Kill Me Again by MAGGIE SHAYNE

him into her mess, she supposed she could repay him for his help by helping him solve his own mysteries.
    Aaron sighed, glancing nervously at the road, as if expecting someone to show up at any moment. The police? The killer? The intruder? She didn’t know. Maybe he didn’t, either.
    â€œAll right, stay here then, Olivia,” he said at length. “I’ll leave you the gun. You can tell your friend the cop I stole the car.” He leaned in. “Come on, Freddy, ride’s off.”
    â€œNo.” She said it quickly, her decision made. “No, I’m coming with you. I’ll go get what I need and lock up.”
    He seemed relieved. Turning, he closed the liftgate as Olivia drew a deep breath and headed back into the house. She closed the door behind her, set her jaw and walked calmly to the telephone stand for a notepad and pen. Then she scribbled a simple note for Bryan.
    Dropping out of sight for a few days. Past lives catching up to me. Everything’s okay so far. Just need some time. I’ll call you in a few days, and that’s a promise. If I don’t—things have gone very wrong.
    Best, Olivia.
    She left the note on the coffee table, with a paperweight on top to keep it from drifting off. Bryan would find it if he decided to come looking for her. He wouldunderstand what she meant. “Past lives”—he would know that meant Tommy. He would know to come looking for her if he didn’t hear from her. He would know what to do.
    She’d worked too hard to stay alive all this time to just put her hard-won life into the hands of any man now—even if that man was Aaron Westhaven. She needed to take some precautions of her own, and she didn’t particularly care if her favorite writer liked it or not.
    She hurried to the kitchen to lock the back door and secure the dog door. Back in the living room, she grabbed her handbag and jacket from the closet, then headed out the front, locking the door behind her.
    She paused on the step, looking through the darkest of nights at the sleeping town where she’d built her new life. Shadow Falls had been her salvation. She hoped to God she would be alive to return and reclaim her life there. But she had a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach that nothing was ever going to be the same again.
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    Aaron . As he drove, he couldn’t get his head around thinking of himself by that name. It didn’t feel any more familiar to him than Jack or Joe or a hundred other names he could think of. Then again, he’d spent a lot of time in his hospital room running through every male name he could think of, and none of them had sent any sparks of recognition sizzling through his head. None of them.
    Still, he was worried. “Aaron” didn’t seem to fit. Thepersona of a novel-scribbling loner felt like a suit that was a couple of sizes too tight. And the dreams or flashbacks or visions he’d had of himself with a gun in his hand and a body at his feet certainly didn’t seem to reflect the life of a reclusive novelist.
    And now he had a sidekick.
    Bringing Olivia with him probably hadn’t been the brightest idea he’d ever had. She was bound to be a problem. Oh, she might seem like a staid, boring, highly intelligent professor, but she was clearly something else entirely. She had her own baggage, her own secrets—big, deadly secrets—hiding in her eyes, not to mention lurking in the shadows of her home last night. He’d heard her attacker call her Sarah and demand that she give him “the disks.” What the hell was that about? Was the reserved intellectual actually leading a double life? Who was she really? And why had he come to Shadow Falls to see her?
    It had to be related to what had happened to him. She had to be involved somehow. And sticking with her was the only way to find out how. Staying alive while he did it was imperative, so hitting the road was the only