We walked down the concrete steps, my hand gripping the steel rail. The hum of electric machines I couldn’t even describe whispered through the room. So many steel things and cabinets. A desk with a computer. A table in the middle of it. Metal and cold, just like the railing under my hand.
“What is this?” I asked.
Cooper reached the bottom and spun in a slow circle. His lips pulled down into a frown and he shook his head. “I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem like anything good.”
“It’s just his work,” I said.
“What does he do?”
My mouth watered excessively, the saliva filling up and keeping me from speaking. An odd, physical reaction, but still. “He’s a forensic medical examiner.”
Cooper’s brows shot up. “Does he work out of the basement?”
“Well, no.” I shrugged. “I mean, yes. But paperwork. Images on his computer. Files he has to go over to present evidence for.”
No dead bodies ever laid in this basement. At least none that I knew of. Goosebumps rippled across my flesh, and the guilt returned tenfold. I was stupid to think another woman had come between us. That he was having an affair. He was off in California, handling whatever case they needed him for. That’s exactly what Erik was doing, and here I was, invading his work space like an insecure idiot.
“We’ve proved that there’s nothing down here except his workspace.” I walked toward the stairs.
Cooper walked toward the computer. “We’ve proved that he has a place to cut up bodies in the basement. That’s not nothing.”
I frowned. “That’s insane. First you think Erik is hurting me, and now you think he’s a murderer?”
He hit a few keys and frowned. “Damn. It’s locked.”
I walked over, determined to drag him upstairs and out of the house. But the picture of a woman on the other side of the monitor stopped me. I hadn’t seen it from where I’d been standing. The monitor blocked it from view. But now I saw it. Saw her, with long blond hair and startling blue eyes. A bright smile on her face, and Erik... holding her from behind, much the same way he held me in the photo upstairs.
“Do you have any idea...” He stopped, seeing my face, and then followed my gaze. “Oh.”
Even with proof right in front of my face, I didn’t want to believe it. The bones in my knees weakened, feeling more like cartilage as I gripped the back of the computer chair. Cooper grabbed my elbow, keeping me from falling as the chair rolled.
“Easy,” he whispered in my ear. “It will be okay. Whatever the truth is, we’ll figure it out.”
All the desire to defend Erik rushed out of me. My face went hot, my vision blurred with tears. My heart shredded even as it beat rapidly in my chest. As much betrayal and guilt as I’d felt with Cooper, I hadn’t actually done anything. But the proof of Erik’s infidelity sat in front of me. Trying to rationalize it wouldn’t do any good. The love in his eyes for her, well it was beyond anything he’d ever looked at me with.
“Lenore?”
Words. They rode on the air, but I had no comprehension of them. If Erik lied about this, what else had he lied about? What else was he keeping from me? If he loved her, who was I to him, and why couldn’t I remember who I was before him.
What had he done to me?
The heat from my face coursed through the rest of my body, my chest heaving as I pulled away from Cooper. Grabbing the picture, I slammed it on the floor. Falling to my knees, I pounded my fists into the frame, glass shards pricking the skin on the side of my palms. My screams echoed off the walls as I poured my rage and anger into the picture.
Cooper’s strong arms wrapped around me and he lifted me up, away from it. “Hey. Easy. Easy, Lenore. Shh.”
Sobs escaped me. Thick tears slipped down my face. My heart ached, physically ached, thinking about Erik with another woman. How could he do that to me? Everything inside me felt like it was falling apart. Like I couldn’t stay whole without him.
Cooper sat me down in the desk chair and knelt down. “Easy, okay? Hurting yourself isn’t going to help anything.”
He took my hand. Blood dripped from the side of my palm. It splattered onto my jeans, onto the floor. A speckled trail from me to the broken shards of class that littered the face of a woman my husband clearly loved.
“This is deep. It’ll need stitches.” He searched the desk, pulling drawers open, sliding paperwork around.
“There’s no bandages.” He ran his hands through his hair and frowned. “Wait, this will work.”
He pulled his t-shirt off and ripped it into long strips of fabric. It left him in a gray tank top and jeans. The ripples of his abs outlined beneath the thin fabric. Despite the coolness, he didn’t seem to mind, too focused on shredding his shirt.
A good-hearted man. Literally taking the shirt off his back to help someone else. I’d been beating myself up so hard, thinking I was betraying Erik. But really, he had betrayed me all along.
As Cooper wrapped his shirt around my palm, it turned a purplish color from the crimson mixing with the blue fabric.
“We need to learn the truth,” I said in a distant voice.
The world felt far away. Like I was floating just above the chair instead of sitting on it. The only thing that kept me anchored was Cooper’s gentle touch as he tended to the wound.
He tucked the end of the fabric underneath the wrapped pieces. “Do you have any idea what his password might be?”
My chest tightened, and I shook my head. It dawned on me how little I actually knew about Erik. How much he’d been hiding from me. What else
