If You See Her (7 page)

“I’m not sure what you’re asking.” He shot Ezra a dirty look. “You like fucking things up for me, boy?”

Ezra curled his lip. “Yeah, it just makes my day, Sheriff. I wake up every damn day, thinking about what all I can do to screw with your cozy little town. Get my girlfriend terrorized. Get my house burned down by some teenaged headcase.”

“He’s not a fucking headcase,” Remy snarled.

“Oh, the hell he isn’t.” Ezra slashed a hand through the air and whirled around, glaring at him. “I feel bad for the kid. You think I want to see him slapped with a crime like this? What is he … fourteen? Fifteen? He’s just a fucking kid and he’s got his whole life ahead of him. All he needs to do is figure that out.”

Then he sighed and shoved a hand through his hair. “He isn’t going to do that until he gets his act together. No one was hurt … 
this
time. But you can’t make this go away. You want to give him a smack on the hand, have him come out and sweep up some of the ashes of my house? You think that’s going to convince him he needs to straighten up? He needs help, Jennings. And I think you know that.”

Gut churning, Remy looked away from Ezra and stared at the gold cross on Dwight’s desk, thought about the way his nephew had looked just that morning. Fuck. Why hadn’t the kid come to him? Trusted him?

Eyes burning and throat tight, he looked at Ezra. “What do you want me to say? What in the holy fuck do you want me to do?”

“Get him help. For the love of God, you’re a lawyer—figure it out, work it out. Get him help—he isn’t going to
find what he needs in jail, but he can’t just walk away from this either.”

Remy shifted his gaze to the sheriff.

Dwight closed his eyes. Then he reached over and grabbed the necklace. “I wasn’t in here, Remy. Wasn’t in here. I left to get me a soda. You two idiots stay in here for the next ten minutes, or so help me God, I’ll beat you both bloody.” With that, he tossed the necklace at Remy.

On his way out the door, he shot them both a dark look. “If this comes back and bites me on the ass, I’m going to make the two of you very, very sorry.”

“Stupid kid.”

Keith Jennings, flipping through a book, looked up as Nielson came storming into the breakroom. He looked pissed, Keith decided. Very, very pissed. Leaning back in his seat, he studied his boss for a minute, torn between finishing the book and asking.

Curiosity got the best of him. “Which one?”

Nielson shot him a look. “Nobody.”

Huh
. Well, he’d hear about it sooner or later, he figured. That’s the way it worked in this town. Turning down the page he’d been reading, he tossed the book aside and watched as Nielson plugged some quarters into the Coke machine. “Is anybody telling King about the similarities between the victim and Ms. Riddle?”

Nielson grunted an answer.

Keith thought it might be a yes. He wasn’t sure. Damn. Something really, really had the boss in a mood today. He didn’t bother asking what it was, though. He kind of liked his head where it was.

S
OME PEOPLE MIGHT SAY THAT A WISE MAN WOULDN’T
be here.

But he couldn’t think of another place to be just then.

Watching Hope seemed to be just the thing to do.

Just the thing.

Even though there were all kinds of trouble going on in Ash right now. If anybody saw a strange, shadowy figure skulking about in the woods, well, he might find his ass plugged with buckshot, and yet, here he was.

He couldn’t not watch her.

She had been in the hospital and according to the gossip grapevine, just a few hours away from getting arrested. The words he’d heard had been
criminally insane
.

Just thinking about it was enough to make him chuckle.

Her … insane.

He laughed.

She looked like she would scream at a loud noise.

She looked like she would run if somebody jumped out from behind a tree.

And they had been ready to arrest her for assault, maybe even for murder?

It was amusing.

But now she was out … and he imagined she would run soon.

That was what she did.

And all he had to do was watch.

Once she ran …

“I shouldn’t be here,” Hope muttered.

The sun beat down on her back as she paced the porch, but she was still cold.

Law slumped on the swing at one end, his eyes closed. He wasn’t sleeping, though. He cracked one lid open, peered at her with that shrewd, intense gaze, and then closed his eye again.

“You aren’t leaving, Hope.”

Shooting him a narrow look, she continued to pace.

“Not really up to you, is it?” she shot at him.

He smiled a little, but didn’t say anything.

No. She wasn’t leaving. Not right now.

Three days. She’d been back at this house for three days, and each day was like a waking nightmare. Her skin crawled, just being inside that place. Memory flashes of the night haunted her, all the damn time. They were vague, so damn vague, nothing but blips, really, but even those were too much.

Neither she nor Law had terribly clear recollections—not too surprising with Law, considering how badly he’d been battered. The hit she’d taken to her head could easily be blamed for her vague memories, but she wondered how much of her hazy recollections were because she was just too big of a coward to remember.

She kept seeing Prather … oh, shit. She covered her eyes with her hands, as though that would block out what few memories she had of that night. The clearest one she had of him was his face—lifeless, but his expression had been one of abject, terrified pain—like he’d died all but begging for mercy.

He hadn’t deserved that.

She suspected he’d been a chauvinistic jerk, but nobody deserved to die like that.

She couldn’t be here without remembering …

Law was going to have his office gutted, completely redesigned, but it would be awhile. Even when it was done, she knew she’d still see it as it had looked that night. With the red stain of blood spreading across the floor.

Hell, even now she could see where blood and other things had left their mark.

The sheriff had given them the okay to go ahead and use the room, said they’d gotten everything they’d need, but there was no way Hope would ever step foot in there, not until Law was done doing whatever.

Maybe not even then.

Being in the kitchen wasn’t as hard, but she barely remembered any of what had happened in the seconds before she’d been hit. The clearest memories all happened before she’d come in here.

Part of her wished the sheriff had told them they wouldn’t be able to come back here yet. And how selfish was that? This was her best friend’s home—he loved this place.

Loved it, and just being here gave her nightmares. The phone rang. “I’ll get it,” she said, shooting him a dark look.

“I
am
capable of standing up, Hope.” He grimaced.

“I’m already standing.” Then she flushed, realized how short, how sharp her tone sounded. Turning her back on him, she reached inside the house and grabbed the cordless from the counter. Then she made a face, almost wished she’d let Law get it after all.

She knew that number. The display only showed
Carrington County
before it ran out of room, but she knew the number.

She cleared her throat before she answered.

Still, her voice creaked a little as she said, “Hello?”

When Remy Jennings spoke, the sound of that slow, lazy drawl hit her low in the belly. “Hello, Ho … Ms. Carson. May I speak to Law, please?”

Without saying anything else, she delivered the phone to Law, tried not to think about the man on the other end of the phone. Tried not to think of how that deep, easy voice made her feel.

It was amazing, really, that she even recognized
that
feeling. It had been years since a man had made her feel that way … and her ex-husband hadn’t ever managed to do that just by
talking
.

No man had. Other than Remy Jennings.

But she really, really needed to quit thinking of him as a man. Really.

Don’t think of him as a man. Think of him as a lawyer … hello, he wanted you arrested!
That right there should have made it very, very clear that he wasn’t a guy she needed to think about.

Hell, she didn’t think about guys period.

She didn’t trust them.

She didn’t need them.

Other than Law, and he wasn’t really a guy in her opinion. He was Law. He was her friend … and he was safe.

He was it, though.

The other males of the species, they could go to hell in a handbasket and that would suit her just fine. She’d survived just fine the past few years without a guy, no reason to change that. And it wasn’t like she ever wanted another guy in her life again anyway. Not after Joey.

A small, quiet voice deep inside her heart murmured,
Remy is nothing like Joey
.

Against her will, she closed her eyes, remembered the first time she’d seen the man.

Barely three weeks ago.

That day on the square.

She’d crashed into Earl Prather, had reacted—badly—the deputy had gone to steady her, keep her from falling. Hadn’t done anything wrong, really, but it had freaked her out, and when she saw his uniform, it had made it worse. She’d panicked, and that set his cop’s instincts off.

And then, just like that, Remy was there. She’d looked into those dusk-blue eyes, heard that soft lazy drawl of his … felt like she was falling.

Get a grip
, she told herself.

Shaking her head, she leaned back against the railing and looked up just as Law was lowering the phone. “Gee, did he change his mind? Is he coming to haul me away?”

“Shut up,” Law muttered, grimacing. “No. He was supposed to come out, needed to talk a few things over with me, but something came up. He’s rescheduled.”

He reached up, rested a hand on her shoulder. “Hope, you’re not getting arrested. You can relax.”

“Relax.” She pressed a hand to her quivering, jumping belly.

How could she relax, when it felt like somebody was watching her every step?

Weighing her every move?

Just waiting …

Shivering, she pushed that thought aside and focused on Law’s battered face. “Are you hungry? You didn’t eat much this morning.”

“Nice, subtle subject change there, darlin’.” Law rolled his eyes.

Giving him a sharp-edged smile, she said, “Fine. Law,
darlin’
, I don’t want to talk about this, so let’s don’t. Now do you want something to eat or not?”

To her surprise, a wide grin lit his face. Then he
winced, pressed a hand to his mouth as the flesh of the healing cut on his lower lip split. “Shit, Hope. Don’t make me smile like that.”

When he lowered his hand, there was a smear of blood on it. He sighed and grabbed a tissue from the counter, pressed it to his mouth.

“You know, you’re acting awful bossy. You’ve been acting like this ever since the two of us left the hospital. Here I was, half-expecting you to take off running like a jackrabbit, but what you did was go and find an attitude. What’s the deal?”

She just shrugged.

She couldn’t begin to explain it. Something about being forced into that hospital—into
any
hospital.

Something about having people trying to force those drugs on her …

Something about these damned bandages on her wrists …

Looking down, she touched one of them, touched the wounds the bandages hid.

Then she looked up and met Law’s eyes.

There was a familiar look there, compassionate and understanding. He reached out and caught her hands, drawing her fingers away from the scars. “It’s going to be okay. You got out of that place before. Whatever this is, whatever put you back there, you’ll get out again. I’m right here and I’ll help you.”

Narrowing her eyes, she jerked her hands away.

The compassion she saw in his eyes, it pissed her off. Fury bubbled inside, hot and potent and deadly. It wanted
out
.

Something dark and frightening pushed at the edge of her memory. She couldn’t quite remember
what
had happened that night … she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to. Seeing Prather, vague flickers of Law … he’d been in trouble—she knew that.

But she hadn’t done this. She knew that as sure as she knew her own name, as sure as she knew the color of her eyes, the color of her hair.

And she was so damned
tired
of having people think she’d done this.

Even Law … who had always trusted her, believed in her. Helped her.

Even Law.

He believed she was so damned weak that she’d slit her own wrists while he was lying there, hurting and helpless. Turning away, she started down the steps, uncertain of where she was going to go—she sure as hell wasn’t about to wander around, but she didn’t want to go inside the house, either.

The helpless anger, her frustration and rage bubbled inside her and then, before she realized it, she hit boiling point. Abruptly, she spun around and glared at Law.

“I didn’t
do
this.”

For long, long seconds, he stared at her … like he couldn’t quite comprehend what she was saying.

Then, his voice slow and rough, he said, “What do you mean you didn’t do this?”

“Just that.” Storming up the stairs, all but shaking as unfamiliar fury swamped her. She knew
fear
. She knew
hesitation
. She knew
doubt
. She knew
anger
.

But this kind of fury? She didn’t know it, barely understood it, and she could hardly control it as it came bubbling out.

Her hands trembled as she fumbled with the bandages, tearing them away and letting them fall to the ground. The black sutures looked like an ugly stain against her pale flesh, the thin red scars vivid and raw.

Holding out her wrists, she lifted her eyes and stared at Law.

“This,”
she snarled. “I didn’t do it. Damn it to hell, I didn’t do it.”

“Hope …”