Parking his Volt in Hollis’s driveway, Ian looked over the small house the cop had purchased in Westwood. The place was cute. A single story built partially over a garage with two-toned brick in brown and beige, so it looked faintly peach in the fading light. Six concrete steps led to a small porch mostly tucked behind some fat bushes that had grown so wild, they overtook the front of the small house.
Twisting in his seat, he stared at Hollis as he softly snored. He’d been too sore to fold his body into the front seat, so he’d stretched out in the back. As if feeling his gaze on him, Hollis blinked open sleepy eyes and gave Ian a lazy smile.
“We there yet?” His Georgia accent was always strongest when he first woke up.
“We are.” Ian curled his hands into fists because he wanted to touch so badly. Wanted to crawl on top of him back there and absorb his warmth, feel his heart beating against his own chest. But the man was hurt, and they were both so damn exhausted from the last forty-eight hours. “Ready to show me your home?”
“Don’t expect much.” Hollis shifted into a sitting position, wincing as he moved. “I was gone for months, remember? Luckily, I remembered to clean out the refrigerator before I left. So there will be nothing here to eat. Might be some ground beef in the freezer.” He chuckled.
“I can do a lot with ground beef,” Ian teased, remembering his comment about frozen meat. “But we’ll worry about food later. I can always run back out. Let’s get you inside and into bed.”
“Shower first. I hate the smell of hospitals.”
So did Ian, and he’d spent entirely too much time in them over the last year. And he knew that despite getting his life back, he was going to be spending a lot more hours at this hospital in the days ahead. Snow had managed to staunch the worse of Lucas’s bleeding as they rushed him to the hospital from the Museum Center. Surgery had been a dangerous thing only because Lucas had lost so much blood, but luckily the only organ damaged beyond repair had been his spleen. Snow was confident that Lucas would be out of the hospital before Christmas, but he would need to take it very slowly for several weeks so he could make a full recovery. Ian and Hollis had lingered only long enough to see Lucas wake from surgery.
Andrei had been on the verge of collapse at the hospital but resolutely refused to move from Lucas’s side. Ian was relieved that Andrei’s parents, Sonja and Milos, had arrived to take care of their son while he took care of his fiancé.
After climbing out of the car, Ian grabbed Hollis’s arm and put it around his shoulder, glad when the bigger man leaned on him, despite the fact that he barely came up to his chin. “Cute house.”
“I got it for a steal. You’ll understand why when you see the bathrooms and kitchen. They haven’t been updated since the place was built in the sixties and somebody liked baby blue.” He shuddered. “I’d planned to fix it up and sell it eventually.” Hollis pulled his keys from his pocket, unlocked the door, then froze when it swung open. “Ian, go back to the car,” he whispered.
But Ian had gotten a good glimpse into Hollis’s home—or what was left of it. Shelves that had held videos had been pulled over, the DVDs in piles underneath and around them. His flat screen TV was smashed, the wall mount the only thing left on the walls because empty frames littered the slashed couch cushions. Lamp shades had been crushed, glass from bulbs littered the hardwood floors. Someone had tossed red paint onto…everything. “Do you even have your gun on you?”
“No.” Hollis frowned, then pointed at what was left of a massive brown couch. “Looks like the paint is dried, so this probably happened days ago. Doubt anyone is still here, but you need to wait in the car.”
“Hell no. We’re both going back and calling this in. You’re in no shape to—” Ian swallowed the rest of his words when Hollis shoved the door all the way open and walked into the house as he pulled out his cell phone. He murmured into it, picked up a piece of a broken picture frame, and walked farther into the house.
Ian grabbed another section of that frame and followed him, not about to let him fight off anyone alone when he had cracked ribs and bruises decorating his entire body. Glancing in rooms as they passed them, he took in the destruction, feeling his heart turn over. Hollis would have to fix this place up a lot more than planned. Whoever had done this, and Ian was pretty sure they both knew who had, made sure to knock holes in walls, and the toilet and pedestal sink in the bathroom had been smashed into pieces. Even the big bed that took up nearly all of Hollis’s bedroom had been slashed.