No One Lives Twice (A Lexi Carmichael Mystery) (11 page)

“I’d like,” he said firmly, so I scrawled it down on the back of another of his business cards. “If you think of anything else, give me a call,” he said. “I’m glad we had a chance to meet and talk, Lexi.”

I really liked the way my name rolled off his tongue in that Irish brogue of his. “Me, too. Um…sorry about the fingers.”

He touched my hair with his injured hand and I held my breath. My heart was beating so loudly, I was certain he could hear it.

“I’ll be in touch soon,” he said.

I didn’t know whether he meant he would be in touch soon to update me on the Basia situation or call so we could go out sometime. I was really hoping for the latter.

Then, to my utter surprise, he leaned over and pressed a soft, gentle kiss on my mouth. It happened so quickly, I didn’t kiss him back. For a moment, I think I just stood there forgetting to breathe. Had one of the most gorgeous guys on the planet just kissed me? On the mouth?

He gave me another of those million-dollar smiles and then turned and walked down the street. I gave a quick laugh and then danced around. At precisely that moment, Finn looked over his shoulder and saw me doing my little jig.

His eyes widened and then he grinned, giving me a jaunty thumbs-up before wincing and then wiggling his injured fingers.

Could I possibly act any more like an idiot?

Probably not. Oh, well. At least he kissed me!

Elated, I jumped into the car and turned on the music as loud as my ears could stand. I drove home singing at the top of my lungs and was dead tired by the time I got there. Letting myself in the complex, I climbed the stairs to my apartment. The door was still locked. When I opened it, I heard the soft buzz of the alarm. To my relief it still blinked red, which meant it was working.

Just the same I did a quick sweep of the apartment, thankfully finding nothing or no one else of interest. I did a half-assed job of it, partially because my paranoia was fading. I relocked the door, set the alarm and dropped my purse on the couch. I checked my answering machine and saw I had three messages.

The first message was from my mother asking me when we were going to go shopping. I groaned. Payback was hell.

The second message was from my brother Beau.

“The check on Lars Anderson came back and he’s clean,” my brother said. “He arrived in the U.S. from Sweden four years ago, was naturalized last year along with his two younger sisters both of whom still reside in Sweden. Mr. Anderson, age thirty-three, is divorced with no children and currently resides in Laurel. He runs Anderson’s Karate Academy, located in a strip mall not far from his home. As far as I can tell, he’s never had a run-in with the law, not even so much as a parking ticket. He pays his taxes regularly and even contributes to the police annual fund, bless his heart. He’s good to go, sis. Have fun, but remember to practice safe sex.”

I rolled my eyes. Beau is such a kidder.

The third message contained some heavy breathing and a hang up. Oh God, it was probably Beefy. It sounded like his breathing. Heavy and perverted. Why was he still bugging me?

Somehow I had to go to work tomorrow and act as if my life were normal. All this crazy stuff was killing me. I was in way over my head and I knew it.

Tonight, I just wanted to go to sleep and have wicked fantasies about a handsome Irish lawyer with amazing green eyes. So that’s exactly what I did.

***

I’m pretty sure I was in the middle of a hot dream when my bedside lamp abruptly switched on, the bright light unceremoniously ripping me from my fantasy. I blinked and then tried to scream.

A man stood by my bed, his hand covering my mouth. Not another one! Intruder man was dressed in a black T-shirt and black jeans. Long dark hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, and he had dark eyes and olive-colored skin.

Enrique Iglesias. Yep, that’s who he was. But what was Enrique Iglesias doing in my bedroom in the middle of the night holding his hand over my mouth?

I grabbed his wrist and tried to sit up. He held me down easily.

“Don’t scream, Lexi,” he said softly, not removing his hand. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to help. Do you understand?”

My heart thumped so wildly I wasn’t sure I was breathing. Sweat trickled down my back and beaded at my temples. I nodded even though I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. Isn’t that how it worked with psychopaths? If you wanted to stay alive, you fed their delusions and pretended you understood what they were talking about. I swallowed hard, watching him warily.

“I’m going to lift my hand,” he said. “No screams, okay?”

I nodded again.

Gazing into my eyes as if measuring whether I was good for my word, he slowly removed his hand from my mouth. I promptly opened my mouth to scream when I noticed he wore a leather shoulder holster. Because I really didn’t want to get shot, I sat up instead and scooted as far away from him on the bed as I could.

“Look,” I said, my voice coming out shakier than I had intended. “I should warn you, I’m trained in karate.”

It was a blatant lie, but sometimes guys got nervous if they thought that girls could kick the beejeebies out of their privates. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t even had my first karate lesson yet, as long as he didn’t figure out how weak and vulnerable I really was.

But instead of looking scared or worried, he smiled. “What a coincidence,” he said. “Me, too. What belt are you?”

I felt a flicker of panic. Oh, God, this was just my luck. I had to get an intruder who knew karate. I didn’t know diddly squat about karate belts, but I remembered that Bruce Lee had worn a black one. Sounded good to me.

“Black,” I said, raising my chin.

His smile widened. “Really? What degree?”

Degree? As in temperature or as in PhD? “Just take my word for it. You don’t want to mess with me.”

He laughed and I noticed he didn’t look all that threatening when he smiled. I took another quick assessment of him, pegging him from anywhere between thirty to thirty-five years of age with well-defined arms and an amazing cleft in his chin.

“Look, buster,” I said in my sternest voice and then yanked the covers up to my chin. “Just how did you get in here? I have a top-of-the-line alarm system, you know.”

“A waste of money,” he said, shrugging.

Obviously he was right. “What are you doing in my bedroom?”

“No, the question is why did you summon me and what do you want?”

“What do
I
want? You’re the one who bypassed my alarm and broke in here in the middle of the night.”

He blew out a breath impatiently and made another gesture with his hands. “You requested my presence,
cara,
so I came. If you have no need of my services, I shall happily leave.”

I was really confused now. Either I had completely lost my mind or this guy was a true-blue psycho. Neither possibility boded well for me.

“Summoned you?” I repeated. “Are you sure you have the right bedroom?”

He muttered something under his breath and then made a gesture with his hands that clearly indicated exasperation. “I’m beginning to wonder that myself.”

“Why do you keep talking like that? Are you Spanish or something?”

He looked offended. “Hardly, I’m Italian.”

“Italian? I suppose this also means I’m not dreaming since I don’t know any Italians and I don’t think you can dream about someone you don’t know.” I was blabbering, but there was a strange man in my bedroom, so I felt entitled. “Look, tell me why you’re in my bedroom at—” I glanced at the clock, “—two-thirty in the morning. Maybe we can straighten out the whole mess so you can leave and I can go back to sleep. No one needs to get hurt. Cool with you?”

“Okay,” he agreed. He had begun to look amused by the whole situation whereas I felt a weird mixture of terror and crankiness.

I took a deep breath. “Let’s start at the beginning. You said you got my message. What did you mean?”

He crossed his arms against his chest and leaned forward. “I received a message today from the Zimmerman twins requesting my assistance. Since I knew they would never approach me on a professional matter—pride, you see—I knew it had to be a request for a personal favor, most likely one for a friend. Since, as far as I know, you’re their only close friend, here I am. How am I doing so far?”

My mouth dropped open as it hit me. “Wait a minute.
You’re
Slash?”

He spread his hands. “You were expecting someone else?”

“I—I—I—” I stammered stupidly. “I wasn’t expecting you at all. I didn’t even think you existed.” My thoughts whirled. “Aren’t you supposed to be a national treasure or something, protected around the clock by the FBI or Secret Service?”

He rolled his eyes. “Is that what they say about me now?”

“Is it true?”

He lifted a dark eyebrow. “Maybe.”

“Then how come they didn’t stop you from breaking in here?” I asked. “Technically, you just broke the law.”

He chuckled. “You think the FBI could stop me?”

“They
are
the FBI, aren’t they?”

He laughed this time. “
Cara,
they don’t even know I’m here. After all, a man needs his privacy when meeting with a beautiful woman in her bedroom at night.”

Beautiful?
I sat huddled under the covers in my oversized T-shirt with tangled sleep hair and probably bad breath to boot. He
was
deranged.

“How do I know you’re really Slash and not just some guy pretending to be him?”

“How would you like me to prove it? A DNA sample?”

“A test.”

“A what?”

“A test. Give me your hands.”

“What?”

“Give me your hands.”

He stared at me for a moment and then held out his hands. I took them and turned them over palms facing upward. I checked out his fingertips, relieved to see they were hard and covered with calluses.

“A hacker manicure,” I said, dropping his hands.

He smiled. “Ah, so there
are
brains behind the beauty.”

“Nice try. You still have to take my test. If you really are Slash, this should be a piece of cake.”

“Are you
insani?
” he asked, his dark eyes flashing. “Do you know who I am?”

“Slash wouldn’t be afraid of a test,” I insisted.

He leaned toward me on the bed. “I am not afraid. I’m insulted. Show me this damn test.”

Now he looked mad. I wondered about the wisdom of what I was doing, but at least he wasn’t assaulting or shooting me…yet.

“Close your eyes,” I said.

“What?” He gave me another dirty look.

“Close your eyes. I need to get to my laptop and I’m not dressed from the waist down.”

He sighed but closed his eyes.

“No peeking,” I warned as I stepped from the bed, dragging the sheet with me. I grabbed a pair of sweatpants from the floor and managed to shove my legs inside and pull them up one-handed. “Okay, I’m dressed.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, opening his eyes. But I saw his lips twitch with what I sincerely hoped was a touch of humor.

I walked over to the laptop, let it boot up and then signed in. I ran a short protocol and when I was done, I unplugged it and took it to the bed where Slash, if that was truly who he was, still sat. I plopped down next to him, balancing the computer on my lap.

I shifted the computer to his lap and he looked mildly interested as I explained what I wanted him to do.

“The twins have got two computers set up on a test network they set up to teach me the finer points of hacking. I just connected to one of them using a secure shell and a digital key. The computer is set up with basic hacking tools. Your job is to compromise the computers on the test network and find one document out of many with a phone number I need. According to the twins, this exercise should take an expert hacker less than ten minutes.”

He snorted in disgust. “Are you really going to make me do this?”

“Getting nervous?”

“You wish. So, whose phone number am I looking for?”

“John Phreak,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow. “Phreak?”

“You know, a cross between a phone hacker and a cracker.”

He sighed. “I know what it means,
cara.
”

“That’s encouraging,” I chirped. “I’ll time you.”

I leaned over and picked up my watch from the bedside table and held it in my lap. “I guess I don’t have to warn you that there are a few traps set.”

His eyes narrowed. “Just get on with it before I die of boredom.”

I pursed my lips. “Go.”

He typed something and then glanced sideways at me. “So, you’re into hacking now, are you?”

“Why? Surprised that a woman can do something so technical?”

He laughed. “Ah, I can see it has been a long, hard road for you as a woman in our profession. You must understand that men are, by nature, insecure creatures. Fortunately, that’s changing. Only the best survive in our field, and the fact that you have made it this far means you must be very good.”

My hostility evaporated. “Well, yeah, that’s true.”

“Nonetheless, you are prettier than I expected.”

I bristled. “Just because I’m into computers doesn’t mean I wear thick glasses and have a face that could stop a truck.”

“Indeed, you don’t,” he agreed. “Dare I mention that you have lovely legs?”

“Hey, did you peek? You promised you wouldn’t look.”

His eyes gleamed with amusement. “Actually, I didn’t promise anything.”

“Well, forget about my legs. Shouldn’t you pay more attention to what you’re doing?”

“Ah, but perhaps you are more worried about this test than I am?”

I glanced at the display but for the life of me could not figure out what he was doing. Nothing I saw even remotely rang a bell. He typed in code I wasn’t familiar with and did so in a bored manner, barely even looking at the screen. To my dismay he seemed far more interested in giving me a thorough perusal.