While I’d been frozen with fear, Mace had managed to turn around, his arms held out. His body wasn’t completely blocking mine so I could see Cole and the way he kept his eyes on Mace. There was a long black bag on the floor at his feet and I could only assume it was for the rifle he was holding.
“Cole, what are you doing?” I asked as fear for Mace and myself threatened to consume me.
Cole’s eyes never wavered from Mace as he said, “You want to tell him or should I?”
Chapter 12
MACE
I ignoredCole’s question and asked one of my own. “How?”
“Frogman,” Cole muttered. “You’ve called me that twice now. Problem is, I never told you I was a SEAL. I never told Jonas either. He only knows I was in the Navy.”
I watched as Cole expertly kept my rifle trained on me as he tossed something to the floor at my feet just beyond my rifle bag. I recognized the tracker I’d put on Jonas’s car.
“I found this on Jonas’s car today.”
“What is that?” Jonas asked.
“It’s a tracking device,” Cole answered.
I heard Jonas suck in a breath behind me.
Cole ignored Jonas and continued. “I followed you after the party.”
Which meant he’d seen me drive the van to the garage and then walk to the apartment building across from Jonas’s gallery. And since he was holding my rifle, he’d clearly been waiting for me to leave so he could search it. How the fuck had I not even noticed him?
Because I was too consumed with the devastating realization that I’d fucked every part of this job up. It was what had driven meacross the street to confront Jonas. My plan had been to question Jonas earlier tonight when I’d followed him down to the barn, but I’d arrived just in time to see Cole and Jonas in an intimate embrace. I’d held my breath as I watched them together and I was actually disappointed they’d been interrupted.
Once it was just me and Cole in the barn, I’d felt an insane need to force Cole into admitting he wanted Jonas, but he’d caught me off guard with his accusation that I was fucking with Jonas’s head. And then those devastating words that had been both the answer I was looking for and a truth I couldn’t fathom.
Do you even know what he was, Mace? What he was forced to do to survive?
With those words, everything fell into place for me. There was no affair between Jonas and Devlin Prescott, and Jonas hadn’t been anywhere near Boston when the sexual assaults had started. Jonas was an innocent victim in a game where I’d been carefully chosen to be his executioner. And I’d been so blinded by my hatred of the monster that someone had worked very hard to make Jonas out to be, that I’d refused to heed what had been staring me in the face the whole time – that Jonas wasn’t capable of hurting anyone.
I had no memory of the trip back to the apartment after the party and once I was there, I’d leaned back against the front door and slid down it until my ass hit the grimy carpet. I’d sat there for hours as Cole’s words went through me again and again. I already had an idea of what Cole meant but I’d needed to hear the words from Jonas’s lips. I’d needed to know exactly what he’d suffered because I didn’t deserve to hide from the truth anymore.
I hadn’t meant to kiss Jonas but I didn’t regret it for a second because as I now stared at Cole, I knew I was about to lose any trust Jonas might have had in me…and I fucking deserved it.
“Cole, what’s happening?” Jonas whispered, the confusion in his voice clear. It was the only time I saw Cole flinch.
“Jonas, I need you to check him for weapons,” Cole said firmly. “Then I’ll explain everything.”
Since my eyes were on Cole, I had no idea if Jonas responded in any way.
“Check his back first,” Cole said and I saw the warning in his eyes…the one aimed directly at me. A moment later I felt Jonas’s hands lifting my jacket. A gasp escaped his lips before he carefully pulled my Ruger from my waistband. He gave me a wide berth as he walked the gun over to Cole, who tucked it into his waistband, and I felt a stab of loss that Jonas already instinctively knew to trust Cole instead of me.
“Now his ankle,” Cole said. To me, “You fucking move…”
The threat was unnecessary since I was no longer a danger to Jonas in any kind of way but Cole wouldn’t have known that.
Jonas hesitated before kneeling in front of me. “My right leg,” I said gently and I saw Jonas’s eyes flash up to meet mine briefly before he started working my pants up to reveal my ankle holster. Once he had the gun, he stepped back to stand next to Cole and I felt a wave of pain wrench through me when I saw the betrayal in his gaze. Cole took the gun from him and dropped it into the open bag at his feet. I could see my laptop sticking out of the bag as well as the manila folder where I’d kept all of the paperwork I had on Jonas.
“Talk,” Cole barked even as he kept the rifle trained on me. Jonas was standing several feet from Cole and slightly in front of him so I saw every emotion go through him as he started to realize what was going on.
I struggled to figured out where to even begin but I realized that there was nothing I could say to soften the blow.
“Jonas-”
