If You See Her Read Online Free PDF

Her voice came out in a thready whisper and she cleared her throat, tried to find some remnant of strength buried.
Joely …
    Tears burned her eyes and she blinked them back, focusing on the wall until she knew she could speak without crying. The screams, they wanted, needed to break free, but she couldn’t give in to them—not yet. Not here.
    Just under the grief, there was a hot, fiery ball of rage. And
there
she found the strength she needed. She reached for it, wrapped herself around it.
    Rage—so much easier than grief, so much easier to handle, so much easier to control.
    “Who in the fuck did this to her?”
    “Must have been rough.”
    Nielson looked at him and Keith grimaced at the look in the sheriff’s eyes. “Rough?” Nielson echoed. “No. Telling a man his prize hunting dog was accidentally run over on the highway, that’s rough. This was past brutal.”
    They watched as Nia Hollister climbed into her rented car.
    “She barely cried,” Nielson said as she drove away. “Hardly even a tear.”
    Jennings blew out a breath. “Can’t decide if that’s good or bad. Hate it when they cry, but it’s not good for somebody to
not
cry either.”
    “Kept waiting for her to break. She never did.” Nielson rubbed his naked scalp and shook his head. “That had to be one of the hardest things I ever did.”
    Nielson would have been prepared to see it through if she broke down, would have done the best he could to help. But all he could do was watch as she pushed that anguish somewhere deep inside and let the anger take the lead. Not good. Sometimes anger could get a person through sheer hell, but there was something about that glint in her eyes that bothered him.
    She could cause trouble, he suspected. A lot of it.
    And he had enough trouble on his hands already, thanks.
    She was leaving, though. She had a cousin to bury and Nia Hollister would need every bit of strength just to get through that.
    She started the car without looking at him and he watched as she backed up, merged with the traffic moving around the small town square. A hard day for that woman. Very hard. And it wouldn’t get any easier any time soon, he knew.
    He had nothing he could tell her.
    No news.
    No clues.
    No suspects.
    And that was the first thing he needed to do for Nia Hollister—find justice for her cousin. “Come on, Jennings. We’ve got a case to solve.”
    They headed toward his office—there, the small team he had assembled waited for him. He wished he had the manpower for a real task force, but the county of Carrington didn’t often see murders. He could happily go the rest of his life without having anything like this happen again, truth be told.
    As he and Jennings walked into his office, the three deputies fell silent.
    “We’ll keep this as short as we can,” he said, glancing at each of them. Settling behind his desk, he reached into a file and pulled out a picture of Jolene Hollister, laid it flat on his desk.
    It was nearly seven o’clock and he was tired as hell. He wanted to be home, with a cold beer, a sandwich, and something other than a pretty dead girl on his mind.
    But the pretty dead girl was dominating his thoughts.
    Staring down at her face, he sighed and looked up, studied each of his men. None of them were really equipped to handle this. Hell,
he
wasn’t equipped tohandle this. He’d had his share of homicides come his way, but nothing like this. He had dealt with drunk driving, hit-and-runs, jealous spouses, pissed-off employees, and shit like that.
    Staring down at the glossy picture on his desk, he kept seeing the superimposed image of what she had looked like in death.
    This here … what had been done to her … that was evil.
    And more than likely, it was somebody in his town doing it.
    It fucking
pissed him off
.
    “She looks so young.”
    Nielson looked up, met the deputy’s eyes. It was Ethan Sheffield, one of his youngest deputies, and one of his greenest. He had a sharp mind,