Yeah, I know, but he's a nice hit man.

  Was she really that lame? Was she so naive that she would play this out the way so many victims did, right to their own bloody ends?

  No. She wasn't. She was intelligent, with the degrees to prove it. And she wasn't buying into this crap.

  "Olivia?"

  "I need to know if Tommy's still behind bars."

  "Absolutely. No bail. Every weapon on him was illegal. He left the state while on parole. He had cocaine in his pocket. And if all that weren't enough, let's not forget that he did have a gun to your head in front of a dozen cops--cops he and his thugs shot at. He's not going anywhere for a long time. And I convinced the judge that he was a danger to you, so there's no bail."

  "That won't stop him from sending more killers to my door."

  "His assets have been frozen until this is all sorted out. They're raiding his house. He won't be able to burp without the authorities knowing about it. Now that you're home, I can send patrols by to check on you. Hourly, if you want. We'll set you up with a panic button tomorrow. And...hell, I never thought I'd hear myself say this to anyone, but maybe you should consider getting a gun."

  "I'm way ahead of you on that." She pulled the gun from her handbag.

  "Just make sure you're ready to use it. Never pull a gun unless you're sure you can fire it. And don't hesitate when you do."

  "Don't worry. I'm pretty much through fucking around with men who only want to do me harm. I'm done letting them take the first shot."

  "Good."

  "How's Sam?"

  "He's fine. Bullet went in and out the fleshy part of his shoulder. His mom bandaged him up in the E.R. and took him home."

  "Thank God."

  "You can say that again."

  "How did you know, Bryan?" she asked at length. "That he wasn't really Westhaven, I mean?"

  "Oh, that. I'm sworn to secrecy."

  "But you're going to tell me anyway."

  She heard his soft laugh. "Yeah, I am. But don't repeat it. No sense ruining your favorite author's career. Not that I really believe it would, but...Westhaven is a woman."

  "No!"

  "Mmm-hmm. Erin, with an E. She changed it to Aaron with an A because she felt her work would be taken less seriously if her gender were known."

  "Do you think that's true?"

  "No, but what do I know about the literati? But that's what she thought, and so the recluse story was born."

  "I never would have guessed. Not in a million years," she said softly. "God, I couldn't have been more wrong, could I?"

  "Did he hurt you, Olivia?"

  "No."

  "Did he try to hurt you?"

  "No. Not in any way. Even when he found out that he used to be...what he was...even when he knew that he'd been hired to kill me, he insisted that wasn't who he is now. He says he could never hurt me, can't believe he was ever the kind who could."

  "Ah, hell, Olivia."

  "What? I didn't say I believe him."

  "But you do."

  "I'm home. Alone. If I believed him--"

  "You believe him."

  She closed her eyes, and her tears spilled over. "I want to."

  "Did you fall for him? Is that it?"

  "How'd you know?"

  He was silent for a long moment. "I don't know. Maybe because you sound like I sound when I'm away from Dawn too long. Dammit, Olivia..."

  "The FBI is looking for him, you said." She changed the subject, knowing he would let her get away with it.

  "Yeah. They're being very tight-lipped about it, though. That trace on his skull plate, though...I think that was legit. The serial number links up to an Adam Selkirk. Sledding accident when he was ten earned him the fractured skull and the steel plate. An Iraqi IED cost him his life in Desert Storm. He got a medal--posthumously, of course. At least that's what the records show. The Feds won't say one word about how that's possible. But I imagine a hit man would need a fake identity. Faking his death as a war hero is the height of hypocrisy, but a hit man is soulless anyway, so to him, it was probably no big deal."

  She opened her mouth, instinctively ready to defend him. Adam wasn't like that. He wasn't soulless. He wasn't a hypocrite. He wouldn't do those things.

  But he had, hadn't he?

  God, she didn't know him at all.

  "I'm really sorry to have to tell you all this," he said. "I just think you ought to know. And I don't think whitewashing it, or playing it down even a little bit, would do you any good. You need the truth."

  "Yes, I do. It's overdue."

  "Hang in there, okay? You're tough enough to get through this."

  "How?" she asked. "God, how, Bryan? Tommy's going to trial, and that means he's going to talk. He's going to tell the world who I really am."

  "Who you were, not who you are," Bryan said. "You've changed."

  That was right, she had changed. She'd changed completely and utterly. And that meant change was possible. So why couldn't Adam have changed, too?

  She decided not to say that out loud. It would only make Bryan worry more about her state of mind. And of heart. Instead, she continued with her earlier train of thought. "I'll lose my job. My career. Maybe even my degree. Not because of who I was, but because I've been lying about who I am. False name. Fraud. There's no way they'll let me keep my tenure."

  He sighed.

  "And Professor Mallory's SUV! I'll probably be charged with stealing it."

  "We found the SUV. It's safe."

  She felt only slightly relieved. "I drove home in Tommy's Lincoln."

  "He hasn't said a word about a vehicle. I don't imagine he came by it legally, or he would have. Anyway, I'll have a car parked outside your house tonight, if you want, and for as long as you want, until I can be sure Tommy hasn't sent anyone else out looking for you. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  "All right. Now I need you to tell me something."

  "Of course, Bryan."

  "These disks Tommy was talking about, the night you met with him. What are those about?"

  She thinned her lips, lowered her head. "It's a long story. Can we talk about it tomorrow?"

  "The Feds will be asking. If they find out you're back, you'd better believe they're going to want to question you from daylight till dark."

  "I can't handle that right now, Bryan. I'll talk to you, but not them. I mean it. I'm not dealing with them."

  He sighed. "Then don't tell them you were with their boy at all. Say you ran off on your own after the shootout, afraid Tommy was going to find you. Say you didn't even know 'Westhaven' was missing. Deny any knowledge of anything to do with this case until and unless they let on that they know otherwise."

  "Do they? Know otherwise?" she asked.

  "I don't know."

  "I'd just as soon avoid them altogether until you do."

  "I don't blame you."

  She sighed. "Do I need a lawyer?"

  "I think that might be a good idea. Get one lined up in advance, just in case. And above all else, Olivia, if Aaron-Adam tries to contact you again--"

  "Don't worry. I won't talk to him."

  "Good girl. I'm sending a car to watch over you. Try to get some sleep, okay?"

  "Okay, Bryan. Thanks. You're a good friend."

  "You're welcome."

  The other end of the line went silent. Olivia sighed and replaced the receiver in its cradle, then stared at it for a long moment until she realized that she was willing it to ring. Wishing for Adam to call her.

  He wouldn't, of course. If he were an ordinary man who was as attracted to her as he'd pretended to be, if he were feeling the same kind of unfamiliar and overpowering force pulling him toward her that she felt pulling her toward him, then he would have phoned five times by now.

  But he wasn't any of those things.

  He was just a liar. He'd been faking every bit of it. The friendliness. The attraction. The sex. All make-believe, just to mess with her head before he finished the job.

  That's not true, and you know it.

  She closed her eyes to block out the little voice of her heart. She wasn't going to listen to her heart. She was going to listen to her head, to her experience, because she'd learned from her past, and she wasn't going to waste those expensive lessons now. She wasn't going to chuck everything she knew and waste herself on another man who would only hurt her in the end, just because her foolish, gullible, hopeful heart wanted her to.

  She wasn't.

  She looked at the phone again.

  God, why didn't he call?

  17

  "Do you recognize me?"

  Adam stood in a long-since-abandoned cinder-block building with fading letters painted on the front that spelled out Cheese Factory. He was face-to-face with Bruce, and he knew him. He felt a familiarity. All of the pieces weren't yet in place, but he knew this man. That much was certain.

  "I do. I do know you. Bruce...Modine. My boss."

  "Yeah. I'm your contact and your confidant. And we're tight, even though I just took over the position last year, when your former boss retired."

  "Earl Baker," Adam said slowly. "I trusted him with my life."

  Bruce clapped Adam on the shoulder. "I'm glad to see it's coming back to you. Glad you came in. First things first. About your mission...?"

  "I failed. Olivia is still in danger, and she's still on her own. At least our efforts weren't wasted the other night. I gather the cops managed to put Tommy Skinner behind bars."

  "I figured you were the 'unidentified male' who was with her at that shootout. Damn local cops kept us in the dark or we'd have been there for you, Adam."

  "Still, at least Skinner's out of the picture."

  "It wasn't Skinner who ordered the hit."

  He lifted his brows, not entirely surprised, but bruisingly disappointed. He'd hoped so much that Olivia would be safe now that her former abuser was behind bars. "Skinner wasn't the client who hired me to kill her?"

  "No."

  "But you said we didn't know who it was."

  "But we know who it wasn't. And it wasn't Skinner."

  "Then who--?"

  "Undoubtedly someone whose name and likeness appeared on those disks the good professor's been keeping all these years. Apparently Skinner told people they existed, then extorted exorbitant amounts of money from them to learn where the disks were."

  "I know all that. They paid him, and in exchange he told them about Olivia."

  "Where she lived, what she did, her current name. He even provided recent photographs. As far as we can tell, he's been watching her for years. She's a target for I don't know how many people who have good reason to want the information on those disks buried, and her buried with them."

  Adam nodded. "The only solution is to take them public."

  "Excuse me?" Bruce asked.

  "Make them public. Publish them on the Net or send them to the media, so there's no more motivation to keep them quiet. I mean, once it's public knowledge, what good is it going to do to kill her? Once everyone knows, then no one wins by silencing her."

  "But everyone loses. Everyone whose face appears on those disks, at least. For buying weed sixteen years ago, Adam. Do you really think that's a solution?"

  "It makes Olivia a worthless target. It takes away any reason anyone might have to want her dead."

  "Unless that reason is vengeance," Bruce said. He shook his head slowly.

  Adam frowned, trying to work through it in his mind.

  "It's okay, pal. You're still trying to unlock your memory. Your skills are all still in there. The rest will come back. But you're thinking like a rookie now. So why don't you just relax and let me call the shots until we can close the book on this one, okay?"

  Adam nodded slowly. "I guess so." But for some reason, he wasn't entirely comfortable ignoring his own judgment in favor of his boss's. It didn't feel like the kind of thing he'd been accustomed to doing.

  "So, what do we do now?" he asked.

  "First we need to get our hands on those disks. And any and all copies you or Olivia might have made of them. That's the priority." Bruce looked at Adam as if waiting.

  Adam said nothing. He felt a little queasy. Shouldn't saving Olivia's life be the priority here?

  "So? Did you make any copies?"

  Adam shook his head. "No," he said. "We didn't see the need. Our plan was to trade the disks back to Skinner in exchange for his promise to leave her alone and keep his mouth shut about her true identity."

  "And you didn't think he might break that promise? That you might need some kind of ammunition to use against him in case he did?"

  "Those disks wouldn't hurt him," Adam said. "He only wanted to use them to blackmail people. Not to protect himself. He's already done time for dealing way back then. They can't charge him with that again."

  "So what did you think was going to make him keep his promise?"

  Adam shrugged. "I wanted to put a bullet in him and end it. Liv said no to that, said she could tell by looking him in the eye if he was going to keep his word or not." He sighed, let his head fall forward. "But she had another plan she didn't tell me about. Notified her friend the cop and got Tommy thrown into jail, where he can't hurt her."

  Bruce nodded slowly. "So where are the disks?"

  Adam averted his eyes. "I can get them."

  "Olivia still has them, doesn't she?"

  "I can get them. Give me until tomorrow, and I'll--"

  "I thought we just established that I'm the boss." Bruce ran a hand over his bald head, letting out a frustrated sigh as he did. "This isn't like you, Adam. I need to know the facts here, despite what are admittedly extenuating circumstances."

  Adam lifted his head, swallowed hard. "Look, I'll get the disks for you by tomorrow. That's the best I can do. Fire me if you have to."

  "Fire you? All I'm asking is for you to trust me. You used to trust me with your life, Adam."

  "Maybe. But I don't have any right to trust you with hers."

  "So she does have them."

  Adam shook his head, turned around and headed for the door. "I'll meet you back here first thing in the morning with the disks. We'll take it from there."

  "I'm afraid that's not going to be good enough, Adam."

  A gun barrel was pressed to the back of his head. There was no mistaking the shape of it, or the sound of Bruce working the action.

  "Sorry, but I want those disks tonight, because I can't risk her showing them to anyone else. Once they're destroyed and the only two people who know what's on them--namely you and Olivia Dupree--are feeding leeches in the bottom of the nearest swamp, my job will be done."

  "We're not the only two people who know," Adam countered.

  "Tommy Skinner's gonna die in prison. And aside from him, no one else has seen the disks."

  "What about you?"

  "What?"

  "You. You'll have them, along with the opportunity to look at them. Is whoever you're working for going to be okay with that, do you think? Or do you think offing your ass will be his way of closing the final loophole?"

  Bruce laughed deep in his chest, softly, dangerously. "That's a nice try, but you don't know shit, and it isn't going to work."

  "So who are you working for?"

  "Shut up and walk."

  "To where?"

  "To your car. We're going to pay the good professor a midnight visit."

  "She doesn't have the disks, Bruce, and you're not going to get them by taking me there."

  "We'll soon find out, won't we?"

  "You think the cops aren't watching her house? You think she didn't call her pal on the P.D. the second she got back into town?" He said whatever he could think of to keep this bastard from going near Olivia. And it seemed to work.

  Bruce went still, apparently thinking. "You're right. We'll have her bring the disks here."

  "She doesn't know where they are."

  "Then you'll fucking tell her. Or you'll fucking die, and then I'll go hunt her down myself." He slammed Adam into a straight-backed chair and handed him a pair of handcuffs. "Snap these on your right wrist."

  Adam took the handcuffs, but he hesitated.

  Bruce jammed the barrel harder into his head. "Do it!"

  "All right, all right." Adam slipped the handcuff around his right wrist, but he didn't snap it all the way shut, hoping to slide his hand free as soon as Bruce wasn't looking.

  Bruce was smarter than that, though. He snapped it shut himself, then looped the chain through the back of the chair and snapped the other cuff around Adam's left wrist. Now Adam found himself bound to the chair, hands behind his back, feeling more vulnerable than he'd ever felt in his life.

  "How much of what you told me was true?" he asked.

  The other man sneered, then flipped open a cell phone and dialed a number. He held the phone to Adam's ear. "Talk," he said. "Tell your girlfriend what we need her to do."

  Adam heard the phone ringing, but finally Olivia picked up. Her voice was rough, as if she'd been sleeping--or maybe crying.

  "Hello?"

  Adam pursed his lips, steeling himself against her voice.

  "Adam, is it you?"

  Still he said nothing.

  Then the gun barrel cracked against the side of his head. "I said talk to her, damn you."

  "What the hell is going on?" Olivia demanded. "Who is this?"

  "No matter what he says to you, don't do it, Liv. Don't do it. Stay as far--"

  Bruce yanked the phone away and clubbed him again. This time the chair went over sideways, and he went with it. His head pounded like a bass drum for about two and a half seconds, and then it swam and he thought he would throw up. Fortunately, he passed out before that could happen.

  Olivia stared at the telephone in shock, wondering just what the hell she was supposed to make of all this. She'd heard Adam's voice briefly, and then some other man, followed by a blow, a grunt of pain, a crash.

  "Adam?" she whispered. "Adam, are you still there? What's going on?"

  "Adam's...tied up at the moment. This is...well, hell, you don't have to know who this is. Just bring the disks. And bring them now."

  She frowned at the phone, shifting higher in her bed and pulling the covers with her. From his nest at the foot, Freddy lifted his head, ears perked forward, sensing her distress, she knew. He was alert and ready for action.