Bile crept up the back of my throat and I couldn’t stop myself from covering my eyes with my hand. Not only had my sister been brutalized in every conceivable manner, her torment had been captured on tape and even now was likely being watched by all manner of men who were getting off on what had been done to her. Tears stung my eyes and my skin felt too tight for my body. Even breathing suddenly seemed to take too much effort.
“Do you want me to stop?” Jonas asked softly, his voice uneven.
Yes.
“No,” I said as I took another moment to get myself under control. “Finish it,” I ordered more harshly than I intended. “Please,” I added, softening my tone as I dropped my hand. Jonas was watching me with concern and I didn’t miss the sheen of moisture in his eyes.
“Once whatever Mateo had given her wore off, she started talking about wanting to go home. I told her she should call her parents but she was scared about what Mateo would do to her for leaving him, so she said she needed to leave that night.” Jonas’s voice dropped as tears began to slip down his cheeks. “She wanted me to go with her. She said your parents…she said they’d accept me.”
“They would have,” I said automatically. Although my parents and Carrie had butted heads on more than one occasion, they would have welcomed Jonas with open arms. They were just those kind of people.
The spark of hope I saw in Jonas’s eyes was devastating. It was almost as if he was back in that moment – a scared, traumatized fourteen-year-old kid who was being given a second chance to be what he was supposed to be…a kid. The light in his eyes quickly died out as he snapped out of his reverie and remembered where he was and why he was there.
“We stopped at her place on the way to the bus station so she could pack. I was in the bathroom getting some of her stuff together when I heard someone knocking at the front door. She answered itbefore I could stop her.” A harsh sob suddenly tore from Jonas’s throat. “I’m sorry Cole, I couldn’t stop him. I swear I tried…”
Despite Jonas’s distress, I needed him to finish it so I said, “What happened?”
Jonas used his sleeves to wipe at his face. “He hit her. When I went after him, he punched me and then started kicking me when I fell. I saw the knife but I was so dizzy that I couldn’t get up fast enough.” Jonas’s voice grew higher and higher in pitch as he spoke. “I could see him stabbing her over and over but by the time I got to him, she’d gone quiet.”
“How did you get away?” I asked. I knew the question sounded accusatory but I was so raw inside that I couldn’t temper my tone.
Jonas’s voice quieted. “Another girl who worked for Mateo saved my life. She’d been waiting in Mateo’s car. She followed him up to the apartment and saw him knock me down. As he was coming after me with the knife, she hit him over the head with a lamp and she got me out of there. We…we checked Carrie before we left but she was already gone…”
There was a moment of silence before Jonas whispered, “I’m so sorry, Cole,” as one of his hands closed over mine. His touch nearly sent me over the edge so I yanked my hand away. My vision was already blurring with tears and I climbed to my feet, ignoring Jonas’s stricken features. My only thought was that I’d gotten exactly what I asked for and I suddenly wished I’d never heard Jonas’s name. I let my gaze briefly roam over the young man who’d just made my sister’s death very real and then I did something I’d never done in my entire life.
I ran.
Chapter 6
MACE
“Jonas, I’m heading out,”I said to the closed door after my knock went unanswered. I waited for several moments but then turned and hurried back down the stairs since I knew that I wouldn’t be able to hear much through the heavy door leading to Jonas’s apartment. There was no doubt in my mind that Jonas was still in there, since I’d seen him rush past me an hour earlier. He’d done his best to hide his face from me but it would have been nearly impossible to miss the tears streaking down his flushed cheeks. My gut instinct had been to grab him and demand he tell me what the fucker he’d walked out of the studio twenty minutes earlier with had done to him, but I’d managed to pretend that I hadn’t noticed how upset he was as I murmured a bland greeting. That same instinct was compelling me to turn around and order Jonas to open the door and tell me what had happened, but I managed to quell it.
It took just minutes to lock up the studio with the key Jonas had given me the day before – a sure sign that I’d managed to earn his trust – and load up the van I’d bought for cheap and loaded with ladders and other supplies to help me sell my persona as a construction worker. I drove the van around the block and parked it in anunderground garage where I knew Jonas would never see it, and then hurried back to the apartment building across the street from Jonas’s studio. My computer was still sitting in the bathroom so I only had to grab the rifle from the closet. As I waited for the laptop to wake up, I lifted the gun and looked through the scope. My gut sank at the empty apartment and I realized that at some point as I’d been parking the van, Jonas had left the apartment.
“Fuck,” I muttered. But a second later, my computer lit up and I saw that I’d left the program open that linked to the listening device I’d left in Jonas’s apartment on the day we’d first met. The sound on the computer was muted since I’d been on the phone the last time I had it running but I could see the audio wave line moving up and down which meant the device was picking up some kind of sound. I hit the unmute button and froze as I heard the wracking sobs filter through the small bathroom. My stomach clenched at the strangled, agonized cries and I actually leaned back against the wall for support. I waited for the cries to end but they only let up long enough for Jonas to draw in a ragged breath and then they started all over. How many times had I heard wails like that? How many times had they come from my own lips?
I watched the waves on the program jerk up and down as my hands automatically began the process of removing the scope from my rifle. Once it was free, I stood up and began scanning Jonas’s apartment again. Using the scope without the gun gave me a little bit more freedom in finding an angle that worked without risking someone seeing the rifle and I finally spied Jonas’s mop of brown hair near the window in the far corner of his apartment. I couldn’t see more than that but I didn’t need to because I saw Jonas’s arms come up to cover his head as he let out another few wails before finally quieting to an uneven combination of hiccupping sobs. Then his arms and head disappeared completely but he didn’t get up so I figured he’d lowered himself to the ground because his crying sounded more muffled. It took another twenty minutes before the sounds stopped all together but he still didn’t get up. I kept the scope in place as I searched out my phone and dialed.
“Yeah?” Mav said.
“Did you find any connection between the mark and the Prescotts?” I asked, pleased that I’d managed to not use Jonas’s name this time around but not liking the sour taste that filled my mouth as I said it.
“No, I’ve got Benny working on it.”
Fuck.
Benny was our tech guy who could dig up even the best kept secrets of any mark. And while that part was great, he also had our team leader’s ear so anything Benny found would be filtered through Ronan first. Which wouldn’t have been an issue if I was still in the early stages of studying my target, but since I’d been hedging on pulling the trigger for almost a month now, there was no doubt that Ronan Grisham would be watching my every move at this point. It was the main reason I’d been relying so heavily on Mav to handle the operational side of things when it came to this particular case.
As much as I wanted to light into Mav, it wouldn’t change anything. “I need you to run a name for me,” I told him. “Cole Bridgerton.”
“Got it,” he said.
“And Mav…”
“Yeah?”
“You run it, not Benny,” I said firmly.
