If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense (42 page)

“With Hope, I just don’t know. The one thing I
do
know? She’s capable of just about anything. I also know that I wish I could help her. Hell, I’d like to believe
you
can. But I know I can’t, and I can’t believe you can either. She doesn’t want help, won’t admit she needs it. Look, if there’s anything I can do to make sure she gets that help, just ask. I don’t want her in trouble, but I do want her to get help. Before it’s too late.”

Remy barely remembered the rest of the conversation.
He was too busy finally processing the fact that he’d more or less gotten the supporting evidence he needed.

Hope Carson’s fingerprints had been found all over the weapon used to beat Law Reilly.

She had slit her wrists.

She had a history of violence.

A history of turning on people who cared about her.

According to her ex-husband—who seemed to care about her—she was manipulative, prone to doing whatever it took to get her way.

Fuck and double fuck.

Instead of feeling satisfied with what he needed to do, what he
could
do, he found himself thinking about those sad, sad green eyes …

Fuck
.

By the time she landed at Blue Grass Airport, Nia Hollister was so damned tired, she could barely see straight, so sick at heart, she ached with it, and she longed to curl up in a dark, quiet room and just … sob.

Giving in to tears had never been her way, but this time, the temptation was strong, so overpowering, there were times when she felt the tears swelling in her throat like a knot. And a scream—just beyond the tears, there was a scream begging to break free.

She kept it held inside through sheer will alone.

Now wasn’t the time to scream, or to cry.

Somewhere inside her heart, she still wanted to believe they were wrong.

All of them.

Joely wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be. They were like sisters—almost closer than sisters.

They rarely fought. They were best friends, in their hearts, their souls. Even when Nia was on the other side
of the country for half the year—or
out
of the country …

They could be wrong. All of them—Bryson, Joely’s fiancé, who wouldn’t even go with her to identify the body, the cops who insisted it was Joely … everybody. They could all be wrong.

It might not be Joely.

But if it wasn’t her cousin lying dead in a morgue in Ash, Kentucky, then where was she?

Her fiancé hadn’t seen her in more than a month.

She wasn’t answering her cell phone or e-mail.

It was like she’d dropped off the face of the earth.

No … she hasn’t dropped off the face of the earth. She’s been lying dead in the deep freeze in the morgue, you selfish bitch, while you’re off on assignment
.

Abandoned—because law enforcement always turned to family, although Bryson might have been able to do it if he’d pushed, especially since Nia hadn’t been reachable. Out of contact
—fuck
.

She hadn’t been around, while her cousin was kidnapped, hadn’t been around while she was killed, hadn’t been around at all and because of that, Joely was treated like some worthless piece of garbage.

Nia hadn’t been around. Oh,
God …
Tears pricked her eyes. She’d been out of contact for almost three weeks. Joely could have reached her, but would she have shared that information with her fiancé? Probably not.

With weariness and grief dragging at her steps, she lugged her carry-on through the airport. Years of living out of a suitcase had taught her to pack light and the bag was all she carried. The rest of her stuff was being shipped back to her house in Williamsburg.

Soon, she’d have to find a Laundromat and wash her clothes, but that was a problem for another day.

Now, she needed to get a rental car. Rental car. Then she needed to …

She stopped in front of an ad—it was brightly colored, displaying a chestnut horse racing across a field of green grass. Numb, she just stared at it for a minute and then once more started to walk.

Rental car. Ash, Kentucky. She needed to get there. Needed to …

“Miss?”

Nia started, then found herself staring dumbly at one of the airport security guards. Blinking, she glanced around. She wasn’t sure where she was, or how she’d gotten there.

He eyed her with a strange mix of concern and caution. “Are you okay?”

Nia swallowed. That knot in her throat swelled to epic proportions and she realized those tears were even closer than she’d thought. “I … rough few days.”

“It looks like it.” He gestured with his head off to the side. “You’ve been standing in the middle of the hall for the past five minutes. Can I help you find where you’re going?”

Nia pressed the heel of her hand against her temple. Shit.

The ache in her chest spread.

Ash—she needed to get to Ash, wherever in the hell that was.

But if she was standing around like a zombie in the middle of an airport, the last thing she needed to do was get behind the wheel of a car. Reality breathed its icy cold breath down her spine and she sighed. “I guess I’m heading outside to catch a cab to a hotel,” she finally said.

Getting to Ash would have to wait until morning.

She loathed the idea, but her pragmatic side was strong, even in grief. As exhausted as she was, it would be suicide to get behind the wheel of a car and she knew
it. As desperate as she was to get to Ash, she had some damn strong inner demons.

Besides, maybe she’d luck out … she’d go to sleep and wake up, realize this was nothing but one awful, horrid nightmare.

The conversation with Detective Joseph Carson was still ringing through Remy’s mind hours later as he tossed and turned on his bed, trying to sleep.

Settling down
wasn’t happening, though. It was past midnight when he finally slept.

There were nights when he hit the mattress and sleep fell on him like a stone. As one of the two district attorneys in the small county of Carrington, Kentucky, he had helped put away meth dealers, a couple of child molesters and rapists, more than a few drunk drivers, and several wife beaters, and he routinely dealt with petty theft.

Even in his small, mostly rural county, crime wasn’t nonexistent.

He enjoyed what he did.

But tonight, sleep didn’t come easy. Hell, screw
easy
—it didn’t want to come at
all
.

Every time he closed his eyes, he thought of a green-eyed brunette and he thought about what he had to do in the morning.

It wasn’t a job he wanted to do.

It was a job he’d give just about anything to
not
do.

But he hadn’t taken this job just so he could walk away from the hard ones.

All the facts pointed to one thing: Hope Carson was a violent, disturbed woman.

His gut screamed
Screw the facts
. But he couldn’t ignore what he saw, couldn’t ignore the evidence, couldn’t ignore what he’d been told and what he’d learned.

His job was clear.

And his job, sometimes, sucked.

It was well past midnight when he finally fell into a restless sleep, and into even more restless dreams.

Nightmares.

Dreams where he saw her as he’d seen her that night in the emergency room. Covered in blood.

Pale.

A disembodied voice whispering,
You did this …

“
No, I didn’t. No, I didn’t,”
Hope said, her voice shaking, but sure.

Remy stood there, horrified. All he wanted to do was pull her into his arms, take her away from this, away from all of it. But then Nielson, the sheriff, was there, pushing a pair of handcuffs into his hand.

“
You want us to arrest her? Fine. You do it
.”

But that wasn’t Remy’s job—he wasn’t a fucking cop. He didn’t arrest people. He got warrants. He prosecuted.

“Yeah, you make us get our hands dirty. But you want her arrested, you do it yourself
.”

And that was what he did. Remy put cuffs on wrists that seemed too slender, too fragile for such a burden.

Remy was the one who led her to a cell.

And when he opened the door, she walked silently inside. But he saw it in her eyes.

I didn’t do this
.

As he turned away, the screams started. Endless, agonized screams. But he didn’t know if they were hers … or his own.

That was how he came awake.

With the sound of screams echoing in his ears.

“
Shit
,” he muttered, jerking upright in bed, fighting the sheets and blankets that had become ropes around his waist.

With his breath sawing raggedly in and out of his lungs, he sat on the edge of the bed and stared off into nothingness. His gut was a raw, ragged pit and his head
throbbed like it hadn’t since his college days. Back then, he had thought he could get by on naps and caffeine.

In a few hours, he was supposed to meet the sheriff at the hospital.

Hope Carson was being arrested today, and there wasn’t a damn thing Remy could do about it. That woman had the ability to turn him into knots just by looking at him. No other woman had ever done that to him. Not a one. Shit. This was a mess.

Not that she knew.

Nobody knew, thank God.

At least he’d managed to keep that much hidden.

But shit, he had to get it together.

Had to get his head together, his act together, had to do … something.

Shoving to his feet, Remy shambled naked toward the bathroom. Maybe if he blasted himself with enough hot water, and then flooded his body with enough caffeine … maybe.

Maybe, maybe …

He turned on the lights, but they hit his tired eyes with the force of a sledgehammer and, groaning, he turned them off again.

No light. Not yet.

Shower. Caffeine.

Then light.

Maybe.

Not that he really needed light anyway. Not like he needed light to shower … or even to get dressed. If he didn’t have any light on, he wouldn’t have to worry about seeing his reflection, right?

And the last thing he wanted to do just then was look himself square in the eye.

No matter what the evidence said, no matter what the logic pointed to, it just didn’t feel right.

It just didn’t feel right … at all.

*   *   *

There were days when Hope Carson wished she’d just driven right through Ash. Instead of stopping in the small Kentucky town to see her friend, like she’d promised, she should have just kept on driving.

No matter how much she loved Law, no matter how much she’d missed him, missed having a friend, there were days when she wished she had broken that promise and never stopped.

Maybe she should have driven straight to the ocean.

Hope had never seen the ocean.

She’d wanted to go to the ocean for her honeymoon, but Joey … her not-so-beloved ex-husband hadn’t liked the idea.

Everybody goes to the beach. Let’s do something different
.

They’d gone to the mountains.

Skiing in Aspen.

But Hope hadn’t been very good at skiing. And she hated the cold … it was like it cut right through her bones. She’d fallen down so many times, and had so many bruises.

“Should have just kept on driving,” she muttered as she listened to the voices just outside her door.

Would have been wiser, that much was sure.

Desolate, she stared out the window and wondered if she’d have a room wherever they were taking her next.

Would it be another hospital?

A jail?

She just didn’t know.

Another hospital, probably. One with
real
security
.

Dark, ugly dots swirled in on her vision.

Fear locked a fist around her throat.
Locked … trapped …

She barely managed to keep the moan behind her teeth.

When the door opened, she managed to stifle her wince.

Barely.

It was just one of the nursing assistants—this time.

But soon … soon, it would be uniformed deputies. She knew it.

Hearing the quiet, muffled sound of shoes on the linoleum, she stared out the window and tried not to think about what was coming.

No matter what, she had to be grateful for one thing.

No matter what, she wasn’t trapped back in that house in Oklahoma with her husband, and she wasn’t trapped in that hospital where he had complete, total control over her.

She’d almost willingly be held for a crime she didn’t commit rather than go back to that particular hell.

At least she wasn’t anywhere close to Joey.

At least she wasn’t under his control, in any way, shape, or form.

That counted, for a hell of a lot.

But it wasn’t enough, and the longer she stared at the plain, white walls of the small hospital room, the more they resembled a cell. So instead, she stared out the window—a reinforced window, one she couldn’t open. Not that she’d tried.

But the nurse had been a little too free with that information, right after she’d come in to check her blood pressure and
offer
her the medications—just an offer this time.

Nobody had tried to force it on her again.

Not since Remy …

She swallowed and tried not to think about that. It really, really wouldn’t do her any good to think about that, about him. As humiliating as it had been, for anybody to see her like that, it had been nothing short of a
miracle in the end. Whether he’d said something to one of the doctors after he’d left or just scared the hell out of the nurses … well, nobody had tried to force any more drugs on her.

No antipsychotics, no tranquilizers, nothing. That fancy law degree of his, Hope imagined. She didn’t know, and honestly, didn’t care.

As long as nobody was forcing drugs on her she didn’t need.

Her head was completely clear. She should be grateful.

And she would try to be.

But her gut told her she hadn’t seen the last of Remy Jennings, and the next time she saw him, it wasn’t going to be over the drugs the hospital staff had been forcing on her.

No, the next time it would be over the night she’d been found unconscious, just a few days ago, her wrists slashed open, her prints on the bat that had been used to beat a man damn near to death.