Page 47 of Erik's Salvation
So fucking glad that his chest ached.
CHAPTER14
“Tell me you have something,” Erik growled across the line before Chandler could get a word in.
“I do. Travis Hardy. A low-level street thug. He’s been charged previously for petty theft, holding up a gas station, and breaking and entering.”
Erik leaned back in his office chair. Maybe the police were right, and it was just a theft gone wrong.
“So you can get off the ‘it’s because she lives next door to you’ train of thought,” Chandler said, just about reading Erik’s damn mind.
“Can you blame me in my line of work?”
“No. Still doesn’t make this your doing.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. A few hours had passed since the police had left. They’d taken her statement in her living room, and when Erik escorted Hannah back into the bedroom to pack an overnight bag, the little color that had returned to her face leached back out the second she’d stepped inside. The bathroom had been cleaned, but he knew she’d revisited the attack in her head.
Once they got to his place, he’d had to force her to eat. Thank fuck he’d prepared the spare bedroom shortly after moving in. Actually, it hadn’t been him. Andi had come over and basically overhauled the room, claiming it was hers if she ever needed to stay. He owed her, both for that and for coming over tonight.
Now Hannah was asleep, but he wasn’t. Probably wouldn’t sleep much at all tonight. It was fine. He was intimately familiar with insomnia. The darkest hours of the night had almost become his comfort.
“What’s going on between you two?” Chandler asked, pulling Erik out of his head.
“Nothing.” The word tasted sour on his tongue. Because it wasn’tnothing. But that little fact scared the shit out of him and wasn’t something he was even close to voicing out loud.
“If thereissomething going on, that’s okay, you know.”
He could have laughed. “No it’s not, and you know it. Danger is always a step away from knocking on my fucking door.”
“True. But maybe she’s not as fragile as you think she is. Maybe she can handle it.”
But could he handle the risk? “She’s still flesh and blood. My job while I was married was far less dangerous, and you know how that ended.”
It had turned his world so dark that he thought he’d never see again. Ripped the damn ground from beneath his feet and plunged him into the depths of hell.
“I know,” Chandler said quietly. “But you need to live, or your life will just become one big cage.”
His life was already a cage, with walls so high and strong they felt impenetrable. “Thanks for the information, Chandler.”
He hung up and dropped his phone to the table, then he moved upstairs to the bathroom. He stripped off before turning the shower on so fucking hot that his skin burned. He welcomed the bite of pain.
He closed his eyes and lowered his chin to his chest, trying to drown out the voice in his head that told him he’d almost been too late tonight…just like he’d been too late to save his wife.
He pressed his hands to the wall.
Tonight had stirred up shit he’d tried to forget. He’d vowed to protect Vicky. He’d taken a fucking oath, but when she’d needed him most, he hadn’t been there.
Then she’d died at the hands of his enemy.
He scrunched his eyes harder. Every time he tried to force himself to forget, to release the pain of the past, it felt like God laughed. Every bad memory had just gotten so much louder since returning to Redwood. Since meeting Hannah.
His breaths moved faster in his chest.
He’d killed the asshole who attacked Hannah tonight, just like he’d killed the man who murdered his wife. He’d thought ending his wife’s killer would silence the voices in his head. It hadn’t. The guy had torn his life to shreds, and his death hadn’t sewn them back together.
What gave Erik purpose now was ridding the planet of animals. The ones walking around masquerading as people. He had tunnel vision when on a job. To hunt. Find. Kill. That purpose stripped him of any humanity that would have stopped a better man from playing God.
When he turned off the tap, he didn’t feel any fucking better.
