If You Hear Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense (36 page)

“E
VERYBODY IN TOWN WANTS TO KNOW WHY IN THE
hell we haven’t arrested him,” Prather snapped, jutting his chin up as he faced Nielson.

Everybody? Nielson barely managed to avoid rolling his eyes. “Just who the hell is everybody?”

“Everybody in town.” Prather glared at him.

“Really.” Shooting a look at Keith Jennings, he lifted a brow. “Sergeant, you live in town, right?”

“I do, Sheriff.”

“Okay. Are you wondering why I haven’t arrested Reilly?”

“Not for a second.” Jennings just smiled. “We don’t have the sort of proof we need to arrest anybody. Not even Reilly, as much as some people might like to think otherwise.”

“Okay.” He looked back at Prather. “You can relax now. It’s not everybody wondering it.”

“Damn it, Sher …” He snapped his mouth shut, sucked in a slow breath. “I apologize. But I have to wonder why you’re so dead set on not arresting him.”

“Because, Deputy Prather … I don’t see enough proof, and because I know the man has a solid alibi.” He looked away, focused on the reports he’d been discussing
with Keith before his current pain in the ass had stormed into the office.

He didn’t need Prather’s help to see that more than a few people were of a mind that Law Reilly should be arrested. It didn’t matter to them that there wasn’t really any hard-core evidence pointing toward Law, other than the body that had been found on his property.

“Next time you talk to everybody, please make sure you let them know we only arrest people when there’s real, serious evidence,” Nielson said as he skimmed the report. He still needed the deceased’s next of kin. Apparently she was a reporter or something, working out of the country on an assignment—tracking her down wasn’t proving to be easy. If he didn’t get in touch with her soon, he’d have to notify the fiancé. They always notified the next of kin first, but when the next of kin wasn’t reachable.… It looked like he’d have to call the fiancé.

Fuck, he hated this part of the job. Hated when he had to shatter a life like this. Although he’d never had anything like this. Never. Violent deaths, yes. But to this degree … no. Never anything so brutal, so violent … and they had no suspect. No suspect, no possible suspects. No fibers. No prints. No fluids.

It was like a ghost had left that body at Reilly’s place.

A ghost.

Or a cop …

Somebody who knew an awful lot about cleaning up a body, that was for sure. But then again, anybody with access to cable or the Internet could learn all sorts of shit about forensics these days.

“… so?”

Scowling, Nielson looked up at Prather. “Look, there is no way in hell I could possibly make an arrest on Reilly stick, assuming I even thought he was guilty, which I don’t. Now if you have something other than this to talk about, please do. If not?”

“Maybe it’s a team thing,” Prather suggested, narrowing his eyes.

“A team thing?” Jennings echoed, lifting a brow, a smile quivering at the corners of his mouth.

Yeah. Jennings might find this all amusing. Nielson didn’t. “For fuck’s sake,” he snarled, hurling his pen down on his desk and rising. Glaring at Prather across the desk, he leaned forward. “Have you seen the woman he’s got staying at his house? Let’s assume, just for the hell of it, that he is some sort of psycho killer. Do you really think he’s stupid enough to orchestrate some murder when he’s got a woman staying at his place? He’d want privacy, Prather. Get that? Privacy.”

“He’s an arrogant bastard. Could do that to avert suspicion.”

“Get out of my office, Prather. Now.”

Dropping back behind his desk, he kept his attention focused on it as he waited for the sound of the slamming door. Fifteen seconds later, it came. He looked up and met Keith’s gaze.

“That man causes more trouble every damn day.”

Keith opened his mouth, then closed it.

Nielson lifted a brow. “Yes?”

“You stating a fact or asking my opinion?”

“Technically, I shouldn’t do either.” Sighing, he rubbed his hands over his face. “This whole mess has my head so screwed up.”

“It should. This isn’t supposed to be easy on us, is it?” Keith mused.

“No. No, it’s not.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and then focused on Keith once more. “You think there’s any merit to what Prather was rambling about?”

Just how honest could he be here? Keith wondered. Rising, he absently linked his hands behind his back. Years out of the military and still, those habits were ingrained. “May I be completely honest, Sheriff?”

“If I didn’t want your honest opinion, I wouldn’t have asked for it,” Nielson pointed out.

“It’s my honest opinion that Prather wouldn’t have an idea with merit unless somebody picked it out for him, wrapped it up, and presented it to him with a big, shiny bow.”

For a moment, Nielson stared at him. Then he started to chuckle. “You’re probably right about that. Shit.” He looked back at the reports on his desk and sighed. “This is such a damn mess.”

“That it is.” Keith shifted his gaze to the board standing in the corner, his attention focused on the victim’s face. She’d been pretty. Happy. She’d had her whole life spread out before her. All that bright hope … ended.

“Such a damn tragedy,” Nielson muttered.

Keith looked over and saw that Nielson was studying the victim’s face as well. “Yes,” Keith said softly. “A waste.”

Abruptly, Nielson sighed and looked back down at the reports on his desk. “I need to go over these again. There’s got to be something I’m missing.”

“If you’ll let me see the coroner’s report, I’ll go through it again.”

Silence fell, finally broken by a grunt from Nielson. “Yeah. You do that. I need to shoot off an e-mail.”

Nielson reckoned something in his tone alerted Jennings.

“An e-mail.”

“Yeah.” He swallowed and glanced at the board, at Jolene’s pretty, smiling face … and the ruin next to it. “It’s her next of kin. The lady is out of the country. I finally got a way to contact her.”

Jennings grimaced. “Hell.”

Made sense, in Prather’s mind. But what he needed was proof.

Clean. Too clean.

Almost like a cop was in on it … A cop.

As he stomped down the street, he tossed that idea around in his mind.

Yeah. Maybe. Maybe that was it. They alibied each other. Stupid city fucker knew how to clean things up, after all.

Proof. Needed to get proof.

Only one way to do that, though, since Nielson wasn’t listening to reason.

“The hell you are.”

Hope glared at Law over the box packed with envelopes and books. “You told me you were hiring me to do a job. That’s what I’m trying to do. Some of these packages have been sitting around so long, they’ve got dust on them.”

“So what?”

Hope tried to ignore the itchy, crawling sensation dancing along her spine. “I’m just driving into Lexington. I’ll be gone long enough to find a UPS store and a Target. I need some clothes.”

“Fine.” He gave his desk a disgusted look and started rummaging around for his keys. “I’ll come.”

“No.” Pivoting away, Hope hooked her hands behind her neck and said, “Law, you know I love you, right? You know I wouldn’t say anything to hurt you … intentionally. Right?”

He remained silent. Shooting him a narrow look over her shoulder, she said, “I’m suffocating and if I don’t get a little bit of breathing room, I’m going to have a breakdown.” She wasn’t exaggerating, either. Earlier, she’d tried to turn the doorknob to get out of the bathroom, and she couldn’t get it open—she’d forgotten she’d locked it. She’d started to panic—
locked in, locked in, locked in—

Even the memory of it was enough to have panic trying to creep in and she had to throttle it into submission, beat it down before she turned to look at him. “I’m fine,” she said. “I am. But I need to get out of this house … for just a while.”

“It’s not safe.”

“Law, nobody is after me.”

“We don’t know that!” he shouted.

She flinched and when the self-disgust glared in his eyes, she could have kicked herself. “Don’t we?” Slicking her hands down the front of her worn jeans, she said, “Don’t tell me you haven’t already had somebody check up on Joey. I won’t believe it.”

He said nothing. Neither did he look away. The truth was there, in those uncompromising hazel eyes. With a faint smile, she said, “It’s not him. If Joey wanted to get to me, he’d come after me. Not some woman I didn’t know. And other than you, nobody here knows me.”

“Psychotics don’t always target people they know,” Law pointed out.

“And do you really think he’s going to come after me in broad daylight? I’ll be gone two or three hours, Law.” Her hands were starting to shake, she realized. Shaking, sweating … closing them into fists, she sank her nails into her skin, hoping that mild, minor pain might clear her head.

“Part of the reason why I left him was because I was tired of being afraid all the time. Tired of feeling trapped—” tired of being trapped. “If I let something like this cage me again, then it was all for nothing, Law.”

She swallowed the knot in her throat. “I can’t live like that. I can’t go back to that … that thing he made me into. I can’t.”

“And just letting me tag along, what does that hurt?”

“You’ve always made it so easy to lean on you, Law.” Blowing out a sigh, she looked up at him. “And right
now, I want that. I want it too much, which means I can’t let myself do it. I spent the past two years standing on my own. I’ve come too far and I won’t let some monster take this away from me. Not now.”

“Hope …” Something sad, dark moved through his eyes.

“Don’t.” Shaking her head, she held his gaze. If he kept pushing, she’d give in, and she’d hate herself. She had to do this, had to make herself be strong. It was getting too easy to lean on him, too hard to fight the need to do it. If she couldn’t make herself stay strong around him, then she wasn’t going to be able to stay here.

She studied the box in front of her and then looked at him. “Come on, use that brain of yours. Is it really very likely somebody’s going to try to hurt me? Nobody knows me. I don’t know anybody.”

Law reached up and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Shit. This is insane. I am not doing this, not thinking this.”

“Three hours. I just need three hours.”

He snorted. “You expect me to believe you’ll be there and back in three hours? You did mention a Target, right? The word shopping?”

“I’m not the clotheshorse some people are.” She shrugged. “I just need a few things.”

He rested a fist on the box sitting on his desk. “Anything happens to you, I’m going to be really pissed off.”

“Me, too.” Eyeing the box on his desk, she said, “How much money is that going to cost?”

Law shrugged and unearthed a wallet from somewhere. The man had already made his desk a disaster zone again. Hell, he was a disaster zone. He pushed a few twenties into her hand and said, “That ought to cover it.”

The box was addressed to his agent. Sealed inside were padded mailers, smaller boxes, and envelopes. When asked about that peculiarity, he’d shrugged and said, “People
can look at postmarks. My luck, somebody from here would win a book and put two and two together. This way, she mails them out—they’re postmarked from New York and I’m happy with my little paranoias.”

As long as he was happy with his paranoias …

“You’re sure you can find your way around okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine.” She had to get out of here, and as much as she loved him, even as much as she was tempted to lean on him, take comfort in how solid and steady he’d always been, she needed a breather from Law. She adored the man, but ever since … that night, she couldn’t go fifteen feet without him poking his head out of his office to check on her. He wouldn’t leave the house without her, and the few times they’d left the house together, it hadn’t been pleasant.

Half the town had painted him a murderer in their minds.

Many of the others were all eaten up with curiosity for gory details.

People, Hope had realized, were sick.

Despite her best intentions, she found herself drawn to the window, staring out at the workshop where the woman’s body had been discovered.

It was still off-limits, but it didn’t matter. Hope didn’t ever want to go in there. Ever.

She should be terrified, she realized.

And she was uneasy. Her gut churned and twisted and every second she stood staring at the workshop, it got worse.

But the thought of leaving Law’s, where she felt safe, didn’t turn her into a tangle of nerves and terror. It should. Once she found a safety zone, she didn’t leave it easily and even finding some place where she felt safe didn’t mean she wasn’t cringing in fear inside.

It was because she was away from Clinton, she figured. Away from Joey.

And she had done that. After all the times he’d told her …

“Earth to Hope.”

Blinking, she looked at Law and smiled. “Sorry, I was just thinking.” Then she forced a smile when she saw the concern in his eyes.

“You know, the longer I think about this, the less I like the idea.” He had a grim look in his eyes, his mouth a straight, solid line.

He wasn’t sleeping. Even if she didn’t hear him pacing the floor at night, she would have recognized the signs of it on his face, in the dark shadows under his eyes, the tense set of his shoulders.

“I’m fine,” she said, trying to put a little bit of force in her voice.

Circling around the desk, she leaned her hips against it and crossed her arms over her chest. “Law, you’ve got to quit beating yourself up over me.”

“Can’t.” He caught a lock of her hair and tucked it behind her ear. “If I hadn’t waited so long …”

He wasn’t talking about what had happened here recently, she knew. Sighing, she caught his hand and squeezed it. “Don’t. Okay? Just don’t. The ifs here belong to me. Only me. If I had listened to my gut the first year, and left then, things would be different. If I had told you there were problems when you first started getting worried, things would be different. There are a lot of ifs, but I was the only one who could make something change. Me, Law. Not you.”