If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense

it.
    Too screwed up. This was all too screwed up. All this time, he’d been so careful.
    Ever since the mistakes he’d made with Mara, he’d been careful not to do it again. But lately it seemed like his entire house of cards was about to come crashing down around him. Shit, shit, shit.
    “Get it together,” he told himself. He made himself take a deep breath, calm down … think.
    And that was when he realized.
    Maybe if they thought he’d taken her
after
she’d died … well. That wasn’t a bad thing for
them
. What did he care if they thought he was into fucking stiffs? They’d be looking for different crimes, then. Different sort of criminal. That wasn’t a problem. Not at all. If they were looking for a different sort of criminal, how likely were they to find him? Even if they were looking?
    He’d only have problems if he lost control of the situation and he wasn’t going to do that. He wasn’t going to do that at all.
    Nobody would know he had been here, nobody would connect the man who’d left the club with this girl to who he was. Nobody.
    He just had to keep calm. Keep cool. Do that, and nobody would be any wiser.
    His hands were steadier as he freed the gag from her mouth. It had her blood on it. He’d have to get rid of it. But later. A lot later. Crouching by her side, he drew a ceramic knife from the inner pocket of his jacket and caught one lock of hair. He did love that knife … made it so much easier considering how many places used metal detectors these days. And he wanted his souvenir.
    It wasn’t a neat job—too much of her hair had blood and brain matter matted in it so he couldn’t cut all of it the way he usually did. Just a nice, gleaming hank that was free of gore. He didn’t like making a hatchet job of it, but this girl was so fucked up from his normal, anyway, what did it matter?
    He’d be more careful in the future. More careful, he’d plan better. And control things better—couldn’t risk getting that angry again.
    This wouldn’t happen again.
    He’d have to find a new MO, a new way to hunt hisgirls—replan, reformulate. Reorganize. No more mistakes. No more losing control.
    Tucking away the hair and the knife, he removed his gloves and tucked them inside his jacket as well. He donned a new pair before he attended to the final task—this was easy. He had known she was the one the moment he saw the diamonds glittering on her wrist. Real diamonds, despite the pink pleather dress. He didn’t know where she’d gotten the bracelet, but it was his now. Another souvenir … a special gift for the special girl in his life.
    Once he had it tucked away, he made his way to the mouth of the alley.
    He had to get back to his hotel. Needed to destroy these clothes, shower … And he still needed to get some sleep before all those damned meetings tomorrow.

CHAPTER
THREE
     
    Two months later
    W ITH HER HEAD PROPPED ON HER FIST , N IA H OLLISTER surveyed the crime scene photos and police report of yet another raped, murdered woman. She’d gone through half a pack of cigarettes, two cans of Monster, and she knew she couldn’t stay awake too much longer.
    Knew she couldn’t keep this up too much longer.
    You can’t keep this up
, her common sense argued.
How much longer are you going to let this take over your life?
    “For as long as it takes,” she muttered, taking another drag on the cigarette.
    At least when she was looking for some indefinable
something
, she felt like she was
doing
something. Felt like she was making steps toward wrapping up the unfinished mess that was her cousin’s murder. It didn’t matter that they had closed the case, that they had a name for the killer, that the killer was dead.
    It didn’t matter … because it didn’t feel
right
. Nothing felt right, nothing felt finished, or complete—it all felt
wrong
.
    Her eyes were bleary with exhaustion and her head ached. Her belly was an empty, shriveled knot, but she wasn’t leaving her desk until she’d finished going throughthese files. She’d spent the past two weeks in Europe on assignment, hadn’t been able to do a damn thing with all the information that kept coming her way, and she was going to make a dent in it.
    How?
Somewhere, she still possessed the ability to be rational. It was fading, and fading fast, but she could still do it. And that rational part of her brain was demanding how in the hell she could make a dent in the dozens and dozens of files she had sitting