If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense

was in the shower, she slipped out of his bed and padded over to the door, listening through the narrow crack to the water splash. She eased the door open, peered inside. His phone was there. Just a few feet away. Easing the door open just a little more, she peeked around the edge, stared at him.
    She could see him, his lean back to her, hands braced against the tile wall, head bent as the water pounded down on him. She slid her way inside and grabbed the phone, clutched it to her breasts as she backed away.
    She didn’t bother closing the door, just beat a fast retreat out of the room as she hit the button, wincing as the iPhone’s bright screen flared to life.
    Photos
 …
    She hit the icon, hit another one, scrolled down.
    Shit
.
    Nothing there.
    He’d deleted it—
    Then she remembered.
    He’d sent it to Ezra. E-mail. It would be in his e-mail.
    She hit the icon for that. Shit. The shower cut off.
    She hurriedly headed down the steps, swearing as the messages loaded.
Sent—
    There it was.
    The message he’d sent to Ezra.
    The picture was there, in the body of the message.
    Her mind
recognized
it. But it didn’t want to process it.
    Part of it was too shiny, like Law’s flashlight had reflected off it. Something dark and rusty stained the bottom of it.
    A saw. It was a saw …
    No
.
    On the bottom step, she stumbled and fell against the wall.
    Dimly, she heard the strangest sound—an animal.
    It sounded like a wild animal.
    Whimpering.
    Law swiped the towel over his head, weariness tugging at him. Although he didn’t really want to sleep, he needed to. He just hoped when he slid into bed next to Nia, he could avoid the nightmares he feared waited for him.
    Fuck, he wished he hadn’t gone in there.
    Ezra could have figured out some way to get people out there, right?
    Granted, Law going in under the guise of curiosity and finding suspicious shit made it a lot easier, but still … he wished he could wipe the images out of his mind as easily as he’d been able to delete them from the damn phone.
    He shot a look at the counter where he’d left his phone.
    Then the bottom dropped out of his stomach when he realized it wasn’t there.
    “Aw, fuck,” he muttered.
    Just then, he heard something.
    It was a sound that would haunt him, much like those images.
    Snagging his jeans, he hitched them on in seconds and took off. She wasn’t in the bedroom. Not in the hallway. He hit the lights and looked around.
    That sound—there it was again.
    And there she was.
    Sitting down at the foot of the stairs, a look on her face that probably echoed what he’d felt inside when he’d figured out what he was looking at. His phone was a few inches away from her hand and she was staring at it like she expected it to attack her. Fuck—what the hell, he’d deleted it … oh, shit.
    E-mail. He’d sent it to Ezra and it was in the
sent
box.
    “Nia.”
    She didn’t even seem to hear him.
    Unsure what to say, how to say it, he came down the steps, knelt on the one just above her. He touched her cheek, but she didn’t react, didn’t move. Sighing, he lifted her feet and sat down on the step across from her. She shifted her gaze to him then and he saw the horror lurking in the golden depths.
    Why in the hell did you have to look, baby?
    That was what he wanted to ask her.
    But he didn’t.
    It was bad enough that she’d seen. He didn’t need to remind her that she’d had the option of
not
looking … that he’d tried to spare her this. Maybe she regretted it, maybe she didn’t. Too late now, either way.
    “It’s a saw,” she said, her voice soft, toneless. Her gaze clung to his face, like she couldn’t bear to look away.
    Law nodded.
    “A saw. There’s blood on it.” She licked her lips, darted a look at the phone, like she feared the image wouldsomehow morph into reality or something. “That … it was blood, wasn’t it? Could it be something else?”
    Blowing out a breath, he said softly, “It could be something else.”
    “Could be,” she whispered. Then she giggled. It had a high, almost hysterical note to it and just hearing it hurt his heart.
    “Nia …”
    She shook her head. “Could be.” The laughter died and she stared at him and now, the shock had faded, leaving nothing but the horror, so thick and dark, it threatened to drown them both. “It could be, but you don’t think it is.”
    “No, I don’t.”
    Closing her eyes, she rested her head against the wall. “You told me