Absolution (The Protectors 1)

The reminder of my daily coffee runs had me remembering the studio as bullets had started flying and tearing into the walls around us as we’d huddled on the ground. Only I hadn’t huddled when the first bullet had torn through the space – Mace had used his body to push me out of the way and shield me. And at some point, he’d gotten shot in the process.

I shouldn’t care. I didn’t.

Frustration tore through me as my inner voice called me a liar, and it nagged me even as I left the room and walked down the stairs as images of the blood that had stained my shirt washed over me. Mace’s blood.

I didn’t hear anything once I reached the first floor but the layout of the house was pretty simple and I found the kitchen with little trouble. But as I walked through the entryway, I spied motion to my right and saw Mace sitting at a small table in the alcove that the owner of the house used as a dining area. Cole stood next to Mace and I felt a little sick as I realized what he was doing. Mace’s flesh was torn open on his left bicep and Cole was in the process of stitching it closed. Mace didn’t even make a sound as the needle pierced his skin repeatedly but when his eyes caught mine, he flinched and then dropped his gaze. I couldn’t remember any time that Mace had actually looked afraid of me, not even last night when I’d held the gun on him, but that was exactly how he looked now. Like he wanted to be anywhere else.

Cole noticed me and then motioned to the chair at the opposite end of the table. I didn’t want to be so close to Mace but I knew I didn’t have a choice. The sooner we figured out what was going on, the sooner I could get away from both men. I’d already made a plan to call Devlin and Casey the first chance I got. As much as I liked being able to do things on my own like starting my studio, I had absolutely no qualms about relying on Devlin’s power and connections to help get me out of whatever mess I’d been tossed into.

Cole kept stitching as he said to Mace, “Tell us, Mace. Everything.”

It felt strange to not have Mace’s eyes on me when he spoke since he’d always been so direct with how he looked at or spoke to me in the past.

“The group I work for…we monitor a lot of different channels to pick out potential marks.”

I swallowed hard at the term but held my tongue.

“But we mostly use the Deep Web,” he said.

“What is that?” I interjected.

“It’s the internet beneath the internet so to speak,” Cole said as he continued to drive the needle through Mace’s skin before tying off the thread. “There’s a lot of illegal shit there including black markets for everything from stolen credit cards to body parts to child pornography.”

I found myself wanting to throw up again. Mace lived in a world where looking through that kind of shit was normal?

“You found my name there?” I said in horror.

“Our tech guy, Benny, has algorithms that look for certain crimes,” Mace said quietly. “From there we look at police reports, trial transcripts, whatever we need to determine if we should step in. Crimes against kids are high on our list. We also look for people who are trying to hire hitmen to take out a spouse or a loved one and we step in and stop it.”

“You kill them? The people you decide are guilty?”

I saw Mace flinch at that but then he stiffened. “We do what it takes get the innocent victims justice.”

Let Justice be done.

The tattoo on Mace’s chest made sense now but I wondered if I would ever be able to consider it beautiful again. And then I realized the direction of my thoughts. Did I even want to see it again?

“What did you find on me?” I managed to ask.

Mace motioned to a large manila envelope sitting in the middle of the table that I hadn’t even noticed. I noticed that my fingers shook as I reached for it.

The first few pages I skimmed after I’d removed everything from the envelope contained basic information about me as well as my lease on the gallery. Next were several pictures of me but they weren’t any I remembered someone taking. I finally realized they were surveillance pictures and most had been taken while I was doing inconsequential things like getting coffee or buying groceries. Except the last one.

The last one was a mug shot of me. I was holding up some kind of board that showed it was for the Boston Police Department and there was a date and a bunch of numbers beneath it. It was dated a year earlier.