If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense

was back here. Whetheror not she’d stay for long, Nia didn’t know. But the trouble had started here, so this was where she would start.
    For now.
    This was … unexpected.
    He watched from the café as she rode into town. He’d seen her before. But the last time she’d been in town had been months ago … not long before things had come to a head.
    Everything was over now. Why was she here? Why now?
    For reasons that he couldn’t really understand, the sight of her had him … twitchy.
    “One hell of a bike, huh?”
    He glanced over as a couple of deputies came out. Giving them a smile, he shrugged and said, “I guess. I don’t know much about motorcycles.”
    “I bet it would be a hell of a ride,” Ethan Sheffield said, a wide, wicked grin on his face. “The bike. The babe.”
    Kent Jennings, a member of the city’s finest, smacked Ethan in the back of the head. “Your wife would kill you—over the bike
and
the babe. And you wouldn’t consider either of them—you’re too damn whipped.”
    “Yeah. But I can think … right?”
    Joking with the rest of them, he still watched her, watched as she pulled up in front of the sheriff’s office … watched.
    Wondered.
    “Okay, Joely … I’m trying,” she muttered, climbing off her bike and staring up at the courthouse.
    Nia could all but feel the eyes crawling all over her as she started toward the sheriff’s office. She knew she wouldn’t find Dwight Nielson in there. She’d attendedhis funeral, although she’d kept to the back and left without speaking to a soul.
    What she’d known of the guy, she had liked. It bothered her that the guy who had killed her cousin had cut such a wide swath of death. A sheriff, a deputy, her cousin … and he’d almost killed Hope Carson, as well. If it wasn’t for the sheriff, Hope would have died, too, probably.
    Hope had survived, though. She’d survived and because of the sheriff, the son of a bitch Carson was dead in the ground.
    Still, it just didn’t sit right. Nia just couldn’t buy it.
    That
was why she was here.
    It didn’t matter that she didn’t belong here. It didn’t matter that they had told her that her cousin’s killer was dead. It didn’t matter that everybody else insisted that things fit—that it was over.
    It didn’t
fit
for her. Nia liked it when things fit into a certain order and for some reason, these things didn’t fit into the order they were supposed to fit, and
damn
it, she wasn’t going to get whatever closure she needed until those pieces fit.
    It was just … too easy, she guessed. Something that was too easy didn’t settle right with her.
    Besides that, her instincts were humming. Nia trusted her instincts. Even though right now, she knew it might be grief pushing her to cling to something … anything.
    But she didn’t think that was the case.
    As she started toward the sheriff’s office, something shivered down her spine and her instincts went from a hum to a scream. Casually, she reached into her hip pocket and tugged her iPhone, pulled it out. Pretending to study it, she lowered her head. Using the phone as camouflage, she looked around without moving her head, tried to isolate just where that feeling was coming from.
    Somebody was watching her. Staring at her
—hard
. She could all but feel the heavy intensity of that stare. But try as she might, she couldn’t figure out where it was coming from.
    “Sheriff.”
    Ezra still had to fight the urge to flinch when she said it in that tone of voice. He kept expecting Ms. Tuttle to throw him out on his ass for being an impostor. And honestly, he felt like one.
    Plastering what was most likely a very false-looking smile on his face, he met her bright, impossibly vivid green eyes and said, “Good morning, Ms. Tuttle. How are you doing?”
    “Not running late, as you obviously were.”
    A dull red blush crept up his cheeks—he hadn’t been late.
    His hours were typically from eight in the morning until five and he had been in this damn seat by 7:53. Normally, he was here at 7:30, the same time as Ms. Tuttle, because she terrified him. But that morning … well, Lena had slipped into the shower with him. He had lost track of time.
    Without looking away, he said, “I was attending to an important personal matter.”
    For a split second, he thought he saw what might have been a smile tugging at her stern mouth. But then it was gone—gone before he could be sure. “Hmph. I’m sure you were.