by Lisa Childs
“I didn’t follow you,” Vonner admitted, putting himself right back at the top of Trent’s suspect list.
“Then how’d you show up when you did?”
Vonner chuckled. “Yeah, that was kind of inconvenient for you.”
“We were going to call it in.” Trent reminded him of what Alaina had said.
“Sure.”
“So tell me,” Trent urged him, “how you happened to be there.”
“The woman called in earlier,” Vonner explained, “to request protection. She claimed to have noticed someone watching her house. I suspected that someone was you. I was bringing your picture to show her.”
His dark eyes narrowed. “Of course, it’s hard to find a good picture of you. The one on your book jacket has your hand over your face, as if you’re trying to hide your identity.”
He planted his palms on the metal table and leaned forward. “What are you trying to hide, Baines? That you’re a killer?” Vonner leaned even closer and whispered, “Your secret’s out.”
“What’s the secret that made you request the assignment to this cold case?” Trent asked the other question that had been niggling at him for some time concerning Alaina’s partner. “What’s your motive, Vonner?”
The man straightened up and stepped back to lean against the mirror behind him. “Motive?”
“Something’s driving you.” Trent could feel the man’s determination; it went deeper than mere ambition. It felt more like an obsession. With the case or with Alaina? “What’s your secret, Vonner?”
The agent laughed. “Besides the fact that your lawyer’s actually been waiting for you? Nothing. I’m not hiding a damn thing. I’ll tell you straight out that I think you’re the guy. And I’m going to prove it.”
Trent was almost tempted to encourage Vonner to prove what guy he was. But just as he was reluctant to write the ending of the final book in the Thief of Hearts series, he was reluctant to know for certain who he’d been. If he had been the man he feared he’d been, he would have to walk away from Alaina—to protect her from himself.
But right now she needed protection from someone else.
“The lawyer is going to represent Alaina, too. Where is she?”
“Waiting for you,” Vonner admitted, shaking his head with disgust. “I don’t know why I never noticed it before.”
“What?” curiosity compelled Trent to ask.
“How crazy she is.” Vonner pushed his hand through his dark hair and sighed his dis appointment.
“She’s not crazy,” Trent insisted. “You can’t tell me you’ve never had that sense of déjà vu, that conviction that you’ve been somewhere before, done something before. But it’s not a memory from this life, so it must be a memory from another life.”
Like those images Trent had had, images of making love with a woman who’d meant everything to him. But those images, and the feelings they’d inspired, paled in comparison to what he felt with Alaina.
Vonner shook his head. “Nope. Never.”
Trent narrowed his eyes over how quickly the man had answered, his denial too vehement. Did some old memories haunt Vonner, too? Memories of him killing?
“How old are you?” he asked the agent.
“None of your damn business,” Vonner shot back at him.
Trent studied the man’s face. Few lines rimmed his dark eyes or his smirking mouth. He was young, probably around the same or close to Trent’s age. He could have been less than thirty. He could have been the original Thief of Hearts….
“You’ve really never remembered anything,” Trent persisted, “that didn’t happen in this life? That had to have happened in another life?”
Vonner shuddered, as if unnerved, either by Trent’s questions or those memories he denied having. He jumped as knuckles rapped against the mirror behind him. Then he walked around to where Trent sat and unlocked the handcuff that tethered him to the table.
“I suspect I will have a déjà vu moment,” the agent admitted, “when I get you back in that chair and finally get you to answer my questions.”
“We can talk with my lawyer present,” Trent offered, rubbing the chafed skin of his wrist. Vonner couldn’t have made the cuff much tighter. “I have nothing to hide. I just don’t trust you.” Not with his legal rights and definitely not with Alaina’s life.
Despite her pain over being fired, Trent was actually relieved that she would no longer be working with this man. He suspected Vonner had no doubts about who he was and who he’d been, but he’d chosen to keep it secret.
“No. You’re free to go … for now.” The guy’s dark eyes narrowed with hatred. A hatred that felt eerily familiar in intensity to what Trent had experienced at the last two murder scenes.
He stood, then swayed slightly on his feet, as the feeling overwhelmed him. And blackness rushed in, momentarily blinding him as it threatened his consciousness.
The agent cursed and grabbed his shoulder, his fingers biting in a fierce grasp. “You’re not going to freakin’ pass out again,” Vonner ordered him. “Alaina might have fallen for your games, but I’m not as easily fooled.”
Not like Detective Kooiyer had been fooled … by his wife, by his best friend. It was no wonder that so much disgust filled Trent when he’d written the detective’s scenes. He’d thought it had been the killer’s disdain.
Now he wondered …
If Vonner had once been the killer, then Trent had to have been the detective. The only problem with that scenario, however, was that he could not believe they had ever been friends.
Chapter 16
“Are you all right?” Trent asked Alaina as he closed and locked her apartment door behind them.
She nodded and lied. “Fine.”
“You didn’t talk to anyone without the lawyer?” he asked, his voice rough with concern.
“I did,” she admitted, unrepentant over what she’d said. It was the only thing she didn’t regret having done. “I made it clear that the director knew those women were in danger but refused to protect them. I made it clear that the woman’s family will also be made aware of that. Maybe they’ll protect the other ones on that list. Obviously I can’t …”
Her voice cracked, her heart aching with regret and pain. “I’ve screwed everything up, Trent. I’m trying to help but I just keep making everything worse.”
He pulled her into his arms, his hands stroking her back as if trying to soothe her. “It’s not your fault. You’ve done nothing wrong. I’m the one who started this all up again. I shouldn’t have written those books.”
She wasn’t the only one struggling with guilt and regret. She wrapped her arms around his waist, clutching the soft cotton of his T-shirt, holding him as close as they could get with clothes between them.
“You didn’t know,” she reminded him, “that what you wrote was real.”
“It doesn’t matter if it was real or not,” Trent said. “It gave someone the idea to make it real. This could just be someone copying those killings from the books. It may have nothing to do with the past.”
“I doubt that,” she said, “and so do you. He’s going after those women from my website for a reason. Because he wants to kill them again. These murders aren’t the work of some crazed fan of yours.” She couldn’t let Trent take the blame for what she had caused in this life and their past.
“Alaina …” His fingertips ran along her jaw, tipping her face up to his. “It’s not your fault, either.”
Tears stung her eyes and filled her throat. She could only shake her head.
“You’re in more danger than those women.” His fingertips slid down her throat, and his hands closed around her neck.
Her breath backed up in her lungs as fear choked her. Had she been wrong about him? Had she fallen for the killer?
But he pushed her chin up with his thumbs and lowered his head to hers. Just before his lips touched hers, she glimpsed a flash of pain and disappointment in the depths of his green eyes. And she felt it, ju
st as he must have felt her fear.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured against his lips.
He kissed her, softly, sweetly, his hands tangling in her hair. Then he pulled back and rested his forehead against hers. “Come home with me,” he urged her. “Let me take you back to the estate. Let me keep you safe this time, Alaina.”
She shook her head. “Not yet …”
“C’mon, you have nothing keeping you here,” he insisted. “You got fired from your job.”
“Those women are keeping me here. I have to make sure they’re safe.” She gestured toward the locked door. “I have to go back out there.” There was one more woman on the list who lived in Detroit.
“After what you said, the director will offer them protection now,” he assured her. “You’ve done all you can do without getting yourself killed. Please, let me get you out of here.”
She glanced at the darkened window. “In the morning,” she agreed, “and on one condition.”
He arched a dark blond brow. “What?”
“That you write the rest …” She swallowed hard, choking on the emotion, the fear that rose up. “That you write the ending.”
“Yeah.” He pushed a hand through his hair and sighed. “It’s time. It’s time to end it.”
She lifted her hand to his face, her fingers trembling. She knew what it meant. If he discovered that he had been the killer, he wouldn’t trust himself around her. He would lock himself away in that fortress of his and never come out. Never touch her, never kiss her.
And if he’d been what he feared most, she shouldn’t want him to. She shouldn’t want anything to do with the man who had the soul of a serial killer.
“It can’t be you,” she said as she stroked his cheek. “It can’t be you.”
“Not now,” he agreed. “There is someone else out there now, killing those women. I felt him today, at the house. I felt his rage, his hatred.” His throat moved as he swallowed hard. “And it felt familiar. So familiar. It could have been me in the past.”
She shook her head, refusing to believe it. She moved her hands to his nape and pulled his mouth down to hers. He kissed her now with passion, all his conflicted emotions pouring over her. His fear, regret, desire.
He lifted her, his hands cupping her butt. She wrapped her legs around his waist, rubbing against the hard erection that strained against the fly of his jeans. A moan burned in her throat, spilling from her lips as Trent pulled his mouth from hers.
He lifted up her sweater, pulling it off and dropping it to the floor. Her bra followed.
Her legs still locked around his waist, Alaina dragged up his shirt and pulled it over his head. Then she skimmed her hands up and down his chest, his muscles rippling beneath her palms. He was so beautiful her breath caught with awe of his masculine perfection.
She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his shoulder. She had to taste him, so she slid her tongue across his salty-sweet skin. Then she nipped at him with her teeth.
“If you keep touching me like that, I won’t make it to the bedroom,” he warned her.
She shifted her hips, rubbing against him. Heat pooled between her legs, and a moan burned in her throat. “I don’t want to wait, either.”
Passion darkened his eyes as he met her gaze. He released her and jerked open the snap of her pants. Metal ground against metal as he dragged down the zipper, then pushed her slacks and her lace panties to the floor. Like her clothes, he dropped to his knees on the hardwood.
She reached out, grasping his shoulders, worried that once again his empathy had overwhelmed him. “Are you all right?”
“No,” he said. “I have to taste you. Right now.” He laid her back against the floor and slid her legs over his shoulders. The sinewy muscles rippled beneath the sensitive skin of her inner thighs.
She arched as his mouth found her. His tongue flicked across the throbbing center of her desire, and his hands slid up her body and cupped her breasts.
Her nipples pressed against his palms and she arched more, pressing harder. He moved his hands, so that his fingers touched the sensitive points. Between his thumb and forefinger, he squeezed them.
She bit her lip, but still a scream escaped. It grew louder as he pushed his tongue inside her. The pressure spiraled in intensity almost to the point of pain. She writhed against his mouth, trying to relieve it.
But Trent took his time, making love to her slowly with his mouth. Sliding his tongue in and out as his fingers teased her nipples. Finally Alaina shattered, and tears spilled from the corners of her eyes, dripping into her hair as she arched her neck and screamed, her body shuddering in the throes of the orgasm.
His hands moved from her breasts. Then his zipper rasped. He didn’t drop his jeans; he only freed his throbbing erection. Then he impaled her.
Veins stood out in a jagged zigzag at his temple. He grimaced, and she felt his pain. And hesitation.
“Condom,” he murmured. “I need a condom.”
“No,” she assured him, wanting nothing between them anymore.
She wrapped her legs tight around his waist, holding him inside her. Then she leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his. She tasted her own passion on his lips, on his tongue as it slid inside her mouth, imitating the actions of his lower body as he thrust deeper inside her.
Her muscles stretched. She’d never felt him so deeply. Emotions like she’d never experienced overwhelmed her, intensifying the passion and the pressure that wound tight again inside her. She clawed at his back, his butt, urging him to go faster.
He thrust harder and deeper, grunting and panting for breath as he chased his own desire. For her.
His feelings overwhelmed her. Then the release came over her, freeing her so that she felt weightless, as if she had escaped her own body. The orgasm shuddered through her, pleasure so extreme it curled her toes.
Then Trent stiffened, his body tense and anxious as he thrust one last time and came. His orgasm filled her. Somehow he still had the strength to carry her to the bedroom and collapse onto the mattress with her.
He rolled her against him, holding her tight in his arms, as if he never intended to let her go. His breath hot against her forehead, he murmured, “We should leave now.”
She burrowed her face into the hollow between his neck and shoulder and pressed a kiss to his slick skin. “No. In the morning …”
She had something she needed to do before they left for the U.P., but she dare not tell him her plan. He would only try to talk her out of it.
Chapter 17
Trent awoke alone in the dark. He didn’t need to run his hands over the tangled sheets to know that Alaina had already left the bed. He didn’t feel her.
And as he realized this, panic jerked him fully awake. Where the hell was she? Not close enough that he could feel her emotions, that he could know if she was afraid or angry or.
Even alive.
He hurried out of bed and first checked the window, pushing the curtains aside. The lock held, the glass unbroken. His heart pounding with fear and dread, he ran through the rest of the small apartment, checking first the door, which was locked, the jamb undisturbed. The living-room window was also locked and the glass unbroken.
No one had busted in and stolen her from him. She’d left of her own free will. Had she remembered something, some image that had scared her away?
He pushed his fingers through his hair. Panic had his heart beating fast and hard. “Alaina, where the hell are you?”
Knowing her, she had gone off to make sure those women were safe. Did she remember the addresses on the list? Or had she used her laptop, which he now noticed was missing, to contact the rest of the women?
Because he couldn’t remember those addresses, Trent might have to contact the women through the blog, too. But would they trust someone they didn’t know? After Alaina’s warning regarding the murders, they shouldn’t. How the hell was Trent going to find them—and Alaina?
When Vonner had searched hi
s briefcase, the agent had taken what he’d called Trent’s hit list. Trent didn’t know whether he did so in order to protect the women or to finish what he’d started.
Just thinking of Vonner brought forth emotions that overwhelmed Trent. The rage and hatred.
Did it come from the young agent … or the killer? Or were they, as Trent had begun to suspect, one and the same?
He had to know if the man was the reincarnated Thief of Hearts; he had to find Vonner before Vonner found Alaina.
She was in danger, and her life would be at risk until the killer was caught. For the first time Trent intended to use the very thing that had forced him to hide from civilization for the past decade.
He intended to use his empathy to find the killer.
“You can’t stay here,” Alaina warned the woman. “If he doesn’t already know where you are, he soon will.”
As grateful as she’d been to find Beverly Jachim alive, she worried that she couldn’t keep her safe if the woman wouldn’t listen to her.
Beverly, in her robe, cowered in a corner of her brightly flowered couch. Did she fear what might happen to her? Or did she just fear Alaina? “I have no place to go….”
“I know a place we can stay,” Alaina said, thinking of Trent’s estate, of his self-proclaimed fortress.
She’d promised to leave with him this morning. Now she noticed light streak across the sky as the sun began to rise. She doubted she would get back to the apartment before he awakened. He would be angry and hurt that she’d left him sleeping and snuck out. But she hadn’t had the heart to wake him.
And she hadn’t wanted to bring him along to what could have been another crime scene. She’d seen, and felt, how the residual emotions of the murders—from both the victim and the killer—overwhelmed him.
“We’ll be safe there,” she assured Beverly. “He won’t be able to get to us.” Trent would protect her or die trying; she didn’t doubt that. She didn’t doubt him, not like he doubted himself.
Beverly shook her head. “No. I shouldn’t—I can’t trust you….”