Déjà Vu

by Lisa Childs

  Despite what her superiors believed, she still considered Trent Baines a suspect in this most recent murder. And because she believed in reincarnation, she suspected him in the other murders, too. It wasn’t the rational explanation her superiors would accept, though, so she had kept it to herself.

  “No, I mean I can help you now,” he said, momentarily turning his attention back on her. His green eyes glittered as his gaze traveled from her bare toes to her disheveled hair.

  “So you’re finally willing to answer questions?” She toyed with the lapel of her robe, lifting it against her neck to hide the top line of the faint white scar on her chest. “You can meet me at the office tomorrow, then, since you’re still in town.”

  He shook his head. “I just left your office. That’s what I mean, Alaina. I now have the clearance to help you, with the new case and the old ones.”

  She backtracked. He hadn’t said he’d just left the director’s office.

  “You were in my office?” Without her there? She had few furnishings in her apartment because her office was where she really lived, where she spent all her time. This place was only where she slept, which was why, besides the bed, she had only a couch and a coffee table and two stools pulled to the kitchen counter.

  “Yeah, I was in your office,” he said, confirming her fear. “You had all the case files in there.”

  “You went through the files?” Just the files. What about her desk? Had he touched her things? The snow globes her mother sent her from each new city she visited? The picture of the two of them on the last vacation Alaina had taken? “Seriously, what do you have on the director?”

  “He’s a fan.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter that he’d gone over not only her head but her boss’s head, too. And he’d violated her space. Like he violated it now.

  Done inspecting her apartment, he closed the distance between them, backing her against the wall as he studied her face. “No makeup and you’re still so damn beautiful.”

  She stiffened her backbone, refusing to react to either the fact that he’d caught her without makeup or that he’d complimented her despite it.

  “You need to leave,” she insisted. “Now.”

  As if he hadn’t heard her at all, he ignored her command and reached out, tracing a fingertip along her jaw. “Have you read it yet?”

  She closed her eyes, not wanting him to see her reaction to his touch or his written words, and admitted, “I started it …”

  Like he was starting something, with his nearness, with his touch.

  He might be a killer.

  Vonner’s rational explanation could be the right one—that Trent Baines might have learned the details of the old murders from the original Thief of Hearts before he began the killing himself.

  She needed to use the defensive maneuvers she knew so well. With one knee and a finger, she could render him as helpless as he made her feel. Yet she couldn’t quite bring herself to hurt him. Still, she needed to knock his hand away from her face and shove his body back from hers. But she couldn’t bring herself to do that, either.

  His hand moved, from her face to her throat. He traced a fingertip across the skin that quivered as her pulse pounded hard beneath it.

  “I hope you’re enjoying it,” he murmured.

  Confused, she opened her eyes, uncertain if he referred to the book or what he was doing to her with just a fingertip and his breath, warm against her skin. She lifted her gaze to his, but with his lids half-closed, she couldn’t read his expression. Then he lowered his head, and she understood.

  He might be a killer.

  The thought should have turned her cold, should have brought out her instincts of self-preservation. But she’d regretted the interruption, for many reasons, that had stopped him from kissing her the first time they’d met. Only a day ago, yet he was as familiar to her as if she’d known him a lifetime….

  She wanted no regrets this time. She wanted just one kiss to satisfy her curiosity. Then she’d push him away, and she would finally get some answers out of him. But the first answer she wanted was whether he tasted like her soul remembered.

  She tilted her chin, lifting her lips to his.

  He’d never felt this before—his own emotions—as he brushed his mouth across hers. Passion flicked through him, sending the blood rushing through his veins. He tunneled his fingers into the silky strands of blond hair, holding her head still as he deepened the kiss. He parted her lips with the pressure of his, then slid his tongue inside her mouth. To taste. To tease.

  She murmured. He stilled, ready to stop if she was protesting. But the murmur turned to a moan, and she stepped closer, pressing her body against his. Despite her tall, slender build, her breasts were full, her hips soft. He slid his hands from her face, over her shoulders to her waist. And he kept kissing her as if she was the air he needed to breathe.

  And she kissed him back just as desperately, her hands clutching at his shoulders, then his back, pulling him as close as they could be without being joined.

  If only he could feel what she felt.

  Every other time he’d been with a woman, he’d felt her desire, her pleasure, but with Alaina, he felt only the heat of his own passion as it flushed his skin. He felt only the urgency of his own need as his body throbbed. He’d never wanted anyone the way he wanted her.

  Kissing wasn’t enough. He had to touch her.

  His fingers tangled around the belt of her robe, tugging it loose so that her lapels parted. Then he finally tore his mouth from hers, gasping for breath, and slid his lips down her throat.

  She arched her neck and moaned. Until he moved lower, over the delicate curve of her collarbone to the slope of her breast. Her hands, which had clutched at him moments before, pushed at his chest, shoving him back.

  That was when he noticed the faint white ridge of a jagged scar puckered over her heart. He staggered back a foot, unable to comprehend what he was seeing, besides her beauty. And God, she was beautiful, all sensual curves and silky skin … but for that scar that marred the perfection.

  “I—I thought none of his victims survived,” he murmured, his head pounding with confusion.

  Her hands shook as she jerked the robe together and refastened the belt, tightly cinching her waist. “I’m not a victim.”

  “Not now,” he agreed. No one could mistake Agent Paulsen for a victim. “What happened? When were you attacked?”

  She met his gaze, the emotion in her eyes unfathomable.

  He was not unfazed by the irony. The one person with whom he actually wanted to empathize, he could not reach.

  “I was born with this scar,” she said, stroking her fingers over the satin that covered the mark. “My parents took me to all kinds of specialists trying to explain it. Heck, they even got divorced over it because my father couldn’t accept what my mother believes.”

  “What does your mother believe?” he asked, muscles clenching in his stomach. He knew. He’d known it from the first moment she’d walked into his den. Hell, even before that—as she’d drawn nearer to his house.

  “My mom believes that I brought this scar with me from a former life.” She drew in a shaky breath. “So although I am not a victim in this life, I was in a previous life.”

  “Reincarnation?” he asked, as if he’d never heard or considered the concept before. Like her father, Trent struggled to accept the explanation even though it might prove the only answer. “That’s what your mother believes. What do you believe, Alaina?”

  Her fingers kept stroking the scar, absently now, as if the gesture was an old habit of hers. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  And that was what he was afraid of. “So do you know … about your other life? Do you remember it?”

  “Not much,” she admitted. “Just flashes. Images. You saw all those files on my desk?”

  He nodded, remembering the pile. He understood her devotion to all those old cases now.

  “You were right about it being
personal for me. But it isn’t because one of those victims had been my mother or sister or aunt. It’s because I was once one of those twelve women.”

  “In another life?”

  She nodded; then, her voice raspy with frustration, she added, “But I don’t know which one.”

  He knew. After all this lifetime of struggling to accept the truth of his memories, the realization overwhelmed him. Just as she had lived before, so had he.

  “You don’t believe me,” she said, her eyes wide with vulnerability.

  He couldn’t admit to the fear that had haunted him for twenty-nine years. He could barely accept it himself.

  “Then explain this.” She jerked her robe open, baring her breasts. “Explain how I could have gotten a scar like this and lived?”

  He closed his eyes, shutting out her beautiful body, shutting out the feelings only she had been able to draw from him. His body ached with wanting hers. He’d had other women, so many other women, but he’d always felt their passion, their pleasure. And even though his body had found release in theirs, he had never really experienced the passion or the pleasure himself. But he knew he could with Alaina.

  Only Alaina.

  “It’s not from this life,” she insisted, her voice cracking with her desperation to make him believe.

  He didn’t need convincing. Not anymore. Not after having met her. But, reeling from the revelations, he couldn’t deal with his own feelings, let alone hers.

  So he forced his desire under control; he couldn’t finish what he’d started with that kiss. Not yet. Curling his hands into fists so he wouldn’t reach for her, he stepped around her and headed toward the door.

  Alaina resisted the urge to grab him and plead for him to stay with her. She had done that once already, and the begging hadn’t convinced her father to stay. Dear old Dad had still rejected her, unable to accept everything she was and once had been.

  “You think I’m crazy,” she said, regretting her admission. No one but her parents knew about the reincarnation theory. And she should have kept it that way. The only other people she’d discussed reincarnation with had no idea of her true identity; she was only a screen name on a website blog.

  But she had thought Trent Baines, of everyone she’d met in this lifetime, would understand. Because she was certain that they had once known each other in another life. Intimately. And those feelings, like the memories that weren’t hers, had rushed over her when he’d kissed her. She’d wanted him like she had never wanted another man: passionately, almost obsessively.

  Trent stopped at the door, his hand wrapped around the knob. He didn’t turn back to her. He didn’t deny that he believed her to be crazy.

  “You’re not going to the director, are you?” If he told the director they had an unstable agent working for the Bureau, he’d ruin her. Dread clutched at her. Her job was everything, not because she particularly wanted to be an investigator but because she wanted—she needed—the truth.

  “I’ll deny it,” she warned him. “If you tell anyone what I told you, I’ll deny it. I’ll say that you made it up, just like one of your books.”

  “You’re the one who told me that I’m not writing fiction,” he reminded her. “And they would only have to see the scar, Alaina, to know that there’s more to your story than you’re telling.”

  “And what aren’t you telling?” she asked. “You never answered my questions about your books, how you got so many of those details from the case files.”

  Maybe it wasn’t the way she’d hoped; maybe it wasn’t the same way she had. Hell, maybe she was crazy to think they had ever meant anything to each other. “Did the director feed you information?”

  He shook his head. “He didn’t need to. I knew. I just knew …”

  Her breath backed up in her lungs. “Oh, my God. You, too? You remember …?”

  He turned the knob and pulled open the door.

  “Wait,” she implored him. “Please stay.” She had never met, in person, anyone who’d experienced the things she had, who had memories that were not hers.

  “I can’t stay.” He uttered the words as if they caused him physical pain, as if it hurt him to leave her.

  Or did it hurt him to remember? Was that why he was so anxious to go?

  “Please,” she said, burying her pride. “I want to talk to you. I have so many questions for you.” So much she wanted to learn about him … and about herself.

  “Read the rest of the book,” he advised. “It may give you the answers you’re looking for.” And he walked out, closing the door behind him.

  Would the book give her the answers he couldn’t? Or just wouldn’t? If he believed, too, why didn’t he want to talk to her? What didn’t he want to tell her?

  Chapter 7

  He loved her.

  That was why he couldn’t let her go back to her husband. Not like he had all the times before. No other woman would satisfy his desire. He’d tried so many times to find substitutes. But she was the one …

  The only one …

  Her lips brushed his in a soft kiss. A goodbye kiss. Only she didn’t know yet how final this goodbye was. Not until his hands closed around her throat. As he exerted pressure,

  her eyes widened with shock and fear. And realization.

  “You know,” he said. “You finally know who I am.”

  The Thief of Hearts.

  He had taken her body so many times, but she’d refused him her heart. Refused to leave her husband. Despite the little time and attention the man gave her, she still loved him.

  “And now you know you loved the wrong man,” he said as she clawed at his wrists, trying to free herself. But she would never be free of him, any more than he would ever be free of her.

  She couldn’t scream; she couldn’t even gasp for breath. He stole that from her first. Her eyes, such a deep penetrating green, rolled back in her head, and her tense body relaxed, sagging against him.

  He rolled her onto her back, then he reached inside the drawer of the bedside table and pulled out the knife. “You wouldn’t

  give me your heart, so I’m going to take it.” Like he’d taken the hearts of all those other women.

  But they hadn’t been her. Their hearts had meant nothing to him. They had meant nothing to him.

  Those women meant more to her husband, more than she did, as he had neglected her in order to find their killer. And the idiot had never realized that he already knew the killer, that he was a man he trusted, a man he called friend. A man he would never suspect until it was too late.

  For her.

  And him.

  He waited until she regained consciousness, until her lashes fluttered and her eyes opened. He needed her to see. To know.

  His hand shook as he gripped the familiar handle. He dragged a breath deep into his lungs, bringing forth all his passion. And he plunged the knife deep into her chest.

  Hell, maybe it was too late for all of them. Maybe it was time to end it….

  Her hands shaking, Alaina set aside the pages she’d just read. He had killed her?

  Is that what would have happened had Trent Baines stayed? Would she have awakened after making love with him to another new life because he’d taken this one, too?

  He had told her to read the rest of it, but as she flipped through the papers left in the box, she found only a couple more chapters. He hadn’t given her the ending. But she didn’t need to read the pages to know how the story—and her life—would end. Just as it had before.

  Badly …

  “She knows,” he told the empty room. “She knows now who she is.”

  Satisfaction filled him. Finally. She knew the truth. This time would she choose the right man? Would she choose life over death?

  He had hope that in this life she was smarter than she’d been in the past. This time she would willingly give her heart to the right man. She would finally love him….

  This was how he dealt.

  Locking himself away in the fortress
he’d found in northern Michigan. Locking himself away from other people’s emotions. Locking himself away in case he posed a threat. In case he was the reincarnated Thief of Hearts.

  The doors rattled, but the lock held. Trent ignored the intrusion and continued to stare out the window, over the fresh green treetops on the hillside.

  A heavy fist lightly rapped and Dietrich called out, “Mr. Baines?”

  His jaw clenched tightly; he didn’t respond.

  “Do you not wish to be disturbed?”

  He was disturbed, deeply disturbed. Anyone who read his novels knew that. Alaina knew that. So why had she made the trek back up to the estate, to him?

  The knocking turned to pounding. “Trent! Let me in,” Alaina demanded. “We need to talk!”

  If he remained silent, Dietrich would send her away, knowing that he was too immersed in his writing to tolerate any interruption. But he wasn’t immersed. Behind him, on the desk, the laptop screen had gone black. He hadn’t touched the keys since turning it on. He had no desire to write.

  No desire for anything or anyone but her. “Don’t touch me!” she yelled out, the anger in her voice drawing Trent from the window.

  He pulled open the pocket doors to witness her dropping Dietrich to his knees. The man fell heavily onto the hardwood floor. Color flushed his face. With anger or embarrassment, Trent could not tell; the man had never revealed any hint of emotion before.

  Agent Paulsen could definitely take care of herself. Would she be able to protect herself from him?

  “Why are you here?” he asked.

  “Because we need to talk.” The vulnerability was gone from her voice now, as it and her eyes were steady with determination.

  “Mr. Baines?” Dietrich asked, regaining his feet with a grimace and groan. “Do you want me to show her out?”

  Trent laughed. “I don’t think you could if I wanted you to,” he teased the other man. “It’s fine. I’ll see Agent Paulsen.”

  He’d seen her all night, the image of her naked body chasing away his sleep. He had been a fool to leave her with just a kiss when he’d needed so much more. He’d needed to lose himself inside her.