If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense

Hope can come over. You come over. Remy can stay here with Lena and Hope, we’ll go into the woods with Nia and look around, see if we can find anything.”
    Law blew out a breath and slid his gaze to Nia. She stood there, arms crossed over her chest, legs planted wide, a mutinous look in her eyes.
    “Fuck.”
    He could see the sense in Ezra’s plans. Could see it rather well.
    But seeing it, and talking that sense into Nia? Two different things.
    He disconnected without saying anything else and looked at Nia. She was already shaking her head. “Don’t even try to talk me out of going out there, Reilly. It ain’t happening.”
    “I’m not going to try to talk you out of going—I just want you to
wait
,” he said. “Until tomorrow.”
    “Wait.” Still shaking her head, she backed away from him, wisely keeping some distance between them. “You want me to wait. How long am I supposed to keep waiting, damn it?”
    “Twenty-four fucking hours,” he snapped. “Less. Look, it’s already close to five. In another few hours, itwill be getting dark and it gets darker earlier in the woods. We’d have a couple of hours—that’s not much and those woods cover several hundred acres.”
    “You’ve got a damn map!” she shouted.
    “Yeah, one that’s older than dirt and it’s not like they were exactly using GPS back when it was drawn.” Softening his voice, he shook his head and said, “Nia, it’s one day. Less. Plus, this way, Ezra is with us, and he’ll be able to have somebody there with Lena, too. Assuming there
is
somebody out there who we need to worry about, and I think there is, he can’t leave her unprotected.”
    Nia opened her mouth, only to snap it closed. She groaned and covered her eyes, leaning back against the wall. “Why would he think she’d be in trouble?”
    “Everything here all goes back to her,” Law said quietly. “I know, for you, it started with your cousin, but the crazy shit that started in this town, everything went insane the night she made that call about the screams. If it
was
your cousin, and if the killer is still alive … hell, Lena is the one who started the ball rolling on him—his problems started with
her
. He wouldn’t have to be insane to get pissed off at her and we already know he’s a sick fuck, right?”
    He stared past her, toward the wall, but it wasn’t the wall he was seeing.
    He was remembering a night. Hell, he still didn’t have his memories of that night. Not much more than seeing Hope’s face—the fear in her eyes right before he’d turned around … then nothing. His next memory was the agony, then waking in the hospital.
    They’d all assumed it had been Joe.
    But lately, Law was starting to wonder. Starting to wonder about
everything
. Had it been Joe? Somebody else?
    Shit.
    He didn’t know what crimes he could pin at the dead bastard’s feet and what crimes were actually the handiwork of a different, and possibly more dangerous, bastard.
    Absently he flexed his arm, the remembered pain sneaking up out of nowhere, even though the actual pain had long since faded. Hearing the floorboards creak, he shifted his gaze to Nia’s face. For a second, he thought about keeping his admittedly paranoid thoughts to himself. But then he decided against it. If it made her think twice? Great. Of course, not that it mattered. He really didn’t give a flying fuck if it pissed her off. She wasn’t going gallivanting off into those woods tonight. He didn’t care if he had to have Ezra arrest her cute ass.
    “You know, lately, you’re making me question all sorts of things,” he said, spreading the fingers of his right hand wide, rotating his wrist and listening to the bones pop. He didn’t look at her as he spoke—he studied his arm, the scars from the surgery that had been done to set the bones. “Shit like what really happened the night my arm was busted up—the night Hope was attacked. At first, people were thinking
she
did it.”
    He looked up at Nia’s harsh intake of breath, smirking at the disbelieving look in her eyes. “I guess you didn’t find that bit of information while you were digging around, huh? Yeah, that was the story first floating around. People were assuming she’d lost her mind, attacked me, then slit her wrists.”
    “That’s bullshit,” Nia said, her voice flat. “Who in the hell would think that?”
    Law shrugged. “Well, at first, a lot of people. Even Remy had to consider it because it had been set