Absolution (The Protectors, Book 1) (9 page)

“Mateo Santero.”

“What was the name of the girl he killed in Chicago?”

More typing, then, “She was a Jane Doe.”

“That’s not good enough, Mav,” I snapped. “I need a name!”

Mav didn’t answer me but since I could hear him typing, I tried to rein in my frustration.

“Fuck,” I heard Mav breathe. “Carrie Bridgerton.”

I closed my eyes as a wave of heat flooded through me. What the hell had I done?

“Mace-”

“No!” I snapped. “Not over the phone. Meet me at our place. One hour!” I hung up the phone without giving Mav a chance to respond and then I slammed my hands down on the steering wheel over and over again until I felt some of the initial rage ease from my system. I knew I needed to get a grip since Jonas could easily see me either from his apartment window or if he came down to the gallery for any reason, so I started the van and went through the motions of parking it in the garage. It took me another ten minutes to get to my car and then I was heading out of the city.

I beat Mav to the nearest motel in the cheap hotel chain we typically used for debriefs, and got a room. I didn’t bother texting him which room it was because he knew which one I’d go for. The one farthest from the street and on the corner. I left the door slightly ajar and paced back and forth as I waited. My mind was racing as I tried to finish piecing together what I knew and what I didn’t. By the time the door swung open, I was in a complete fury and I didn’t even slow down as I strode up to Mav, grabbed him by the shirt collar and slammed him against the back of the door, effectively closing it.

“Tell me what you know right fucking now!” I snarled.

“I swear, Mace, I don’t have a clue what’s going on,” he said as he held his hands up in supplication.

Of all the men in the group that I’d worked with, Mav had been the easiest to read. And the fact that he wasn’t fighting back told me he knew we’d fucked up.

I shoved away from him and began pacing again. “How the hell did we miss this?” I asked.

“The mark’s-”

“Jonas!” I yelled. “His fucking name is Jonas!”

Mav nodded. “Jonas’s name never showed up in either investigation but there was a reference to a witness to Carrie’s murder. But because they were underage, there wasn’t any specific information about them…name, age, gender.”

“And Casey Prescott’s case?”

“Jonas isn’t mentioned at all. Nothing to indicate they even knew each other.”

“They’ve known each other for eight years!” I snapped. “The only way he could have known both girls was if he was in Chicago. And if he went with Casey to Wisconsin after Carrie’s death, he wouldn’t have been in Boston when those sexual assaults were committed.”

“Maybe he wasn’t with her in Wisconsin.”

I shook my head. “He said she saved his life. He had to have meant from Santero. They were just kids – I can’t imagine they would have split up and gone their separate ways.”

“What if he went home?” Mav offered. “His parents live in Boston. He could have reconnected with Casey after she got to New York.”

I shook my head but didn’t say anything because it was a slim possibility.

“I saw the emails Benny found. Jonas’s parents would have run in the same social circles as Devlin Prescott. They could have met that way after Jonas got back from Chicago,” Mav said softly.

“So Jonas runs away to Chicago as a kid, meets and befriends Casey after Carrie is killed, then goes back home to Boston and starts fucking the same guy who goes looking for Casey three years later to help him get custody of her niece? Jesus, Mav, you can’t even call that a fucking coincidence! It’s such a fucking stretch…”

“Then tell me how he ended up a suspect in not one but four sexual assaults in Boston? I checked, Mace – he wasn’t in Paris when that nine-year-old boy disappeared! Customs has him arriving at Logan airport in Boston three days before the kid was snatched.”

Fuck! An hour ago I’d been so sure this was all some monumental mistake but I didn’t have the answers to Mav’s questions. Tomorrow night - Jonas’s party at the Prescotts. I’d get my fucking answers then, even if I had to drag them from Jonas himself. Because I was done with this.

“This conversation doesn’t leave this room,” I snapped at Mav as I stormed past him and out of the motel room.

Cole

I questioned what the hell I was thinking for the hundredth time as I rolled through the large iron security gate that opened after I announced my name in the small speaker box, and began the long drive up the perfectly manicured driveway that wound through a grove of trees before giving way to acres and acres of freshly cut lawn. I’d told myself to call Jonas and tell him I couldn’t make it to his party but every time I picked up my phone, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not because I thought Jonas would be overly disappointed if I wasn’t there but because I wanted to see him again. Even though I’d spent the better part of the day with him only twenty-four hours ago, I needed to hear his voice again, see his infectious smile.

When I’d seen his sketchpad lying on the bathroom floor next to the tub the night of Carrie’s funeral, I’d been strangely glad to have the excuse to see Jonas again, even though I’d spent the rest of the day after he’d patched me up trying to sort through the strange feelings both he and Mace brought out in me. An unexpected mix of excitement and peace went through me whenever I was around them and I couldn’t make sense of either of those things. I’d spent all night lying in bed repeating my mantra that it was just the stress, but as random images of Mace and Jonas filtered through my head, I’d found myself reaching for my cock before I even realized what I was doing. Even as I’d stroked myself, I’d tried to call up some of the faces of the women I’d been with in recent years, but I always came back to Mace’s fingers gripping my arms, his eyes on my mouth and the feel of Jonas’s body flush with mine. And just as Jonas’s mouth had closed over mine while Mace’s hands traveled down the length of my body, I’d come in a rush of pleasure so intense that I was whispering both their names as they murmured praise in my ear, before turning their attentions to each other.

While I couldn’t understand my sudden attraction to these men – and I knew after that mind blowing orgasm that that’s what it was – it didn’t freak me out as much as it probably should have. Maybe because it was coming at a time in my life when everything was already so fucked up that in the scheme of things, my sudden expansion in sexual preferences didn’t seem consequential. So much in my life no longer seemed as important as it had once been.

My childhood had been decidedly uneventful and entirely stereotypical. I was the typical army brat though, in my case, it had been the Navy that controlled nearly every aspect of my family’s lives since my father had been a Naval Intelligence Officer. While my sister had struggled under my father’s disciplined, orderly rule, I’d thrived on it. I couldn’t even remember a time when I hadn’t wanted to be exactly like my father and I’d breathed in his praise like oxygen. It hadn’t hurt that I naturally exceled at everything I did, but having the highest GPA in my graduating class and being scouted for college football teams had never once deterred me from my goal to follow in my father’s footsteps. Carrie had often ribbed me for being a kiss ass but it hadn’t only been about pleasing my father. I’d loved the challenge of pushing myself both physically and mentally so trying out for the SEALs had been a foregone conclusion because I never did anything in half measure. Failure wasn’t an option for me and defeat wasn’t even in my vocabulary. But while I was an unstoppable force in the field, I wasn’t capable of dealing with the chain of events that unfolded after the night my sister took off.

One event that left me powerless and helpless for the first time in my life.

The only thing that had kept me functioning was my team and our missions, because when I had those things, I turned off the endless loop that ran through my head of the terrible things that might have happened to my sister. My men often called me the Ice Man because I never reacted to even the evilest of atrocities we bore witness to. None of them knew that I was dying inside as I watched my family fracture and slowly implode. Every time I went home, I lost more of my mother as she sought the quiet of her darkened room. My father spent his days and nights trolling websites that described unidentified bodies found all over the country. On more than one occasion, he would show me pictures of cast models that artists created to try and show what a deceased victim might have looked like at the time of their death.

As the years passed, holidays ceased to exist, birthdays were barely remembered and Carrie’s room was turned into a shrine. And then my mother gave up. That wasn’t what the autopsy said, of course. But that’s what it was. There’d been no solace that she’d gone in her sleep, because even what some coined a “peaceful” death didn’t make up for the years of torment she’d suffered at not knowing what had happened to her youngest child. After that, my father stopped looking for Carrie. Maybe because he’d failed to bring her home to her mother, maybe because he’d done what I’d done and started envisioning Carrie living a happy, successful life somewhere else. Whatever the case was, he found his solace at the bottom of a bottle. And I did what I did best – I became the man my father had always wanted me to be. Because I was certain there’d be a day when he’d come out of his drunken fog and he’d need to know that he hadn’t lost everything.

But that day hadn’t come. What had come was a call from my father’s doctor, who also happened to be an old family friend, telling me my father would be dead in less than a year if he couldn’t get his drinking under control. I’d spent the first few days after my discharge trying to get my father sober enough to talk to me about getting some help, but the man who’d told me to leave him the fuck alone wasn’t my father. The news of Carrie’s death had come the very next day.

As the Prescott house came into view, I tried to push thoughts of my father to the back of my mind. I’d asked Mrs. Pellano to check in on him and I had plans to meet with his doctor tomorrow to see what my options were for forcing my father to seek help. My guess was they’d be limited and nothing that would be a long term solution. And from the words my father had spat at me when I’d first broached the subject, he wasn’t interested in anything long term.

I pulled my car to a stop in the turnabout part of the driveway as I took in the sight of the massive Tudor style house that was just yards from the water. I didn’t know much about Jonas’s friends other than the little bit he’d shared with me about his and Casey’s life after they’d escaped Mateo. I suspected he’d glossed over the hardships they’d faced as two teenagers trying to carve out a life for themselves, but I hadn’t pressed him for anymore because I hadn’t wanted the smile that had been glued to his face all day to disappear. I’d had more fun than I’d had in a really long time and most of that had come from watching Jonas interact with the kids at the various schools we’d stopped at. Although his intent had just been to drop off art supplies, he’d gotten roped into an impromptu art class on more than one occasion after the kids got done unpacking their new supplies. He’d been in his element and I’d been envious.

As I got out of my car, I scanned the grounds and saw Jonas’s car parked near the multi-car garage. A man I didn’t recognize was checking something on Jonas’s car.

“Hi,” I said as I approached him. He was a good looking guy in his late thirties and was dressed in a pair of jeans and a white button down shirt.

“Hi,” he said back as he stood and reached out his hand but then withdrew it when he noticed how greasy it was. “You’re either Cole or Mace.”

“Cole,” I said.

“Devlin Prescott. Good to meet you.”

“Is Jonas still having car trouble?” I asked as I motioned to the car.

“No. He picked up a nail in his tire so I decided I’d change it for him just to be on the safe side.”

I nodded and watched as he began tightening the lug nuts.

“Daddy?”

“Over here, Ryan,” Devlin called.

A young boy in his early teens at best appeared and gave me a quick wave as he circled around me. “Mom says the pilot needs to talk to you about tomorrow.”

“Uh, yeah,” Devlin murmured as he glanced at the tire and then his son.

“Go, I’ll finish up,” I offered.

Devlin hesitated and then said, “You sure?”

“Yeah, absolutely.”

“Thanks,” Devlin said as he handed me the tire iron. I watched him follow his son into the house and then turned my attention to the car. I began tightening one of the lug nuts but as I moved to the next one, I lost my grip on the tire iron and it shifted upwards and hit the inside of the top of the wheel well. Before I could even check for damage, I heard a clicking sound and looked down to see a round, black object fall to the ground beside the tire. I picked it up and turned it over in my hand and then froze when I realized what it was.

I’d seen more than my share of tracking devices but I couldn’t even begin to fathom what the hell it was doing on Jonas’s car. His car was an older model that didn’t come with GPS but it wouldn’t make sense for a civilian to use this type of device as a stand in for a LoJack system.

“Cole?”

Jonas’s voice had me tucking the tracker into my jacket pocket. It was clear that someone was keeping tabs on Jonas but I didn’t want to freak him out until I knew more. I was already making a plan in my head when he appeared.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Jonas asked.

“I offered to finish putting on your tire so Devlin could take a call,” I responded as I tightened the last lug nut.

“I told Devlin not to worry about it,” Jonas said as he glanced at the tire. Then his eyes met mine and he said, “Thank you.” His smile did something to my insides and I had the insane urge to touch him.

“It’s no problem,” I said as I brushed past him, ignoring the way my body responded when my chest came into contact with his arm. I put the tire iron in the back of the car and closed it.

“Thanks for coming,” Jonas said as we began walking towards the house. “I know Casey didn’t really give you a choice.”

I was saved from having to answer by the sound of an engine coming up the driveway and I automatically stiffened as Mace’s van pulled up and parked next to my car. The man had been uncharacteristically quiet yesterday during Casey’s visit to the gallery, but today he looked stiff and unyielding. He reminded me of a solider going into battle. His grim features barely shifted at Jonas’s greeting and I felt the urge to kick his ass when I saw Jonas shrink back.

The house was surprisingly chaotic considering there were only a few people in attendance. Jonas made the introductions and besides Casey, Devlin and their two kids, there were several dogs and cats running around including a huge Mastiff that nearly knocked me to my knees when it came to check me out. The atmosphere was friendly and relaxed and not at all what I would have expected for such a well-off family. And watching the way they treated Jonas, I could tell he was definitely a part of the family. While most of Jonas’s time was monopolized by twelve-year-old Ryan and eight-year-old Isabel, Devlin and Casey spent much of their time interacting with me and Mace. Mace managed to hold up his end of the conversation but I didn’t miss how his eyes kept shifting back to Jonas. I knew Mace had an interest in Jonas beyond their professional relationship, but I couldn’t tell if he’d acted on it.

As much as I enjoyed watching the happy-go-lucky Jonas who blossomed in the presence of his family, I started feeling the pang of my own loss as the evening went on, and I ended up excusing myself shortly after dinner on the pretense of checking my messages. I found my way to the back of the house and went to stand out on the massive deck that stretched the length of most of the back of the house. The salty ocean air felt good against my skin and I started walking towards the beach to explore a bit when I heard a horse whinny. I glanced to my right and saw a small barn with several large paddocks around it. A gray horse stood in the paddock closest to the barn. I could tell there were two other animals in the enclosure but I wasn’t sure what they were so I began walking that direction. It wasn’t until I reached the fence that I realized they were donkeys. Both came up to greet me at the fence but the horse stayed where it was, its dark eyes fixed on me.

“That’s Jack.”

I turned to see Jonas walking towards me and I felt a ripple of desire go through me. Jonas’s lean body nearly touched mine as he stood next to me and draped his arms over the fence. “And this is Judy and Dot,” he added as he began petting the donkeys. “You guys hungry?” he asked the docile animals as they began sniffing his hands expectantly. “What do you say, big guy?” he said to Jack. “Dinnertime?”

I followed Jonas into the barn and watched as he went to a bin at the end of the aisle and began scooping grain from it. “You mind opening the doors?” Jonas asked as he motioned to the doors at the back of each stall that presumably led out into the paddock that the horse and donkeys were in. I did as he asked and then watched as he finished feeding the donkeys which had each entered a stall. Jack was the only one that remained in the paddock even though I’d opened his door. I leaned against the outer stall door and watched Jonas as he stood by the inner door and began talking softly to Jack. It took a couple of minutes but the horse finally entered the stall. But instead of eating, it stood tentatively before Jonas for several long seconds before it finally stepped forward and pressed its head against his chest. I didn’t say anything as I watched Jonas’s fingers ghost over the horse’s face. He soothed the animal for several minutes before leading it to the bucket where the grain was waiting. I was surprised to see him wiping at his eyes when he exited the stall and closed the door.