Kill Me Twice (A Zeke Edison Novel Book 1) by Joseph Flynn Read Free Book Online Page B

two guys at this table probably know better than to do that.”
    Reggie’s look said Zeke and George had better know better.
    Zeke patted Reggie’s hand as if humoring her melodramatics.
    He was the only guy in the world who could get away with that.
    He said, “I got an email from a friend.” Never mentioning it was from his shrink. “It said the Division of Perceptual Research at the University of Virginia has people doing past lives research. They’ve been collecting stories of people who can recall earlier lives for 45 years.”
    “Really?” Paulette looked happy to hear that news.
    “Yeah,” Zeke said. “It took me by surprise, but apparently you’re not alone. Nobody’s come to any conclusions yet. I don’t see how they really could. But if psychiatrists and psychologists and a major university have all put decades of work into the subject, you have to think it’s either worthwhile or they have people who write damn good grant applications.”
    Paulette looked at George, sitting next to her.
    “Hey, I’m all in no matter what,” he said.
    Paulette smiled at him. She turned to Zeke.
    “Me, too. I don’t have all the answers, but I’ll try to find as many as I can.”
    Reggie didn’t need a prompt. “I know more than Sluggo over here does. The way I can see helping is to make sure nobody sneaks up on him from behind. Or any other direction. Everybody good with that?”
    They all were. When dinner was done, Paulette and George excused themselves. Zeke washed the dishes and Reggie dried.
    Finishing the last plate, Reggie asked, “Have we waited long enough?”
    “We’ve built up enough of an edge for me,” he said.
    “Then show me to your bedroom, and I’ll tell you some war stories.”
    “You’ve always known how to talk dirty to me.”
    After they managed to rip the top sheet and scatter blankets and pillows to the four corners of the room, Reggie lay next to Zeke as they both stared at the ceiling and caught their breath.
    “I remember a past life,” Reggie said.
    “You were Alexander the Great or Attila the Hun?”
    “Neither of those guys.”
    “Emperor Nero?”
    Reggie knew Zeke would continue mining that vein unless she stopped him.
    “I was the wife of a samurai.”
    Zeke turned his head to look at her. “You’re serious?”
    She met his gaze and nodded.
    Zeke said, “I haven’t read a lot about feudal Japanese society, but wasn’t it highly hierarchical?”
    “It was.”
    “And weren’t women nowhere to be found in that hierarchy?”
    “There were exceptions, but you’re pretty much right.”
    “You were one of the exceptions?” Zeke asked.
    Reggie shook her head. “Minor aristocracy and a pain in the ass. By all rights, I should have had my head chopped off. Only I was a real looker and the local daimyo, my husband’s lord and master, issued an edict that he’d be the only one who would decide my fate. He wouldn’t have tolerated my impudence if it had been directed at him, but he was amused by a woman who gave other men fits. One of the unacceptable things I did was martial arts training.”
    “Sounds risky,” Zeke said. “Let me guess. You got into it with your husband somehow.”
    “There was an archery competition. He beat all the other samurai and should have received the grand prize: money, land and elevated status. Only the daimyo said, ‘Let’s see if you can beat your wife.’”
    Deke sighed. “You just couldn’t help yourself, could you? You had to know your life would be richer, at the very least, but you couldn’t throw the match.”
    Reggie told him, “Under the rules of the game in those days, only a man could divorce a wife at will. My husband had been forbidden to kill me, but it was perfectly acceptable for him to boot me out of his house and his life. Which, I’d heard, was his plan. My only socially acceptable alternative was to become a nun in a temple. If I stuck it out there for two years, then I could get a divorce.”
    Just the