She had nothing for him now. Barely any life left in her.
He didn’t let it anger him, though.
As he turned back to face her, he smoothed a hand over his bare scalp and knelt down next to her. “You really were one of the best … for a while,” he said.
It should have ended better than this. So much better.
Her eyes were dull as she stared straight ahead and when he covered her body, she didn’t even flinch.
In her mind, Joely was already drifting away. She knew what he was doing. Pain blistered through her, but she was only vaguely aware.
He would rape her again, she realized. She’d thought he was done with that. But no. He’d do it again and she didn’t want to be here for it.
Let him do it.
In her mind, she cried out for Bryson … for her fiancé, the man she loved. In her soul, she wept for him.
And in her heart, she mourned the life she could feel slipping away.
In life, she’d been very lovely—that serene, almost peaceful, angelic beauty covering an impish sense of humor and wicked intelligence.
In death, that serene, peaceful beauty was broken, shattered. He’d taken his time with the rape, taken his time before he slowly choked the life out of her, and by the time her life ended, her face was so swollen, not even her own mother would have recognized her.
He didn’t care for that, but it had been necessary for his plan, and in the end, it didn’t matter to him how she looked now. Even as he carefully trimmed her hair to chin-length, he was more focused on how she had looked before.
That night.
Forever, he would remember how Jolene Hollister had looked that night when he had dragged her back into his place and flung her against the wall—her eyes bright with terror, her heart racing, and her strong, slim body struggling. So alive. So alive, so defiant. Even as she fought him and lost, she’d been strong and defiant … and his.
Only his.
He took care to clean up the loose hair, taking only what he needed and tucking it safely away, then gathering the rest to be disposed of. He could do that easily enough in the morning.
Tonight, he had another task to see to, and instead of his normal routine, he had a new plan in mind.
He took little notice of the bruises as he cleaned her carefully, wrapping her body in a sheet of plastic before carrying her out of the trees under the cover of darkness.
This was a risk, but it was a calculated one.
One he felt he needed to take.
He’d made a bad mistake in judgment thinking nobody would pay any attention to Lena Riddle if she reported anything unusual. She’d reported it, and yes, people had paid attention. So it was time to give them something to find.
From his truck, he could see the lights on in the house, could see the shadow of the occupant moving around. The shades were drawn, but he could still see movement, the odd flickering light that told him the TV was on.
A night owl, a fact that had played in his favor.
Lena Riddle was a problem. One he needed to deal with, and over the past few days, he had come up with a solution.
There was one major problem and that was Lena herself, but there were smaller problems that added to the whole.
She was so sure of herself, so cocky and confident.
Too many people seemed to believe her, and part of that was just because she was so cocky and confident.
Shake that confidence, even a little, and like a house built on sand, the entire structure might very well collapse.
And even if it didn’t … well, they needed a body.
So he would give them a body … and a bad guy.
She’d forgotten how damned eerie and empty a big house could be at night.
Especially when you couldn’t sleep.
The floorboards squeaked.
Outside, the wind wailed.
A storm was blowing in and although it wasn’t cold, she found herself rubbing her arms, chilled to the bone.
She thought about turning on the TV, but this late at night, her best bet was infomercials, lousy horror movies, or worse. Something gross and scary, the last thing she needed when she was already freaked out for reasons she couldn’t entirely explain.
As midnight edged past and she still couldn’t settle her restless mind, she thought about reading. Absently, she realized the wind was dying down. Maybe the storm would blow over. She sighed and moved over to the window, absently adjusting the blinds.
And that was when she felt it.
The eerie sensation of … wrongness.
Her breath lodged in her throat and she peeked through the blinds, staring out into the darkness. Her breath came in hitching gasps as she tried to breathe past the knot that had suddenly lodged itself in her throat. Tried to breathe … and couldn’t.
Tried to breathe … and damn near screamed. Clapping a hand over her mouth, Hope Carson breathed out a prayer against her muffling palm. One step after another, she backed away from the window.
She’d just seen a shadow.
Out there in the darkness, where she shouldn’t be seeing anything.
Moving toward Law’s workshop.
A man.
Carrying … something.
Phone calls at close to one A.M. were bad news.
Really bad news. Nobody called at one A.M. just to chat, so whoever was on the phone must really need to talk … but he was still going to commit bloody mayhem.
Grouchy, irritable as hell, Law grabbed the cell phone from the bedside table and snarled, “What?”
“Law …”
Hope’s shaky, terrified whisper was a splash of icy cold water, and one hell of an effective wake-up call.
“Baby, what’s wrong?”
“Huh?”
Lena knuckled her eyes and tried to make sense of the words coming out of the receiver, but so far, they weren’t making much sense.
“Where’s your cop? Is he there with you?”
“My cop? You mean Ezra?” Lena asked. Coffee. She needed coffee—especially if she was supposed to make sense of a phone conversation with Law at … what time was it again?
“Yes, Ezra, unless you’re shacking up with Prather now, too. Damn it, Lena, wake up, this is important.”
“Law, honey, trust me. Whatever weird story question you got, it needs to wait until—”
“It’s not a fucking story!” Law snarled.
If it wasn’t for the underlying fear she heard in his voice, that tone alone would have had her back going up and she would have torn into him. As it was, it served to wake her up. Very, very well. Slowly, she sat up. “Okay, then. What’s going on?”
“Is he there with you?”
“No.” More’s the pity … Part of her wanted to make some snide comment about him being presumptuous—except Ezra had spent four nights with her this past week—and just think, last week, they weren’t even really talking. Sighing, she rubbed her neck. “He had a doctor’s appointment with a specialist in Lexington and said he wouldn’t be fit for human consumption, so he was heading home once he got back in town.”
“Is he in town?”
“Yes,” she said slowly.
“Call him. He needs to come pick you up.” Law blew out a breath. “I need you to go to my place and you need to do it now—have him come pick you up right away. It’s got to be him, Lena. Nobody else. Not Roz, not Carter. Ezra. You understand?”
“No. Not in the least. Law, what’s the deal?”
In a grim, angry voice, he said, “I’ve got to call the police.”
“The police … what in the hell is going on?”
“I … I’ve got a friend staying out there. She thinks she saw somebody out near my workshop—I don’t know. But I can’t call the sheriff and report it until somebody else is out there. Lena, if she sees a uniform, she’s going to freak out. I need you there.” He hesitated for a few seconds and then quietly, his voice a raw plea, added, “Please?”
The phone
rang.
Ezra came awake instantly, even though he’d been caught in the midst of one weird-ass dream involving a physical therapist, his high-school gym teacher, clown school, and Nascar.
Shaking the weirdness from his head, he grabbed his phone from the bedside table. Seeing Lena’s number had his heart skipping a beat, but he forced the fear down, buried it under a layer of ice. “Hey, beautiful. Kind of late … are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, her voice husky, soft and sleepy. “But apparently there’s something weird going on at Law’s.”
“I thought he was out of town.”
“He is. But he’s got a friend staying there. Look, this is a fricking mess and I need coffee before I can try to explain. Will you pretty please just come over here and pick me up? Drive me over there?”
He looked at the clock. Shit. “You do know what time it is, right? It’s just a few minutes past one.”
“I know.” She muffled a yawn. “Trust me, I know. But … hell, Ezra. Law never asks me for anything and he sounded … scared.”
Shit.
He was pretty sure there was something in a relationship handbook somewhere that required him to help out his woman’s friends in times of need.
Even if those friends were like Law—a guy who was dying to get inside her pants. Scraping his nails down the heavy growth of stubble on his face, he sighed and stood up. “I’ll be there in about ten minutes. Less.”
After he disconnected the phone, he got up and walked over to his closet. There was a fire safe on the top shelf. Even touching it was enough to make him break out in a sweat. But he did it anyway. Before slamming the door, he grabbed his shoulder holster as well and a lightweight denim jacket.
Dressing quickly, he took the fire safe into the kitchen. By then, his hands were shaking so bad, it took two tries before he could get the little silver key on his key ring to go into the damn lock.
Opening it up, he didn’t give himself time to think, he just grabbed the matte-black Glock and loaded it.
In another minute, he was heading out the front door.
To keep from thinking about the gun, he focused on Lena. Only on Lena.
“I’M GOING TO POUND HIS DAMN ASS INTO THE ground,” Ezra snapped.
“He wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t important.” Lena rested her head against the back of the seat and tried to quell the churning in her gut, but it wasn’t happening.
“Shit. That guy gets the basics of law enforcement—you suspect an intruder, you call the cops.”
“He’s got a friend there,” Lena said, her voice quiet. “Law just doesn’t have friends out at his place. He doesn’t. And he doesn’t ask for favors. But he asked me for one. I can’t tell him no.”
Ezra almost missed the turnoff. Law liked his privacy—guarded it the way a dog guarded a beloved bone, one might say. Paranoid—had Ezra called him a little paranoid? He hadn’t been detailed enough.
Exactly what was the deal with this friend, anyway?
“There are lights on,” Ezra said softly, as they rounded a bend. “A lot of them. No county cars here yet.”
“Law will be giving us time to get here.” The car stopped in front of the house and she climbed out, called for Puck. The dog jumped out, but there was a reluctance to his steps. He made a sound low in his throat, tugging against his harness.
For reasons she couldn’t explain, it made her heart skip a beat.
“Ezra, you don’t see anything, do you?”
“If I did, you really think I would have let you get out of the car?” he asked. His voice was weary. “Puck is staring off toward the woods. Past the house. It’s not Law’s place that’s got him spooked … it’s something else, out in the woods. Whoever it is, whatever it is, don’t think he’s still here, though. That bruiser of yours is too calm. He doesn’t like being here, but I get the feeling if somebody was still out there, he’d be all but dragging you inside the car.”
“Hmm.” Lena rested a hand on Puck’s head and smiled. “Hear that, boy? He’s calling you a bruiser.” In that moment, she was feeling very, very appreciative of her dog, too.
An eerie, cold tingle raced down her spine and she gripped Puck’s leash tighter. Hope you’ve called the sheriff’s office by now, Law, she thought. “Hey, do you … ah, do you have a gun?”
There was a brief pause. “Yeah. I’ve got one.” His voice was brusque, hoarse. “Seriously hoping I don’t ever need to use it, but I’ve got one and yes, I brought it.”
Blowing out a breath, he said, “What’s the deal here, Lena? Why was it so important that we come here before he could call the police?”
“I don’t really know. All he told me was that he had a friend here and that if she saw a uniform, she’d freak out.”
He started to swear, long and hard.
“Stop,” Lena said. “Whoever it is, it’s not because she’s had trouble with the law. He’s not a pushover. If whoever it was had legal trouble, they’d just have to deal with it—Law wouldn’t be dragging me out of bed over something like that.”
She pushed her hair back from her face and sighed. “You’re right, you know. Law does have a decent understanding of how things in law enforcement work—he really does. He wouldn’t have asked this if it wasn’t important.”
Ezra’s only response was an irritated grunt.
Resting her hand on his arm, she said, “Come on. Let’s go talk to this friend of his.”
Law couldn’t have timed his call to the police more perfectly. Lena had just knocked on the door when they heard the first wail of sirens.
She heard footsteps, but they froze, as though the woman inside had heard the sirens, too. “Hope …? Hope, my name’s Lena. Law called me, asked me to come over. He figured you’d want somebody else here …”
The door cracked open.
Lena stood there waiting, Puck at her side, Ezra at her back.
“Law called the police.” A soft, thready voice came from inside the house.
God. There was so much terror in that voice, Lena thought. Four words … and there was more fear in those four words than Lena thought she’d ever heard in her entire life, more fear than Lena had ever felt in her entire life.
What had been done to this girl to make her so scared of cops?
“Yeah. He was worried about you … said you saw somebody moving around outside. He wants to make sure you’re safe.”
Hope gave a strained, tight laugh. “Safe.”
The door inched open just a tad bit wider. Reaching up a hand, Lena rested it on the door. Then she turned her face to Ezra. “Maybe you could wait out here a little bit … give me a minute?”
Ezra sighed. “Yeah.” He caught her arm, tugged her close. Dipping his head, he murmured softly into her ear, “It’s not going to help much, though. They’ll have to talk to her. And Law wasn’t wrong. She’s so damned scared, she looks like she’s about ready to go through the roof if somebody even looks at her wrong.”
The last damn person Ezra wanted to see climb out of that county car was Earl Prather.
As it slowed to a stop, Ezra closed his eyes, muttering under his breath, “Please not him. Please. I’ll be good. I’ll go to church and sit right next to Miss Lucy. I’ll put fifty—no, a hundred bucks in the offering plate next Sunday. I swear.”
As Prather climbed out, Ezra shot a dirty look up at the sky. “Not much for deal-making, huh?”
But he wiped the disgust off his face and by the time Prather drew even with him, he had his legs stretched out in front of him and his hands folded on his belly. All he needed was a bottle of beer and he couldn’t have looked more relaxed. Sometimes, as much as he hated to admit it, appearances were everything.
“Nice night, huh, Deputy?”
Prather gave him a look of acute dislike. “What are you doing here?”
“Lena got a call, was asked to come over. As she can’t exactly drive over, I gave her a lift.”
“You just happened to
be handy?” Prather asked, narrowing his eyes.
Ezra gave him a slow smile. “Well, I won’t go into detail about that. My mama raised me right, you know, and she’d have my hide if I was talking about a lady that way.”
“Humph. So why in the hell did Reilly call Lena and nine-one-one in the middle of the night?”
“Hey, I’m not the cop here.” He shrugged and played dumb. “On leave, remember? Plus, I’m out of my jurisdiction. I’m just playing chauffeur tonight. I heard somebody was nosing around the back, though.” He arched his brows and said, “Hey, maybe he’s still back there … hiding. You could catch him and bring him in.”
As Prather waddled away, Ezra rolled his eyes and stood up. Idiot. Then he slipped inside the house. He hated like hell that he was going to have to scare the pretty girl inside the house, but she was going to have to talk to Prather and maybe, just maybe, he could prepare her for that a little bit better.
He hoped.
He had cop eyes.
That was the first thing Hope noticed as he came into the room, limping just a little.
The second thing she noticed was the way he lingered by the pretty redhead and stroked a hand down her hair, rested a hand on her shoulder. Lena reached up and covered his hand with hers.
Something about that simple, sweet gesture made Hope’s throat ache.
She remembered that kind of touch from her childhood—her mother and father had shared them, all the time. God, what would they think if they could see how things had turned out for her? If they hadn’t died in that car wreck?
Shame, slippery and tight, washed through her and she looked away.
It wasn’t just shame, though. Envy curled through her and that left her feeling more than a little dismayed. After Joey, she hadn’t thought she’d be able to see those casual little touches between a man and a woman and feel even the slightest bit jealous, but here she was.
Although the thought of a light, gentle touch was enough to make her break out in a light sweat, she found herself wondering what it would be like to have somebody touch her like that … just because. That “I’m touching you because I can’t not touch you” sort of touch. The way her parents had touched each other.
If You Hear Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense Page 20