Déjà Vu

Chapter 3

Emotion overwhelmed him. This was why he isolated himself in the wooded hills of his estate—because he couldn’t block out what others were feeling. He couldn’t help but feel it, too.

Disgust and fear emanated from the uniformed officers guarding the door. Trent passed them and ducked under the yellow tape. The crime scene had already been processed, so he was alone in the studio apartment. The victim’s body was on its way to the morgue, but he could feel the residual emotion left in the room.

The paralyzing terror hung heavy in the air. He winced as the echo of the victim’s screams reverberated inside his head. He widened his eyes as he studied the scene—the blood spattered on the white walls and drying to a dark burgundy, the blood pooled on the hardwood floor, as thick and dark as tar. He inhaled deeply, trying to fill his shallow lungs, but he breathed in the cloying metallic scent of blood.

His stomach cramped, and he doubled over, crippled with pain. But the pain was not his. It was never his. He always felt others’ pain, others’ emotions. Never his own.

Until today. Until he’d met Alaina Paulsen.

“What the hell!” a vaguely familiar male voice exclaimed in surprise.

“How—Why are you here?” asked a woman. The woman—Alaina Paulsen.

Like earlier today when he’d been with her, Trent felt none of her emotions. He felt no emotions but his own. Attraction, fascination and an overwhelming sense of destiny …

“You can’t be here,” the man said.

Trent assumed he was the other agent, the one he’d refused to see because he’d only been able to see her. This time he took a moment to compose himself, schooling his features back into his usual cocky mask, before he straightened up and turned to her.

“How did you get here before us?” Alaina asked.

“He must have a helicopter,” her partner answered for Trent. The man stood close to her, protectively. Were they more than professional partners?

Trent didn’t care what they’d been. The guy was no threat to him. No other man had the claim on her that he did. As he met her gaze, one emotion gripped him—possessiveness. Mine.

Her eyes widened, as if she’d read his mind, and she dragged in a shaky breath. “That explains how you got to Detroit before we did,” she said, “but how did you get here?” She gestured at the apartment. “Into our crime scene.”

The “our” to which she referred was not her and her partner; Trent couldn’t accept that. It was him and her. She knew just as well as he did that he was part of this. If only he knew, for certain, which part.

“I told you,” he reminded her. “I have a few fans in law enforcement.”

“In the Bureau?” the male agent asked, his dark eyes narrowed with doubt. His suspicion was as palpable in the air as the scent of the victim’s blood.

“Check out my story,” Trent suggested, more to get rid of the guy than to reassure him.

The agent turned to Alaina, who offered a brief nod. With a warning glare at Trent, the man ducked under the crime-scene tape and slipped out into the hall.

“So you’re the senior agent,” Trent observed.

“What?”

“He checked with you before leaving.” Or maybe her partner had just wanted to make sure she would be all right alone with Trent.

Alaina didn’t satisfy his curiosity as she ignored his observation. “That’s why I went to your estate,” she said, “to check out your story. To find out what your involvement was in those old murders.”

Her brow knitted as she glanced around the room, taking in the crime scene. Again, the color faded from her porcelain skin, leaving her ghostly pale.

But she wasn’t a ghost. She was real. And for the first time in the memory of his own life, Trent felt real. His emotions were finally his own instead of what he’d empathetically picked up from someone or somewhere else.

“Those murders happened before I was born,” he reminded her.

“You do have a friend in the Bureau,” she said, accepting his claim without the confirmation her partner required. “A source.”

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t call him a source,” he clarified. “More like a fan.” Someone who had contacted him a couple times throughout the years and whom Trent had felt comfortable calling to find out all he could about Agent Paulsen—like where she’d rushed off to in such a hurry.

Before he’d had a chance to kiss her and test the strength of the passion she’d drawn from his soul.

“A fan?” She shook her head, as if she doubted his claim or doubted that anyone would actually enjoy the novels he’d written.

Sometimes he wondered about that himself. He didn’t enjoy writing them; they exhausted him as much as experiencing the emotions of others.

“This murder didn’t happen before you were born,” she pointed out, her teeth nibbling at her full bottom lip. “Did you get sick of just writing about murder and decide to reenact one that you wrote about?”

“No.” He wasn’t a killer … in this life. But if he had the soul of a killer …

“No?” she repeated as if disappointed by his short response. “That’s it? You’re not going to eloquently profess your innocence?”

While he shrugged, he was anything but unconcerned. “It doesn’t matter how eloquent I am. You’ve already made up your mind about me, Alaina.”

“You’re involved,” she insisted. “Somehow, someway, you’re involved.”

He wished like hell that he wasn’t. But he couldn’t deny her allegations.

As if she dismissed him, she began to inspect the crime scene, ignoring his presence. He couldn’t ignore her; he could do nothing but stare at her.

Then she uttered a sudden gasp.

He followed her gaze to discover what had elicited the reaction from her. The blood, the gore? He would have expected that she was used to those things in crime scenes. Then he saw it, too: his book, lying atop the day-bed where the victim had been raped and mutilated. The book lay facedown, the hand lifted over Trent’s face in the publicity shot spattered with blood.

As if he hadn’t already been blaming himself for this woman’s death.

Her blood was on his hand. It had only been a book, Alaina kept reminding herself. But still she couldn’t get the image out of her head. She couldn’t get Trent out, either. She worried that he was in deeper than her mind, that he owned a part of her reincarnated soul.

“Why are you so hung up on Baines?”

She jerked away from her intense scrutiny of the bright lights of the cityscape outside her office window. Vonner’s startling question brought forth a rage of denial and resentment. “Why the hell would you say something so—”

He held up a palm to interrupt her tirade and clarified, “As the killer. Why are you so hung up on him being the killer? Yeah, I get that the helicopter access makes him a suspect in this case, but he wasn’t even alive when the other murders occurred.”

She turned back to the window, leaving Vonner sitting in front of her desk piled high with cold-case files. She only needed to glance at one of the folders to know exactly what was inside; she’d read them all so many times. But how did Trent know so many of the details it had taken her years to learn? “He knows too much.”

“So you think he knows who the killer is?” Vonner asked with a heavy sigh. “That he interviewed him when he started writing those horror books of his?”

He should have been excited by the lead he’d been chasing for months—Alaina for years—but they’d spent hours on the road after very little sleep. She understood his weariness.

But Alaina doubted she would sleep anytime soon. The killing had started again. She knew this murder would not be a onetime thing; she knew it with as much certainty as she knew the contents of every one of those cold-case files. This new victim’s case would never get onto that pile on her desk; Alaina would not rest until Penelope Otten’s murderer was found.

“Yes, I think he knows who the killer is.” Or he had been the killer in another life and his evil soul had called him to kill again …?

She sucked in a breath at the horrific thought. She didn’t want him to be the killer. She just wanted—

Vonner said, “We’ll have to talk to him again.”

That was what she was afraid of—talking to him, touching him, kissing him, giving in to the passion that had burned so hotly between them that it was forever a part of her soul. But she would do whatever was necessary to find the killer. “Yes, we’ll need to interview him.”

“That’s if the bosses will let us.” Vonner pushed a hand through his disheveled hair. “I still can’t believe he was granted access to a crime scene.”

“A crime he could have committed,” she reminded her partner and herself. He could be a killer in this life, too.

“Think the Bureau will let us use the helicopter to get back to the U.P.?” he asked. “I hate to think of doing that drive again.”

“He’s here now,” she murmured, her skin tingling as she sensed him close.

“What?”

“He’s somewhere in the building,” she said.

“What? Did Security notify you when he came in?” Vonner asked.

“Something like that …” Her phone rang, saving her from offering a more specific explanation. Her partner would not understand her special connection with the horror author; she didn’t understand it herself.

Vonner grabbed the receiver. “Agent Paulsen’s desk.”

She held out her hand for the phone, but instead of passing it to her, he hung it up. “Who was that?” she asked.

“The morgue.”

Trent gripped the edge of the metal table on which the victim’s body lay. His vision blurred, a red haze blinding him as pain overwhelmed him. He felt every emotion she had experienced in those final moments before her death. Panic shortened his breath and quickened his pulse. Then the fear intensified to a terror so acute that his lungs burned with a scream he couldn’t utter. His throat ached as if strong hands wrapped tight around his neck, choking the life from his body. But before the threatening blackness claimed him, the pressure eased. He gasped for breath, trying to fill his aching lungs. Then pain shot through his heart, so sharp and intense he clutched a hand to his chest and dropped to his knees.

“What’s he doing?” a male voice whispered. “Having a heart attack?”

Trent turned toward where Alaina stood in the doorway to Autopsy. He hadn’t felt her this time. He’d been too connected to the dead woman, to the emotions echoing from her soul within the empty shell of her mutilated body.

Those emotions clung to him no matter that he tried to shake them off. Exhaustion weighing heavy on his limbs, he lurched to his feet and staggered into the metal table. The woman’s stiff arm dropped off the edge, her hand open as if reaching out to him.

Alaina stared at him, her eyes narrowed and her brow slightly creased beneath the fall of blond hair. The man, her partner, stood almost in front of her, as if protecting her from Trent or trying to come between them.

A memory tugged at him, a memory of frustration and jealousy. Someone else had tried to come between them. In another life?

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Agent Vonner asked. “Are you drunk?”

He ignored the man as if he was invisible. To Trent he was; he could see only her now.

“What are you doing?” she asked him finally.

“I was given access—”

“To the Bureau’s morgue?” Vonner asked, his voice cracking with shock and indignation. “Who the hell gave you access?”

Because she lifted a dark blond brow in question, Trent answered, “Phillip Graves.”

A breath hissed out between Vonner’s clenched teeth at the mention of the director’s name. He turned his back on Trent and spoke softly to her. “We gotta stop this, Alaina. We can’t have a suspect getting access to the crime scene and the evidence. We have to talk to the director.”

“You need to talk to Agent Bilski first,” she corrected her coworker as she slipped past him to stand on the opposite side of the metal table from Trent. “Don’t go over his head.”

“Okay, Bilski first,” Vonner agreed. “But you have to come with me to talk to him.”

She shook her head in denial.

Trent’s lips twitched into an amused grin. She didn’t like being told what to do. He could identify; he’d never liked taking orders.

“I can’t leave you alone with him,” Vonner said.

She lifted her gaze from the victim to Trent. “Where’s Dr. Rosenthal?”

“He stepped out to get something for me,” Trent admitted.

“What the hell? Are you ordering him around like you do that ape you have on your payroll?” Vonner asked.

“Oh, I’m glad you’re still here,” Dr. Rosenthal said as he rushed back into the room. “Thank you for waiting for me.”

The gray-haired coroner’s admiration and awe physically washed over Trent, drawing a smile from him even as Vonner’s disgust and distrust pummeled him from the other side of the room. But he experienced none of Alaina’s emotions. He could only feel her, like a touch on his skin, a kiss on his lips….

Dr. Rosenthal held out a book and a pen to Trent. “Do you mind signing my copy for me?”

Trent steadied his hand as he reached for the book, the same edition that had been spattered with blood at the crime scene. Even though this cover was clean, he could see the blood again on his hand.

How was he involved in all of this? It was more than mere coincidence. He knew this. And so did she.

Vonner snorted and turned on his heel, leaving the room. Trent noted his exit, but Alaina didn’t so much as glance at her partner. Instead, she stared at him, as if trying to figure out who he was or where she’d seen him before.

An image chased through Trent’s mind. The curve of a woman’s throat as she arched her neck. Her hands, with slender, red-tipped fingers, cupping and caressing her own breasts as she moved her hips, rocking back and forth on his pulsing erection. Then her cry of pleasure as she came. The woman had red hair and green eyes; she looked nothing like Alaina. But to him, she felt the same.

“Mr. Baines,” the coroner said, glancing from him to Agent Paulsen. Confusion wrinkled his brow. “Do you mind autographing …?”

“Not at all,” Trent assured him, flipping through until he came to the title page. Then he scrawled the doctor’s name, some platitude and his own, although sometimes he didn’t feel as if his name was really his. Even though he hadn’t taken a pen name, Trent Baines felt like an alias; he felt as if he was really someone else.

“So, Dr. Rosenthal,” Alaina said, drawing the coroner’s attention away from him, “when will you have the autopsy report ready?”

“I need more time,” Dr. Rosenthal said, his face flushing with color.

“How long?” Alaina asked sharply, her impatience with the doctor’s lack of professionalism obvious.

“I can’t tell you how long it will take me,” the doctor said. “It’s getting late….”

“How long has she been dead?” she clarified.

“I did a liver temp. Twenty-four hours.”

She glanced at Trent. No doubt he was back on her suspect list. Then she turned to the doctor again and advised, “Let me know as soon as you finish the autopsy. And don’t call me again if you don’t have any information for me.”

Dr. Rosenthal sputtered, “B-but I didn’t—”

“I called you,” Trent admitted, irritation gripping him that the male agent had answered her phone.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I can tell you what happened to her.”

She said nothing, only turned that unfathomable stare on him again.

He continued, anyway. “She was raped, then strangled until she nearly blacked out.”

Dr. Rosenthal gestured toward the victim’s throat. “There is bruising around her neck that supports that.”

“And then she was stabbed,” he said with a twinge in his chest as he relived the woman’s pain. He drew in a ragged breath before finishing his assessment, “And her heart removed from her chest.”

The doctor did not need to point out the gaping hole and missing organ in the mutilated corpse. Dr. Rosenthal only added, “His M.O. is just like that of the protagonist in your books, just like the Thief of Hearts.”

“Exactly like the Thief of Hearts,” Alaina agreed, her eyes unblinking as she studied Trent.

Did she expect a confession?

Chapter 4

“I want to talk to you,” Alaina said from the shadows of the dimly lit corridor. She’d waited for Trent outside the morgue, unwilling to watch the coroner continue to fawn over the author. And she’d been unable to stand beside the body of the red-haired woman who’d died such a violent death—the same death Alaina was certain she had experienced.

Trent grinned as if not a bit surprised to find her in the hall, waiting for him. Then he reminded her, “I warned you that you wouldn’t be able to stay away from me.”

Heat flushed her skin as she remembered what he’d told her when she’d left him that morning. Then another memory flashed through her mind: a thumb stroking across her bottom lip, back and forth. A hungry mouth sliding down her throat, nibbling along her collarbone before skimming over the slope of her breast to the nipple that peaked, begging for attention. His attention.

She swallowed hard, choking down the desire that overwhelmed her. “I only want to talk to you.”

His naughty, sexy grin widened as he stepped closer to her, trapping her against the wall. “Why waste our time talking?” he asked, his voice a seductive purr. “I’m not going to tell you what you want to hear.”

“What’s that?” She leaned her head back, away from the temptation of his lips. “What do I want to hear?”

“That I’m the killer.”

“If only it were that easy …” She sighed, bone-deep weary from a day that had started with her and Vonner on the road at dawn, driving up to Trent Baines’s remote castle in the Upper Peninsula. Now, night had fallen and she was back where she’d started in Detroit … only with Trent Baines. Just as he’d said, she couldn’t stay away from him.

The image flashed through her mind again—lips tugging at her nipple, a tongue flicking across the tip, hands caressing her back, then along her sides to the curve of her hips. She arched and parted her legs, silently begging for him to take her….

But he pulled back.

Trent stepped away from her and asked, “Killers don’t spontaneously confess like on television?” His green eyes sparkled with feigned innocence.

“No one who’d actually committed a crime ever spontaneously confessed to me.” She crossed her arms across her chest. It was cold in the hall, but her skin was hot, flushed with desire for the man in her mind.

And maybe the one in the hall …

“Innocent people confess?” he asked.

“Innocent? I don’t know how innocent they are when they interfere with an investigation just to get attention. Screwed up, yeah.” But then, so was she, to be attracted to a man who might be a killer.

He lifted his shoulders in a slight shrug. “Well, I’m not going to confess either my guilt or innocence. You’re wasting your time talking to me.”

“And you’re wasting your time going to the crime scene, visiting the morgue.” Tension pounded at her temples and knotted the muscles in her neck and shoulders. “What are you doing here in the middle of my investigation?”

“I got clearance.”

“But why would you ask for it? Why would you want to go to a crime scene or visit the morgue?” She had to know. “Is this what you do? Is this how you research your novels?”

“That’s what the director thinks,” he admitted with a wink. “But I’m really not one to do much research.”

“Then I’ll ask you again. What are you doing here?” Trying to cover up evidence that might have implicated him? Sure, the crime scene had already been processed, the evidence collected, before he’d arrived. But still his presence there, and at the morgue, unsettled her, raising her suspicions about him even more.

He stepped forward again and touched her, just the pad of his thumb sliding along the line of her jaw. “I’m here for you.”

She shivered at the intensity of his gaze and the heat of his touch. Both felt eerily familiar. “Why? You won’t answer my questions.”

“I want to help you, Alaina,” he said, his deep voice full of seductive promise. “I want you to figure out what you need to know.”

“I need to know who this killer is,” she said. “I need to catch him.” She’d wanted that for so long, even before he’d killed again. Now she had to find him, to stop him….

“That’s not all you need to know.” He leaned closer, his forehead nearly touching hers. “You need to know about us.”

She pushed her hands against his chest and shoved him back. Ignoring the tingling in her palms from the heat of his body and the hardness of his muscles, she shook her head. “There is no us. And there will never be.”

But had there been? In another life? Was he the lover she dreamed of, even wide-awake? Was he the man who had loved her so passionately in her past life that no other man in this life had ever measured up?

“You feel it, Alaina,” he insisted, his voice a rough whisper. “I know you feel it, too.”

Staring into his eyes, she could almost glimpse the images in their depths, the images that had been taunting her, of two naked bodies intimately connected, physically and emotionally. Alaina dragged in a ragged breath of air and shook her head again, trying to clear it. “All I feel for you is suspicion. You know more than you’re telling me about those old murders and this one.”

His grin flashed again. “You feel more than that. You feel what I feel….”

It didn’t matter what she felt. “I don’t trust you,” she stated unequivocally, reminding herself. “All I want is the truth.”

“Since you don’t trust me, you won’t believe that anything I tell you is the truth,” he pointed out. “So I guess we have nothing to talk about.”

Images, like slides in a projector, flicked through her mind—a sculpted chest pressed against her breasts, heavily muscled arms holding her close, perspiration glistening on slick skin….

She opened, then closed, her mouth, knowing it was useless to ask Trent Baines any more questions. Like he’d said, she wouldn’t trust the veracity of his answers.

But since she didn’t trust anyone with her secrets, she couldn’t expect him to share his willingly. She’d have to find out what she wanted to know another way.

“Come with me,” he urged her, his green eyes glittering with desire and erotic promises. “Come with me and we won’t have to talk at all.”

Temptation pulled at her to see if he could deliver on those promises. To see if he could make her feel what she only imagined….

“I shouldn’t be here,” she whispered, as if afraid someone might overhear her and catch them. “It’s so wrong….”

“That’s what makes it so exciting,” he pointed out as he reached for her.

She pressed her palms against his chest, as if about to push him away again. Her eyes wide with confusion, she stared up at him. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

“I told you,” he reminded her, “that you wouldn’t be able to stay away from me … any more than I can stay away from you. You belong with me.”

She shook her head, trying to deny him, trying to deny her feelings.

He cupped her chin in his hand and tipped her face up. “Look at me. I’m the man you’re meant to be with. You can feel it, too.” He lowered his lips and just brushed them across hers. “When I kiss you …” He trailed his fingers across her cheek, along the length of her neck to the curve of her breast. “When I touch you …”

Her fingers clenched the fabric of his shirt, dragging him closer. “I want you.”

Want. It wasn’t love. And what he wanted—needed—was her love.

The soft click of a door opening drew Trent’s attention from his computer screen. He lifted his head as Dietrich stepped inside his room of the hotel suite they shared.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the big man said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your writing.”

“No, that’s fine.” He didn’t want to be writing, anyway; he wanted to be with Alaina. But she had refused his proposition and denied her feelings for him.

Hell, maybe he was wrong about her. Maybe he couldn’t feel what she felt because she felt nothing for him. Maybe this connection between them, this sense of destiny, was only in his mind.

Trent rubbed a hand across his forehead where tension pounded with the onslaught of the emotions of others. “Did you get this floor cleared?”

Dietrich nodded. “The concierge helped convince them to move to the new rooms you’re paying for.”

“And everyone moved?” Because he could still feel the anxiety of someone about to do something … Apply for a new job? Ask someone to marry him?

And the couple that fought …

Trent felt their anger and resentment, the hurt and pain that felt eerily familiar even though he’d never been in a relationship that had lasted beyond a week or two of physical pleasure.

At least, he hadn’t in this life.

Had he lived before? Or was it that through their emotions he lived everyone else’s life right now?

Dietrich nodded. “Everyone on this floor has moved. But there are people on the floor below and in the buildings surrounding this hotel. We should go home, where it’s quiet and peaceful,” he urged. “The city is too much for you.”

Trent closed his eyes as a red haze of emotion rushed over him. Then oblivion, black and comforting, tempted him to slip into unconsciousness. He’d done it before. Blacked out when he was too overwhelmed to deal with the pain of others.

At the crime scene and the morgue, he’d nearly lost consciousness. The terror and pain had been so intense.

But he was stronger now than the kid he’d once been … the kid who’d escaped into his own little world so he wouldn’t have to deal with others. He opened his eyes to the screen of his laptop. The words he’d just written all blurred together unintelligibly.

And he realized it hadn’t been his own little world.

Other people had lived in it with him … Before he had killed them?

Dietrich cleared his throat, drawing Trent’s attention back to where he hovered, like a mother hen, in the doorway of the suite. He spoke hesitantly, dropping each word softly into the silence. “I don’t understand why we’re here.”

Trent leaned back in his chair at the desk. Too weary to speak, he just arched a brow.

“You have that book to finish.”

He’d already missed his deadline.

“Your editor called again today.” Dietrich relayed the message, as much secretary as bodyguard. “Twice.”

Evan was pissed, not just about the deadline but because Trent had told him this book would be the last in the lucrative Thief of Hearts series. It was time to end it. But he’d been struggling before Alaina Paulsen had shattered his peace and quiet and confirmed that his fiction was actually fact.

Fact that Trent didn’t know if he was strong enough yet to face….

“I’ll get the book done,” he promised Dietrich and himself.

“But it’s easier for you to write back at the estate,” his assistant insisted. “You have fewer distractions.”

It wasn’t just his empathy that distracted him now; it was her. And Dietrich must have noticed.

Hell, Trent had left shortly after she had that morning. But it hadn’t been just that he was drawn to her, connected in some way he couldn’t explain. It had been because of the murder. He’d called the Bureau to find out why she’d been called away so abruptly and he’d learned of it. The ritualistic killing that so closely matched the M.O. of the protagonist of his Thief of Hearts novels. He’d had to see for himself if the nightmares he’d hoped were only products of his imagination matched the horrifying reality.

“I was there,” he murmured, the dead woman’s terror gripping him again. “It was just like.” The violent images once again took center stage in his mind.

“It’s not your fault,” Dietrich said, “if someone copied your book. You can’t be held responsible for someone else’s actions.”

But what if they’d once been his?

He closed his eyes, and passionate images replaced the violent ones. A woman’s nails raking his back, clutching at his butt as he thrust inside her again and again. Alaina Paulsen was more than just an agent investigating murders; she was part of it, too.

She had once been his … and he couldn’t leave until she was again.

Excitement coursed through him, but he fought it down, fought to control his emotions.

But it was all so perfect.

He wanted to scream, wanted to thump his fist in the air in celebration. But he had rejoiced another way, a far more satisfying way….

He lifted the cover from the box. He’d found it, like he had so many other things, when he’d opened that door and allowed the past to come rushing back into his mind.

A chuckle rumbled in his chest. Trent Baines had unlocked that door with his books. And until today the man had had no idea that he’d let the monster loose.

He gazed inside that box at the heart he’d stolen. In his mind, it beat yet. For him.

But it wasn’t the heart he really wanted. That heart beat now inside Alaina Paulsen’s chest. But he knew to whom it had once belonged. The woman she had once been and the man she had once loved.

Now he knew who they all were and who they all had once been … before he’d killed them.

He closed the lid on the box, which would soon fill with more hearts. Because now he knew what he had to do, who he had to kill. Again.