waist. “Take me to bed.”
He clutched her butt and walked in the direction she pointed, toward the door of a short hall. As they moved, her hips ground against his erection, hardening his body to the point of pain.
Pain only she could relieve.
A lamp beside the bed illuminated her room with a soft glow. The pale yellow sheets echoed the pale yellow walls and the drapes pulled back at the window. Everything light and bright despite—or maybe because of—all the darkness she’d seen in her mind and in her new life as a federal agent.
She unhooked her legs and slid down his body, her chest tight against his bare one, her hips arching against his erection. “I imagined you here with me after you left that night,” she admitted. “But I thought the scar turned you off.”
He shook his head. “You’re beautiful.” He lifted her sweater, pulled it over her head and tossed it aside. Then he reached for her, his fingers shaking slightly as he ran the tip of one along the faint white ridge. “This overwhelms me,” he admitted, “with everything it represents, everything it proves true.”
“I still could be one of those other women,” she remarked, almost desperately. “One of those women who’d been unfortunate enough to have the wrong coloring.”
“You know you’re not,” he gently reminded her. “Because of this … because of us …”
And the passion that burned between them with an otherworldly intensity.
Her breath shuddered out as his fingers continued to stroke her scar. Then he unclasped her bra and pushed the straps from her shoulders. The bra fell away from her breasts as it dropped to the floor.
His hands along her sides, he pulled her close, so that her nipples, peaked with her desire, rubbed against his chest. And he lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her like he always kissed her, as if he’d die without her lips, her breath. If anything happened to her.
He clutched her closer to him, consuming her with his mouth and his tongue. Alaina’s nails raked down his back as she arched against him. She moaned deep in her throat, sending her need and her heat rushing through him, burning him up.
His hands shaking now, he caught her waist and pulled her back, just long enough to unclasp her pants and shove them and her lace panties over her hips and down her long legs. Then he dealt with the rest of his clothes and pulled a condom from his wallet.
Alaina took it from his fingers and tore open the foil. Then she closed her hands around his erection, sliding her palm up and down the pulsing length of him.
He closed his eyes on a wave of sensation. Her desire and his filled his heart, tensing every muscle in his body so that he was taut and on the edge of control. He expected the latex of the condom to replace her fingers, so he jerked when instead he felt the wet heat of her mouth as her lips closed over the tip of his penis.
He opened his eyes and stared down at where she’d dropped to her knees before him. Her eyes dark with passion, she stared up at him, watching his face as she loved him with her mouth. Her tongue slid along his erection as she sucked him deep in her throat.
“Alaina,” he warned her as she pushed him dangerously close to the edge of no control. His fingers clutched the silky strands of her hair, holding her head against him. But it wasn’t enough. He had to completely connect his body with hers. His soul with hers … “No.”
She pulled back, those gray-blue eyes glittering with power and passion. Then she rolled the condom over the length of his erection.
He nearly came then, the tension wound so tight inside him that it might only take her briefest touch. But that wouldn’t have been fair to her.
She needed this, needed him. He felt it. He felt everything she felt. And the sensations were heady.
He reached out, flicking first his thumbs over her nipples. Her eyes dilated, and her breath caught. And he felt the quiver in her stomach, the heat between her legs. So he moved one hand there, to slip his fingers inside her as he lowered his mouth to her breasts and began loving them with his tongue and his lips.
Her legs trembled, and she tightened her thighs around his hand, the soft skin of her inner thighs brushing against his palm. Passion, hot and wet, poured over his fingers as she came, her orgasm spilling out of her with a throaty moan.
And his control snapped. He pushed her back against the mattress, then he followed her down and pushed her legs apart. She lifted them high around his back, her nails digging into his butt as she guided his erection inside her. She screamed, coming again with just that first thrust. But he wasn’t done. He needed the friction, the in and out, her inner muscles tightening around him like a fist in a velvet glove, stroking him, holding him….
She came again, her eyes wide with shock as her body shuddered. He pushed her, thrusting harder, faster, until he joined her in oblivion, his orgasm shaking him to the core with its intensity.
Overwhelmed, he nearly gave her the words, nearly professed his love. But then she might feel she needed to reciprocate, and he couldn’t accept her love. Because s
he couldn’t love a man neither of them really knew….
Rage bubbled over as he read the message she’d posted. She thought she could stop him? His hands gripped the laptop, then hurled it against the wall. It dented the drywall, then cracked and dropped to the floor, pieces of plastic snapping off. Like his temper.
She was with him. Again. He should kill them both now. Set a fire.
Or break down the door and steal both their hearts.
Chapter 14
“Are you feeling better, Agent Paulsen?”
No. But she nodded in response to the director’s question. She should have come to the Bureau with Trent when he’d met with Graves the night before, but then Alaina had had something more important to do. She’d had to try to correct the mistake she had made, the mistake that had already cost two women their lives.
Trent had wanted to come with her this morning. He’d insisted on it, but she’d convinced him she’d be fine at the Bureau. She hadn’t been as certain that he would be, with Vonner considering him the prime suspect in the recent murders.
“I’m sorry to have been out when I was needed,” she told her superior.
“Baines told me that you were still working the case,” Graves said. “And the calls we’ve been getting confirm that you have.”
“Calls?” Her breath caught as fear and hope gripped her. Maybe some of the women had seen something or suspected someone? They would finally have a lead on the Thief of Hearts. But what would that lead cost? The safety of innocent women? “You’ve been receiving calls?”
“Yes, from some website you set up.” The disdain in his voice left no doubt as to his opinion on reincarnation.
After her own father’s rejection, she wasn’t surprised by his reaction. She could have pulled aside the cowl neck of her sweater and shown him the scar. But even with Dr. Rosenthal’s discovery of those same scars on the murder victims, she doubted the director would change his mind about a philosophy so many struggled to understand or accept.