Even though I’d already suspected why Mace had been watching Jonas, it still tore me up to hear it confirmed. I couldn’t even imagine what Jonas was suffering.
Jonas didn’t say anything but he didn’t have to because it was written all over his face. Disbelief, terror, betrayal.
“Why?” Jonas managed to whisper.
Mace stepped back. “There’s…there are some papers in my bag…they’ll explain everything.”
But when Mace made a move towards the car to get them, Jonas yelled, “No! You tell me! I want to hear you say it.”
I hadn’t had a chance to look at the contents of the manila envelope in great detail after I’d broken into the apartment Mace was using to watch Jonas but I could tell by the look of horror on Mace’s face that whatever was in there was pretty bad. I could also tell that Mace didn’t want to have to speak the words aloud.
“I work for a group that delivers justice when the law can’t,” Mace began. “Your…your name came up in one of our investigations.”
“What investigation?” Jonas asked when Mace didn’t continue on his own.
Mace lifted his eyes so he could watch Jonas when he said, “We had information that you were a suspect in the sexual assaults of three little boys and the disappearance of a fourth.”
Jonas didn’t seem to register what Mace was saying at first but once he did, his face contorted in agony and his free arm wrapped around his stomach as if trying to stem some wound.
“You think…you think I raped…”
Jonas couldn’t even finish the statement before he leaned over and vomited.
“Jonas-” Mace cried brokenly as he stepped forward to try and support Jonas.
“Don’t you fucking touch me!” Jonas screamed, waving the gun in his hand. “Don’t you ever touch me again!”
More retching followed and then Jonas sank to his knees and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “I didn’t…I wouldn’t-”
“I know, Jonas,” Mace said. “I know you’d never hurt anyone. I knew it the first time I met you, but I couldn’t get past the proof.”
Tears were coursing down Jonas’s face and I knew he was done. I was walking towards him when he asked, “Is there anything else?”
I glanced at Mace and then came to a halt when I saw his face fall. Fuck, how the hell could there be more?
Jonas lifted his eyes to meet Mace’s. His face was streaked with grime and tears and I wanted to beg Mace not to say anything else.
“I was given emails between you and Devlin. They suggested…they were intimate. They suggested you and he had been in a relationship from the time you were a teenager and that it was still going on.”
Soft, guttural cries tore from Jonas as he dropped the gun to the ground. He didn’t fight me when I put my arm around him and pulled him to his feet. His body felt cold against mine despite the warm evening and violent tremors tore through his body. I managed to get him up the porch stairs and held him against me as I searched out the spare house key that was stashed under a decorative planter.
Once we were inside, I flipped on the lights. Jonas shoved away from me and wiped at his face. The move hurt but I didn’t try to touch him again.
“The bedrooms are upstairs,” I said gently. “You can get cleaned up and rest,” I suggested.
Jonas didn’t respond but he did step around me, giving me a wide berth as if he was afraid to have any kind of contact with me, and went up the stairs. I turned back to the door to see if Mace was behind me but saw that he hadn’t moved at all. The flood lights turned off, burying Mace in a cloud of darkness. The fact that theydidn’t come on again right away was telling. I had no doubt that Mace was suffering because I’d seen it in his eyes when he watched me help Jonas to his feet. I still didn’t have the answers I needed but I had the most important one…the one that had me leaving the front door open. Mace wasn’t a danger to Jonas anymore…my guess was that he hadn’t been for a long time.
I spentthe next half an hour going through the house and stripping off the dust covers on all the furniture and checking the kitchen for supplies. There was nothing in the fridge but the freezer was stocked with food and the pantry wasn’t completely bare so I knew we’d be okay for at least a few days. Geoff, my friend who had inherited the house after his parents died in a car accident, had used this place as an escape from the real world in between deployments. It was isolated so I knew that we wouldn’t be getting any visitors investigating the gunshot Jonas had discharged earlier. The property was more wooded than I would have liked, but my hope was that there was no way for anyone to link me to the property and we wouldn’t be followed. And since Geoff hadn’t had any family left, I knew there wouldn’t be anyone coming to check on the house. Even with Geoff’s death at the hands of a sniper in Afghanistan last month, I suspected it would take a while for whoever was handling his estate to get around to checking on the remote property.
I still hadn’t heard Mace come inside so I closed the front door, but left it unlocked and went upstairs to check on Jonas. There were four bedrooms on the second floor and I checked each one. I’d expected to find Jonas asleep or at least resting in one of them but he wasn’t. I finally heard running water in the bathroom attached to the bedroom that had belonged to Geoff as a child, but the door was locked and there was no light showing from underneath the door. Concern went through me as I knocked and called Jonas’s name.
When there was no answer, I stepped back and gave the door one good kick, breaking it down. I flipped on the lights and slid theshower curtain back. My heart broke as I saw Jonas huddled on one side of the large tub, still fully dressed with water raining down on him.
“Jonas,” I whispered as I reached down to push his wet hair off his face. He was ice cold and I realized he’d run out of hot water at some point and hadn’t noticed or hadn’t cared. Jonas didn’t acknowledge me in any way, so I turned the water off and reached down and wrapped my arms around and lifted him to his feet. His clothes soaked through mine and I cringed at how bitterly cold it felt.
“Jonas, I need to get these clothes off, okay?” I said softly. He didn’t answer me even when I gently cupped his face to force him to look at me. The emptiness in his gaze terrified me, so I focused on the task at hand. I wasn’t sure if he would stay standing on his own so I sat him down on the closed toilet and knelt down to pull his shoes and socks off. His shirt went next and I grabbed a towel and ran it swiftly over his hair and upper body. He made no move to help me in my efforts so I pulled him to his feet and put my arm around him so I could get him to the bedroom. After I sat him down on the edge of the bed, I made quick work of his pants and underwear and then pulled him back into a standing position so I could push the comforter out of the way.
Once I had him settled beneath the covers, I didn’t think too much about what I was doing when I stripped my own shirt off. My pants were damp but not soaked through like my shirt, so I left them on since I didn’t want to frighten Jonas when he came around, only to find himself in bed with a naked man. I climbed in bed next to him and pulled him against me and got us both covered with the comforter. Jonas’s skin felt like ice against mine and his shivering body had me tightening my arms around him. He still hadn’t acknowledged my presence, so I didn’t bother speaking to him. I just kept stroking my hand up and down his back as I tried to work some heat into his system. It took a good hour before I finally felt his body relax against mine and when I looked down, I saw his eyes had drifted shut.
