If You Hear Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense (28 page)

She could smile, Hope realized.

Five feet away from a cop, even though he wasn’t wearing a uniform or flashing a badge at her, there was no mistaking it—he was definitely a cop. But he didn’t make her want to run screaming. And she could sit there and smile.

It was a start, right?

Less than a minute later, the lighter atmosphere shattered as they heard the wail of other sirens.

Followed by more.

When there was a loud, booming knock on the door just a few seconds later, the pit of her stomach crashed to her knees. Her heart jumped to lodge in her throat, and dread crawled along her spine as Ezra moved to open the door.

Even if she didn’t know something about how law enforcement worked, Hope would have realized something was wrong just by the way Ezra’s eyes darkened, the way his mouth went tight.

Prather might be a lousy cop, but he was still a cop, and Ezra knew by the look in his eyes there was something seriously wrong, and unless the idiot was even more of a clown than he had thought, then it was bad wrong.

“What’s the problem, Prather?” Ezra said, using his body to block the door when Prather might have tried to push his way inside.

Three cars came pulling up behind him and out of one of them came Sheriff Dwight Nielson. He made a beeline for the porch, but Prather was already in Ezra’s face, and judging by the glint of battle in Prather’s eyes, the boy was gunning for blood.

“Where in the hell is Reilly?”

“A little unavailable,” Ezra said, keeping his voice mild. Until he knew what exactly was going on, there was no need to share more than that.

“Deputy, you need to step back,” Nielson said.

Prather all but vibrated, all but shook as he turned to stare at Nielson. “I always told you that man had something wrong with him—something seriously fucked up, and I was right. We need to—”

“Right now,” Nielson said, his voice low, cold, and all the more effective for it. “It would seem we have a crime scene that needs to be processed, so instead of getting in this man’s face, maybe we should take care of that.”

Ezra didn’t look away from Prather.

But his question was directed at the sheriff. Nielson was the only one, so far, who’d showed any appreciable amount of common sense.

“Crime scene?”

“You’re on leave, city boy, remember?” Prather jeered.

“Prather, you’re about to find yourself on leave—unpaid—if you don’t shut the flying fuck up,” Nielson said. His gaze cut to Ezra’s and he said, “You’re welcome to come along, but remember … you have no authority here.”

No authority—Ezra had no problem with that. Hell, he didn’t want any authority.

He shut the door behind him and followed the sheriff out behind the house. Hell, knowing Prather, it was nothing more than …

Death
.

Even from out here, he could smell it.

Remembering the eerie way Puck had been staring off into the woods earlier, he was suddenly damned glad of the solid, heavy weight of his gun.

Law grabbed the phone off the bedside table and punched in Lena’s cell phone. Damn it, if she didn’t answer this time, he was going to wring her neck.

Halfway through the second ring, she answered.

“You’re an impatient bastard, buddy, you know that?” she said in lieu of greeting.

“What in the hell is going on?”

“Don’t know yet,” Lena said, sighing. “County sheriff has men out here and Ezra is out there with them, but that’s all I know right now.”

Hope was quiet, hadn’t said a word since Prather had all but knocked the door off its hinges. Lena wished there was something she could say to calm her down, but she didn’t know what would do it. Hell, she wasn’t exactly calm. She’d been doing okay up until Ezra had slipped outside, but now …

He’d been too quiet.

Something about that silence … Shit. Lena wouldn’t have minded being able to see just then—being able to see his face, look into his eyes. Have something else to go on besides that odd tension in the air, the fury she’d heard in Prather’s voice.

“Hope’s okay, right?”

“Yes. Scared. But she’s fine. Nobody has been inside the house,” Lena said. “You want to talk to her?”

“Yeah. Put her on.”

Lena held the phone out and gave the other woman a smile. “It’s Law.”

The brief conversation did nothing to soothe Law’s edgy tension, and he was up, prowling the room after he’d hung up. He wouldn’t sleep, he already knew. He wouldn’t sleep and he needed to be on the phone, booking a flight back home. But he didn’t want to tie up the phone. Not until he knew what was going on.

Shit, why had he left Hope there alone?

Joey—fuck. Had he tracked her down?

The bastard had said he wasn’t going to let her go. Had he tracked her to Law’s place?

“What’s going on?” Hope asked, her voice shaking, so nervous and small. “Why are there so many cars? What’s with the van?”

Lena sighed. She felt utterly useless. Pushing upright, she gripped Puck’s harness and followed the sound of Hope’s breathing. She was pretty sure Hope was over by the window—she breathed in soft, erratic stops and starts, almost like she had to remind herself to breathe.

“I don’t know,” Lena said, once she stood next to her. Resting a hand lightly on the other woman’s shoulder, she squeezed gently. “But don’t worry. I won’t be going anywhere. Law and I have a mutual dislike of that idiot, Prather, so as long as he’s on Law’s property, I’m not leaving.”

There was a brief pause, and then quietly, Hope said, “The guy is a jerk.”

“Yep. He thinks that badge makes him something special.”

“A lot of them do.” There was an undercurrent of resentment, of anger in her voice. And fear—so much fear. “Think it makes them untouchable.”

“Nobody is untouchable.” She squeezed Hope’s shoulder once more and let her hand fall away. “I might not be able to see, but I get the feeling Ezra was about to put the guy on his back for a minute there. The vibes in the air? Talk about tension.”

Hope shifted.

Nervousness had a sound. A habit of swallowing a lot, the restlessness of constant movement, as if stillness was just too hard. Hope’s nervousness somehow conveyed a pain, a misery that managed to leach its way inside Lena’s heart, and in such a short time. No wonder Law had been so worried. Lena barely knew more than this girl’s name and she wanted to protect her.

“Why don’t you tell me what you see? Maybe we can figure it out.”

“Something’s wrong,” Hope said softly. “And it’s more than just me seeing somebody running by Law’s house.” She hesitated and then softly, she added, “I … I think he might have been carrying something.”

“Who? The guy you saw?”

“Yes.”

Lena processed that, going cold inside. She was hearing sirens again, but this time they were all in her mind, wailing a warning. She was utterly freaked out. She hoped it didn’t show on her face. “Carrying something … like what?”

“I don’t know.” Hope swallowed and then whispered, her voice hoarse, “Something big. Over his shoulder. Almost like a …”

She didn’t finish the sentence, though. Almost like she feared doing it.

Like a body?
Lena wondered as she found herself remembering a scream. A woman’s desperate voice.

Being away from the job for a few months hadn’t made it any easier, or any harder, to look at the violence one could do to the human body. She’d probably been pretty once, although under the bruising and swelling, it was hard to tell.

Ezra suspected she’d been raped, and probably more than once, judging by the bruising on her thighs and hips. Some of the bruises were almost healed, others were almost new.

She had scratches and scrapes on her body, especially her outer arms and legs—Ezra found himself frowning at those and wondering.

The sort of scrapes one might get in the woods, he wondered? Running through the woods? Maybe that was the cause of the banged-up condition of her knee, too. Those weren’t the sort of injuries to happen in a beating—he wasn’t a doctor, but he was pretty damn sure of that.

Standing off to the side, Ezra watched as Nielson directed his men in a calm, competent manner. The man had worked homicides before, there was no question of it.

Prather, though … Prather was proving to be one major, major pain-in-the-ass kind of problem.

“Fucking pervert—I always knew he was messed up,” Prather muttered as one of the deputies had to leave the scene to go puke his guts up.

Prather looked a little green and his eyes glittered with anger, but unfortunately, he wasn’t going to excuse himself from the scene.

Too fucking bad. “Always knew that Reilly was a sick sumbitch,” he said. “Always knew it.”

Running on too little sleep, his mind whirling with too many angles, Ezra opened his mouth when he shouldn’t have. “Reilly didn’t do this.”

Prather’s eyes narrowed. “You sound pretty damn sure of that.”

“I am sure of it,” Ezra said. Hell, he was allowed to have a personal opinion on that. He wasn’t involved in it and this wasn’t his jurisdiction. Besides, he also knew for a fact Law couldn’t have done it.

“You’re sure.”

Behind him, Nielson opened his mouth, but Ezra caught his eye and gave a quick shake of his head. Nielson cocked a brow but remained silent.

“Yeah. I’m sure.” He shoved away from the wall and moved toward the body, crouching down beside her. She’d been young—too young—and somebody had brutally, painfully cut off that life.

A few short hours ago, she’d been alive.

“Well, Mr. Big City Cop, let me spell something out for you, although you shoulda already figured this out, being so smart and all. This here is what we call a crime scene. We got us a dead body and as this is Reilly’s home, he’s going to be the prime suspect.”

Ignoring Prather, he glanced at Nielson and asked, “You got a pair of gloves?”

Nielson, without comment, passed them over.

A humorless smile curled Ezra’s lips as he studied the way the blood had pooled in the lowest points of her body. It was no surprise that when he touched the woman’s body, she was still warm. Cooling, but warm.

Pity and anger churned inside him as he saw the bruises that also marred the girl’s buttocks.

I hope they find who did this to you, sweetheart
, Ezra thought sadly.

He didn’t do anything else. This wasn’t his case, this wasn’t his jurisdiction, and he hadn’t ever worked homicide. But he knew the basics. The woman hadn’t been dead long. Law wasn’t in town, hadn’t been for a couple of days. Stripping off the gloves, he balled them in his fist and met Prather’s gaze.

“You are an idiot,” Ezra said shortly. “The biggest fuck-up excuse of a cop I’ve seen in a while, and I’ve seen some fuck-ups.”

“You stupid son of a bitch—”

Dismissing Prather, Ezra looked at Nielson. “I imagine you’ve got all sorts of questions for Law Reilly, and if I were you, I’d have them, too. But you need to start rethinking those questions. Law Reilly has been out of town for three days. Nobody knew this but Lena, me, and the friend he has staying in his house.

“So,” he said, shooting a thin smile at Prather. “Being a big city cop and all, let me tell you what you have here … it’s definitely a murder. But it’s a setup. And fifty bucks says she wasn’t killed here.”

Sometimes, once the shit started rolling, a guy just couldn’t get out of the way fast enough.

This was one of those weeks, it seemed.

Law lowered the phone and stared at it stupidly for a
second, convinced this was some sort of prank call. Then he lifted it back to his ear.

“You need me to what?”

Lena sighed. “Hang up and call from wherever you’re staying—not your cell phone, either. A land line,” she said tiredly. “Call the number I gave you. I can’t explain any more than that.”

Can’t. He heard the fury vibrating under her voice and he knew he needed to hang up and do just what she asked, but first … “Lena, just tell me Hope’s okay.”

“She’s fine, Law. She’s not hurt, I promise.”

When he called the number Lena had given him, it was Sheriff Dwight Nielson who came on the phone, and he was about as informative as Lena had been. But the fact that he had a law-enforcement official on the phone was a bad, bad sign, one that had his blood turning to ice.

“Thanks for your cooperation, Mr. Reilly. I’m going to have to ask you to return home immediately. I realize this might be bad timing …”

“Bad timing,” Law drawled as he sat down on the edge of the bed and then lay back, staring up at the shadowed ceiling. He was staying at Cassie’s place—her husband, also a friend, had insisted. Law knew the poor old guy just didn’t want to be alone yet, and he couldn’t blame him. “I helped bury a friend today and you realize this might be bad timing.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, but this is urgent.”

Scowling, Law said, “Well, if it’s so urgent, you can tell me what in the hell it’s about. Otherwise, I don’t see any reason I should cooperate.”

Five seconds passed, then ten. Finally, Nielson said, “Evidence of a crime has been discovered on your property, Mr. Reilly. That’s about all I can divulge at this time. You need to come home. Immediately.”