Page 12 of A Deadly Game of Cat and Mouse

Chapter 4

Eric

Undisclosed location

“Fuck,” she swore before adding. “He’s not in love with me.”

Of course not. Men like that wouldn’t know what love was if it fell on their heads like a ten-ton piano. It didn’t mean they didn’t have their own facsimile emotion, however.

“Stop evading the question. How long has he been after you?”

“Since the Academy.” I looked at her with horror.

“The man has been stalking you for twenty years?” She winced at my calm voice.

“Yes.”

I breathed in and out. Calm. Stay calm. Eric Winslow, you’re going to stay calm if I have to kill everyone on this fucking island, understood?

“How bad is it?”

“He makes things hard.”

“And you haven’t destroyed him because?”

“He found Audrey.”

Fucking A.

My girl had one weakness, her baby sister.

Audrey was now a young student at Browns. A nice family adopted her after their parent’s death, and she didn’t know she had a sister who has been watching over her for most of her life.

“Has he hurt you?”

“No, he went after me, and I put the cops on him.”

“What happened after that? Did he retaliate?”

“Yes, he hurt Audrey and got punished by the Guild,” she stated in a stoic voice.

“Was she badly hurt?” She shook her head, and only I could see the trembling in her chin.

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing you could have done. There’s nothing either of us could have done.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about Hayes? You can’t keep these things from me.”

“Because you would have flipped out. Gabe needed you focused, and I was handling it.”

“Bullshit. You have the Irish Butcher after you.”

“Again, I was handling it,” she repeated stubbornly.

“We’ll talk about this after we make it out of here alive. Be prepared to sit with your ass on fire for a week,” I gritted out.

Yeah, I was seriously pissed. Wouldn’t you be if you found out your girl has been hiding that a maniac was after her?

---