Free If You Hear Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense by Shiloh Walker

thudded dully against the floor and then stopped. “Ms. Riddle, around here, we work. We don’t have time to chase down every little imagined problem, spend hours following up just because one person insists she heard something weird—”
    “Actually, that kind of is your job.”
    A new voice. A deep, low rumble of a voice—and very, very familiar. Pretty much the last voice she would have expected to hear. Narrowing her eyes, she turned her head toward the sound of the voice. “Ezra King.”
    “Hello, Lena.”
    Don’t you “Hello, Lena” me
, she almost snapped. She managed to bite it back simply because she didn’t want him to know she’d been looking forward to him calling her … like he’d said he would.
    Bastard.
    “You okay, Lena?”
    “Oh, I’m just peachy,” she drawled, resisting the urge to cross her arms over her chest. Just the sound of that low, sexy drawl had her body doing bad, bad things—her nipples beaded up, her belly went hot and loose, and her heart was racing.
    Sexy, so damned sexy, the sort of voice a womanwants to hear murmuring in her ear during just the right moment—hell, with that kind of voice, any moment would be right.
    Like a phone call.
    A phone call would have been nice.
    But he never called—
    Focus!
she told herself as Prather said, “Mr. King, if you don’t mind, this doesn’t concern you, so if you’ll just wait for me where you were …”
    “Actually, I do mind—and I’ve already pointed out, it’s not Mr. King, Prather. It’s Detective King. Detective. Got it? It sounds rather obvious to me that you have some sort of problem doing real police work, Prather, but I feel the need to point this out—chasing things down is kind of what us cops do.”
    Detective? Us? You’re a cop?
Arching her brows, she interrupted Prather. “Excuse me, Ezra—do you work here?”
    Please, please, please say yes
, she thought. Forget the fact that he hadn’t called her. If he worked here, she could totally forget that, because she already knew he’d do something more than Prather.
    Hell, the person who’d greeted her at the desk had been more helpful than Prather.
    Footsteps, drawing closer—the steps sounded uneven, like he put more weight on one foot than the other. She’d noticed it before, but it was more obvious this time … she thought.
    “Sorry, Lena. I’m with the state, and I’m on leave. Of course, I don’t think the deputy really works here either. Seems he just pretends to.”
    Well, hell. But the sense of disappointment faded as a slew of other emotions swarmed up to surprise her.
    He was closer, now. Close enough to touch. Close enough to pick up on a few other things, too, like the slow, steady cadence of his breathing and his scent—hesmelled good. She remembered that from the two other times she’d been this close.
    The sound of his voice, the woodsy, male scent, the warmth of him, the entire package had her heart racing and she had to forcibly throttle down. He’d made it clear he wasn’t interested enough to call, so she wasn’t going to humiliate herself by letting him see just how … interested she still was.
    But that heat didn’t want to be ignored, and for about five seconds, she couldn’t think of a damn thing beyond him.
    Her heart skipped a few beats, her breathing hitched, and liquid warmth spread through her, starting in the pit of her belly and spreading outward until it encompassed her whole body.
    Cool it
, she told her libido.
    Said libido didn’t want to listen. It had been being ignored for way too long. Lena was too much a control freak to let lust drag her along on a choke chain, though. Inwardly, she wrestled it into submission and outwardly, she just smiled.
    “I must admit, I’m inclined to agree with you about the deputy and his lack of interest in working.”
    “Are you now?” That sexy voice rumbled out, stroking her senses like a velvet glove. “Since he doesn’t seem to give a damn about doing his