by Lisa Childs
“Apparently you offered federal protection to these women,” Graves continued, and now the disdain had turned to disapproval.
The women had requested protection? Goose bumps rose along the skin on Alaina’s arms despite the jacket she wore over her sweater. “Yes, sir.”
“Who authorized you to offer federal protection to anyone, Agent Paulsen?” he demanded to know, his deep voice vibrating with anger.
“I—I … hadn’t thought I would need authorization,” she explained. “These women are in danger.”
“We have no proof of that.”
“Two women have been brutally murdered,” Alaina said, stunned and disappointed that she had to remind him.
“We have no proof that those murders are linked to this website or to past lives.” He grimaced now with his obvious opinion of reincarnation. “And if I had been made aware of this website you created, you never would have been assigned to this case.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I may have overstepped,” she said, though she didn’t understand how, when lives were at risk. “But I honestly believe these women are in danger. Dr. Rosenthal found scars on the two recent victims—”
Director Graves lifted a hand, as if to forestall her argument. “You’ve put the Bureau and me in an untenable position, Agent Paulsen.”
Confusion knitted her brows together while tension pounded at her temples. She didn’t need this lecture; she needed to be working the leads from those phone calls. “Untenable? I don’t understand.”
A muscle ticked along his clenched jaw. “If the media gets wind of this, it would be an embarrassment to the Bureau.”
“Embarrassment?” Her voice cracked as anger rushed through her. “Isn’t it more of an embarrassment that a killer who eluded the Bureau for thirty years is killing again?” She snorted. “Embarrassment? Hell, it’s a travesty that this case was ever allowed to become cold.”
The director slammed his fist onto his desk. “There were no leads!”
Apparently Graves was as familiar with those cold-case files as Alaina was. “Maybe if someone had kept working it, there would have been leads. Some more evidence could have turned up. Something …”
“You think this is the same killer—the one from thirty years ago?” He uttered a derisive laugh. “You think someone who killed, like he killed, would have been able to stop for thirty years?”
“Some do. They have to,” she reminded him. “They get caught, or put away for some reason.” Or they’d killed the person who had inspired their killing and they didn’t need to kill again until they realized she’d returned to life—thanks to her ill-conceived website.
She would like to think that she’d started Déjà Vu to find answers. But she’d started the site because she’d needed validation. She had needed to prove to herself that she wasn’t crazy for having those memories of another life. That she wasn’t alone.
And maybe she’d hoped to find that man who’d haunted her dreams, waking and asleep.
Graves offered an alternative. “Or the old killer died, and someone’s books detailing those murders has inspired someone to copy those crimes.” His dark eyes narrowed as he stared at her. “You’re his source.”
“What?”
“Your boyfriend—Baines—how long have you known him?” the director imperiously asked. “Since he started writing that first book back in college? Had you and he tracked down the old newspaper articles?”
“Articles?”
“There was a reporter who followed the case,” he shared. “He was close to the detective.”
“How do you know this?” she asked. There had been no mention of a reporter in those files. Of course, even now law enforcement wouldn’t admit to a relationship with someone from the media.
Graves answered her question with one of his own. “How do you know Baines?”
“I just met him a few days ago,” she insisted. In this life. In another she had known him for a long time, and she had known him well.
The director snorted his disbelief. “Agent Vonner is working the connection between you two. He’s going to find it.”
“Agent Vonner is wasting his time when he should be tracking down the leads from those calls.”
“Those calls are a nuisance we don’t need right now.” He leaned back in his chair, his gaze cold as he stared at her. “But they have helped me realize what I need to do.”
She shivered, knowing this was not going to be good for her … or Trent.
The guy sighed regretfully, but his eyes were cold and determined. “I have to let you go.”
“Let me go? What do you mean?”
“You’re fired,” he explained. “Turn in your gun and your shield, and a guard will escort you out of the building.”
“Director—”
“If you want to petition to keep your job, I recommend that you hire a lawyer, Ms. Paulsen.” Graves thumped his hand against his desk. “You might want to tell your boyfriend to do the same.”
“Vonner convinced you he’s a viable suspect,” she realized.
The director nodded. “He’s the only suspect who makes sense. To write what he has, he’s sick. Twisted. Eventually he’d grow tired of just writing about these crimes—he’d be tempted to actually commit one. Now two …”
“You’re wrong about him. Vonner’s wrong about him,” she insisted, more outraged at their maligning of Trent’s character than her firing.
Graves shook his head. “I used to think that you were so smart, Ms. Paulsen. But you’re making mistakes, mistakes that will probably, at best, get you arrested. At worst, get you killed.”
“I can take care of myself,” she assured him. Her hand shaking, Alaina laid her gun and credentials on the cold granite surface of the director’s desk. “I want to know if you’ll protect those women.”
“That’s no longer any of your concern,” he callously reminded her.
“Yes, it is,” she insisted, anger and frustration gripping her. “I promised them protection.”
“You didn’t have the authority to do that, Ms. Paulsen,” he reprimanded her again. “Now I must order you to leave the premises.”
“Sir, you have to—”
The older man stood and slammed his fists onto the desk next to her gun and shield. “Leave now, Ms. Paulsen, or I’ll have you arrested for interfering with an ongoing investigation.”
She bit her lip to resist the temptation to continue arguing. If she got arrested, she wouldn’t be able to help those women at all. She turned and headed for the door, but before she closed it behind her, she couldn’t resist adding, “You’re going to regret this….”
“This is crazy,” Trent said, outrage heating his skin so that his face burned beneath the stubble on his jaw. “Let me talk to him. I think I can get through to him, convince him to give you your job back.”
“Or you’ll get arrested like he threatened to arrest me,” Alaina warned him. She leaned her head against the headrest of the rental car and closed her eyes. “You’re their number-one suspect right now.”
He sighed. “That actually makes sense. If I were them, I’d suspect me, too.”
“And they suspect I’m either your accomplice or your unwitting dupe.”
“What?” Outrage on her behalf surged through him again. How could anyone suspect her involvement in a murder? “No wonder they can’t find the real killer.”
“Vonner’s working on finding a connection between us.”
He laughed. “I doubt it’s a connection he’ll be able to understand, let alone accept.” His amusement faded. Trent wasn’t certain it was a connection he could accept.
“They think I’ve been your source all along.”
Frustration tightened the muscles in his neck and shoulders. He shrugged. “They’re fools. We need to go back in there and set them straight. You can show them the scar….”
“No.” She shook her head. “I think it’s better we stay away from the Bureau right now.” She opened her e
yes, turned in the passenger seat and studied him where he sat behind the wheel of the rental car. “Thanks to you, we already know more than anyone in the Bureau does.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” he said. “The director was on the case, you know. He worked it thirty years ago with Detective Kooiyer.”
A breath hissed out between Alaina’s clenched teeth. “He’s late fifties, early sixties,” she mused. “He could have been the detective’s friend.”
“Could have been,” Trent admitted.
Alaina pressed her hand to her heart. “Which puts those women even more at risk. No wonder he’s refused to offer them protection.”
Trent cursed. This was why he preferred to lock himself away from the real world. It was easier to not get involved than to care too much—like Alaina cared. He could feel her frustration and pain as if it were his own. He reached across the console for her hand, but she pulled away and opened the glove box.
He noticed how sunlight glinted off metal and looked down to see a handgun. “You had a gun in there?”
She nodded. “I didn’t know what might happen today. I didn’t know what Vonner had been telling Graves.”
“So you think Vonner’s the reason you got fired?”
She lifted her slender shoulders in a slight shrug. “I don’t know. He’s focused more on you than me.”
“You rejected him,” he reminded her. “He might have gone after you out of spite.” The hair lifted on Trent’s nape as his instincts screamed at him. “I wonder just how obsessed with you he is….”
As obsessed as the Thief of Hearts?
“I’m more concerned about those other women with the scars,” Alaina said as she inspected the clip for the gun. “I promised them protection. I need to make sure they’re safe.”
“I figured you might say that.” He knew her so well, felt all her guilt and pain. “So I put my techie guy on it and got some IP addresses.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “So did he find out who anyone is?”
He nodded. “As he claims, no one’s really anonymous online.”
“Did he find any of their actual home addresses?” she asked, hope pitching her voice higher.
He nodded again. “A couple more women live right here in the city.”
“I’ve heard that reincarnated people are drawn back to the same places where they lived in other lives.” She stared at him, her pupils dilating with desire. “And to the same people they loved in other lives.”
He wanted to give her the words; she deserved the words. But until he knew for certain which man he’d been to her—husband or killer—he could not offer her anything. Nothing but an uncertain future … after a painful, terrifying past.
“Trent?” she called his name, her voice soft with a vulnerability he suspected she rarely ever showed.
He clenched his fingers around the steering wheel, resisting the urge to reach for her, to drag her across the console and into his arms. He had no idea who could be watching them—Director Graves, Agent Vonner or the killer.
“I, uh, my briefcase’s in the back,” he said. “The list of addresses is on the top.”
Disappointment dimmed the brightness of her gray-blue eyes, but she reached between the front seats and pulled the steel briefcase from the back. She whistled as she opened it. “I’m not the only one who’s armed,” she observed as she touched the handle of his Glock.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” He hadn’t protected her in their past life; he wouldn’t make that same mistake.
“I can protect myself,” she said again, her voice sharp with pride. “It’s these women I’m worried about.” She read an address from the list. “This one’s nearby. Just a few blocks from here.”
Fighting the congestion of rush-hour traffic, Trent followed her directions. Her voice cracked with urgency as she called out the streets and which direction he was to turn on them. She leaned forward, her breasts pushing against the seat belt, her fingers tapping on the dash.
Her anxiety and dread filled him. But he resisted the urge to reach for her hand, to offer her comfort. His touch wouldn’t be enough to ease her fears. Only finding these women alive and safe would ease her worry.
But the closer they drew to the address, the more emotions overwhelmed him. The fear and panic. And the rage and hatred. His hand shook as he shut off the car.
Her breath caught, her eyes widening as she studied his face. “Trent …?”
“He’s here,” he warned Alaina. “The killer is still here.”
Chapter 15
“Stay here,” Alaina whispered to Trent as if the killer could hear them out in the drive, in the car with the windows rolled up. Her heart beat louder than her voice, as it pounded fast and hard with fear and adrenaline when she reached for the door handle.
“Hell, no,” he protested. “You’re not going in there alone.” He pulled his gun from the metal briefcase and pushed open his door the same time she opened hers.
The creak of metal hinges echoed loudly in the eerie quiet of the suburban street. The houses, some with porch lights left on, looked empty, as if everyone had already left for work or school.
She glanced back at Trent and wanted to argue with him, but there wasn’t time—not if the killer had already found his next victim. Thanks to her unwitting help.
“Stay behind me,” she snapped at him as she headed toward the front door of the small bungalow. The door, which had been painted a startlingly bright yellow, stood ajar.
Alaina tightened her grip on the gun. “Be careful,” she whispered to Trent before ducking inside the foyer. She had no doubt he would follow her inside. She felt his fear and adrenaline as acutely as she felt her own.
But that wasn’t all Trent felt. She glanced behind her and noted the paleness of his skin, the tightness of his jaw and the horror in his eyes. And she knew what she would find even before she pushed open the bedroom door to the blood sprayed across the wall.
She rushed toward the bed on which the woman lay and checked for a pulse. But there was no need to do so; the victim’s empty chest gaped open. “That son of a bitch!”
A crash reverberated down the hall from somewhere in the house. Trent rushed out ahead of her, the gun she didn’t even know if he could fire clenched in his hand. His legs longer, he beat her out the back door, which swung out on the porch in the wake of someone else having just passed through it. But she saw nothing but a shadow among the trees of the backyard.
Trent lifted his gun, but she grabbed his shoulder. “No, you can’t shoot. You can’t know for sure if that’s him.” And not another innocent person caught in the cross fire of an obsession that spanned lifetimes.
“I know. I can feel that it’s him,” Trent insisted. Yet he lowered his weapon and a ragged sigh slipped through his lips. “We were too late.”
He’d stayed behind her, in the hall; he hadn’t seen what she had on the bed. But he must have felt it—all that poor woman’s terror and pain.
“Yes, we were too late,” she confirmed. Tears of frustration and guilt burned her eyes. How had she been so careless, so stupid? Again?
“This isn’t your fault,” he tried to reassure her.
But Alaina knew better.
“We need to call this in,” she said as they stepped back inside the house.
“No need,” Vonner said, his gun trained on them. “I’m already here. And you’re both under arrest.”
“So you’ve decided to live out the books you write,” Vonner taunted Trent.
Trent bit the inside of his cheek to hold in a pithy response. He wouldn’t give the smug agent the satisfaction of goading him into talking. Instead, he leaned back as far as the stiff chair would allow, pushing away from the table to which one of his wrists was cuffed. The metal was cold and hard against his skin. He studied the mirror across from him; it was the only thing that relieved the monotony of the gray cement walls and floor of the interrogation room at the Bureau.
Under the table Trent clenched his hands into fists that he longed to slam into Vonner’s face. Again and again. But he wasn’t feeling only his own rage. He felt Vonner’s, as well. His anger and resentment.
“You probably believe in that reincarnation crap, too,” Vonner continued. “Or is her belief just convenient for you? Did you use it to get her into bed?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Trent shot back, unable to hold down the words.
“So you and she do have a sexual relationship? Did you kill that woman together today?” he asked. “Is murder foreplay for you two?”
“You are one sick bastard,” Trent said, disgust choking him. “And you’re not too smart.”
Vonner snorted, not really insulted by Trent’s opinion of his intelligence.
“I already asked for my lawyer,” he reminded the overzealous agent. “Anything you get out of me now would be inadmissible in court.”
“So you do have something to hide,” Vonner persisted, pouncing on everything Trent said like a cat chasing a piece of string. Or its own tail.
“Don’t we all?” Trent shot back, wondering what the agent had to hide. And while he shouldn’t answer any questions until his lawyer showed up, he could ask some. So he voiced the question that had been burning his throat since Vonner had showed up at the murder scene. “Did you follow us when we left the Bureau this morning?”
Or had he beat them there? Had he been the shadow that Trent should have shot at through the trees? Vonner could have killed the woman, slipped out the back and then around to the front to arrest them.
The agent said nothing, but his jaw clenched so tightly a muscle ticked in his cheek.
“If you followed us, you know we had no time to kill her,” Trent pointed out. But if he’d followed them, Vonner couldn’t be the killer, either, unless he’d killed her earlier and someone else had gone out the back door. Some unsuspecting witness …
But the only fear Trent had felt at the scene had been the residual of the dead woman’s terror. And the only guilt had been Alaina’s.