Page 56 of Cherished By the Sinners

“To pay for what?”she asked.

“A very long list of offenses, insults, and slurs.”

“So...what you’re telling me is, he’s going to hurt me to hurt them.”

He didn’t answer, but he looked away, as if embarrassed.

Great.

They didn’t say anything else for the rest of the ride.

When the car stopped, Eli slid out of it with her arm in his grasp.He pulled her along from the vehicle to a warehouse door.He knocked and it opened.

It was dark inside, only a couple of red emergency lights high on the walls provided any light.

She stumbled along beside him as he pulled her into the enveloping darkness.

Chapter Seventeen

Mason

“For the last time,”Mason said to the mob of men arrayed around him.“I’m wearing the latest design in bulletproof suits.”

He’d finished his statement, signed the damn thing, then the detective nodded at a couple of officers who’d been hanging around, watching.At that nod, though, they’d started asking him about his suit and why the hell wasn’t he a corpse in the morgue.

Their questions had brought more cops, officers in uniform and detectives in their ill-fitting suits, over to listen and ask their own questions.Which were, unfortunately and irritatingly, repetitive.

“It’s made with nanotechnology,” he continued.“And it’s fifty percent lighter than Kevlar.It protects me from my neck to my ankles.It’s theonlyreason why I’m not dead.”

“It’s the jacketandthe pants?”A young officer who’d managed to wiggle his way through the crowd until he was in front of Mason asked.

“Jacket, pants, undershirt, and button-up shirt.”

The cop pointed at Mason’s chest.“But there’s holes in your jacket.”

Mason sighed.Heavily.The way things were going he’d be here for a week trying to explain, but he had other places to be, people to keep safe, and assholes to kill.“May I?”he asked the group at large.