NO NO NO NO …
He was fucking laughing at her … turning her body against her.
Bastard—
Fucking bastard …
Through a red haze, she glared at him and with a strength she didn’t know she had, she wrenched against his hold. Her wrists, slippery, slick with her sweat, twisted and she got one free. Blindly, she swung out, driving her fist into his neck, then again into his nose.
He snarled and swore, but didn’t let go. He fisted a hand in her hair, slammed her head back against the wall again, harder this time. A second time. A third.
By the fourth time, she was no longer even aware of what he was doing.
By the fifth time, she was unconscious. There was a sixth … a seventh … an eighth time. She never knew.
Kathleen died of a brain hemorrhage before he was even done using her.
“Cunt,” he muttered, kicking her side as he let her fall to the ground. His throat still ached from the jab and his nose was tender, puffy. Not broken, thankfully. That would have been harder to explain away. But the little slut had gotten a few good blows in.
Swearing, he knelt and wished he had the time to let her wake up. He’d do it all over again, but this time, he’d make her hurt more. There was no time, though. Closing a hand around her mouth and nose, he squeezed. A few seconds passed before he realized she wasn’t breathing.
Swearing, he jerked his hand away, stared at her face. Her eyes were closed. Her face slack. Shit.
He lifted one lid. Stared at her pupil, stunned when there was no reaction.
Lifeless.
Still not processing it, he rested his fingers on her neck, searching for a pulse that wasn’t there.
Nothing.
Disgust rolled through him as he realized he’d been fucking her corpse.
Swearing, he grabbed her shoulder and rolled her over, and that was when he saw the back of her head. Saw the damage. It was all pulpy and misshapen, the bones of her skull pulverized.
Fuck …
He surged to his feet and cast a quick glance around the alley. Although every instinct screamed for him to get the hell away, he needed to be careful. Very careful. Shit. He’d screwed up. Screwed up bad. Had let his anger get the better of him, had been in too big a hurry, hadn’t taken his time, hadn’t been careful. That was the bottom line—he hadn’t been careful. Then, when she’d managed to get a hand free and hit him, fight back, she’d caught him off guard.
He’d fucked up.
When the cops found her, he knew they’d examine her.
Would they realize penetration had happened after her death? Or while she died? Shit, he wasn’t a fucking necrophiliac. She’d been alive when he started on her. Fucking cunt. Damn 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 his girls—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
WITH HER HEAD PROPPED ON HER FIST, NIA HOLLISTER 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 through these 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 all over her office. Cases about women raped, and murdered. She’d tried to keep the scope relatively narrow—young, attractive, from the Midwest.
There were still too many. She felt raw inside. Her on-again, off-again boyfriend had walked in on her a few hours earlier after taking one look at the files.
“When are you going to let this go? They found the guy.”
No, they didn’t, she wanted to argue. But it wouldn’t matter if she argued or not. He wouldn’t believe her. And it didn’t matter if he did or not.
He’d stared at her, something in his eyes that was pity, anger, and sadness. Then he’d turned and walked out. Somehow, she’d known he wouldn’t be back.
It didn’t matter. Nothing did. Except the search. She had to keep looking. Keep searching. For what, she didn’t know. But Nia couldn’t let it go. She couldn’t leave it
alone.
It didn’t matter that they had found the guy. She had to keep looking … it was like the monkey on her back, riding her, pushing her, driving her. She had to keep looking, had to, had to …
Eyes heavy and gritty, she flipped through the file of a twenty-one-year-old nursing student who’d been assaulted and killed in St. Louis. They hadn’t found the killer. Nia’s heart ached for the girl. But beyond the grief, the heartache, she felt nothing when she read the reports, looked at the pictures.
Nothing that told her this was what she was looking for—this was what she needed to find. Not that she was expecting to feel something. She just …
Shit. She didn’t even know what she was expecting. Looking for. Hoping to find. She reached for the nearly empty can of Monster, took a sip, and then reached for the next in her “hopeful” pile. But exhaustion made her clumsy and she ended up knocking over the “hopeful” and the “not-so-hopeful.” Swearing, she made a mad grab at fluttering pages, eyeing the mess around her desk.
“Hell.” Pushing her hair back, she hoped the people who’d sent her all these files had some recognizable sort of organization. With a groan, she scooted away from her desk, tempted to just ignore the mess and head to bed.
She might have just done that, too. She was so tired, so damn tired.
But a picture caught her eye.
She couldn’t say why.
Staring at it, though, she felt something.
A burn. That thing she’d been waiting for—this was what she’d been searching for, who she’d been searching for. There wasn’t anything really intriguing about the woman’s face. She looked nothing like Joely.
She had hair so pale a blond, it didn’t seem natural at all. Big blue eyes, big round breasts … a lot like a Barbie doll, right down to the bright pink-and-white sundress that barely skimmed her ass. Everything about her sparkled, her smile, her eyes, the diamond bracelet on her left wrist.
Her name was Kathleen Hughes.
The next picture of her wasn’t quite so attractive.
She was lying on a slab, her skin that pale, bluish-gray color of death, and the pink pleather dress she wore was splattered with blood, gore, and dirt.
Nia sifted through the files, finding everything pertaining to Hughes and then she started to read. She had nothing in common with Joely, other than being physically attractive, and young. Joely had excelled in all things—this girl was big into partying, hard and fast, making up for what looked like a relatively normal, borderline-boring childhood. She’d barely been coasting along in college and had been working some on the side at a club as a stripper.
Nothing in common with Joely.
But looking at Kathleen’s face, Nia’s gut twisted, burned, and adrenaline roared inside her. It couldn’t be anything, though. Because Kathleen had just died two months ago.
Joe Carson had been dead now for nine months.
Still …
Unable to resist, she continued to read. Brutally raped. Drugs in her system. Roommate confirmed she’d been using for a while. No boyfriend—her last serious boyfriend had a solid alibi—he was an ER doctor at a hospital in Detroit, a Dr. Jared Roberts, and he’d been working in said Detroit hospital the night Kathleen died … in Chicago.
She’d been seen leaving the club with a guy—only description was “an older dude.”
Nia frowned, checked the info in the folder on the ex-boyfriend. Somehow pink pleather Barbie didn’t look like the sort of girl a doctor would date. He was thirty-five … and originally from Kathleen’s hometown of Madison, Indiana.
Eleven-year difference. Would that count as an older dude? Then she sighed. Didn’t matter. He was alibied. And why did it even matter?
But she couldn’t stop reading.
She read through the medical examiner’s report, her head pounding, her heart racing.
One line caught her eye. She found herself stumbling over it. Again. And again. Even as her mind tried to process it, Nia found herself seeing her cousin. Lying on a slab … just like Kathleen. Her hair … shorter than Nia remembered. A lot shorter.
Nia hadn’t thought much of it. Not then.
But now … Her breath hitched in her chest, right next to that burning ache. Swallowing, she rubbed her eyes and made herself read it one more time. Kathleen Hughes’s hair had been cut sometime that night. Not completely—just a section toward the front, a six-inch-long section.
Her hand shook as she reached for her cell phone.
It took three tries to actually get her hands to cooperate long enough to call Bryson. Before her cousin died, Bryson had been Joely’s fiancé, and a casual friend of Nia’s. The two of them had tried to keep in touch for a while, but both Nia and Bryson had finally realized their memories were too painful.
Needless to say, he wasn’t pleased to have her on the phone. “Nia … it’s late.”
She glanced at the clock, winced when she saw it was past eleven.
“Sorry. This won’t take long. I just … ah, well. I had a question. Had Joely gotten her hair cut recently?”
“Her hair? What?”
“Yeah. A haircut. Had she gotten it cut before she … ah … died?”
He sighed. “No. She hadn’t. She wanted it long for the wedding—something …” His voice half broke. “Shit. No. I don’t know what the hell this is about, but she hadn’t gotten her fucking hair cut.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
He hung up without saying another word.
Nia put her phone down and continued to stare at the report. This didn’t mean anything. She waited for that rational voice to murmur an agreement, waited for that voice to tell her to dump this file, just like she had dumped so many others.
But for once, that voice was silent.
Completely and utterly silent.
The house was silent … completely and utterly silent, save for the slow, measured sound of Law Reilly’s breathing as he lifted the bar up, lowered it, lifted.
Sweat rolled down his brow, along his arms. He ignored it, focusing on the weighted bar. Just like he ignored the trembling in his arms—especially in his right. That arm, still trying to heal from that bad break, didn’t seem as strong as it should be, and by the time he was done with the third set of reps, his muscles were quivering, all but begging for a rest.
He ignored them, moved to the next set of exercises, and the next. It wasn’t until he’d worked his body into a numb state of exhaustion that he let himself leave the gym he’d set up in his basement. On his way down the hall, he passed by a closed door.
Months ago, it had been his office.
Now, it was nothing but unused space.
Awhile back, he’d finally admitted the obvious and moved his books and everything else out of the room, turning his living room into his office. Wasn’t like he had a lot of company out here anyway.
There was just no way he could work in that room again, that room where a man had died, slowly, painfully. Although the professional team had gotten the blood out of the floor, although he’d redecorated, even put down a new floor, he couldn’t look at the room without seeing it the way it had been that night. Without seeing the blood.
Shit, there were days when he didn’t even want to live in this house—it wasn’t just the office, but the house. But Law wasn’t about to give in to that—wouldn’t let the bastard win that battle.
He’d keep his damn house, but the office … no. He wasn’t fighting that one. He couldn’t stand to go in there—even though it no longer looked anything like it had looked all those months ago. Law still couldn’t look at that room without seeing blood.
Without remembering how a guy he’d known in elementary school had killed a cop in there, then tried to kill Law, and Hope. Shit, there were days when he thought if he had any sense at all, he would tear this damn house down, build a new one.
Screw tearing it down—burn it and salt the earth, make sure no demons from the past could rise to haunt them. Then he’d move to Fiji
, buy a shack on the beach, and write from there.
But he was too fucking stubborn to do that. Too stubborn, too determined.
And he knew the demons would still be there anyway.
The demons lived in his memories, not in the house, not in the earth. He couldn’t eradicate them from his memory, so he’d just have to deal with them, live with them.
Those memories weren’t going to win, damn it. They weren’t.
Joe was dead, Hope was safe, and she was happier than she’d ever been in her life. It was over. Completely over.
He’d just started up the steps when the phone rang.
His muscles turned to lead as he turned to stare. It was late. There had been a time when late calls wouldn’t faze him, but after the past year, it was hard to ignore the dread creeping through him. Hard to ignore the worry, the fear.
Not too many people would be calling him. Not too many people had his number. Hope and Remy. Lena and Ezra. His agent. A few friends. That was about it—and none of them would call him this late unless it was an emergency.
Scowling, he moved to the phone, stared at the caller ID.
Virginia. Did he know anybody in Virginia?
The machine picked up and he stood there, dumbly, as a voice rolled out. Low and smooth, soft and sexy as black velvet draped over a woman’s nude body.
“Hello. I’m … looking for Law Reilly. My name is Nia Hollister. I … ah, we met a few months ago …”
Yeah. He hadn’t forgotten. They’d met the day she accused him of killing her cousin. The day she’d punched him, drawn a gun on him—not exactly the sort of woman a guy was going to forget.
Without realizing what he was doing, he reached for the phone.
“Hello.”
“Ahh … Mr. Reilly?”
He just waited.
“Ah … hello. This … okay, this is awkward. My name is Nia Hollister. We met a few months ago—”
“I remember.” Short, silken, dark hair. Big gold eyes. A mouth that he would have given his right arm to taste. Long legs. Attitude. Grief. And a gun … mustn’t forget that gun, or the fact that she’d come onto his property ready to kill him, and Hope, if she’d decided they had something to do with her cousin’s death.
If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense Page 3