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“I know, Lucy. It’s okay,” I said as I stroked her hair.
“If he’d contacted her, she would have told me,” Lucy said.
I nodded.
“Lucy, have you been in touch with Jackie again?” Ronan asked.
“Just once after we left Arizona and got to Seattle. I never told her where I was, though.”
I watched as Ronan pulled out his phone and dialed a number. “Daisy, I need you to check an email for me.” Ronan paused long enough for Lucy to tell him the email address for the account she’d created. Several long moments passed in tense silence as we waited while Ronan listened to whatever the person on the other end of the phone had to say. His expression was grim when he got off the phone and I felt a wave of unease go through me.
“Okay, Lucy, thank you. That was very helpful. Would you mind hanging out with Seth and the kids for a while longer while we finish up here?”
She looked at me and I nodded. “Go on, we’re almost finished.”
Her slim arms went around me and my heart clenched when she whispered, “I love you, Ethan.”
Even though we hadn’t been together long, our reliance on each other as we’d fled the same evil had made us something more than two people on the run together. She’d filled a hole inside of me and I’d hoped I’d done the same for her. “I love you too, Kiddo,” I said softly as I pressed a kiss against her temple.
I waited until Lucy was gone before I faced Ronan. “What?” I asked.
“When she set up her new email, she had to enter her regular email address as a recovery email. That linked her new account to her old one which made it traceable.”
I closed my eyes as what he was saying began to make sense. “So that’s how Eric found out about the library in Arizona and that we’d come here.”
“Was Lucy using the library here too?” Cain asked.
I nodded. “Since I had Allen’s ID, I figured it was okay to use it to get a library card. We’d been so cut off from everything for so long, that I wanted her to have something normal.” I let my eyes settle on Ronan. “Thank you for not telling her about the email. She’d…she’d never forgive herself if she knew…”
I shook my head, unable to complete the thought.
“I’ll have my tech girl delete the email account. We’ll tell Lucy that for now, it’s safer that she doesn’t create any new accounts, no matter what.”
I managed a nod. “Thank you.”
“Ethan, tell us about the day Eric found you again,” I heard Cain say.
It was the last thing I wanted to do. I was so damn tired and raw that the idea of having to revisit those moments even for a few minutes was taxing. But I also needed to be done with this.
Unfortunately, I had no idea what would happen once I was done.
Would Cain keep his word to let me and Lucy go?
Or would it be just another broken promise in a line of many?
Chapter Nine
Cain
My heart hurt for Ethan because he just looked so damned tired. A part of me wanted to tell Ronan that we’d heard enough, but another part of me needed to hear every detail of what Eric had done to the man before me. I’d use it as fuel when I confronted the fucker. And I would confront him. Of that, I had no doubt.
“After I performed that procedure on that patient, I knew the jig was up. I told Lucy when I got home that we’d need to leave the next day. I ended up sleeping in later than I’d meant to the next morning. When I woke up, I found a note from Lucy saying she’d finished packing her stuff and had walked over to a friend’s house to say goodbye. I packed up my own stuff and then drove to the gas station to fill up the car and get us some snacks for the road. When I got back to the house, Eric was waiting inside,” Ethan said softly.
“He was on me before I even realized what was happening. He hit me a few times and then kicked me. Then he started breaking things. He accused me of taking Lucy to humiliate him. Said I was trying to brainwash her against him. I managed to get to my feet while he was trashing the place. I flipped the light switch near the front door so the outside porch light would turn on – it was a signal Lucy and I had worked out. If the light was on, it meant she should run…go to the police.”
My insides clenched as my admiration for this man rose several more notches. Even with his own life in jeopardy, he’d put Lucy’s safety first.
