If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense

behind him.
    “So I guess you don’t much like being in there, huh?”
    “No.” He sighed, absently rotated his neck, reaching up to rub it. “I’ve thought about locking the door and then just throwing the key away, but that seems a little extreme. It’s just a damn room.”
    He shoved a hand through his hair. “Come on. We’re going back up to the attic.”
    “Fun, fun …” She stepped aside and gestured to him. “I’ll let you lead the way. And I’ll think about you being commando under those jeans.”
    Once they were back up in the attic, it took exactly four minutes to locate the maps.
    They all but overflowed the top two drawers of one filing cabinet. He had six of them, all lined up against the far wall. Eyeing them with a curious gaze, she looked at Law. “You a packrat or what?” she asked as he handed her a thick binder. He grabbed another one before sliding the cabinet closed.
    “Nah. Well, not exactly. This is just stuff I either need to keep for a while or stuff I’ll end up using.”
    Nia snorted and looked pointedly at the six filing cabinets. “Exactly what would you need to keep that could fill six file cabinets? It sure as hell can’t be your taxes.”
    “You haven’t seen my damn tax return,” he muttered. Then he sneezed. “Come on. We’ll look at these downstairs. Too much dust up here.”
    Trailing along behind him, she flipped open the binder, eyeing the plastic page holders, labeled and stuffed with maps. “Somehow I don’t think you’re the one behind this organization here,” she said.
    Law just grunted.
    “You had Hope do all of this? Hell, Law, how lazy are you? And why is Hope the one organizing this shit for you?”
    “Because that’s what I pay her for,” he replied.
    “You
pay
her to organize your junk? Why don’t you just throw it out?”
    “I pay her because that’s her job.” He shot her a narrow look over his shoulder. “I can’t toss it out—I’ll probably need it at some point, or I
could
need it.”
    “What do you mean you could need it?” She studied one of the maps—she knew this one pretty well, actually. It was a map of Colonial Williamsburg. “Just what use could you have for a map of Colonial Williamsburg?”
    He headed into the living room and flopped onto the couch, hunching his shoulders a little as he muttered something too low for her to hear.
    “What?”
    “Research.” He snapped the binder closed and dumped it on the table. Leaning forward, he looked at her, his mouth twisted in something not really a scowl, but not a smile, either.
    If Nia didn’t know better, she’d think he looked uncomfortable.
    “Research?” she echoed. She flipped through the binder. It looked like she had the back half of the alphabet, as far as states went. There were maps for Texas, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico, West Virginia,Virginia, Washington—state and the District of Columbia. “Okay, so are you a travel agent in training or what?”
    The look in his eyes was flat, emotionless, but she still had the weirdest feeling he was uncomfortable.
Very
uncomfortable. “No, I’m not a travel agent,” he said.
    “Okay. So what are you?”
    He grimaced. “I’m a writer.”
    “A writer.”
    “Yeah. Books. I write books. I pick up things like maps and stuff when I travel in case I decide to base a book somewhere, because I can’t remember the details when I need to remember the details.” He shifted again, still with that vaguely uncomfortable look on his face.
    “Okay?”
    “A writer.”
    “Yeah.” He reached for the binder again, focusing on it like it held the answers to the universe and beyond.
    Nia looked around the cluttered living room/office, eyeing the haphazard pile of new books stacked against one wall. New books. All by the same author. She’d noticed it the other day, vaguely, but she’d been so focused on Law, she hadn’t paid it that much attention.
    Now her eyes zeroed in on the name and she looked back at Law, then at the books.
    “Law Reilly,” she muttered, shaking her head.
    The books had a different name on them … but not so different from his legal name, which she’d looked up back when she was still checking out details on everybody she could think of who might have a connection to her cousin.
    Law … short for Lawson.
    Edward Lawson Reilly
.
    Ed O’Reilly
.
    “Holy shit—you’re Ed O’Reilly?”
    Those lean shoulders hunched even more and if shewasn’t mistaken, the tops of his