If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense

wasted too much already.
    As they pushed through the front door, Remy snarled, “You don’t have any fucking right interrogating Roz’s staff.”
    “I didn’t interrogate her. She blurted it out,” Ezra said shortly. “Now yank your head out of your ass. You’re convinced Carter didn’t do anything wrong—fine. Then prove it. I need to talk to him. Where is he likely to be?”
    Remy swore. Shoving a hand through his hair, he said, “His workshop.” He pointed off to the side. “It’s about a twenty-minute drive if you want to take the car—we have to cut through on backroads. Or we can take the path he takes—it’s about a ten-minute walk across their property.”
    “We walk.” Grimly, Ezra headed down the sidewalk. His leg was already aching and he hadn’t done a damn thing. It was going to be a bitch of a day—he already knew it.
    As they started down the path, he pulled out his phone and pulled up Lena’s number. She answered on the second ring. “Anything going on?” she demanded before he even managed to get a word out.
    “No.” He shot Remy a look, wondered how much he could say, how much he should say. “Everything okay over there?”
    “Oh, we’re just peachy keen.”
    The bite of sarcasm in her voice had him smiling. “When you talked to Roz this morning, did she say anything about going anywhere?”
    “No. And she wouldn’t be—too many shipments come in today,” Lena said.
    Hell
. “Okay. Everybody still there?”
    “Yes. Why were you asking about Roz?”
    “I was just wonder—”
    “Bullshit,” she bit off. “What’s wrong with Roz?”
    “I can’t say anything is wrong with her. I haven’t seen her.”
    Lena fell silent. Even though he couldn’t see her, he could all but feel her worry. “Do you think …?”
    “Don’t start the
what-if
game, baby,” Ezra said, sighing. “Just hang tight. If I hear anything, learn anything, I’ll call. And if
you
hear from her, call me.”
    “Okay.”
    “And keep everybody there. Don’t leave, okay?”
    “Yeah, yeah.” She paused briefly, then murmured, “I love you. You be careful.”
    “I love you, too, sweetheart.” As he disconnected the phone, he was all too aware that Remy was watching him—too aware, but he was already walking on a hair trigger himself. Getting into a pissing match with a man he considered a friend wasn’t going to help either of them right now. And Remy—hell, his life was about to get seriously unpleasant.
    Carter was a killer. Ezra knew it in his bones.
    “What’s this workshop for? He paints, right?”
    “No. Pottery.” Remy’s tone was level, measured, like he knew Ezra was carefully circling around the things Remy wanted to say. “Carter’s a potter. Does the pottery you see in Roz’s shop, in the bookstore on the square. Even gave you and Lena a platter at your wedding—the sign of a killer, for certain.”
    Ezra gave him a narrow look. “You’re right. Killers always look like killers. Jeffrey Dahmer looked so evil, didn’t he, Jennings?”
    Remy tensed, his muscles bunching.
    He could all but see the other man getting ready to lunge.
    Ezra stilled. “Don’t. We don’t have time for this shit—and I think, if you’d just take a few seconds and listen to your gut, you know I’m not just making this up. I
want
to be wrong, Remy. Like you wouldn’t believe. And if I
am
, I’m willing to deal with the fallout. But are you prepared to deal with what happens if
you
are wrong?”
    “Fuck you,” Remy snarled. Then he started to walk, moving down the gravel path at a fast pace, too fast.
    Ezra didn’t bother trying to keep up. Whether it was his own nerves or what, the muscles in his leg were already knotting up and he could just see it buckling under him, see himself flat on his ass. Not going to happen.
    Remy got to the workshop ahead of Ezra, leaning back against the door with a sour look on his face. “Surprise, surprise. The door is locked,” Remy said, sneering. “And Carter isn’t in there, because he’d be answering if he was.”
    Blowing out a breath, Ezra pushed Remy out of the way and peered through the narrow window in the door. It didn’t let him see much and most of what he could see, he didn’t recognize. Some benches, a huge metal thing hulking over in one corner—a kiln, maybe? There were smaller versions, too. Kilns, had to be. That’s what potters used, right?
    “Shit.”
    He backed away, reaching up to rub his neck.
Running around in