WHEN OLIVIA AWOKE she was in the softest four poster bed she had ever slept in. It was like a pile of pillows resting on a cloud. Piper, Luca and a man in a dress shirt and dark pants stood just outside the room talking in low voices. Through the open doorway Olivia could see the man was wearing a stethoscope around his neck. They had called a doctor. She wondered when Piper had arrived and how long she had been out.
“Piper,” Olivia called out weakly and tried to sit up. Wow she was woozy. What the hell? Her head hurt like crazy. Piper rushed into the room.
“Hey, Liv. Quite the day huh?” Piper sat in the chair beside the bed. “The doctor says you are going to be okay but they may need to admit you for a few days.”
Olivia tried again to sit up. She swayed and back down she went. “Something’s wrong,” she protested.
“Don’t worry. The doctor gave you a little sedative to help you calm down and rest. Just lay back, sweetheart. Everything is going to be okay.” Piper gently soothed and held her hand.
“Is this the hospital? I don’t want to be admitted. I have to finish this case. Luca said that Grace—” Olivia blurted but Piper interrupted.
“Shhhh . . . calm down . . . We are in Mr. Carlisle’s suite here at the hotel. He called Dr. Ferguson, to come check on you. You were hysterical downstairs and they had to give you some medication. He will come talk with you in a minute but he said with your history he would like to transfer you to the hospital until they can be sure you are stable.”
“My history? What are you talking about?” Olivia wrestled with the sheets and forced herself to focus. “I have panic attacks but I’ve been dealing with those since Grace’s death.”
“Sweetheart, I’m not trying to upset you.” Piper spoke as you would to a three-year-old on the verge of a tantrum. “They took such good care of you at Rawson before.”
“Rawson? What is that?” Olivia questioned as she racked her memory for some clue to what Piper was talking about.
“Darling, you spent some time there almost ten years ago. Don’t you remember any of it? I understand though that was a hard time for all of us. Everyone was so worried about you.” Piper squeezed her hand. “I will never forget the day they pulled you out of the water . . .” Piper’s voice broke.
“Piper, you know I don’t swim. I wouldn’t go anywhere near the water,” Olivia protested. As she spoke the sensation of being weightless in the depths of Lake Mead enveloped her. Lost in the darkness with only shreds of moonlight escaping through the clouds, she was screaming for help but none came. “Damn it! I am a lawyer. Why can’t I make sense of these dreams or memories, or whatever the hell they are.”
“Ok . . . No need to get upset . . .” Piper tried again.
“I could not possibly be more upset.” Olivia reached out and grabbed Piper’s arm to steady herself. Piper backed up as if Olivia was trying to hurt her. Olivia continued, “Someone’s potentially framing me for murder, my dead sister may not be dead, and my boyfriend was madly in love with my twin fucking sister before she died . . . or didn’t die. Fuck! I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on and you all think I’m fucking crazy!”
Luca and Dr. Ferguson rushed into the room. Luca pried Piper from her grip and held her hand. Dr. Ferguson reached in his bag and pulled out another vial. “No!” she yelled and tried to get away. “Please don’t give me anymore medication. I need to have a clear head. Please! I’ll calm down I promise.” Olivia tried to wriggle out of Luca’s monstrous grip. The doctor stuck a syringe in the vial and pulled up the medication.
“Please . . . Piper . . . Luca . . . Don’t do this. Please!” Olivia begged. Piper looked away and started to cry.
“I can’t bear to see her like this again.” Piper sniffled and walked toward the door.
“Piper! Wait!” Olivia started to hyperventilate. Not now. She had to stay in control. She felt the room getting smaller. “Luca.” She turned and met his eyes. “Please Luca. Don’t put me in the hospital. Tell him I don’t need any more medicine. Could someone call Detective Shaver or the Norfolk, Virginia District Attorney’s office.”
Luca’s face was pinched into a sad grimace as he held her in a firm but tender grip. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, darling. Everything is going to be all right now. Dr. Ferguson is just trying to help you get some sleep. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Olivia’s mouth went dry and her heart felt like it was beating all over the place making the room spin. Her feet and fingertips began to tingle. Her breaths came in short labored gasps. Dr. Ferguson wiped her skin with a cool alcohol pad. The sting of the needle was followed by a burning sensation that started in her arm and became a warming that spread throughout her body like plunging into a pool of warm bourbon. Her body and breathing relaxed. Olivia knew all this was wrong. She knew she had to get . . . out . . . of . . .
THE ROOM WAS dark when she came to. She looked around cautiously. She was still in the room with the four-poster bed. She didn’t know what was going on but she knew she had to get out of here. She was not about to get locked in some mental hospital. She needed to get out of this hotel and get a hold of her boss and Detective Shaver. They would be able to help her figure out what the hell was going on. She knew that she was going to be in some serious shit for leaving town but she would take that over this any day of the week. Olivia quietly sat up. Her head swam and she held onto one of the bed posts. Each movement felt like she was walking on the deck of a boat in rough seas.
She was thankful that they hadn’t already transferred her to the hospital. Now she just had to figure a way out before they came back. She stood holding firm to the post. Each move she made, Olivia paused and listened for the phone to ring as it had earlier when Luca was watching her. So far so good. She arranged the pillows in her bed to look like her form and covered them with the blanket. Her shoes were sitting beside the dresser on floor. She slid along the wall for support, grabbed her shoes and moved to the door of her room. She could hear the TV in the next room. Olivia moved silently to where she could see the living area. Piper was asleep on the couch with a chenille throw over her legs. A half empty bottle of wine and an empty room service container sat on the coffee table. The single Waterford glass was still a quarter full. She prayed Piper had drank enough to be in a deep sleep. Olivia moved one step at a time through the dim living room. She could see the door just fifteen feet away. She held onto furniture and the walls to keep from falling. When she was about three feet from the door she stumbled over a small statue of a Yorkshire terrier. She flew forward and grabbed onto the doorframe. Her heart pounded so loud she could barely hear Piper snort and then return to mouth breathing. Olivia stayed perfectly still for several tense moments listening. Piper’s breathing evened out and Olivia grabbed the handle of the door, unlocked the deadbolt and prayed as she turned the handle. She eased the door open in a slow steady motion that allowed a stream of light from the hallway to filter into the dark space. She stopped just short of the light reaching the sleeping figure of her friend. Piper never moved. Carefully Olivia looked out into the hall. Other than a discarded room service cart the hall was empty.
She slipped into the hall and eased the door closed behind her. She knew she wouldn’t have much time before she was discovered. Still using the wall for support she moved in the direction of the elevators. She contemplated the stairs but decided she wasn’t steady enough and she had no idea how many floors up she was. She pressed the button for the elevator. The knot in her stomach grew with each floor the car climbed. What if Luca or Dr. Ferguson were in the car? There was nowhere to run. Closer and closer it climbed. She reconsidered the stairs. The hand holding the wall was sweating and made it difficult to hold on. She could not let herself start hyperventilating. She heard the ding and the doors started to open. Please, God, let it be empty.
“Olivia?” The familiar low voice escaped the elevator like an arctic breeze that chilled her to the bone. It took her a moment in her foggy state to realize who it was.
The doors opened fully and there stood Dominic Kain. “Olivia, what the hell is going on? What’s wrong with you?” He started to step out but Olivia lunged into the elevator and fell into his arms.
“We have to get out of here. Hurry please,” she begged as she held onto him for dear life.
He didn’t question, he just pressed the button for the first floor and the door close button with the fervor of a telegraph operator. Once the car began to move he did his best to stand Olivia up on her Jell-O legs. “What happened to you? Are you on drugs? Why the hell did you come out here?” He threw questions out as fast as they descended floors in the high-speed elevator.
Olivia heard him talking but her mind had already moved to an elevator ride a decade ago.
WHEN THE DOORS had opened Olivia sat in the hall outside the elevator crying. She had never fought with her sister like that before. She looked up and there he was. His pale green eyes, like a jade sea, beckoned to her. In that moment she wanted nothing more than to sail away in them. He stepped out, scooped her up, and helped her onto the elevator.
“What happened? Did someone hurt you.” His voice moved her like a warm breeze across a cool glassy sea. It wrapped her up, carried her to a safe place. She was captivated in an instant. They began their descent his arms still wrapped around her. “I’ve been looking all over this place for you. I would tear the world apart to get to you.”
“I was in an argument. I’m better now.” She looked at the floor and then back up into his eyes. In her nineteen years she had never met another man like him.
He pushed a strand of dark hair out of her eyes and tucked it gently behind her ear. His face leaned close to hers. Her hand was on his chest and she could feel his heart pounding with every ounce of desire that flashed in his exquisite eyes.
“You are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met. I’ve waited so long for a chance to hold you.” Then he laughed sheepishly and bit his lower lip. “But In all the nights I lay awake dreaming of this moment, I never pictured it like this.” His young face and eyes burned with all the innocence and passion of a first love. He tilted her face tenderly toward his and kissed her. In her time at college other boys had come and gone. But Olivia had never been kissed like this before.
It was the first kiss of fairy tales and young girl daydreams. The kind of kiss that built up every part of her heart and soul and made them swell until she burst with the joy of the grand finale fireworks over a crystal sea. She closed her eyes and surrendered completely to his touch. Her breath left her and her knees weakened. She lived and died a thousand lives in that moment and would have given a thousand more to hold on for one more minute in his arms.
Suddenly the elevator doors opened and two security guards ripped him away.
“Stop! What the hell are you doing?” Olivia yelled as she stepped out into the lobby and watched them take him away.
THE ELEVATOR LURCHED and jolted Olivia back into the present. Dominic was staring at her with a knowing look. She could finally see what he had known all along. She looked up at Dominic, her eyes wide. “It was you,” she seethed. “Here in the elevator, ten years ago. You kissed me. I remember now. God I’m so stupid. That’s why you seemed so familiar at SaSS.” Tears in her eyes she pushed him away. He wrapped his hands tenderly around her wrists and pulled her back to him.
“It was always you.” He breathed and leaned his head to hers, lips and noses barely touching he continued, “That kiss haunted me every day for the last ten years. My soul has been searching for you ever since. I couldn’t bear to let you go.” His eyes brimmed as if he was seeing her for the first time.
She cried and pulled away from him bracing herself against the wall. “But you weren’t even kissing me, were you?” You didn’t know me. You were here for Grace. All that love and searching was for her, not me.” Olivia felt as if the floor of the elevator had fallen away and she was in free fall.
Dominic ran his fingers through his dark hair and looked away for a moment. “Olivia. I—” Before he could answer the elevator reached the lobby and the doors opened. “Come with me,” he ordered and grabbed her by the hand.
“I’m not going anywhere with you. Why should I trust anything you say?” Olivia stopped dead in the lobby. “You’ve been lying to me since the moment I met you.”
The pale sea in his wild eyes raged desperately. “Because you want to get out of here, and I trust you. I don’t know what’s going on here but I know that I left your sister here ten years ago and never saw her again. I’m not about to let something happen to you too.” He stood holding her hand tightly in his. “I’m not leaving you.”
Olivia hesitated. She wasn’t sure who to believe. She looked back at the casino. Luca would be there somewhere, but he and Piper wanted to send her with Dr. Ferguson. Were they trying to hurt her or protect her? They treated her like she was crazy. The more flashbacks she had the less sure she was of anything she thought to be true.
She looked back at Dominic. He stood ready to fight. He looked at her as if she was the only girl in the world. “Olivia,” he implored her. “You can yell at me later. You can hate me until the end of time but do it away from here. We have to go now . . .” The urgency in his voice stirred her from her stronghold. She took one last look toward the casino floor and the last traces of her sister.
“Okay.” She consented and squeezed his hand. He turned and led her quickly through the crowd toward the exit. As they reached the doors she heard Cammie behind them.
“Grace! Grace!” she yelled. “Where are you going?”
“Keep moving,” Dominic growled never letting loose of her hand. “Don’t look back.” He pulled Olivia through the large brass doors out into the desert night.
“Where’s your . . .” she started and then spotted it. “Oh, hell no…”
“Come on, Olivia. I won’t let anything happen to you.” They reached the Silver Ducati. He handed money to the valet who had been standing guard then took his helmet and quickly but carefully placed it on her head. He climbed on the bike and reached back for her. “Get. On,” he commanded. Though every fiber of her body was screaming no, Olivia swung her leg over the bike just as Luca and Piper burst out of the door.
“Stop, Liv! Don’t go!” Piper yelled. “Stop! Sweetie, please!” Olivia turned to see her friend running toward her.
“Hold on,” Dominic yelled as he revved the engine and tore out of the drive like a bat escaping the depths of hell.