If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense (27 page)

“What the hell …?” she whispered.

Her room was destroyed. Completely destroyed. Clothes were everywhere. Black paint marred the TV, mirror, and walls. And the bed … she stared at it, trying to figure out what was wrong, but her mind wasn’t processing it.

“It looks slashed,” she murmured. “Somebody slashed up the bed.”

“Ethan.” Law—that was Law’s voice. Coming from too far off.

Hands, gentle but insistent, tugged her aside. She didn’t fight them.

For some reason, the fight was suddenly gone. Her head was spinning. Black dots danced in front of her eyes. A hand gripped the back of her neck and she realized somebody was pushing her, forcing her away from the open doorway, then into a chair on the porch. Her head was shoved down, between her legs.

Not helping …

Her bed.

Somebody had slashed her bed.

*   *   *

“Breathe, Nia,” Law said. “You need to breathe so you can yell at me and threaten to kick my ass more, okay?”

Finally, she stirred under his hand and when she tried to sit up, he let her, staring into glassy eyes. Her pupils were too big, her normally warm skin almost ashen. “He cut my bed up,” she said softly.

Law blew out a breath. “Yeah. It looks like.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw the two deputies making their way around the room, nudging things aside with a shoe, but taking care not to touch anything.

But he’d seen some of the clothes on the floor before he’d forced Nia into the chair. The bed wasn’t the only thing that got the knife job. She’d be lucky to find anything big enough to use as a rag.

Had he come here looking for Nia? Or was this just to scare her?

Law didn’t know. Soothingly, he rubbed a hand up and down her back, watching as the color slowly crept back into her cheeks, watching as the shock in her eyes was slowly replaced by anger.

He saw her body tense only a second before she went to shove him aside. He let her, but when she tried to barge into the cabin, he stopped her. “Nia, it’s a crime scene. They need to make sure there isn’t any evidence. You go in there, it makes it harder for 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. “My
cousin’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 there
together, 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 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 would
somehow 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 I’d have nightmares. That’s why you didn’t want me looking.” She swallowed and then lifted her lids just enough to stare at him from under her lashes. “I wish I’d listened. I don’t want that picture in my head. I’d do almost anything to get it out.”

“I know the feeling. It’s stuck in there, though. For both of us, I guess.” He closed one hand around her ankle and started to rub the bottom of her foot. “Maybe … I dunno. Maybe I should have given you some idea of what I’d seen. That might have helped.”

“No.” She had her eyes closed again. “I still would have tried to look, would have been determined. I can’t stand to have somebody trying to protect me, keep something from me. Even when maybe it’s better.”

With a watery laugh, she whispered, “I wish I’d let you keep this from me, Law.”

“I’m sorry.”

Silence fell between them, thick and tight, but no longer quite so strained. She sighed as he used his thumb on her instep, across the ball of her foot. When he put that foot down, she lifted her other foot for him. “I shouldn’t
have come down on you like I did,” she said softly. “I get why you didn’t want me seeing that.”

Law stayed quiet.

“I’m just … hell. I just don’t deal well with being coddled, with having somebody make a decision about what I can and can’t handle.”

“It’s not about can or can’t handle,” he said, shooting her a quick look. “I’m starting to think there’s not a damn thing you
can’t
handle. It’s a matter of why in the hell should you have that image in your head? I don’t want it in mine. Ezra has to have it—it’s his job, but you and me …?”

He sighed and shook his head. “Wasn’t trying to coddle you. You’d cut a guy off at the knees if he tried that with you. I was just trying to help.”

“I know.” She leaned forward and covered one of his hands with hers.

“And I’m sorry,” she added as their gazes locked.

“It’s okay.”

She squeezed, gave him a smile. “No, it’s not. But at least you tolerate me being a bitch … although I don’t know why.” She sighed and closed her eyes, only to open them immediately. “Damn it—I think I’m going to see it every time I close my eyes. I want to push it out of my head but my imagination is kicking in and I’m already thinking,
what did he do with that stuff …
”

“You need to stop wondering,” Law said. “It’s just going to drive you nuts.”

“I’m already there.”

“Why don’t you come to bed?” He laid a hand on her knee, squeezed it. “Get some rest.”

“I can’t sleep with that picture in my mind and right now, it’s all I can see.”

She lifted her hands to her face, but stopped when she saw them shaking. A harsh laugh escaped her.

“Shit. Holy shit—I can’t stop seeing it. Why did I look?” she whispered. Sliding her gaze past him, she stared at the phone, shuddered as the image loomed large in her mind once more.
Why
 …

Abruptly, she tore her gaze from the phone and looked at Law. His hair, still damp from his shower, was darker than normal. He’d shaved recently. He smelled of soap, toothpaste … and himself.