Shattered (The Protectors 11)

“Jesus, Memphis, don’t tell me he got off.”

There was a long pause before Memphis said, “Acquitted on all the charges.”

“Fucking Christ!” I yelled as I got up and began pacing the room. “How the ever-loving hell is that even fucking possible?” I shouted. “The fucker raped him! I saw the goddamn proof myself!”

I managed to calm myself as Memphis remained silent. I suspected he and the rest of the team had likely had a similar reaction to my own.

“The defense brought up Eli’s history,” Memphis murmured.

I shook my head in disbelief. “He was a fucking kid,” I whispered. As a teenager, Eli had been forced to prostitute himself for money before someone had finally stepped in and put a stop to it. I couldn’t even begin to fathom what it must have been like for him to have that shit thrown in his face in an open courtroom.

“How is he doing?” I asked.

“Not good,” was all Memphis said. “That’s why he and Mav didn’t realize Caleb had taken off at first. They found his phone in his room and he didn’t take his car. We can’t find his name on any flights and we’ve searched everywhere we can think of. We think he might be headed to D.C. – maybe to meet up with some old friends or something. He… he hasn’t contacted you, right?”

“No,” I managed to get out as my worry for Caleb grew. “I’ve never given him my number and he doesn’t know where I live.”

A fact I was cursing now. The last time I’d seen Caleb had been more than a year ago at Christmas. I’d flown to Seattle after Caleb had begged me to come see him. He hadn’t been doing well then either, but after spending the holiday with him, I’d hoped things would begin to turn around for him. He’d even agreed to go to therapy to start dealing with what his father had done to him.

But I hadn’t had the balls to check in with him since then. I’d told myself it was for his own good, since he’d become far too attached to me, but I knew that was only half the truth.

“Is there any chance you can check out his old neighborhood… maybe stop by his friends’ homes and see if they’ve heard from him?”

“Yeah,” I said absently, though from everything I’d learned about Caleb, there hadn’t been many friends left in his life. And if Caleb had left his phone and car behind and he’d avoided taking a plane, it was because he knew how easy it would have been to track him down using those things.

Fuck, why the hell hadn’t I sucked it up and kept in touch with him?

“Jace,” Memphis said quietly.

“Yeah.”

“Caleb…he hasn’t been doing well. So if you find him, don’t let him out of your sight, okay?”

I could barely get my next words out. “Yeah, okay.”

I said my goodbyes to Memphis and tossed the phone onto the bed. It was two in the morning, so I couldn’t even start searching his old neighborhood for a few hours yet. But as I studied my bed, I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d be able to sleep now.

No, Caleb needed me.

I might not be able to check in with his friends for a little while yet, but I sure as hell couldn’t just sit there doing nothing. There were a couple of places I could go. They were long shots, but I literally had nothing to lose.

So I grabbed my phone and my keys and told Caleb exactly what I’d told him when he’d called me just before Christmas and begged to see me.

“Hang on, Caleb, I’m coming.”

It couldn’t be.

That was the thought that kept running through my mind as I stared at the motel room door that had been propped open by flipping the security latch into the locked position before closing the door.

Driving to the motel in the Appalachian Mountains had been so much more than a long shot, but I’d been desperate. I’d spent the entire day scouring all the places I thought Caleb might go if he’d indeed made his way back to D.C., but to no avail. The motel had literally been my last shot.

There were absolutely no cars in the parking lot, but when I’d slipped the manager some cash, he’d confirmed that a young man with blond hair had checked into the very room Caleb and I had used nearly two years earlier while we’d been waiting for Mav and Eli to arrive.

The same room where I’d held him in my arms for the first time so he could finally find some peace in sleep.

I should have been relieved to know I’d finally found him, but I was terrified about what I might find in that room when I opened the door. Two years ago, Caleb had barely been hanging onto his sanity. From what Memphis had told me, things hadn’t seemed to have gotten any better for him, despite having found some stability with Mav and Eli. At nineteen years old, Caleb should have had the world at his feet. Instead, it seemed to be crumbling around him.