Absolution (The Protectors 1)

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen.”

It took every skill I had not to react to that. I’d struggled with the knowledge that at seventeen, Carrie was too young to understand the harsh cruelties of the world and would have been easy prey but Jonas had been even younger. I wanted to ask him how he’d ended up in the same situation as my sister but I knew it wasn’t my place. Jonas was already doing me a favor by linking me to the memory of Carrie and her final days.

“She listened to you,” I said.

Jonas nodded. “I think she knew what the guy was but she was so overwhelmed that I don’t think she really understood how much danger she was in. I took her back to my place. The first thing I told her was that she should go back home.”

A shadow of sadness flashed in Jonas’s eyes and I wondered if he wasn’t thinking back to whatever circumstances had forced him into such an ugly life.

“She said she didn’t have a home to go back to but she wouldn’t tell me what she meant. I figured maybe her folks” – Jonas’s eyes caught on mine – “your folks kicked her out or something.” His eyes dropped again and I noticed him rubbing a fingernail into the logo on the coffee cup.

“I told her she could stay with me while she looked for a job. She was really sweet and we hit it off right away and I was actually glad to have the company. We liked a lot of the same things – cheesy horror movies, Chinese food.” Jonas laughed and then said, “We couldn’t actually afford takeout so we’d save the oriental flavored ramen noodles for Friday nights and eat them while we were watching a late night horror flick…we called it date night except it was always early in the morning because I was working…”

Jonas’s voice dropped off and then his eyes went wide and he looked at me and said, “It wasn’t really a date night! She and I were never together like that…I’m gay.”

If I hadn’t been hung up on Jonas’s reference to selling himself for money, I would have laughed at his horror-stricken gaze as he tried to convince me, the big brother, that nothing untoward had happened between him and my baby sister.

Jonas must have realized I wasn’t concerned about the nature of their relationship because he continued on his own. “She tried finding work but the few places that would hire her always fired her when she couldn’t produce a social security card. I didn’t want her working in the type of places that didn’t care but I guess she felt guilty…” Again, Jonas’s voice dropped off.

“She felt guilty that you had to work more to pay for her,” I supplied.

Jonas didn’t answer and I didn’t need him to. It was the logical conclusion.

Jonas’s gaze momentarily darted around the quiet coffee shop and when his gaze finally reconnected with mine he said, “Are you sure you want to hear the rest?”

I only managed a nod because deep down, I hadn’t wanted to hear any of it. I’d wanted to believe that my sister was off living some fairy tale life and that all this was some fucked up nightmare.

“She’d been living with me for a couple of months when I came home one day and found her packing. I thought maybe she’d decided to go home but when she wouldn’t look at me, I knew what she’d done. I tried to talk her out of it but she kept saying it was for the best.”

Jonas dropped his eyes again. “Mateo was the worst of them.”

As soon as the name of the man who’d murdered my sister fell from Jonas’s lips, I had to clench my jaw to keep from telling Jonas to stop. I already knew the violent details of Carrie’s death, but hearing the other brutalities her killer inflicted upon her before he finally took her life was something I had no way of preparing myself for.

“Did you work for him?” I asked, hoping the question didn’t offend Jonas considering he hadn’t actually come out and admitted he’d sold his body to survive.

Jonas shook his head but didn’t say anything and I knew there was more there.

“I told her how dangerous he was but she was convinced that he cared about her and that she could handle what it meant to be one of his girls. I’d see her on the streets sometimes after she left, but she wouldn’t talk to me.”

I realized as Jonas spoke that he hadn’t just been scared for Carrie; he’d missed whatever relationship they’d managed to forge in the time since they’d met. I desperately wanted to ask him more about what had driven him to that life but even more so, I wanted to comfort him, to take away the haunted look in his gaze. The observation confused me, so I kept silent.