If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense

them.”
    “Damn it, Law,” she snapped. She reached out to shove at him, but instead, she rested her hands on his chest. Then, abruptly, her hands fisted in his shirt. A harsh sigh, too close to a sob, escaped her.
    “Hey …” Slipping an arm around her waist, he eased her up against him, pressed his lips to her brow. “It’s going to be okay, baby. I swear.”
    “How? How in the hell can you swear that?” She buried her face against his chest, her voice muffled. “Mycousin’s gone. We don’t know who is responsible. And he’s fucking around with me.”
    “He’s messing up, that’s what he’s doing,” Law said. He hugged her close, wished there was some way he could protect her from this. Assuming she’d even let him. Hell, he’d tried to protect her earlier and she’d spent the day pissed off at him—he could still feel that wall between them.
    Already she was trying to back away. And he couldn’t force her to stay there, either. Reluctantly, he let her go. She wasn’t pale now, and although her eyes were still a little off, she looked more pissed than anything. She stared through the door, but made no move to go inside.
    Her head tilted to the side and he watched as her eyes narrowed, watched as a flush settled over her cheeks. “He cut up my clothes,” she said quietly.
    Law tucked his hands into his pockets, rocked back onto his heels.
    She shifted her gaze his way and snarled, “He cut up my fucking clothes.”
    “Yeah.”
    Spinning away, she started to pace. “What the hell … I mean, shit. What the hell is he trying to do?”
    “I’d say he’s trying to run you off.”
    She stopped in midstep and looked at him. “What?”
    He shrugged. “Makes sense. I mean, think about it. He can’t risk coming after you, not if there’s a chance you’ve shared your concerns with the sheriff, and everybody knows you’ve talked to him a few times. First thing anybody would think is that there’s a connection. If you disappeared or got hurt …”
Or worse …
“It’s going to just make things look that much more suspicious.”
    Fuck. His gut was in knots just thinking about the
or worse
possibilities. What he’d seen in that underground cellar—the tools. The bloodied cot.
    The fucking saw—
    Shoving it aside, he focused on Nia’s face again. “Whoever this is, he’s smart enough to realize that it’s safer to just get you out of here. Trying to come after you is dangerous. So he wants to scare you. That’s what this is about.”
    “Scare me. He kills Joely and thinks cutting my clothes up is going to chase me off?” Nia shook her head.
    “Well, some people might be freaked out enough.” He chanced lifting a hand, touching it to her cheek. “But I doubt he’d planned on stopping with this. This was just another step. He’ll probably keep going.”
    “Except we found his place,” she said softly. “He’ll know about that now.”
    A cold chill ran down Law’s spine.
    “Yeah. He’ll know.” Grimly, he looked back at the cabin and then around the grounds. “Nia, staying alone, even with the deputies outside, it’s just not safe.”
    She was gritting her teeth. He could tell. Curling a hand over the back of her neck, he massaged the tense muscles there, half-expecting her to jerk away. “It will get worse after this, you know. It only makes sense. Once he finds out his place was found, he’ll get pissed or desperate or both.”
    “And coming after me does what? It’s not like I
know
anything.”
    “But you’ll be his focus. The problems started back up with you.”
    “Me …” She frowned and twisted her head around, looked at him. “This time. But is he going to focus on me, or Lena? Who really started the problem?”
    Law wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulled her back against him.
    She didn’t pull away. In fact, she snuggled closer, lifted her hands to curl around his forearm. Standing theretogether, they stared into the cabin, watching as the deputies continued to study the remains of her clothes.
    “It really will get worse now,” she said softly.
    “Probably.”
    It was late. So fucking late. All she wanted to do was lie down and sleep.
    Nia couldn’t, though. Not yet.
    It was like a burn on her brain, that driving need to know.
    He thought she was asleep. She’d let him think that, waited until he slid out of bed, knowing he’d probably shower—he liked to shower before he slept, one fact she’d already picked up on.
    Once he