If You Hear Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense (35 page)

Spine rigid, Lena ignored the other woman as she heard the door to the kitchen open. Thank God, she thought. Grabbing Puck’s leash from the hook, she crouched down by the door.

It wasn’t Ezra, though.

It was Carter.

“Ahh … is everything okay in here?”

“Just peachy,” Lena snapped. Gripping the dog’s leash, she rose and headed to the kitchen’s north entrance. She’d wait for Ezra out in the lobby. “Come on, boy.”

“Are you okay, Lena?” Carter asked.

“No. I’ve got a headache, I’m pissed, and I’m leaving,” she said, biting off each word.

“It’s not closing time yet.”

“And we’re dead in here. If somebody comes in, give them bar food, tell them I started puking all over the floor—I don’t care—but I’m leaving,” she said.

“Lena, I can see you’re upset …”

Upset—damn it, if one more person called her upset, she was going to start gouging out eyes.

Unaware of how close she was to screaming, Carter continued. “I know we’re friends, but you are an employee. Now if you’re ill, I understand, but if not …”

“If not, what?” she demanded scathingly.

“Lena, we need to talk about this,” Roz said.

“The hell we do!” she shouted. “I’m not talking about this right now.”

Puck’s growling grew louder. Shit. She was freaking her dog out.

“Lena, I don’t know what the problem is, but you don’t speak to my wife that way and you can’t just walk out in the middle of your shift, either.”

“And what if I do, damn it?” Reaching down, she laid a hand on Puck’s head. “If I walk out that door, you’ll what? Fire me? If that’s what you need to do, then you do it, because I can’t stay here another minute—if I do, I’ll say something I’ll regret.”

She didn’t wait long enough for him to come up with an answer.

“What just happened?”

Gaping, Roz turned and looked at her husband. The misery on her face twisted at something inside him. Sighing, Carter crossed the room and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, tucking her against him.

“Baby, what just happened?” she said again. “I … damn it, I don’t get it. We’ve never had a fight like that. She’s never acted like that.”

“What started it?”

Roz sniffled. “Me.” Then she started to cry. “I just can’t help it. I’m scared. I’m worried. And … well, all this crazy talk about Law, I don’t really think it’s him, but what if it is? She’s so close to him and she …” She sobbed against his shirt.

Carter rubbed his cheek against her short, soft curls. “It’s okay, darling. I understand. We all love him. Nobody wants to think he could do this. I don’t think he did. But we worry.”

Roz continued to cry.

He simply stood there and held her, stroking her back. There wasn’t much else he could do.

His nice, quiet little town had gone crazy, Remy realized with more than a little dismay.

It was early Friday morning. He needed to be in his
office, and instead, he was trapped in the doorway of the café. In his left hand, he held his laptop bag. In his right hand, he held a cup of coffee that had already started to cool.

Keeping his frustration hidden, he stared into Deb Sparks’s eyes and tried to figure out just what in the hell she expected of him.

“Well?” she demanded, her voice shrill, strident.

Her eyes, a pale, almost colorless shade of blue, peered at him and he could tell by the stubborn set of her shoulders, the lift of her chin that she expected an answer.

She wasn’t the only one, either.

She had four other people with her.

Earl Prather was standing there, just a few feet away and he was watching the whole damn thing with just a little too much amusement for Remy’s liking. “Ms. Sparks, I can’t issue a warrant when there is no proof,” Remy said. He’d already mentioned that little fact three times.

“You have proof,” she snapped.

Remy barely resisted the urge to wince. Her voice could break glass, he’d swear to it.

“No, we don’t. What we have is a body that appears to have been placed there. Law Reilly wasn’t on the premises when she was put there. He wasn’t in the state when she was killed.”

Her eyes widened. In a dramatic voice, she said, “They can fool coroners, you know. Putting the body on ice, all sorts of things. I’ve seen it on
Court TV, CSI, Law & Order
. And just because he claims he wasn’t in the state doesn’t mean he wasn’t. Did you look for ice? Did you?”

Ice. What in the hell? Shit.
Put knowledge in the hands of stupid people, and it just made them more stupid
, he thought.

“No, I didn’t look for ice. However, I’m sure the deputies did. And deputies from the sheriff’s office spoke
with a number of people who can testify to Law Reilly’s whereabouts,” Remy said, looking at Deb’s face and then at Prather, then to each of her loyal little crowd of followers.

Slowly, as though he was speaking to a child, he said, “Law Reilly was not in the state. And, while I’m sure you’re just trying to help, this really isn’t anything I can discuss with you—any of you.”

“Why not?” Deb stomped her foot. “I am a taxpayer. I pay your salary, Remy Jennings, and don’t you forget it. That means you answer to me.”

Oh, now that did it. “No. It does not mean I answer to you. I answer to my superiors, and if you have a problem with how I do my job, take it up with them.” He made a display of taking a look at his watch. “Now, if you don’t mind, I do have other cases, other taxpayers who are depending on me.”

“Your mama should be ashamed of you, letting a sick pervert like that walk around when you’ve got the power to stop him!” Deb proclaimed.

Remy couldn’t decide what was more annoying—her strident tones or her habit of making everything sound like a matter of life or death. Turning to look at her, he said, “Ms. Sparks, believe it or not, if I thought Law Reilly was guilty, I’d be out there combing through every square inch of the county on my hands and knees myself, looking for proof. But he’s not a murderer.”

He pushed through the small crowd only to come to a dead stop as he started to swing left.

Law Reilly was standing there, his face an unreadable mask. The woman was with him, her long brown hair swept back and braided, falling over her shoulder in a tail that damn near touched her waist.

Law might have been wearing a mask, but the woman … she wasn’t.

Her face was pale, but her sea-green eyes snapped with fire. She wasn’t looking at him, though. She was staring past him with disgust at the people gathered at the foot of the steps.

“Bunch of hyenas,” she muttered, her voice a low, soft drawl.

Then her eyes cut to his. Their gazes locked for a few seconds and she looked away, staring at the concrete as though it held something uniquely fascinating.

Hell, Remy found
her
fascinating.

She crashes into a plant stand and gets terrified, but somebody insults her lover and she looked ready to rip throats open?

Tearing his eyes away from her pretty, heart-shaped face, he looked at Law. “Reilly.”

Law cocked a brow. “Good morning, Counselor.”

At the sound of Law’s voice, the small crowd at the café door went strangely silent. One by one, they eased down the steps, glanced at Law, and then started to slink away.

Law would have let them do just that.

The woman, though?

“Such a nice town, here, Law. So nice of you to invite me for a visit … they stand around talking about you behind your back, but they don’t have the courage to look you in the eye when they realize you heard every damn word,” she said. “They think you’re the sort of sick, murdering coward who could beat and murder a woman, but they don’t have the guts to say it to your face. I love a hypocrite, don’t you?”

That soft, low voice of hers could carry, Remy realized.

Amused, he shifted so he could see the reaction from the corner of his eye.

Two of them kept walking. One paused and looked back at Law, then at the woman, shamefaced, before hurrying on down the sidewalk.

But Deb, damn her—was she stupid or was she just that fond of causing trouble?

Lifting her chin, she came closer. Giving Law a nasty look, she then focused her eyes on the woman—Remy still didn’t know her name, shit.

“You’re making a mistake with this one, young lady.” Deb sniffed. “I should know. He’s lived here for years and after you’ve lived near a person for that long, you get to know them. He’s trouble, mark my words.”

A cool smile spread over the woman’s face. “After you’ve lived near a person for years, huh?” She smirked. “Then I should know. He may be trouble, but he’s no murderer. I’ve known him since I was in diapers. He wouldn’t hurt a woman. He doesn’t have it in him. And that is something I have on good authority—you can mark my words.”

A strange, faraway look entered her eyes, one that left Remy with a bad, bad taste in the back of his mouth.

Then she blinked and the moment shattered. Looking back at Deb, she said, “Whatever you think you know, you’re wrong. You’ll figure that out soon enough.”

She looked away from Deb then, effectively dismissing her. “Come on, Law. Let’s get out of here. We can grab some coffee at the bookstore or something. Suddenly, I’m not hungry.”

As they headed down the sidewalk, Remy fell in step with them. He could have given them several reasons—if he didn’t get away from Deb, he might do himself bodily harm, jab himself in the chest with his pen, beat himself in the head with his iPhone until he broke the skin—just to have a reason to escape. But he also needed the woman’s name.

Even if she belonged to Law, and it looked like she did. Whether Law was still hung up on Lena or not, the woman was loyal to him.

But Remy wanted her name—the slim brunette who
had cowered in front of Prather but stood up to the worst gossips and bitches this town had to offer. Who was she to him?

“It will get better,” he said to Law.

“Shit.”

“It will. Right now, it’s just … news.” He grimaced as he said it. It was morbid, it was awful, and it was, plain and simple, true. “But sooner or later, people will find something else to talk about.”

“Maybe if we could find who really did kill her, that might help,” Law said, his voice sharp.

“Yes.” Remy narrowed his eyes. He’d like that. A lot. He wanted that fucker caught, locked away. He wanted a part in it.

“Thinking how nice and shiny that might look on your résumé or whatever in the hell you lawyer types call it?” Law asked cynically.

“No. I’m thinking how nice it will be for people around here to be able to stop worrying every time their daughters, their wives, their sisters leave the house for work, school, groceries,” Remy snapped. He stopped in his tracks and glared at Law. “I don’t need my ego stroked and I don’t need big cases to feel important—if that was what I wanted, I’d be practicing someplace other than here. I just want this town to go back to what it was. Safe.”

Law’s lids drooped, shielding his eyes. A sigh escaped him and he looked away. “It’s not ever going to be the same town again, Jennings. Not after this. Even if we find him. What he did, it ripped something here and even after it’s mended, the fabric of the place? It’s torn.”

The woman reached out and caught Law’s hand, squeezed it. “But finding him will make it better. At least it will mend things, instead of leaving a big hole, right?”

Her eyes darted toward Remy, bounced away before really making contact.

Law reached out and caught a strand of her hair, tugging on it. It looked like a familiar habit, one he’d done a thousand times. “Yeah, I guess.” Then he frowned and glanced at Remy. “Guess I should introduce you. Remy, this is my friend, Hope. Hope, this is Remy Jennings. If somebody had decided I needed to be arrested, most likely he would have been the one getting the warrants and all that official stuff.”

Her pale green eyes cooled—from spring green to arctic ice in the span of seconds, Remy realized. He wanted to glare at Law, but managed not to. Barely. “Nobody is going to arrest you without some sort of proof and there isn’t any,” he said.

“Law isn’t a murderer,” she said, her voice flat.

“I agree with you,” Remy said. He held out his hand, wondered if she’d accept.

He was mildly surprised when she did. The hand she put in his was small, and slim, as delicate as the rest of her. She gave his hand a quick shake and then pulled back, as if that small touch was all she could stand, or all she wanted. “You’re a lawyer?”

“Yes.” He gave her the same charming smile he’d used to coax his mother into letting him stay up late, the same charming smile he’d used to coax Sandy Reynolds into going to the prom with him … and into losing her virginity with him later that night. It was the same charming smile he’d used on women most of his life and it worked on a pretty regular basis.

But she just stared at him, her gaze unreadable, her mouth a flat, unsmiling line. She didn’t look charmed at all. Matter of fact, she actually looked a little irritated and she looked like she’d like to get as far away from him as she could.

Then she pointedly turned away and focused on Law. “Are you still hungry?”

Sixty seconds later, he was standing on the sidewalk and watching her walk away with Law.

She never spared him so much as one backward glance.

Well, Remy thought, at least he had a name.

It was better than nothing.

Although why in the hell it mattered, he didn’t know.

Hope was clearly not interested.

And she was clearly all about Law Reilly.