The Life We Need (Red Snake Investigations #2)

Prologue

Ash

“Ijust want to know her name,” I murmured, eyes on the blue carpet in the back room in Rossy’s Books.

I need to know her name.

Closing my eyes, I allowed myself to go back to that place—to the night I found the wife of one of Red Snake’s clients chained to a bed in his home.

Her hair had been long and matted, heavy with grease, blood, and sweat.

Nothing compared to her short, lively hair I’d just seen.

Her skin had been bruised, swollen in areas, dirt and dried blood coating her.

Nothing compared to the clean, soft-looking skin I’d just seen.

Her eyes today were golden, bright and shining with life.

That night, they had been lifeless but filled with fear.

“All I want is her name,” I uttered again, my voice guttural as I opened my eyes, storing the nightmare away.

I’d learned, trained myself to suppress that night, because it was affecting my daily life, the very basis of how I operated.

That night—that memory had been slowly poisoning me from the inside out, chipping away at my soul, and I couldn’t let it go on.

After nearly two years of searching for those women and nearly losing my life in the process, I had mustered up the strength to let her go. I’d convinced myself she had perished under horrid circumstances, in pain and all alone. I was starting the process of grieving a woman I failed to save.

Then, five minutes ago, she walked into the bookstore, a vision. An angel.

Margo’s voice filled my ears then. “Her name is Angel.”

Angel?

“What?” I murmured, chest heaving, hands hanging off my knees. “What did you say?”

Margo moved to Hayes, glancing at her lover with worried eyes, and grabbed my hand. When she looked back at me, my chest was close to collapsing. “Her name is Angel.”

I moved, scrambling up to my feet in an uncoordinated hurry. “Angel?” I repeated softly, testing the name out.

My sweet Angel.

“Ash, listen to me,” Margo urged, stepping forward.

“You talked to her?” Hayes pressed, brows furrowed.

She looked up at him and then back to me, twisting her fingers together in front of her. “Yes,” she confessed. I watched, holding my breath and silently begging for more, as she looked to her feet. “For some reason, she would only talk to me. Not to Carrie or Sarah.”

I didn’t really care why she’d only spoken to Margo. In time, maybe she could explain that to me, but right now, I needed to know she was okay. “Is she all right?” I swallowed. “Do I need to go to her?”

Margo shifted her weight. “Ash…”

Still. I remained perfectly still, every muscle inside tense, my heart racing. Margo lifted her eyes to me again, and my stomach dropped.

“She doesn’t want anything to do with you,” she whispered, her voice shaking.

My body gave out and I stumbled back, her words hitting me like a train.

“She’s here to forget the past.” She paused, pressing her lips together for a moment as if she didn’t want to say the words. As if they would cause her pain too. “And that includes the man who saved her life.”

My heart drummed in my ears, the corners of my vision blurring. “But—”

“Angel came to Astoria to heal,” Margo cut me off as she came to me and put her hand on my chest. “She has asked that you leave her alone.”

I didn’t—I didn’t save her. I failed her?

She didn’t want me in her life?

Pain came then, slow and calculated, growing in the pit of my gut, stretching upward to my chest and into my throat. It balled up there, like the thorns of a rose brush.

“Is she safe?” I finally asked through the agony.

“Ash—”

“Margo, is she safe?”

She nodded. “Yes, she is safe.”

She was safe.

She was safe.

She was safe.

She wasn’t dead or being held captive still. She was here, in Astoria, safe from the monsters who’d hurt her.

In the end, that was all I wanted and it was my fault for trying to romanticize the act of saving her life. It was unfair to her—to Angel.

She doesn’t want anything to do with you. She’s here to forget the past.

And finally, it was time for me to do the same. Like everything else in my life, this pain in my chest would eventually fade into a dull ache before disappearing all together.

“All right,” I muttered. “That’s all I needed to know.

” I put my hands on Margo’s shoulders, thankful for her honesty, her friendship, and the way she loved Hayes.

Out of all of us jackasses, he needed his happy ending the most. I was grateful he’d found that with her.

I pressed a long but hard kiss on her forehead.

Then I made my way to my bosses, jaw tight.

I looked at Grayson first, then Hayes as I said, “I’m heading back to Portland.

Angel wants me to leave her alone, but I need—”

A new voice sounded from the doorway, full of promise. “We’ll keep an eye on her.”

I turned to find Carrie, her blue eyes shining with tears. Tears for me, for my agony, for the loss of something I never truly had. My family would watch Angel. They’d keep an eye on her not only for her sake but for my sanity.

I nodded and moved to the back door, knowing what I had to do now. With my hand on the knob, I looked over my shoulder, knowing that when I returned, they’d be here waiting for me.

A little pissed off, but waiting, nonetheless.

“You guys are the family I never had.”

Then I disappeared into the summer sun.

Five hundred and forty-seven days later, I finally returned to Astoria, still broken and in love with a stranger. Prisoner in my own heart, chained down the cries of my soul calling out for her.

My Angel.