If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense

Indiana.
    Eleven-year difference. Would that count as an older dude? Then she sighed. Didn’t matter. He was alibied. And why did it even matter?
    But she couldn’t stop reading.
    She read through the medical examiner’s report, her head pounding, her heart racing.
    One line caught her eye. She found herself stumbling over it. Again. And again. Even as her mind tried to process it, Nia found herself seeing her cousin. Lying on a slab … just like Kathleen. Her hair … shorter than Nia remembered. A lot shorter.
    Nia hadn’t thought much of it. Not then.
    But now … Her breath hitched in her chest, right next to that burning ache. Swallowing, she rubbed her eyes and made herself read it one more time. Kathleen Hughes’s hair had been cut sometime that night. Not completely—just a section toward the front, a six-inch-long section.
    Her hand shook as she reached for her cell phone.
    It took three tries to actually get her hands to cooperate long enough to call Bryson. Before her cousin died, Bryson had been Joely’s fiancé, and a casual friend of Nia’s. The two of them had tried to keep in touch for a while, but both Nia and Bryson had finally realized their memories were too painful.
    Needless to say, he wasn’t pleased to have her on the phone. “Nia … it’s late.”
    She glanced at the clock, winced when she saw it was past eleven.
    “Sorry. This won’t take long. I just … ah, well. I had a question. Had Joely gotten her hair cut recently?”
    “Her hair? What?”
    “Yeah. A haircut. Had she gotten it cut before she … ah … died?”
    He sighed. “No. She hadn’t. She wanted it long for the wedding—something …” His voice half broke. “Shit. No. I don’t know what the hell this is about, but she hadn’t gotten her fucking hair cut.”
    “Okay. Thank you.”
    He hung up without saying another word.
    Nia put her phone down and continued to stare at the report. This didn’t mean anything. She waited for that rational voice to murmur an agreement, waited for that voice to tell her to dump this file, just like she had dumped so many others.
    But for once, that voice was silent.
    Completely and utterly silent.
    The house was silent … completely and utterly silent, save for the slow, measured sound of Law Reilly’s breathing as he lifted the bar up, lowered it, lifted.
    Sweat rolled down his brow, along his arms. He ignored it, focusing on the weighted bar. Just like he ignored the trembling in his arms—especially in his right. That arm, still trying to heal from that bad break, didn’t seem as strong as it should be, and by the time he was done with the third set of reps, his muscles were quivering, all but begging for a rest.
    He ignored them, moved to the next set of exercises, and the next. It wasn’t until he’d worked his body into a numb state of exhaustion that he let himself leave the gym he’d set up in his basement. On his way down the hall, he passed by a closed door.
    Months ago, it had been his office.
    Now, it was nothing but unused space.
    Awhile back, he’d finally admitted the obvious and moved his books and everything else out of the room, turning his living room into his office. Wasn’t like he had a lot of company out here anyway.
    There was just no way he could work in that room again, that room where a man had died, slowly, painfully. Although the professional team had gotten the blood out of the floor, although he’d redecorated, even put down a new floor, he couldn’t look at the room without seeing it the way it had been that night. Without seeing the blood.
    Shit, there were days when he didn’t even want to live in this house—it wasn’t just the office, but the
house
. But Law wasn’t about to give in to that—wouldn’t let the bastard win that battle.
    He’d keep his damn house, but the office … no. He wasn’t fighting that one. He couldn’t stand to go in there—even though it no longer looked anything like it had looked all those months ago. Law still couldn’t look at that room without seeing blood.
    Without remembering how a guy he’d known in elementary school had killed a cop in there, then tried to kill Law, and Hope. Shit, there were days when he thought if he had any sense at all, he would tear this damn house down, build a new one.
    Screw tearing it down—burn it and salt the earth, make sure no demons from the past could rise to haunt them. Then he’d move to Fiji, buy a shack on the beach, and