Absolution (The Protectors 1)

It actually hadn’t been easy to drag Cole off the guy and I hadn’t missed the hungry look in Cole’s eyes as he fought me, albeit briefly. His unspent fury felt familiar to me and I’d actually felt a perverse need to let him do whatever he needed to do to lance the wounds that drove him. I’d also felt something else that I was trying very hard not to dwell on.

I hadn’t seen Cole after that because I’d stayed in the van during the service. I’d spent much of the time trying to figure out my next steps, because the call from Mav that I’d finally managed to return after Ronan left had only left me with more questions than answers. I knew Cole was a decorated Navy SEAL who’d been honorably discharged in recent weeks and I’d wondered why a man in the prime of his career would walk away from it. At twenty-nine, Cole still had plenty of years left to serve his country and from his stellar record, he’d done more than his fair share of it. I hadn’t seen any signs of PTSD and from the information I’d gleaned about his sister, the discovery of her death occurred after his discharge.

Which led me to the problems I was having with figuring out Jonas’s connection to Cole and his sister. While Cole had mentioned a police report that described Carrie’s death, he’d also hinted at Jonas knowing something about what had happened to her. The problem was that Mav hadn’t been able to find any details about Carrie Bridgerton’s death. All he’d found was a missing person’s report her parents had filed years earlier.

I’d had Benny send me all the emails between Devlin Prescott and Jonas from the time their relationship started, and while there weren’t a lot of them, they were regular enough to prove that they’d been seeing each other from the time Jonas was fourteen up through the time he’d spent in Paris. Which meant Jonas would have likely met Carrie while he’d been living in Boston or possibly during one of his trips to Manhattan to meet up with Devlin.

The idea of Jonas and Devlin Prescott made me physically ill, and I’d been tempted on more than one occasion in the last couple of days to grab my rifle and head up to the Hamptons to take out the monster who’d started this whole thing…the man who’d turned Jonas into what he was. But first and foremost, I needed to figure out what the hell was going on with Jonas because Ronan’s patience would only last for so long. I knew in my gut that something about this whole thing was really fucked up but I just couldn’t figure out the piece I was missing.

As I got out of the van, I heard Jonas’s car start up. My plan had been to fix the car I’d intentionally disabled before Jonas got up. I hadn’t planned on Cole showing up though.

“Morning,” I said to Jonas as he climbed out of the car, a smile on his face.

“Morning. Cole fixed it,” he said, motioning to his car where Cole was in the process of releasing the hood so he could close it.

Cole’s cobalt eyes shifted to me when he said, “Loose wire on the distributor cap. Surprised you missed it.”

“Huh,” I said non-committedly. “Glad you figured it out.”

“He’s a lifesaver,” Jonas said as he started loading some boxes that were stacked up on the curb next to the car. “It would have sucked trying to get these into a cab.”

“Didn’t expect to see you again so soon,” I said to Cole.

“Jonas left his sketchpad at my house,” Cole responded as he began helping Jonas with the boxes. “I knew it was important to him…”

“Cole’s going to help me deliver some of these art supplies today,” Jonas added. “If you need anything, you can call me on my cell.”

Right. Because I was the fucking help.

“Sure,” I murmured as I went through the motions of getting my shit out of the van. I did my best not to watch Jonas and Cole laugh as they struggled to fit the boxes into Jonas’s little hatchback sedan. I hated the jealously that ate away at me but I hated knowing that my irritation stemmed more from being an outsider rather than Jonas and Cole being together. Because there was something about the two of them…

“Bye, Mace,” Jonas called as he and Cole got into his car. I returned his wave as I got the last of my things out of the van but I didn’t bother taking them into the studio. Instead, I put the tools back into the van, slammed the doors shut and locked up the gallery. It took just minutes to walk to my regular car which was parked in an alley one block over. Following Jonas and Cole wasn’t really necessary but I convinced myself otherwise and brought up the app on my phone that linked to the GPS tracker I’d placed in the wheel well of Jonas’s car the day before.