Forsaken (The Protectors 4)

Eli shook his head.

“What set him off? He said something about ‘staying away from him.’ Do you know who he was talking about?”

“Caleb.”

“Your stepbrother?”

Eli nodded. “Caleb called me the day before and left a message. The connection was really bad because I couldn’t understand most of what he said, but I could tell he was crying. I tried calling him back but it kept going to voicemail. So I called Jack and asked him if Caleb was okay. He told me Caleb was having some problems right now, but that he was getting him some help. He…he asked me to give Caleb some space.”

Eli lifted his eyes to look at me. “But I couldn’t stop worrying about him so I called my mom. She’s in Germany right now doing some work at the military hospital over there. She couldn’t tell me much except to say that my stepdad was dealing with it. I called Caleb back and left him a message telling him to call me if he needed to talk. That was the morning of the attack.”

“Jack confronted you in the stairwell,” I ventured.

Eli nodded. “He was waiting for me by the door that led to the floor my car was parked on. He started screaming at me for not listening to him. I tried to tell him I was just worried about Caleb and he grabbed my arm and twisted it. Said he didn’t want his son around someone like me. Then he hit me and told me to stay away from him. He hit me again after we heard you call out and then he left.”

Even now the image of a battered Eli huddled in that stairwell had my stomach twisting in anger.

“What about your other stepbrother? Nick.”

Eli dropped his eyes again. “Nick overdosed a few weeks ago.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I could tell that even though they hadn’t been close, Eli wasn’t unaffected by the young man’s death.

“I thought that was why Caleb was calling me. He took Nick’s death pretty hard. He was the one who found him.”

“How old is Caleb?”

“Seventeen. Nick was nineteen.”

“Do you still have Caleb’s message?”

Eli nodded and pulled his phone from his pocket. He pressed several buttons and then handed me the phone. I put the phone on speaker and then hit the play button. The voice that came on was garbled, but it was clear the speaker was crying.

“Eli? Eli…Nick, it wasn’t…I don’t know…”

Several long seconds of pure static followed where there was no other audible noise before the young man’s voice cut in again. “Eli, I’m sorry. Please.”

I reached for my own phone and dialed Daisy’s number. When the young woman’s voice came on the line, I said, “Daisy, I’m going to send you an audio file. Can you see what you can do to clean it up?”

“Sure, you’ve got it.”

“I also need you to run a trace on the phone. See if it’s been used in the past couple of weeks and where it is right now.”

“Is there a case number?”

“No,” I said simply and was glad when she didn’t press me.

I hung up and forwarded the voicemail message along with Caleb’s number to her. I returned my attention to Eli who was looking at me with a mix of awe and hope.

“We’ll find him, Eli. Make sure he’s okay.”

Eli nodded. “Thank you.”

“So after your stepfather assaulted you in the stairwell, did you hear from him again?”

“No,” Eli said.

“Until the attempted break in,” I reminded him.

“It couldn’t have been him,” Eli said. He reached for his phone again and began looking for something. “My mom sent me this picture this morning of the two of them at an event that night. She flew home from Germany for it because it was a fundraiser she’d put together.”

Eli handed me the phone. The picture showed the very well dressed couple posing for cameras and I scrolled up to check the date.

“He couldn’t have been at that event and here just a couple hours later trying to break into my place,” Eli said hopefully. “It had to have been just some random thing.”

I didn’t bother to mention that Jack could have hired someone since all it would do was scare Eli and I had no proof. And from what Eli had told me, it sounded like the man had been the perfect father up until a couple of weeks ago. With the death of one son and the breakdown of another, he clearly could have been driven over the edge with grief and fear and had taken his anger out on his stepson.

“So you didn’t go to Dom because of his friendship with your stepfather,” I ventured.

Eli nodded. “You saw him tonight. Dom’s always been protective of me. It would kill him to know Jack was the one who hurt me.”

I understood perfectly, but it wasn’t something I necessarily agreed with. I was saved from having to say anything because my phone beeped. I scanned the message from Daisy and glanced up at Eli. “Caleb’s phone is turned on. It’s near 5th and Washington in Alexandria, Virginia.”