If You Hear Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense (18 page)

“Lena Riddle.”

The man would have made one hell of a poker player, Ezra decided. He didn’t flicker an eyelash. “And what about Ms. Riddle brings you here? You can’t tell me she was out four-wheeling on your property.”

Giving in to the ache in his leg, Ezra settled on the one chair in the room that wasn’t stacked with files, boxes, or something else. Now that the dragon wasn’t on guard, he might as well sit. “No. It’s about what happened out at her place the other night. I’m curious as to what you plan on doing about it.”

“You’re curious.”

Ezra shrugged. “You have to admit—kind of odd. Disturbing. Dead of the night. Woman hears screams. Nobody finds anything. No accidents reported nearby. Odd. Not the sort of thing you could just ignore, really.”

“That’s assuming she really heard anything.”

“You think she did,” Ezra said, narrowing his eyes.

“I didn’t say that.”

As Ezra studied him, Nielson returned the favor. The man in front of him looked like exactly what he’d expected to find—a cop. Young, just enough of an edge to him, and still some idealism left in there, too.

He either hadn’t been on the job long enough, or he was just one of those who kept that idealism the whole way through.

No, Nielson wasn’t surprised by what he saw in Ezra King, nor was he surprised to see the state cop in his office. King had been seen with Lena at the café, and while that wasn’t a declaration of marriage, seeing as how
Lena hadn’t had a meal with anybody other than Law Reilly and Roz Jennings since she’d broken things off with Remy Jennings a year earlier, well, it said something.

Besides, he had ears.

More than a few of his deputies had commented on Lena’s visit to the office Sunday, and the fact that Ezra King had also been around.

The man in front of him might well be a cop—being on leave was irrelevant—but he was also a man. It wasn’t just a cop’s interest that had Ezra in his office. Nielson knew it as well as he knew his own name, as well as he knew his town.

Made things dicey.

Nielson had no problem sharing some information with a fellow cop.

Had a bit more difficulty sharing it with a man who had a personal interest in somebody the sheriff’s office was viewing as … a person of interest.

“At this point, I’ve yet to make any decision,” Nielson hedged.

King snorted. “You can try that line on somebody who doesn’t know the routine, Sheriff. Look, I just want to know if you plan to pursue this.”

“Do you mind if I ask why?” Nielson asked. “Other than your … interest in Ms. Riddle? You do have an interest, am I right?”

“That interest, whether I have one or not, doesn’t have any bearing on why I’m here.” He reached down, rubbed a hand on his thigh, an absent expression on his face.

“On the job?” Nielson asked as King shifted his gaze away, staring out the window.

“Yeah. Six months ago.”

“You going back?”

King’s gaze, a vivid and clever green, slanted toward Nielson. “Don’t know.” He hesitated and then, finally, he added, “Not sure if I can.”

Those words carried a world of weight to them. Understanding, Nielson nodded. Story there, he suspected. But he wasn’t going to pry. The man’s eyes, they held dark, sad secrets. Nielson would leave them alone.

“Look, I’m not trying to piss you off here or anything.” King leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. His eyes met and held Nielson’s easily. “This is your place, I know that, respect that. But let’s just say I overheard how your deputy was talking to Lena on Sunday and I wasn’t impressed with the amount of concern he was showing her. That dipshit Prather couldn’t have been any more dismissive of her if he’d escorted her to the door the minute she stepped foot inside. That one? Major asshole you got there, Sheriff.”

Actually, that was putting it mildly. Prather was more than an asshole, but Nielson had learned to work with him. He wasn’t at all surprised to hear that the man had been dismissive of Lena Riddle’s case—a little irritated, but not surprised.

He’d have to have a word with Prather about that, too.

A faint smile tugged at the sheriff’s mouth. “I’ll take that under advisement. But that still doesn’t exactly tell me why you’re so concerned about this.”

Ezra figured that question, or a variation of it, would pop up and he’d already figured out how to answer. Slouching in the chair, he kept his face carefully blank. “I’ve got a friendly interest in Lena Riddle—at this point, just a friendly interest. I want her safe. That part is personal. Then there’s this part—I’m a cop. Whether I’m on leave or not, I’m still a cop and it pisses me off to no end to think there could be something majorly fucked up going on just a few miles from where I live and the woman who is a witness—and that’s what she is—is being dismissed on account of the fact that she can’t see.”

“Lena Riddle’s inability to see doesn’t mean jackshit to me,” Nielson snapped.

Ezra believed him. Mostly. The guy struck him as the fair, level sort, the kind who’d look at a matter from all angles. “I’m glad to hear that. However, you’re letting at least one of your deputies write her off on that basis alone, and there’s no way in hell you can deny that. Hell, that fuck implied she ought to have a live-in companion there with her at night—hell, he didn’t imply it. He said it. She’s not a damned invalid. She can’t see. Your deputy obviously can’t think, and I don’t see him applying for a live-in companion.”

Something that might have been humor flashed in Nielson’s eyes, but it was there, then gone so quick—Ezra couldn’t be sure.

“Look, Detective King, I understand where you’re coming from. I really do. And I don’t plan on just shelving this complaint.” He sighed and leaned back, smoothing a hand over his scalp in what Ezra had decided was a nervous, habitual gesture. “But there’s also the plain and simple fact that we can’t find a victim. Ms. Riddle heard screams. If we could find a victim, if we could find a body, if we could find some evidence of a crime … something … then that would make it a lot easier to proceed.”

He met Ezra’s eyes and spread his hands. “But right now, there’s nothing. What would you have me do when there is absolutely nothing to go on?”

“Do you believe her?” Ezra asked.

He didn’t want to answer. Ezra could tell by the look in the sheriff’s eyes. He didn’t want to answer that question, for some weird reason.

Leaning forward, Ezra pressed, “Has she ever done anything like this before? Ever caused any sort of trouble? Ever given you a reason not to believe her?” He studied Nielson’s face, but suspected he already knew the answer. Lena wasn’t a troublemaker. She wasn’t an annoyance, either.

Nielson met Ezra’s gaze levelly. “No. Which, I figure,
you’ll find out on your own—that’s the only reason I’m telling you, Detective.”

“Understood.” He absently massaged his leg and stared out the window. It was a pretty view of a quiet, peaceful-looking town. He could understand Nielson’s urge to protect that.

“She’s not the type to imagine it, either,” Ezra said, recalling the way she’d moved through the trees with him and Law. Steady and confident—a calm, confident woman. She wasn’t going to imagine something like this. “My gut says if she claims she heard screaming, then she heard screaming.”

Nielson scratched his chin and said, “And as I’ve explained, the problem is that we can’t find a single soul who could be responsible for the screams she heard.”

Then you didn’t look hard enough
, Ezra thought, but he kept that quiet.

“Besides, it’s just the one incident. Until something else turns up, there’s just not much more we can do. But … I’m not going to shelve this. I’ll have my boys come out there every now and then, do a pass through the woods where she says she heard the screaming. Do random drive-bys. If something is going on, sooner or later, we’ll see something.”

Hell.

It wasn’t much, but Ezra had to admit it was better than nothing.

As he left Nielson’s office, the green-eyed, steel-haired dragon shot him a glare. “Next time you need some of the sheriff’s time, try calling for an appointment,” she said.

“Absolutely.” Ezra ambled past her, well aware that she was drilling daggers into his back with her eyes.

As he left the sheriff’s office, he debated on what to do next.

He didn’t want to work on the damn deck.

He couldn’t concentrate worth shit and he knew it. He’d end up smashing his thumb or fucking up his plans, which would require fixing the screw-up, and his patience was absolutely shot to hell.

No … what he wanted to do was go out and see Lena.

It was an edgy, burning need, one that crawled around under his skin and tore at him, ate at him. It was a hunger, a need, an ache, and one he had to listen to, or it would drive him insane. But he also knew listening to it was a bad, bad idea.

Bad idea, very bad idea
, he told himself.
Friends, remember? Just friends
.

“Yeah, and as a friend, I can go out there and see how she’s doing, right? I mean, after the weekend she had, what could it hurt?” he muttered to himself.

Trying to talk himself out of that idea, trying to cool the need, the fire in his gut, he decided to stop by the store. His last grocery store run, he’d been distracted—and without a list. Today, he was still distracted, and still without a list, but one thing he’d realized he needed was deodorant, so he made himself stop before leaving town.

He made it halfway through the store, congratulated himself for not thinking about Lena. But as he stopped in the microscopic health and beauty section—crap, why did they put men’s deodorant in the beauty section?—he found himself in front of the display of condoms.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

He did not need condoms for a friendly relationship.

Once more, his focus was right back on her, and this time it had nothing to do with the strange mystery of the screams and everything to do with the shape of her mouth, the round curve of her ass, and the weird way he found his heart skipping when she stood close. The way he smiled when she laughed, and the way his chest ached when he saw that sad look on her face.

It was almost like the way he felt when he’d first
started dating Stacy Traynor back in high school—first major crush—that hot, fiery burn of young love.

But the deal with Lena? It was worse. Way worse.

Shifting his weight away from his stiffening right leg, he grabbed a box of Trojans and threw them in his handheld basket before stalking out of the aisle. Fine. So what? He’d bought a box of condoms—he was being practical. Nothing else.

Just practical.

Except he was having a hard time thinking about practical when it came to thinking about sex and Lena at the same time. It gave him the weird sensation of burning his brain cells—causing little microscopic implosions—and he could almost hear the neurons blowing up, one by one.

In self-defense, he started thinking about something else—and the best way to distract himself was to focus on the puzzle. The screams.

“Not a car wreck. We pretty much know that,” he muttered.

There would have been records at one of the local hospitals, a vehicle, even just the sign of an accident, something.

That was off the list.

Missing person? Somebody had been kidnapped, maybe escaped only to be recaptured by her abductor?

Problem with that line of thinking, in a town the size of Ash, if a person disappeared, people would notice, and he figured the sheriff would have mentioned it if somebody had fit that bill.

“Could be somebody not from around here, though …”

“Ezra!”

Stopping in his tracks, he winced. That creaky voice was familiar. Normally, he would have welcomed it, but he really, really wasn’t in the mood for the thirty-minute distraction that was Lucy Walbash.

Miss Lucy had been his grandmother’s best friend, and
Ezra had known her for as long as he could remember. When he’d come back home for his grandmother’s funeral, Miss Lucy had sat in the front row, right next to him, and she’d held his hand, patted it as he tried not to cry.

When he hadn’t been able to fight it anymore, she’d whispered, “She was a fine woman, you know. Would be a shame if you couldn’t shed a few tears for her, I think.”

She was, without a doubt, one of his favorite people in the world, and probably his favorite person in Ash … with the possible exception of Lena.

But he really didn’t want to talk to her just yet—especially not with the box of Trojans sitting right there in his basket.

You’re a grown man. Thirty-six years old. The fact that she used to teach the Sunday school classes when you went to church with Gran doesn’t change the fact that you’re a grown man
, he told himself.

As she drew nearer, he angled the basket so the box of Trojans slid around—score—they fell down and got lodged on their side, no longer quite so prominently on display.

“Hey, Miss Lucy.”

She shook a finger at him. “Don’t you hey, Miss Lucy me. You’ve been telling me for the past month you’d be coming by for a visit and you still haven’t done it. What is your excuse this time?”

“Ahhhh …”

She sniffed. “You went and forgot.” She gave a theatrical little sigh. “You young people, always forgetting about us older folks.”

“Now, come on, Miss Lucy …” Chagrined, he shifted on his feet, feeling the same way he’d felt when she’d discovered him reading a comic book during her Sunday school class instead of paying attention.

“Grandma, leave Ezra alone. He’s been busy, that’s all.”

As her granddaughter came sauntering up behind her, Ezra managed to muffle his sigh of relief. Natalie was pushing along a mountainous cart of groceries—probably helping her grandmother get her monthly shopping done.

She met his eyes and smiled. “Don’t pay attention to her nagging. It’s just her way of showing affection.”

Lucy sniffed. “Affection. Why should I show affection to a boy who can’t even keep his word and come by to visit me? All he does is sit out there at his place and brood.” The teasing light in her bright eyes faded, replaced by a serious, somber intensity. “I hate to think of you just sitting out there, day after day. You’re a young man, Ezra … you’ve still got your whole life ahead of you. Can’t let that leg slow you down forever, you know.”