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I’d struggled to give Ethan what he wanted when he’d asked me not to end Eric’s life. But his need to get justice had outweighed my need to eliminate the threat against him all together. I’d already made the decision to have someone else take Eric out if there was even a hint that he was going to follow through on his threat not to let Ethan go, but that wasn’t something I’d shared with Ethan.
But surprisingly, Vincent’s threat seemed to have done the trick. No, Eric hadn’t gone completely silent, but he had been careful about what he’d said about Ethan when things went public a few days after the encounter in the farmhouse. Once we’d reached Seattle, Ronan had worked with a team of lawyers to determine how Ethan and I would turn ourselves in. There’d been no way either of us were going to let Ethan be taken back to D.C. since that would have put him in contact with the cops who worked with Eric. We’d been talking about going to the Feds when they’d ended up coming to us after Vincent had called Ronan to tell him he’d sent them our way.
But there’d been no arrests.
There had been some questions, but very few about the night I’d gone after Eric. Most had been about Ethan and his relationship with Eric. Ethan had told them everything…every ugly detail. He’d shared what he’d known about the death of Eric’s partner in the home invasion as well. The PI Patricia Palmer had hired hadn’t panned out in terms of connecting Eric to Ethan, but we’d caught a break when Daisy had found the original files Ethan had transferred from the digital recorder to CDs using the computers at his work. While he’d deleted the files from the computers after transferring them each time, he hadn’t realized the files went into a different folder to await final deletion. Daisy had made copies for us and then left the files there so the Feds could find them for themselves. Between the video of Patricia Palmer’s death and the evidence of the torture Ethan had endured, the Feds had promised that Eric wouldn’t be walking away from any of it. He’d been arrested while in the hospital recovering from Vincent’s gunshot to the groin, an injury that had resulted in permanent damage that meant the man would have a close relationship with a catheter for the rest of his life. I’d fully expected Vincent to be arrested at some point, but we’d heard neither hide nor hair from the man since that night and the Feds had been tight-lipped about his whereabouts and had only shared that “Mr. St. James isn’t currently a suspect or person of interest in any crime.”
Eric had ended up pleading no contest to his wife’s murder after the video had surfaced. He’d agreed to the plea after the prosecutor had offered him a reduced sentence. While neither Ethan or I had been thrilled at the lighter sentence, it had gone a long way in re-establishing Ethan’s reputation. More importantly, it had meant Lucy hadn’t had to testify. But it had also spurred Ethan on to pursue justice for the crimes he’d suffered. Eric hadn’t agreed to a plea deal in the multiple counts of assault and rape that had been brought against him, but he hadn’t testified in court either. Not after Ethan had held his ground when he’d been cross-examined and most definitely not after the damning recordings had been played in court.
It hadn’t been easy for Ethan to have parts of his past go public like that, but he’d stayed strong as he’d fought for justice for himself. Eric had been found guilty less than a month ago and just in the past week he’d been sentenced to another thirty years in prison, which was on top of the twenty he’d gotten for his wife’s death. With parole, there was a chance he’d get out early, but that was a ways off. And the likelihood was high that he’d be brought up on charges for his partner’s death soon since the Feds had found proof Eric’s car had been in the neighborhood the night of the murders.
All in all, it would be a long time before Eric saw the outside of prison walls. And that was assuming he even survived prison long enough to convince a parole board that he was a changed man.
While Ethan had been completely vindicated, it had been a rough journey as he’d had to relive the past and have every part of his private life exposed for the entire world to see, but luckily, he’d recognized early on that both he and Lucy would need to seek psychological help to deal with the trauma they’d both faced. I was still on the fence about talking to a professional about my own past, but I hadn’t completely dismissed the idea and Ethan hadn’t pressed me one way or the other.
