Absolution (The Protectors 1)

Jonas kept his hands tucked in his pockets as we walked and he never once looked at me. In fact, his eyes never even left the ground and on more than one occasion, people coming towards us were forced to walk around him because he didn’t notice them. I was tempted to reach out and draw him closer to me so that we wouldn’t be taking up so much of the sidewalk but my gut was telling me he’d freak out even more if I touched him so I just kept pace with him. When we got to the coffee shop, he seemed to be on autopilot as he ordered a latte and when I went to pay for it, he didn’t even seem to notice. I’d already figured that my appearance in his life would be a shock, but his behavior was making me wonder if I was really prepared to hear whatever it was that he was going to tell me about my sister.

We found a quiet booth in the corner of the small shop. The awkward silence between us stretched as I tried to get a read on him. He was younger than I thought he’d be. My contact in the Chicago Police Department hadn’t had much information to go on other than a name but it had been enough of a starting point to lead me to his studio in a quiet area of Brooklyn. I’d expected someone closer to Carrie’s age…or rather, the age she would have been had her life not been cut short.

“How’d you find me?” Jonas suddenly asked and I looked up from my own drink to see that he was watching me.

“A guy I served with works for CPD. He was able to look up Carrie’s case for me and that’s when your name came up.”

“You’re in the military?”

“I was. Navy. I finished my last tour ten days ago.”

Jonas began chewing on his lower lip. “I’m sorry, she never told me her last name. I wasn’t even sure if Carrie was her real first name…it wasn’t unusual for kids like her – us - to use different names.”

With that one sentence, Jonas had confirmed what I already knew, but hearing it from his lips suddenly made it all the more real and I found myself struggling to find words.

“We didn’t know she was dead until a few days ago,” I blurted out.

Jonas’s eyes snapped up from where they’d been studying the lid on his cup. “What?”

Shit, this was not going the way I’d planned. I could feel my stomach rolling and I pushed my cup away from me and reached up to run my hands through my hair. It was already starting to grow longer than I normally wore it, and I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of one more little thing to get used to in a life that had changed overnight.

“They never told you?” Jonas whispered.

“There was some kind of mix up in their ME’s office and her DNA was never entered into CODIS. They finally figured it out and loaded it a couple weeks ago and matched her to a missing person’s report my parents filed after she disappeared eight years ago.”

“Oh God,” Jonas croaked as tears flooded his eyes. “Cole, I’m so sorry…If I would have known…”

I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out to cover one of his hands with mine. The warmth I’d felt earlier was gone and his skin felt cold and clammy against mine. I suspected mine didn’t feel much different.

“Jonas, I didn’t come here to blame you in any way,” I began. He nodded and I reached for a couple of the napkins the barista had given us and waited until he’d pulled himself together. When he seemed as composed as he was going to get considering the shit I’d just dumped in his lap, I said, “I was hoping you could tell me some stuff about her…the stuff that’s not in the police reports.”

Jonas managed a nod but when he didn’t say anything, I asked, “How did you two meet?”

“Bus station,” Jonas answered, still somewhat in a daze. He was undoubtedly still trying to process what was happening. While the circumstances of my sister’s death were limited, I knew enough to guess that Jonas had likely been caught up in the same life she’d found herself in after she’d fled our house in the dead of night, following a particularly heated exchange with our parents.

“I was…it was a good place to find guys looking for…” Jonas stuttered. His cheeks flooded with color and shame replaced the guilt in his eyes. He took a deep breath. “I’d just finished up in this alley behind the bus station when I saw her talking to this pimp. I could tell she was scared but I wasn’t sure if it was because of being in the city or if she was scared of the pimp…Anyway, I knew what he’d do to her, turn her into, so when I saw him walk away from her to take a phone call, I went to warn her.”