If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense

days.”
    “It looks like it.” He gestured with his head off to the side. “You’ve been standing in the middle of the hall for the past five minutes. Can I help you find where you’re going?”
    Nia pressed the heel of her hand against her temple. Shit.
    The ache in her chest spread.
    Ash—she needed to get to Ash, wherever in the hell that was.
    But if she was standing around like a zombie in the middle of an airport, the last thing she needed to do was get behind the wheel of a car. Reality breathed its icy cold breath down her spine and she sighed. “I guess I’m heading outside to catch a cab to a hotel,” she finally said.
    Getting to Ash would have to wait until morning.
    She loathed the idea, but her pragmatic side was strong, even in grief. As exhausted as she was, it would be suicide to get behind the wheel of a car and she knewit. As desperate as she was to get to Ash, she had some damn strong inner demons.
    Besides, maybe she’d luck out … she’d go to sleep and wake up, realize this was nothing but one awful, horrid nightmare.
    The conversation with Detective Joseph Carson was still ringing through Remy’s mind hours later as he tossed and turned on his bed, trying to sleep.
    Settling down
wasn’t happening, though. It was past midnight when he finally slept.
    There were nights when he hit the mattress and sleep fell on him like a stone. As one of the two district attorneys in the small county of Carrington, Kentucky, he had helped put away meth dealers, a couple of child molesters and rapists, more than a few drunk drivers, and several wife beaters, and he routinely dealt with petty theft.
    Even in his small, mostly rural county, crime wasn’t nonexistent.
    He enjoyed what he did.
    But tonight, sleep didn’t come easy. Hell, screw
easy
—it didn’t want to come at
all
.
    Every time he closed his eyes, he thought of a green-eyed brunette and he thought about what he had to do in the morning.
    It wasn’t a job he wanted to do.
    It was a job he’d give just about anything to
not
do.
    But he hadn’t taken this job just so he could walk away from the hard ones.
    All the facts pointed to one thing: Hope Carson was a violent, disturbed woman.
    His gut screamed
Screw the facts
. But he couldn’t ignore what he saw, couldn’t ignore the evidence, couldn’t ignore what he’d been told and what he’d learned.
    His job was clear.
    And his job, sometimes, sucked.
    It was well past midnight when he finally fell into a restless sleep, and into even more restless dreams.
    Nightmares.
    Dreams where he saw her as he’d seen her that night in the emergency room. Covered in blood.
    Pale.
    A disembodied voice whispering,
You did this …
    “
No, I didn’t. No, I didn’t,”
Hope said, her voice shaking, but sure.
    Remy stood there, horrified. All he wanted to do was pull her into his arms, take her away from this, away from all of it. But then Nielson, the sheriff, was there, pushing a pair of handcuffs into his hand.
    “
You want us to arrest her? Fine. You do it
.”
    But that wasn’t Remy’s job—he wasn’t a fucking cop. He didn’t arrest people. He got warrants. He prosecuted.
    “Yeah, you make us get our hands dirty. But you want her arrested, you do it yourself
.”
    And that was what he did. Remy put cuffs on wrists that seemed too slender, too fragile for such a burden.
    Remy was the one who led her to a cell.
    And when he opened the door, she walked silently inside. But he saw it in her eyes.
    I didn’t do this
.
    As he turned away, the screams started. Endless, agonized screams. But he didn’t know if they were hers … or his own.
    That was how he came awake.
    With the sound of screams echoing in his ears.
    “
Shit
,” he muttered, jerking upright in bed, fighting the sheets and blankets that had become ropes around his waist.
    With his breath sawing raggedly in and out of his lungs, he sat on the edge of the bed and stared off into nothingness. His gut was a raw, ragged pit and his headthrobbed like it hadn’t since his college days. Back then, he had thought he could get by on naps and caffeine.
    In a few hours, he was supposed to meet the sheriff at the hospital.
    Hope Carson was being arrested today, and there wasn’t a damn thing Remy could do about it. That woman had the ability to turn him into knots just by looking at him. No other woman had ever done that to him. Not a one. Shit. This was a mess.
    Not that she knew.
    Nobody knew, thank God.
    At least