Absolution (The Protectors 1)

“I swear, Mace, it’s just me,” Ronan said as I came around the car. “You trusted me once,” he added.

“The stakes are too high now,” I said. “Talk.”

“Jonas will want to hear this,” Ronan said.

“Cole,” I called out.

“Kitchen,” he responded without hesitation. “We can cover the front and back yard from there.”

I motioned to Ronan and followed him to the house. Cole was already in the kitchen and he had Jonas at his back. I could see my revolver tucked in the waistband of Cole’s jeans.

“Sit there,” I said as I pulled a chair out and put it near the front window so that I could watch both Ronan and the driveway at the same time. Cole moved to the window overlooking the back yard. I kept Jonas between us as I glanced down at the folder in my hand.

“Benny set this up?” I asked.

“Isn’t that your tech guy?” Jonas asked from behind me.

“He was,” Ronan said and I didn’t miss the fact that he used past tense. I knew what that meant in Ronan’s world. “After the shootout at your gallery,” Ronan said as he looked at Jonas, “I began looking at what we had. They weren’t any of my guys, Mace.”

I nodded because I’d already figured that. Ronan’s men would have had all the exits covered, but the men who’d shot at Jonas had left the roof unguarded. We wouldn’t have gotten out of there if they’d been Ronan’s men.

“Open it,” Ronan said as he motioned to the folder.

I flipped the folder open and the first page I saw was very familiar. It was a picture of one of the boys Jonas had been accused of assaulting. The statement the boy provided was exactly the same except for the part where he named his attacker. The same suspect was named on all three statements and listed as the person of interest in the case file on the missing boy. I handed the pages to Jonas so he could see for himself.

“Those are the real reports, Jonas,” Ronan said. “Benny pulled them from BPD’s servers and changed the suspect’s name to yours.”

“So no one else saw the other reports? The ones with my name on them?” Jonas asked.

Ronan shook his head. “Your name isn’t linked to any investigation anywhere.”

I didn’t need to look at Jonas to feel his relief.

“The emails between Jonas and Devlin?” I asked.

“Also fakes. He spoofed Devlin’s email address to make them look real and he hacked his expense reports to get information about what hotels he stayed at and when and then he dated the emails to line up with those hotel stays.”

“Why?” I bit out.

Ronan shifted his gaze to Jonas. “Did you know Mateo Santero was appealing the plea deal he made in the murder of Cole’s sister?”

“What? No…no, the D.A. said he wouldn’t be able to do that once he took the plea deal,” Jonas said quickly.

“He’s arguing ineffective counsel.”

“Ineffective how?” Cole asked, the anger clear in his voice. He obviously hadn’t been kept in the loop about his sister’s case either.

“He’s saying his lawyers failed to discover that Casey Prescott’s biological father is a U.S. Senator who used his political connections to influence the investigation into the attack on Casey, as well as Carrie’s murder.”

I glanced at Jonas who was shaking his head. “He didn’t!”

“Whether he did or didn’t is irrelevant,” Ronan explained. “It’s the perception that matters. And it seems to be working because the judge in Wisconsin already threw out the plea deal. But he went a step further and dismissed the case with prejudice – that means the D.A. can’t charge Mateo again for the attack on Casey.”

“But he did it,” Jonas whispered.

“What about Carrie’s murder?” I asked Ronan.

“The hearing is scheduled for next week. Chances are high that the plea deal will be overturned but because of the seriousness of the crime, the judge probably won’t dismiss with prejudice like the one in Wisconsin did. That means the D.A. can re-file charges…”

“And Jonas would have to testify,” I said grimly as it all came together.

Jonas was visibly upset, so I ushered him to one of the kitchen chairs to sit. Like me, Cole had sensed that Ronan was no longer a threat to us and he joined Jonas at the table and covered his hand with his.

“What was Benny’s role in all this?” I asked.

“There’s a contract out on Jonas,” Ronan announced.

Cole tensed up and Jonas looked like he was barely holding it together.

“Benny found the contract but instead of reporting it to me, he accepted it and then set Jonas up to make it look like he was a pedophile. My guess is he knew you’d get the assignment and that you wouldn’t see past your hatred to notice what was really going on.”

I swallowed hard because I almost hadn’t. If Jonas hadn’t been who he was or if I hadn’t been drawn to him for some inexplicable reason, I would have done exactly what Benny had expected me to do.