Closer Than She Knows Read online

  ACCLAIM FOR KELLY IRVIN

  “A compelling and timely story, Over the Line is a testament to the courage required to forgive. Irvin paints a vivid picture of life on the border—of loyalty and betrayal, fear and love, hope and despair.”

  —SIRI MITCHELL, AUTHOR OF STATE OF LIES

  “Tell Her No Lies is true romantic suspense at its best! Kelly Irvin has penned a heart-stopping, adrenaline-pumping romantic suspense with an unlikely heroine that tugs at the heartstrings. Highly recommended!”

  —COLLEEN COBLE, USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  “This is a fun suspense novel that is very different from Irvin’s Amish writings, and will definitely attract a new fanbase. Those who like action and suspense should check this one out.”

  —PARKERSBURG NEWS & SENTINEL ON OVER THE LINE

  “Tell Her No Lies is a fast-paced, well-planned story with a myriad of whiplash-inducing twists wherein the suspense is the main course and the romance a tasty, slow-burning side dish . . . bravo to the author for showcasing the plight of our homeless and not treating them as throwaways but humanizing them by giving them faces, futures, and hopes. Tell Her No Lies is a perfect read for fans who like a chilling, puzzling thriller with a mild dose of romance.”

  —MYSTERY SCENE MAGAZINE

  “Irvin grips readers’ attention page after page . . . Vibrant real-world characters and an unpredictable plot keep the adrenaline level high while gentle nudges guide Nina to truth faith and love.”

  —HOPE BY THE BOOK ON TELL HER NO LIES

  “No one is above suspicion in a tale sure to appeal to readers beyond its main Christian audience.”

  —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ON TELL HER NO LIES

  “I think I’ve found a new favorite author! What an exciting read—tense, suspenseful, and masterfully written!”

  —CARRIE STUART PARKS, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF FORMULA OF DECEPTION ON TELL HER NO LIES

  “In Tell Her No Lies, Kelly Irvin has crafted a story of wounded characters overcoming and fighting their way to the truth. In a world where so many present one facade externally and another inside their homes, this novel shines a light on the power of truth to cut through the darkness. Wrap that inside a page-turning mystery and some sweet romance and it’s a story perfect for readers who love multiple threads. This is a keeper of a story.”

  —CARA PUTMAN, AUTHOR OF THE HIDDEN JUSTICE SERIES

  “With plenty of twists and surprises, this is a story readers will be shocked by.”

  —PARKERSBURG NEWS & SENTINEL ON TELL HER NO LIES

  “Well-established as a writer of Amish romances, Kelly Irvin’s romantic suspense novels promote faith after betrayal and encourage readers to learn to love and trust again.”

  —INGRAM ON TELL HER NO LIES

  “Irvin . . . creates a complex web with enough twists and turns to keep even the most savvy romantic suspense readers guessing until the end. Known for her Amish novels, this two-time Christy Award finalist shows that her talents span subgenres from tranquil Amish stories to rapidly paced breathless suspense.”

  —LIBRARY JOURNAL ON TELL HER NO LIES

  OTHER BOOKS BY KELLY IRVIN

  ROMANTIC SUSPENSE

  Tell Her No Lies

  Over the Line

  AMISH

  Amish of Big Sky Country Novels

  Mountains of Grace

  A Long Bridge Home

  Peace in the Valley (available August 2020)

  Every Amish Season Novels

  Upon a Spring Breeze

  Beneath the Summer Sun

  Through the Autumn Air

  With Winter’s First Frost

  The Amish of Bee County Novels

  The Beekeeper’s Son

  The Bishop’s Son

  The Saddle Maker’s Son

  Closer Than She Knows

  © 2020 Kelly Irvin

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

  Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.®

  Also quoted is the New King James Version®. © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  Thomas Nelson titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please email [email protected].

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Irvin, Kelly, author.

  Title: Closer than she knows / Kelly Irvin.

  Description: Nashville, Tennessee : Thomas Nelson, [2020] | Summary: "In this fast-paced romantic suspense, a serial killer with a literary bent pursues a court reporter, leaving a taunting new note with every body he kills. And he’s getting closer"-- Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020002143 (print) | LCCN 2020002144 (ebook) | ISBN 9780785231868 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780785231875 (epub) | ISBN 9780785231882 (audio download)

  Epub Edition April 2020 9780785231875

  Subjects: GSAFD: Romantic suspense fiction. | Christian fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3609.R82 C58 2020 (print) | LCC PS3609.R82 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002143

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002144

  Printed in the United States of America

  20212223LSC10987654321

  To my grandchildren: Brooklyn, Carson, and Henry.

  You are the hope of a new generation. (No pressure!)

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Acknowledgments

  Discussion Questions

  About the Author

  1

  Six pounds of pot, a .38 Special, and a b
y-the-book cop.

  Teagan O’Rourke rolled the words around in her head. They sounded like the opening lyrics of a classic rock-and-roll anthem instead of evidence in a murder trial. Weary to the soles of her black pumps, she stared out the window of the San Antonio Police Department vehicle and watched small, unassuming homes built along a long, narrow city park whiz by. Park Boulevard failed to deliver on its grand name. Latino kids screamed and laughed on the playground. Seniors stretched on outdoor fitness equipment. Teenagers engaged in a fierce pickup game on the covered basketball court. Only the tennis courts stood empty and forlorn, their nets waffling in the breeze. Play with me. Please play with me.

  No one looked up at the SAPD unit. Cop cars were as common as mosquitoes during a humid summer in this neighborhood. If her mother were here, she’d say, “You reap what you sow, Teagan Catherine O’Rourke.” Twenty awkward minutes in a car with a newbie wasn’t so bad. Officer Moreno had unbent enough to tell Teagan she had plans to go to a movie with her fiancé that evening. After much debate they’d decided on a superhero action flick. Officer Moreno preferred dramas. Her fiancé liked what she’d termed “stupid” comedies. “A lot of bathroom humor and raunchy—that’s his idea of funny.”

  Like a lot of men in the arrested development stage.

  Maybe by the time they returned to Teagan’s Prius in the parking garage across from the Paul Elizondo Tower downtown, she’d know the officer’s first name. Most trials didn’t require such an expeditious disposal of the evidence to SAPD’s evidence room, but Judge Ibarra had ordered the immediate return of this evidence due to the nature of the trial and the involvement of opposing gangs likely to retaliate over its outcome.

  Teagan didn’t mind. It meant less evidence she had to worry about storing in her crowded office vault.

  “We’re almost there, Ms. O’Rourke.” Officer Moreno came to a full stop at the corner of Park and Academic Court, where the glass-covered police department recruitment center and property room facilities glinted in the late-afternoon sun.

  A smile brought out dimples on Moreno’s cherub-cheeked face. Her assignment to escort a court reporter and the evidence to the property room was almost to the halfway point. Teagan had told Moreno to call her by her first name, but the patrolwoman couldn’t seem to manage it. “I’ll get us through security, we’ll stow the evidence, and I’ll have you back to your car in a jiffy.”

  Did people still say “in a jiffy”? Teagan’s grandma might, but this woman was no more than twenty-four. A couple of years younger than Teagan. She studied the officer’s face as she turned onto Academic Court and accelerated. The woman was for real. A straight shooter determined to be successful in a man’s world.

  Teagan smiled, but Moreno had already returned her gaze to the road, hands at the proper ten and two positions on the wheel. “I know there’s plenty of other things you’d rather do than babysit evidence—”

  The driver’s side window exploded.

  The force knocked Teagan’s head against her window. Sudden pain pricked her face. Fragments of glass pierced her cheeks and forehead.

  The car swerved, jumped the curb, and crashed into the wrought-iron fence that protected the academy.

  Was this what Mom felt the day she died? The inevitability of it?

  Air bags ballooned.

  Teagan slammed back against her seat.

  I’m sorry, Max.

  I’m sorry I never said it.

  A second later the bag deflated. The smell of nitrogen gases gagged her. Powder coated her face. The skin on the back of her hands burned.

  Time sped up in an odd, off-kilter tick-tock.

  Teagan struggled to open her eyes. Pain pulsed in her temple. Her stomach heaved. Waves of adrenaline shook her body as if she’d grasped a live electrical wire.

  I’m alive. Today’s not my day to die.

  The evidence. Protect the evidence.

  “Officer Moreno?” She tried to sit upright, but her seat belt bit into her sore chest. “Officer?”

  Head down, Moreno slumped to her right, held back by her seat belt. Blood coursed down her face. A lot of blood, considering the air bags should have protected her from a hard hit from the wheel or the windshield with its safety glass.

  Teagan struggled to lean toward the officer. Her seat belt clenched tighter. Her lungs refused to cooperate. “Officer?” The strangled word barely broke the sudden, ringing silence.

  She wiggled toward the woman. She stopped.

  Six years of slapping evidence stickers on crime scene photos and listening to medical examiners’ testimony forced her to admit what she was seeing. Officer Moreno had a hole in the side of her head near the temple.

  A bullet had pierced her skull and scrambled her brain.

  Teagan forced her gaze from the dead woman’s face. A warm, humid breeze wafted through Moreno’s window, sending the smell of blood and human waste to assail Teagan’s nose.

  She’d written official court records for dozens upon dozens of murders, attempted murders, and aggravated assault cases. She transcribed those court records. She proofread them. She added her official certification to each one.

  Now she knew. Death stank. Murder stank.

  Vomit rose in her throat.

  “No, no, no.” Teagan fought with her seat belt. Her hands shook. “Come on, come on.”

  “Deep breaths.” Her father’s Dallas drawl filled her rattled brain. “Just breathe.”

  Teagan inhaled and exhaled. She unhooked the belt. Gently, she touched Officer Moreno’s wrist. Her pride in that navy-blue uniform had been so obvious.

  Warm skin rewarded Teagan’s efforts. Wisps of brown hair grew above the woman’s wrist. The details flooded Teagan, trying to drown the one salient fact.

  Officer Moreno had no pulse.

  The baby-faced officer didn’t have to worry anymore about potty humor.

  She didn’t have to worry about anything at all.

  2

  Officer down. Officer down. In the intersection of Academic Court and Park Boulevard next to Collins Garden Park’s tennis courts.”

  These magic words would bring help. Teagan dropped the mic. The dispatcher’s soothing voice continued to talk, but Teagan had no words left.

  The door jerked open. Hands reached for her.

  “I’m okay.” Not okay. So not okay. “It’s the officer. She’s dead.”

  “Are you hurt?” The man touched her arm. “Let me help you out, mi hijita.”

  Mi hijita. The words of endearment soothed Teagan’s soul. He sounded like the father of her best friend from high school, Jessica Hinojosa. Mr. Hinojosa called all Jessica’s girlfriends “mi hijita.” My little daughter.

  “I’m okay. It’s the officer. She’s . . . dead.”

  The man, dressed in a green parks department uniform, guided her from the car. “Help is on the way.”

  Screaming sirens confirmed his words.

  Teagan’s body swayed. Her legs refused to do their job. They collapsed under her. The man and his companion, a rotund woman in a matching green uniform, settled her on the curb a few yards from the mangled vehicle. “Put your head between your legs,” the woman urged in the raspy voice of a chronic smoker. “Don’t pass out on us. You’ll conk your head.”

  “My evidence.” She hung on to the one thing she knew for sure. Her job remained to preserve the chain of evidence. They were here in this spot because of her duty to the court. “I can’t leave the evidence.”

  “You have stuff in the cop car, mi corazon?” Corazon. Heart. Just like Mr. Hinojosa. He’d died of a heart attack the year after seventh grade. She and Jessica had that in common, only Teagan’s mom died in a car accident the summer after fourth grade. “That car isn’t going anywhere. Don’t you worry. Just rest.”

  The next few minutes were blurred, like the old family videos her mother had loved to show at family get-togethers. A fire truck hurtled down the street, its Klaxon horn blaring repeatedly as residents scurried to the
curbs while trying to capture the scene on their cell phones. Teagan shooed the first responders toward the SUV and Officer Moreno.

  An ambulance followed. A dozen police units. Officers swarmed the scene, drawn by word of a fallen comrade. Yellow crime scene tape fluttered in the dank air. Officers pushed the growing crowd of onlookers back until they stood around on the grassy stretch that separated the tennis courts from the street. Officer Moreno’s comrades in arms did everything they could to keep the proceedings respectful, but nothing dignified came of a sudden, violent death.

  Mothers with babies in strollers chatted. An elderly man yelled the sordid details into the ear of a lady in a flowered housecoat. Tattooed gangbangers dressed in wife-beaters and baggy jeans squatted on the tennis court, smoked cigarettes, and thumbed texts on their cell phones.

  A regular circus attraction.

  Eventually an EMT focused on Teagan. He took his time plucking tiny glass shards from her cheek and then covering the cuts with small bandages. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the pain pricks that told her this wasn’t a nightmare. It was real. A wispy memory hovered. Mom never let her have bandages unless there was blood. She’d put ice in a plastic bag for a boo-boo, as she’d called it.

  Once Teagan fell off her bike and cut her knee. Not one but three Rugrats Band-Aids had been applied. Along with kisses. Her mother felt the wound worthy of her badges of honor.

  Wounds of the heart took much longer to heal.

  Max. She needed Max.

  “Let’s get you checked out at the hospital.” The EMT closed his kit. “I’ll help you up.”

  “I’m fine. I don’t need a hospital.” She managed a smile. “But thank you. I can’t leave my evidence.”

  “Are you refusing to be transported?”

  Fortunately, she understood legalese. “Yes. Thanks.”

  He wasn’t buying the “fine” thing, but the EMT urged her to see her physician if she had any residual pain in the next few days, then moved away. Teagan would have plenty of pain, but none that a primary care physician could fix.