If You Hear Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense (42 page)

“Then find the real evidence … not the bread crumbs some sick fuck spread out for you.”

Then he closed his eyes. He wasn’t tired, but he needed to rest. Needed to heal. He couldn’t walk out of here today—he’d barely made it to the bathroom. But one day soon—hopefully tomorrow, he would walk out of here.

As soon as he could, he was going to track down Remy Jennings and plant his fist in the bastard’s face.
Good thing he was almost as good with his left hand as he was with his right.

Trapped.

The door wasn’t locked, but she wasn’t fooled by that. She was trapped here.

Hope curled up on the bed, staring at the plain white walls and trying not to think.

As long as she didn’t think, Hope was mostly okay.

Lena had come by earlier, told her what the nurses wouldn’t.

Law was okay. He’d woken up and he was talking.

That was all that mattered, really.

Law was okay.

Two different shrinks had tried to talk to her, but Hope was tired of talking to shrinks.

She wasn’t crazy, was so tired of them trying to tell her she was. She’d lived through that already, and she was almost certain she’d rather die than do it again.

Almost.

But then she’d look at the healing, neatly stitched wounds on her wrists and fury would take over.

A lie. Those wounds were a lie.

She hadn’t done that. No matter what the doctors told her, no matter what anybody said, she hadn’t done it. Somebody had done that to her.

Law.

No. Can’t think about him …

But she couldn’t stop herself.

She needed to think about him. Needed to talk to him, needed to tell him. There was something important. But it was so hard to think … all that crap they kept giving her. Every time she thought she’d be able to think again, they showed up again … and oh, shit …

The door opened.

Deep inside, something wild started to shudder. Shake.

It was the nurse again. And she had two of the male nursing assistants with her.

Drugs.

They were going to drug her again.

Hope drew her legs close to her chest, told herself not to fight. The more she fought, the crazier they thought she was, and the more they’d do this.

But instinct took over when she saw that needle and she couldn’t stop it. Swearing, she lashed out with a foot and hot satisfaction rolled through her when she managed to kick one of the nursing assistants right between the legs.

Remy stood in the door. For a few seconds, he couldn’t think. Then, finally, fury had his leaden muscles moving and he strode forward.

“What in the hell are you doing?” he snarled, glaring at the nurse.

“Sir, you’ll have to wait in the hallway.”

“I don’t think so. What are you doing?”

Two men, wearing stark white scrubs, stood on either side of the bed, holding Hope Carson pinned. One held her arms just above the healing wounds at her wrists. The other held her knees.

“We need to administer her medication,” the nurse said. “Unfortunately, she’s resistant.”

“She’s allowed to resist,” Remy snapped. “Unless somebody has power of attorney and insists she’s to be medicated whether she wants it or not. You can’t make her take the drugs if she doesn’t want them.”

He waited a beat and then coolly asked, “Does somebody have power of attorney?”

“It’s for her own good. Without the medication, she becomes agitated, irrational … dangerous.”

Remy smiled. “Dangerous. I’ve been outside at the
nurse’s station for the past thirty minutes on a call and I haven’t heard a sound from this room. How dangerous can she be?” He looked at the nursing assistants and then at the nurse. “She was perfectly fine until the three of you stepped in here.”

Moving around, he stopped at the foot of the bed. “Let her go,” he said, his voice flat and hard.

“She’s a violent criminal,” the nurse snapped.

Hell. Were these people blind? he wondered. The woman lying handcuffed in the bed was terrified, and she’d fight when she was cornered, but a violent criminal? Shit. Again, he said, “Let. Her. Go.”

The assistants slowly removed their hands and Remy studied Hope’s face. She blinked. Those pale green eyes were clouded. Hell. How much crap had they pumped into her system? “Do you know where you are?” he asked softly.

The nurse snapped, “She won’t talk. She hasn’t talked to anybody since they brought her to the unit.”

Hope curled her lip and gave the nurse a look of such withering disgust that Remy had to hide a smile. Then she looked at him and swallowed. “Yes,” she said, her voice raspy and rough. “I know where I am.”

“Do you know why?”

Her lashes drooped low over her eyes and she sighed, her narrow shoulders rising and falling. “I don’t want to talk to you.” She glanced at his face and then lay down, drawing the blanket over her shoulders. “I don’t want to talk to anybody.”

“Fair enough. But I do want you to answer this question, and it’s important. Do you want any more medication? To keep you calm? For your own good?”

Hope sat up and this time, though her eyes were still clouded, they snapped with fury. “I don’t need medicine. If they wouldn’t keep sticking me with needles, they wouldn’t need to worry about calming me down, either.
No, to answer your question, I don’t want any more medication.”

Then she shot the nurse a look of pure, undiluted disgust. “Irrational. I wonder how fucking rational you would be if you were put in a psych ward for no fucking reason and had some nurse pumping you full of drugs you didn’t need. How fucking rational you would be if people were calling you a violent criminal. What in the hell ever happened to innocent until proven guilty?”

“You haven’t been proven guilty of any crimes,” Remy said, although he knew that wasn’t going to make any difference to her.

In the eyes of some people in this town, she was guilty.

Her pale green eyes went cold as ice. “So this is how you treat everybody who gets assaulted in this town,” she said, her voice thick with sarcasm. “Lovely.”

She reached up and rubbed absently at one of her arms. Remy scowled when he saw the multiple, mottled bruises there. Bruises in the shape of hands. Fuck, how often had they been drugging her? Why had they been drugging her?

Because of what had happened to Law? Or was it something else? He didn’t know and just then, he didn’t care.

He only knew two things—none of this fit and she had bruises on her.

Those bruises really pissed him off.

Focus—he needed to focus.

He shoved all of that out of his mind and looked up, staring at the nurse, who was still there, holding that damned syringe in her hand. “Why don’t we step outside?” he suggested softly.

Reaction settled in and left Hope shaking. Grabbing the blankets, she hauled them up and huddled under them like a rabbit. Staring out the narrow window, she
wished she could just fade away, fade away and disappear. Forever.

But she knew she couldn’t.

She might have escaped another forced dose of some sedative, but this wasn’t done.

That was the lawyer.

Remy Jennings.

She remembered him.

He was probably here to get her to say something, make it easier for them to arrest her.

“I
S THERE ANYTHING LEFT
?”

A cool breeze kicked up, blowing her hair back from her face. She could smell the scent of wet, charred wood, grass, and the coming promise of fall.

Next to her, Ezra sighed. “The frame of the house, walls. That sort of thing. Sure as hell doesn’t look like much of anything can be saved.”

She caught his hand and squeezed. “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.” He laced his fingers with hers.

“It was a waste of time, wasn’t it?”

“What?”

She lifted a shoulder, shrugging. “Well, if whoever did this had anything to do with that woman, if they burned this place down, thinking that would make you leave, it was a waste of time. You’re not going to leave as easy as that, right?”

Ezra chuckled. It was a hoarse, rusty sound. “Hell, no, I’m not leaving. Guess I’m going to have to look for a place to rent, though.”

“You got the money for that?”

After a brief pause, he said, “Yeah. I’m good on that front. My grandmother … well, let’s just say she hid it well, but she knew how to play with money.”

She wasn’t even aware the fear had been there until it loosened inside her heart. Wasn’t aware she’d had the fear until it seeped away. He wasn’t leaving. Closing her eyes, she leaned against his arm. It felt good, she realized. Leaning on somebody. Leaning on him.

Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing, to lean on somebody. Maybe he’d even lean on her every now and then.

Tired, Lena whispered, “Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t woken up that night. Would any of this have happened?”

Ezra pulled her in front of him, cupped her face. When he stroked one thumb over her lower lip, she sighed and shivered. “Well, I know one thing that might not have happened,” he said quietly. He dipped his head and brushed his mouth against hers.

“This.” He nibbled on her lower lip and then lifted his head a little. With his brow pressed to hers, he said, “Seeing you at the sheriff’s office made me open my eyes. Maybe I would have done it sooner or later anyway, maybe not. But I’m not sorry I saw you there and I wouldn’t have seen you there if you had slept the night through.”

Then he straightened. With strong, steady strokes, he moved his hands down, rubbing them down her arms, then back up. “Besides, if you waking up that night is what is bringing all this on, then it’s a good thing. Sooner or later, he’s going to screw up—that’s how he’ll be caught. And stopped. Keep that in mind when you start getting mad, frustrated, or scared.”

“Mad. Frustrated. Scared.” She slid her arms around his waist and pressed close. “That pretty much describes my state of mind at any given time anymore.”

In a low, heated voice, she added, “I fucking hate it. All this shit, it’s in my head almost all the time and I can’t turn it off, can’t stop it, and it’s driving me nuts.”

Her voice cracked as she whispered, “Damn it, Ezra.
What is this? What else is going to happen? Your house. Prather—hell, he was an ass but I didn’t want him dead. Law almost gets beaten to death. Hope’s locked up like some lunatic on the crazy floor at the county hospital and they’re talking like Remy might have to arrest her. I just don’t get it. I don’t understand any of it.”

“Lena.” He closed his eyes. Shit. Blowing out a breath, he eased back and cupped her face in his hands. Stroking his thumb over the full curve of her lower lip, he murmured, “I don’t know what’s going on with Law or Hope, but … well, what happened here, it’s not related to anything else, I don’t think. I can’t prove it, but I’m almost positive.”

Her brow puckered. “What do you mean?”

“Just call it instinct. I can’t say anything else about it until I know, but I don’t think the fire is related to what happened at Law’s house. None of it.”

“But …”

Dipping his head, he bussed her mouth. “Stop,” he whispered against her lips. “You’ve got enough on your mind right now. Just stop worrying about the house. It’s just a house, anyway.”

She rested her hands on his chest, stroked upward. Resting one hand on his cheek, she shook her head. “It wasn’t just a house to you, Ezra. It was your grandma’s house. Don’t tell me that didn’t mean something to you. You might not talk about this place much, but I hear your voice when you talk about her. She meant a lot to you.”

“Yeah. She did. And she’d be glad that nobody was hurt, before anything else,” Ezra said, turning his face to her palm and kissing it. He couldn’t deny the ache in his chest, though. Looking up, he studied the rubble and what little remained of the house his grandma had been so proud of. The important stuff, like his grandma’s quilts, her wedding picture, those things had been given to his mother or aunts. Thank God.

The house itself, yeah, it had meant something and he was madder than hell over the destruction of the pretty old house.

But as he stood there with Lena in his arms, he found himself thinking about Hope and Law.

Hell, what if Nielson hadn’t had that weird instinct to check on Hope and Law? Either of them, both of them might be dead.

What if he’d left Lena at the house when he went to investigate the fire?

What if the bastard had gone to Lena’s house instead of over to Law’s?

It might have been Lena lying in a pool of blood.

Involuntarily, he tightened his arms. Raggedly, he whispered, “Shit, Lena. I don’t think I ever want to do without you in my life, you know that?”

It just wasn’t thinkable.

Not anymore.

How had this happened?

So quick.

So strong.

So certain.

Lifting his head, he cupped her chin and guided her face up. “Ever,” he muttered.

She sighed against his mouth as he kissed her and when she twined her arms around his neck, aligned her body to his, his heart stuttered, skipped a few beats.

She already mattered so much.

Meant so much.