Page 100 of The Silent Hour

Heading out.

I pocketed the device before curiosity could poke at me further. “This will never happen again.”

“You sure about that? You’ve said it three times now.”

A cold, corrosive dread coiled in my gut. I forced myself to look at her. She was smoothing the creases from her shirt collar, running slender fingers through hair still damp with sweat. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes bright, and she looked every inch the opposite of the woman I’d betrayed. The sight turned my stomach and ignited something angrier inside me.

“I have a wife,” I rasped, voice brittle.

Lila’s lips twitched, not in triumph, but in a knowing, sorrowful curve. “You had one four minutes ago too.”

I opened my mouth, closed it. There was no answer to that. “Whatever you think this was,” I warned, lowering my voice to the measured register I used in courtrooms, “don’t.”

Her smile was slight, almost unreadable. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to.”

I stepped toward the door, then paused. “Get yourself together. I’m leaving.”

“Ethan.”

I looked back. No mockery slanted her features, no triumphant spark in her eyes, but there was calm appraisal, as if she were weighing every desperate scrap of me.

“You can keep telling yourself you did that because of me, but I wasn’t the one who needed convincing.”

I spared her one more glance, then turned and pushed out into the humid night. The air clung to my skin along with the drizzle. Gravel crunched under my boots, each step tightening the cage around my guilt.

Headlights whipped through the darkness ahead. Eric’s silhouette materialized by the parked car, arms folded, shoulders rigid. The pulse in my throat drummed so loud I could hardly hear the crickets. He didn’t move as I approached, he just watched, standing in the damn rain.

I reached for the driver’s side door.

“What the fuck happened to you?” he demanded.

“Nothing,” I replied, keeping my hand on the handle.

“Great.” He pushed off the car, stepping closer. I glanced at him; his eyes narrowed behind his glasses. Then he gestured at me from head to toe. “Explain this then.”

“Get in the car,” I ordered.

“No.”

We stood in the glare of the headlights. Eric knew me too fucking well. Grew up with me as a kid. He’d been at my wedding. He’d held my daughters before they could even speak. There were few people alive I couldn’t lie to. Unfortunately, he wasn’t one of them.

His stare drifted over my rumpled shirt, the sweat-dark hair plastered to my forehead. Then he glanced lower, and my stomach twisted. Finally, he met my eyes.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing you need to concern yourself with,” I answered, voice flat. I opened the car door. “Anything from Knox?”

“No.”

I slid behind the wheel. Eric lingered in the halo of the open door before folding into the passenger seat. The door slammed, a gunshot in the hush. Eric clicked his seat belt into place, then turned to study me. “

What?”

“Just deciding.”

“Deciding what?” I asked with a sigh.