“It’s okay.” She patted his hand and then eased away, moving to stand by the window, sliding Remy a look from the side of her eye. “I know the lawyer type. He’s already got it in his head that I’m guilty, Law. So I’m curious why he isn’t interested in arresting me.”
Lawyer type? he thought, studying her with narrowed eyes. Some part of him wanted to be offended, feel insulted. But another part of him was just too surprised—he wouldn’t have thought she’d have it in her to stand up to him like that. Not to anybody.
But, shit. If he said he didn’t plan on having anybody arrest her, then damn it, he meant it.
“It was just a couple of days ago when you made it clear that I didn’t know you,” Remy said, brusquely. “You’re right. I don’t. But you don’t know me, either. You might know lawyer types. But I’m not a type. I’m just me. And if I wanted you behind bars, I’d find a way to get you there. If I say you don’t need to worry, then I mean it. I don’t say things I don’t mean.”
“Everybody says things they don’t mean,” Hope said quietly. “That’s the way the world works.”
“Even you?”
She frowned.
Those soft green eyes of hers, the secrets and the hurts inside them, fuck, she was killing him, and what he wanted to do, more than anything, was the one thing he couldn’t do. He wanted to pull that slender, sleek body against his, cuddle her close, promise her that she was safe, that nobody would ever hurt her again. He wanted to make her smile, make her laugh … make her trust him. Then he wanted to make love to her, over and over.
And he couldn’t do it.
“Not everybody’s out to hurt somebody else,” he said quietly. “I’m not out to hurt you.”
Then he glanced at Law and gave him a short nod.
Cutting a wide berth around the two of them, he started for the door.
He needed to get away from her.
Very far away from her.
And then, he needed to find someplace where he could pound on something.
For a good, long while.
“Why was he here?” Hope asked, watching as Remy Jennings made his way out to his car.
For once, he didn’t have that easy, I-own-it-all gait. Hope knew that gait. After all, Joey had moved the same way.
You’re not being fair, that soft, chiding voice whispered as she turned to look at Law.
He was busy straightening up the magazines and books that littered the desk next to his chair, taking his time with it, too. Too much time, even though he only had the one good hand.
Giving her an absent smile, he just shrugged. “Just checking on things, I guess. Who the hell knows?”
“You know … for somebody who tells lies for a living, you’re not very good at lying.” Hope pushed her hands into her pockets and rocked back on her heels as he straightened.
“Lying about what?”
“He was here for a reason.” Hope swallowed the knot in her throat. “I can tell. What was it?”
Law’s hand curled around the stack of magazines, tightened. Pages crumpled and then abruptly, he hurled them down and spun away. “Shit, Hope.” Under the faded shirt he wore, muscles strained as he lifted his hand, rubbed it over his face. “He was here about you, okay?”
A chill raced down her spine.
And for reasons she couldn’t even begin to explain, her heart ached.
“So much for him meaning what he says,” she muttered, reaching up and wiping the back of her hand over her mouth.
“What?”
She just shook her head.
“What are you so scared about?”
She laughed, and even to her own ears, the sound was hard and brittle. “Oh, come on, Law. He just stood there and told me I don’t need to worry about him causing trouble for me, that he means what he says and yet he was here grilling you about me.”
“Yes. He was.” Law crossed the room and reached down, caught one of her wrists and lifted it, exposing the healing scars. “Mostly because of these, honey.”
She curled her hand into a fist, tensed. Staring into his hazel eyes, she whispered, “What about these?”
He held tight, his grasp gentle … but firm. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, let her get away. “Hope, somebody tried to kill you. He beat the shit out of me, but he tried to kill you. And up until recently, everybody just assumed you’d done it yourself. Remy’s a DA. He’s got a job to do, and now you’re just as much a victim of a crime as I am.”
Hope swallowed the knot in her throat—victim—damn it, she was so fucking tired of being a victim.
Closing her eyes, she reminded herself that she wasn’t one now, not unless she let herself be one. So what if the law decided to view her as one? That didn’t mean she had to see herself as one, that she had to let herself be one … act like one …
Taking a deep, steadying breath, she opened her eyes and looked at Law. “So if he was here about these, why didn’t he talk to me?”
A shutter fell across Law’s eyes.
And just like that, she knew. Pain, shame, horror, they sliced into her heart, into her soul. A scream rose in her throat, but she swallowed it down.
He knew.
Remy knew.
For some reason, that knowledge was like a lash across her heart. Raw and unending and painful.
“Oh, shit.” Jerking away from him, ignoring the sharp sting it caused in her wrist, she turned away from him. Nausea churned inside her and if she had had any food inside her belly, she would have vomited every last bit of it up on Law’s polished, gleaming hardwood floors.
Instead, she made her way over to the windows and opened one, fighting with the screen until she’d freed that, too.
Leaning forward, she sucked in a breath of air. But it lodged in her lungs when she saw Remy.
Doing the exact same thing.
He was leaning over the hood of his car, a sleek, silver sports car, a Jaguar, if she wasn’t mistaken, his shoulders bowed, head low.
As though he felt her stare, he lifted his head.
A good forty feet separated them, but she still felt the impact of his gaze and it shook her clear down to her very core. Heat … wrapped in fear, and nerves, and need, and … surprise.
Because he looked every bit as shaken, as worried, as confused as she felt.
Those blue eyes bored into hers.
Her heart raced and for the first time in her life, Hope understood the concept of what it might be like to actually have the world fall away. In those few seconds, it seemed like nothing, and no one, existed, except for him, and her.
Then, he looked away and the moment shattered.
Without sparing her another glance, he climbed into that sleek, sexy car and drove away.
With her knees shaking and her heart still racing, she rested a hand on the windowsill and sank down to the floor, turning so that her back was to the wall.
Staring into the living room, she found herself looking at Law.
He stared back at her.
“He knows,” she whispered. Tears burned her eyes, shame clawed at her throat. “He knows all about me, what happened, what Joey did to me, doesn’t he?”
“He knows enough.” Law sighed roughly, his shoulders rising and falling. “I didn’t tell him, but he’s a smart guy and he knows what to look for, where to look. Plus …”
He closed his eyes.
When he looked back at her, she saw the apology, the sadness in his eyes. “I think he talked to Joe, honey,” he said, his voice gruff.
Hope drew her knees to her chest and tried not to whimper. Tried not to cry. It took every last bit of strength, every last bit of courage she had to keep those wounded, broken sounds trapped inside. But she could hear them, echoing inside her head—an animal, trapped, helpless, wanting to get out.
That was exactly what she had been.
What he had made her into.
“Does Joey know where I am?” Hope whispered.
“It doesn’t matter,” Law snarled. He stalked acros
s the room and crouched down in front of her, taking her cold hands in his. “Baby, he won’t hurt you again. I’d kill him first. I’ll take care of you, I swear.”
I’ll take care of you …
“So fierce,” she whispered, her voice breaking a little. She stared at him and there was a huge part of her that wanted to let him do just that—take care of her. This was Law, she could trust him to do just that. Take care of her.
She wouldn’t, though.
She couldn’t.
Staring into his glittering, angry eyes, at his battered face, she knew he would, knew he meant it. Forcing herself to smile, she reached up and touched a hand to one stubbled cheek. “Law, I love you … but I have to start taking care of myself.”
Then she leaned forward and pressed a light kiss to his lips.
Although her legs felt like water, she stood and made her way out of the room.
At the door, Law called her name.
Turning, she looked at him.
“Tell me you’re not going to run away,” he said. There was a plea in those hazel eyes.
Giving him a sad smile, she said, “I finally figured it out, Law. I can’t keep running. If he comes looking for me, he’ll find me. But if he tries to touch me, tries to drag me back—you won’t be able to kill him. I’ll kill him. I won’t let him take me back to that.”
Absently, she touched her wrist, studied the healing scars.
Hot, burning anger rippled through her and she welcomed it, because it chased away the icy, aching fear. “I’d die before I’d go back to him, you know. And I’d kill him and pay whatever price before I’d let him take me back. But I’d also rather kill him and pay that price before I’d settle for living the rest of my life with this kind of fear. I’d do it, and be happy with it.”
Then she walked away, one shaky, unsteady step at a time.
Ezra stalked into the sheriff’s office and said, “Look, if you keep calling me in here, you’re going to have to get me some sort of free pass to get me through the dragon keeper’s gate. That woman out there, I hate to say this, but she almost scares the shit out of me.”
“Ms. Tuttle has that effect on people,” Nielson said. He smiled, but it was a strained, tired smile, one that didn’t reach his eyes.
Ezra wanted to flop into a chair, but the ladder-backed, hard-ass chairs the sheriff’s office boasted weren’t exactly made for it. So instead, he settled down and stretched his legs out, crossed them at the ankle. The muscles in his right thigh twinged, twitched, and pulled, but he ignored them and focused on the sheriff’s face. That grim look in the man’s eyes? He didn’t like it.
“Where’s Lena?”
“It’s Thursday—she’s working. I dropped her off at the Inn on my way in.”
“That your normal routine?”
Ezra shrugged restlessly. “We don’t exactly have a routine yet,” he said. An itch settled between his shoulder blades and he had the weird urge to fidget, but he squashed it. No, he and Lena didn’t have a routine. They just barely had a relationship. Nielson probably knew that. “This is still … new.”
“You two look right together,” Nielson said softly. “You know that?”
“Yeah.” A slow, pleased grin curled Ezra’s lips. “I know that. I see it. And I feel it. I think she does, too, otherwise she wouldn’t have asked me to stay out at her place. Although, I gotta say, I wouldn’t have expected the romantic streak, Sheriff.”
Nielson snorted. Then he leaned back, skimming a hand over his bald scalp. “I’ve got to show you something, but it can’t go any farther than this room. Technically, I shouldn’t be sharing this information, but my gut says I need to, so I’m doing it.”
The smile faded from Ezra’s face. Drawing his legs in, he braced his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, focusing on the sheriff’s face. “What?”
Instead of saying anything, Nielson just placed a picture on the edge of his desk.
Ezra stared.
It looked like Lena.
A lot like Lena.
The shape of her face, almost down to the chin. But Lena’s chin had that sharp, almost feline angle and this woman’s chin had a softer curve. The eyes were hazel, not pale, icy blue. The hair, though, the color was almost identical, even if the woman in the picture wore hers longer than Lena did. The skin, the cheekbones.
This woman was probably a few years younger, but just a few and even with the slight difference in age, the similarity was … eerie.
Swallowing, he looked up and stared at the sheriff.
In the pit of his stomach, he already knew who she was.
But he asked anyway.
“Who is she?”
“Her name was Jolene Hollister.”
Ezra’s stomach sank.
Even before the sheriff continued, Ezra already knew.
“It’s the woman we found at Reilly’s place.”
Closing his eyes, he reached up and rubbed his hands over his face, tried to battle down the bile rising in his gut. Shit, shit, shit. Fuck.
“They look enough alike to be sisters,” Nielson said. “Almost twins.”
“I’m not blind,” Ezra snarled, opening his eyes. “I can see that.”
Nielson nodded. “Yes, I know.” Then he put the picture away. “Do you think you’ve ever seen the woman before?”
“No, I haven’t.” As much as she looked like Lena, if he’d seen that woman before, he’d know. There was no way in hell he couldn’t know.
He blew out a breath, tried to reconcile the two images in his mind—the bloody, battered carcass he’d seen in Law’s workshop weeks earlier, to the woman in the picture. But he couldn’t. The woman, she’d been beaten, brutalized, beyond all recognition.
His heart started to pound, slow, heavy beats as something occurred to him. The screams … holy shit, those screams. The screams Lena had heard.
Fuck.
Was it somebody after her?
Adrenaline started buzzing through his system. He wanted to crawl out of his skin—find a target, any target. Instead, he kept himself focused. That was the only thing that would help right now.
“The screams Lena heard … how likely is it that it was Jolene?” he said.
“You know there’s no way we can know that,” Nielson said, shaking his head.
Ezra curled his lip. “Yeah, well, you’re perfectly capable of having a hunch. Of listening to your gut. My gut tells me this … it was that girl. The sick fuck who killed that girl was in the woods out by Lena’s house chasing her down—just yards away from her.”
Abruptly, he surged to his feet and started to pace. Shit.
The room was too damn small.
He felt caged in, trapped—so damned trapped, and helpless. Useless.
Completely useless.
Near the minuscule window, he stopped and rested his hands on the sill, staring out over the town square. Ash, Kentucky—middle of nowhere. Was supposed to be quiet, safe … boring. Some place for him to just sit, do nothing, while he figured out how to waste the rest of his sorry life.
He’d spent just a few weeks doing that, too. Then he met Lena. Bye-bye, Boredom. Now he was shit-faced in love with Lena Riddle, and ass-deep in the middle of a mess the likes of which he had never expected.
Stuff like this wasn’t supposed to happen in quiet, pretty little small towns. In an ideal world, it wouldn’t happen anywhere, but definitely not here.
He closed his eyes only to open them back up as the image of the dead woman’s face flashed through his mind, haunting him. Taunting him.
So like Lena.
What the hell.
“So why are you telling me this?” he asked softly.
“Because it seemed like what I needed to do.”
Ezra glanced over his shoulder and looked at Nielson. “Why?”
Nielson lowered his gaze and Ezra, despite himself, found himself doing the same. Although he couldn’t see the picture, he knew the sheriff was staring at it, seeing that w
oman’s pale, pretty face.
How old had she been?
What had she been planning to do with her life?
And what the fuck did it matter? Some bastard had robbed her of that. All of it.
“It could be nothing but a coincidence that she looks so much like Lena,” the sheriff said. He closed the file and set it aside before he looked up and met Ezra’s gaze. “It could just be one of those things.”
“But you don’t believe that.”
Nielson shrugged. “I don’t not believe it. But I’m also not going to discount any possible connection … and I’m not going to take any chance that she could become a target of his. Especially considering that she did hear something. The more aware you are of the situation, the more you’re going to watch her.”
Ezra scrubbed a hand over his face.
Shit, if he watched her any more closely, he’d have to hide in her back pocket. Not that he’d mind, but it might get a little tedious for her after a while.
Grimacing, he focused on the town square once more, watching the people as they passed by.
“I bet you never imagined anything like this happening here, did you?” he asked absently.
There was a long, heavy moment of silence and then Nielson sighed. “No. No, I didn’t. You know, some cops probably dream of shit like this—it’s the kind of thing that makes a career.”
Ezra nodded. He knew plenty of cops who would be all but salivating to have this kind of potentially fucked up case on their hands.
“Is that how you feel about it?” he asked, staring at the sheriff.
“Hell, no,” Nielson said, shaking his head. “I wish to God it wasn’t happening—wish more than anything else none of this had ever happened in my town.”
It was a bad thing to have a strain on a friendship.
Lena Riddle knew this very well.
She hadn’t had so many friends in her life that she could afford to be dismissive of any. But then again, because she hadn’t had all that many good, solid friendships, she was still madder than hell that one of her supposedly good friends had dumped on another friend the way Roz had dumped on Law.
It had been a few weeks since it had happened, but still, walking into the Inn … well, it no longer felt like a second home.
With her hand gripping Puck’s harness, she made her way into the kitchen, half-hoping Roz would be busy with a phone call, a meeting. Hell, even upstairs screwing Carter.
If You See Her Page 11