“What?”
He didn’t answer, though, just kept muttering.
She didn’t really get irritated, though, until he rather unceremoniously moved her off his lap onto the bed. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone while Nia stared at him, trying to figure out just what in the world he was mumbling about.
“Law?”
He didn’t answer, still fiddling with his phone. Irritated, she clambered off the bed and stood up, getting pissed off. What in the world had she said?
“Damn it,” he snapped behind her.
Turning around, she looked at him as he stood up and shoved his phone into his pocket.
“What in the world are you mumbling and shaking your head and scowling about?”
“I’m not sure. Come on. We need to go back to my place—I need to check something out.” He grabbed his jeans, pulling them on without bothering to look for his boxers.
She stood there admiring the view, a little too distracted by said view for a moment to even realize what he’d said. Then she jerked herself back to attention. “Huh? Go where? Check what out?”
“Something. I’m not sure,” he said, that distracted look still on his face—distracted, kind of sexy, brooding. He had a faint line between his brows like he was thinking damn hard about something and despite her irritation over his suddenly strange behavior, she found herself thinking about how damn gorgeous he was—and then she wanted to kick herself.
Crossing her arms over her naked breasts, she glared at him. “You’re not sure what we’re checking out?”
“No. That’s why we need to go home. It’s been a few years since I looked at all that shit.” He stared at her, frowned. “You’re not dressed.”
“No. I’m not. You haven’t told me why we’re supposed to be leaving or what we’re looking for.” Fucking strange—why hadn’t she noticed how easily his mind moved from one topic to another before now?
“Caves—you said something about caves,” he said patiently, like he was talking to a child. Like she could follow whatever very strange path his brain was obviously taking—the one she was having a very hard time following. “I need to look at my maps.”
“Maps?” She stiffened. Inside her chest, her heart skipped a beat.
“Yeah.” He looked around. “You need clothes.”
“Damn it, Law, what maps?”
Rummaging through Nia’s closet, he pulled out a black shirt. He tossed it at her, along with the bra that was draped over the foot of the bed. “The maps that aren’t here,” he said, trying to guide his brain back to the present, although it was racing just then—racing as a picture suddenly started to come into focus.
It wasn’t caves Nia needed to be looking for—although she didn’t need to be looking for a damn thing, and shit, he couldn’t exactly leave her alone, either. He saw a pair of jeans in a tangle on the floor and he scooped them up, dumped them in her arms. She was glaring at him, giving him the same irritated look a hundred other people had given him when his brain took a little side trip, but he wasn’t about to try to explain anything to her just yet.
Ezra needed to know this first. And Law wasn’t about to tell Nia what he was thinking and then leave her here. So she needed to go with him, so she’d be kind of stuck with him—stuck, and safe.
While she stood there, still not getting dressed, and fuming, he gave her the smile that he used with others—sheepish, self-deprecating. “Look, I just need to look at a few things—you made me think of something, but I can’t entirely remember it, okay?”
Not a lie. He didn’t remember entirely … where.
“So the sooner we get to my place and I look at the maps and stuff, the better, right?”
Her eyes full of suspicion, she turned away and headed to the bathroom.
Five minutes later, she emerged, dressed, silent, and still watching him like she didn’t entirely trust him.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
THE DEPUTIES FOLLOWED THEM.
Law wasn’t too sure how he felt about that, but he wasn’t going to throw a fit about it, either.
Right then, his brain was too occupied just trying to figure out what in the hell he was going to do once he told Nia what was in the woods. Not caves … but yeah, there was something underground. Or at least there had been. A long time ago.
Stands to reason it could still be there, right?
And if it was, what then? What then? Short of locking her up and throwing away the key, he suspected he didn’t have a chance at keeping her out of those woods.
But if the incident from last night had anything to do with what she was doing in the woods yesterday …
Shit.
The drive home took too long, and yet, not long enough. He was still wracking his brain, trying to come up with ideas, plans, scenarios—things that normally never failed him.
For once, though, his mind was blank.
The silence between them was tense, heavy, as he parked behind the house, not bothering to put the car in the garage. He had a feeling they’d be heading over to see Ezra sometime that afternoon, so what was the point?
He tucked the keys in his pocket after he unlocked the back door, automatically reprogramming the alarm system he’d had installed after what had happened months ago with him and Hope. Nia came in behind him, sauntering into the house with her hands tucked into her back pockets. As she moved over to the island, he shot a glance at the key rack where he kept the keys to the other cars.
Shit.
He grabbed them, tucked them into his pocket, too—he always kept the two spare keys there even though Hope had a set herself. Couldn’t make it that easy for Nia to take off running if she got pissed, right? Not that she’d ever do anything that impulsive, he thought sardonically.
She gave him a quizzical glance, which he ignored in favor of the liquor cabinet.
He needed a drink. A strong one. Screw heading over to Ezra’s—Ezra could come here.
“Want a drink?” he asked as he pulled the whiskey out of the cabinet.
“Sure.” She grimaced and said, “I’ll take the whiskey with some Coke, if you’ve got it. Whatever has your boxers in a twist probably isn’t going to improve my mood.”
He sighed. “Sorry. I … shit, my brain doesn’t track too well when I’m distracted. Gets worse when I’m worried or pissed. Right now, it’s both.” He fell silent as he made her drink, then his own. She got Coke and ice for hers—he drank his straight. It burned a line down his throat, but it didn’t do a damn thing to ease the knots in his belly.
“Come on,” he said after he topped his drink off. “Some of the shit is going to take me a few minutes to find.”
* * *
A few minutes?
Hell, Nia thought, two hours later, while she listened to a one-sided conversation—how about a few hours?
“You sure? Damn it, I thought I’d checked there—yeah, yeah, okay.”
He hung up the phone and sighed. “Hope rearranged everything, has my maps filed up in the attic.”
“We just spent an hour in the attic.”
He scowled. “Yeah, but I wasn’t looking in a file. Was going through the boxes where I’d dumped it all.”
Nia shoved off the doorjamb, eyeing the office with no small level of curiosity as Law headed toward her. “So what’s the office used for? You don’t seem to use it.”
He stopped dead in his tracks, and unless she was mistaken, his face went a little pale and his eyes went dark and flat. Then he gave her a grim smile. “No. No, I don’t use it. Not anymore.”
“Why not?”
He turned his head. Automatically, she followed the direction of his gaze with her eyes, but she didn’t know what he was seeing.
“Just how far back did you go when you were reading about Joe Carson, Nia?” he asked quietly.
“Pretty far,” she said, shrugging. Abruptly, it hit her. Shock stiffened her body and although she couldn’t see whatever Law saw in his
memories, she knew what he was looking at.
That empty space on the floor—it was where the deputy had died. He’d been murdered … in this room.
Wincing, she said, “This is where the deputy died, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Law was rubbing his forearm.
She wondered if he even noticed. Unable to take the dark, tormented look on his face, she made herself take the first step into the room—it hadn’t bothered her just a few minutes ago, but now, well, she didn’t want to be in there. She did it, though. One step in front of the other, until she was close to him, close enough to reach out, offering her hand. “Come on. You still need to show me these maps that have you so worked up.”
He gave her a tight smile. “Worked up?”
“Yeah. Worked up, stressed, boxers in a twist.”
“I think I left the boxers at your place,” he murmured.
“Damn, I think you’re right. You’re commando under those jeans.” She winked at him. “Now how am I supposed to focus on anything?”
When she tugged on his hand, he followed along, shutting the door snugly behind him.
“So I guess you don’t much like being in there, huh?”
“No.” He sighed, absently rotated his neck, reaching up to rub it. “I’ve thought about locking the door and then just throwing the key away, but that seems a little extreme. It’s just a damn room.”
He shoved a hand through his hair. “Come on. We’re going back up to the attic.”
“Fun, fun …” She stepped aside and gestured to him. “I’ll let you lead the way. And I’ll think about you being commando under those jeans.”
Once they were back up in the attic, it took exactly four minutes to locate the maps.
They all but overflowed the top two drawers of one filing cabinet. He had six of them, all lined up against the far wall. Eyeing them with a curious gaze, she looked at Law. “You a packrat or what?” she asked as he handed her a thick binder. He grabbed another one before sliding the cabinet closed.
“Nah. Well, not exactly. This is just stuff I either need to keep for a while or stuff I’ll end up using.”
Nia snorted and looked pointedly at the six filing cabinets. “Exactly what would you need to keep that could fill six file cabinets? It sure as hell can’t be your taxes.”
“You haven’t seen my damn tax return,” he muttered. Then he sneezed. “Come on. We’ll look at these downstairs. Too much dust up here.”
Trailing along behind him, she flipped open the binder, eyeing the plastic page holders, labeled and stuffed with maps. “Somehow I don’t think you’re the one behind this organization here,” she said.
Law just grunted.
“You had Hope do all of this? Hell, Law, how lazy are you? And why is Hope the one organizing this shit for you?”
“Because that’s what I pay her for,” he replied.
“You pay her to organize your junk? Why don’t you just throw it out?”
“I pay her because that’s her job.” He shot her a narrow look over his shoulder. “I can’t toss it out—I’ll probably need it at some point, or I could need it.”
“What do you mean you could need it?” She studied one of the maps—she knew this one pretty well, actually. It was a map of Colonial Williamsburg. “Just what use could you have for a map of Colonial Williamsburg?”
He headed into the living room and flopped onto the couch, hunching his shoulders a little as he muttered something too low for her to hear.
“What?”
“Research.” He snapped the binder closed and dumped it on the table. Leaning forward, he looked at her, his mouth twisted in something not really a scowl, but not a smile, either.
If Nia didn’t know better, she’d think he looked uncomfortable.
“Research?” she echoed. She flipped through the binder. It looked like she had the back half of the alphabet, as far as states went. There were maps for Texas, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico, West Virginia, Virginia, Washington—state and the District of Columbia. “Okay, so are you a travel agent in training or what?”
The look in his eyes was flat, emotionless, but she still had the weirdest feeling he was uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. “No, I’m not a travel agent,” he said.
“Okay. So what are you?”
He grimaced. “I’m a writer.”
“A writer.”
“Yeah. Books. I write books. I pick up things like maps and stuff when I travel in case I decide to base a book somewhere, because I can’t remember the details when I need to remember the details.” He shifted again, still with that vaguely uncomfortable look on his face.
“Okay?”
“A writer.”
“Yeah.” He reached for the binder again, focusing on it like it held the answers to the universe and beyond.
Nia looked around the cluttered living room/office, eyeing the haphazard pile of new books stacked against one wall. New books. All by the same author. She’d noticed it the other day, vaguely, but she’d been so focused on Law, she hadn’t paid it that much attention.
Now her eyes zeroed in on the name and she looked back at Law, then at the books.
“Law Reilly,” she muttered, shaking her head.
The books had a different name on them … but not so different from his legal name, which she’d looked up back when she was still checking out details on everybody she could think of who might have a connection to her cousin.
Law … short for Lawson.
Edward Lawson Reilly.
Ed O’Reilly.
“Holy shit—you’re Ed O’Reilly?”
Those lean shoulders hunched even more and if she wasn’t mistaken, the tops of his ears were brilliant red. She couldn’t see his face, hidden by the shaggy fall of his bangs.
“Law?”
“What?”
She waited for him to look up, but he was still looking at the binder. Looking at it—but not much of anything else. She had the feeling it was there just to keep him from staring at his lap.
Sighing, she dumped her binder on the table and grabbed his away, set it aside as well. “Will you look at me?”
He blew out a breath and shot her a narrow look. “You know, you were all but breathing down my neck for the past two hours while I looked for these. Now you want to chat?”
“I just want an answer,” she said, feeling oddly charmed. He was embarrassed, she realized.
“An answer to what?”
“Are you Ed O’Reilly?”
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Now … the maps?”
Pursing her lips, unable to resist, she skimmed a hand through his hair. The thick strands, golden-brown mixed with strands of lighter blond, darker brown, were cool against her fingers, and soft. “You know, I’ve read a few of Ed’s books. I always pictured him the older sort—in his fifties, maybe. Balding. With a paunch.”
Law lifted a brow. “Your point?”
“You don’t look like an Ed.” She leaned in and kissed him, lingering long enough to nip his lower lip. “That’s my point. You just don’t look like an Ed. And it’s kind of cool. I didn’t know I was sleeping with some hotshot crime writer.”
He snorted. Then, with a sly smile curling his lips, he reached over and laid a hand on her inner thigh, stroking higher and higher until his fingers brushed against her crotch. “Well, I need to do something to keep up with the sexy photojournalist, right? Hey, you got your camera? Maybe we could set it up and you could take some pictures …”
He stifled her laugh as he slanted his mouth over hers.
By the time he lifted his head, she was breathless and he looked pleased with himself. Having successfully distracted her, she figured.
“So … can we look at those maps?”
It wasn’t one of the many maps he’d picked up at stores or gas stations.
This one was older—one that had been hand-drawn, something he’d found at an old rummage sale. It was so fragile the paper felt like it was going
to disintegrate just at his touch and he could have kicked himself for not doing something to protect it.
But it had been years since he’d picked it up and he’d been focused on another project at the time—just hadn’t been thinking.
Law unfolded it carefully, all but holding his breath until he had it spread open over his coffee table.
“A few hundred years ago, most of this land around here all belonged to one of two families,” he said absently.
“Let me guess … one of them had the last name of Jennings,” she quipped as she bent over, peering at the faded print on the map.
“Yeah. The other one was Ohlman. Lena lives right about where the line was drawn between their property.” He traced a line down between it, not quite touching the paper. “The house used to be right about here …”
He indicated an area on the map. It didn’t mean jack to Nia. Then he circled the area around it, a pensive look on his face.
“The Ohlman family had a lot of people who sympathized with the Northern states during the Civil War—helped hide runaway slaves. I was thinking about doing an alternate history story once, basing it here. Did some research—apparently the old Ohlman place had some underground areas—cellars, that sort of thing, where they’d hide the runaway slaves.”
Cellars …
Nia hissed out a breath and shot up off the couch.
Good thing he’d been prepared for that. She wasn’t the type to sit and wait around, was she? But before she could take even two steps, he caught her, his hand snagging the waistband of her jeans. He set the map aside with his free hand.
She craned her head around, glaring at him. “Let go.”
“No.” The distant, distracted look on his face was gone, replaced by one of flat and focused determination.
“Let go,” she repeated, jerking against his hold. “Don’t you get it? That could be where he did it. If I can find something—”
“I do get it. And that’s why I’m not letting go.” He jerked against her jeans—jerked hard until she ended up on his lap and then he wrapped an arm around her. “If he had a place there, he’s too likely to be watching for you and you are not taking off into those woods by yourself, sweetheart. Not happening.”
If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense Page 17
