Page 4

Jonah

Jonah blinked awake when the car rolled to a stop, lifting his head away from the window. The short hair at his temple was cold and damp from the condensation of an unseasonably cold morning. He swiped his hand across the moisture on the glass, and the knot in his stomach pulled tight. They were already at the house.

“Does he know?” Jonah asked, avoiding the driver’s eyes peering back at him from the rear-view mirror.

Marcus, a man of few words at the best of times, didn’t reply. Jonah knew better than to push, but he couldn’t help but ask again. It would be better if he knew what he was heading into.

“Did you tell him already? About the money?”

It wasn’t as if he had forgotten about the cash shortage last night, but it seemed that his client had. Jonah had intended to wake him this morning to ask for the remaining sixty dollars, but as he’d hovered over Liam’s sleeping form, shifting on his feet, guilt had locked the words in his throat.

Liam hadn’t gotten anything from Jonah worth paying for. He hadn’t even wanted him.

Jonah had stood there for several minutes while the beginnings of sunlight trickled in through the window, while the clock on the nightstand ticked closer to Marcus’s arrival, but in the end he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it. It was only when the hotel door had closed behind him, putting a lock between Jonah and his only chance at salvation, that regret had settled in.

“Go,” Marcus said. He barely turned in Jonah’s direction, just enough to show a sliver of a dark-stubbled jaw. His leather jacket creaked against the seat when he moved. “Being late won’t do you any favors.”

Jonah opened the door and climbed out onto unsteady legs. Before he closed it behind him, Marcus leaned back in his seat, catching his eye through the opening.

“Eight o’clock tonight,” he said. “I’ll be outside.”

Jonah pushed the door shut and turned down the cracked pavement toward the house.

House was an unseemly term for it, but on a structural level, once upon a time, that had been its intended purpose. The evidence was there in the bones: a two-story graystone building with weathered brick along the flat side, a concrete porch with fist-sized chips in the steps, and a rusted-iron fence along the perimeter. The inside, which might have once housed a single family a century before Jonah was born, had been divided into rental units, and then reconstructed once again a few years ago to accommodate seven dormitory-style rooms. And below them, as Jonah knew well, a stone cellar.

He tried to avoid his reflection in the glass as he slipped in through the front door. There was no masking the groan of the hinges, but he pressed down on the knob out of habit, muffling whatever sound he could. In theory, the house should have been empty. The morning shift at the meal center down the street would have started already, and attendance was mandatory. He stood still in the front hallway for a moment, listening for creaks in the old wood floorboards. Hearing none, he slipped into his room behind the staircase—the only one on the first floor, and the only one built for single occupancy.

Jonah peeled off his shirt, grateful to avoid the communal shower after his hot one the night before, and grabbed his volunteer tee from where it hung on the doorknob. White lettering on the breast pocket spelled out Shepard’s Fold , and beneath it, in smaller print, Guiding the Way Home . He pulled it over his head and discarded his only other shirt on the bed to deal with later.

He broke into a jog outside the house. Marcus was right: being late wouldn’t do him any favors.

The kitchen was empty when he entered the meal center through the back entrance. Breakfast hours would be starting soon, and he was sure there was already a line forming out front. Everyone else was already in the cafeteria, setting up. Jonah slipped one of the last remaining aprons over his head and went to join them.

No one looked up when he entered. By now they were used to Jonah showing up late.

He kept his head down and went to the first empty station he saw, then shook the coffee carafes. They were still empty, so he went to work on starting a fresh batch. As the machine heated up, he scanned the room. No sign of Shepard yet, but it was only a matter of time.

At the serving table, the other residents worked in pairs, scraping pans of eggs, bacon, and potatoes into large aluminum vats. An electric griddle was set up at one end, where someone was flipping pancakes.

A couple of the new boys, whom Jonah only knew vaguely by name, messed around at the other end, flicking spoonsful of food at each other when the coordinators weren’t looking. The sharp howl of their laughter echoed across the large room. When one of them turned—a boy with tight, dark curls—Jonah accidentally caught his eye. There was a fleeting moment of uncertainty when Jonah lifted the corner of his mouth in greeting before the boy flattened his expression and turned back to his friend, picking up where they’d left off.

Jonah returned to his work.

He was used to the others keeping their distance. On paper, they were all part of the same program, and they all lived under the same roof, but the rules—spoken and unspoken—weren’t the same across the board. Jonah was an outlier. No one knew specifics about what went on behind closed doors, but Shepard’s claim on him was like a plague. His mark on Jonah clung to him wherever he went, following him like a dark cloud. He couldn’t blame the others for wanting to keep their heads down and their hands clean. For not wanting to make themselves known by association.

He picked up the shakers of sugar and powdered creamer and saw that they were almost empty. A glance at the clock told him he still had a few minutes before the volunteers unlocked the front doors. Jonah grabbed the containers and headed back toward the kitchen.

Grateful for the momentary solitude, Jonah unscrewed the caps and set them on the counter before ducking into the pantry. It was a closet bigger than his room at the house, with shelves of bulk ingredients for the daily meals they served to the community. Jonah yanked the cord that turned on the light and dropped to his knees in the corner. His hand had just closed around the box at the back of the shelf when a voice from the doorway made his limbs go numb.

“There you are.” His voice in the confined space was too close, too loud, even if the words were spoken with saccharine softness. “Hiding?”

Jonah’s fingers bit into the cardboard hard enough to dent it. He turned around, unwilling to have his back to Shepard for long, and found him leaning against the doorframe. His stance might have seemed relaxed to an outside observer, but Jonah saw it for what it was—an obstruction. He had him cornered .

Ross Shepard wasn’t slight in stature. The top of his head missed the doorway by inches, his shoulders broad enough to create a solid barrier between Jonah and the kitchen. Still, he wasn’t the kind of person you would be scared of unless you knew to be. Intimidated, maybe, but his friendly affectation had kept him high in the public’s opinion for years.

From an outsider’s perspective, he was the Patron Saint of Wayward Young Men. He had started Shepard’s Fold, working closely with Chicago PD and the court system to find rehabilitative alternatives to incarceration for those just above the juvenile age limit. On paper, he was doing a public service—providing free labor for charitable causes and keeping troublemakers off the street. In reality, his position gave him unfettered access to and power over a group of vulnerable young people, year after year. He was careful about which ones he chose to do his under-the-table work. Very few people ever got to know the danger that lay beyond the facade. Jonah was unfortunate enough to be one of them.

“No.” Jonah swallowed, keeping his eyes on the box in his hands.

The squeal of hinges preceded a soft click, Shepard sealing them in. Jonah pressed his back against the hard shelf, grounding himself with the pain as footsteps crossed to him, slow and taunting. He came to a stop inches from Jonah’s knees, a looming shadow blocking out the light.

“Where’s my money?” he asked .

No point in delaying the inevitable. Jonah put the box down and stood, half expecting to be shoved back to his knees, but desperate to lessen their difference in stature. He reached into his pocket and withdrew the cash, handing it over. He kept himself pressed into the corner as Shepard counted.

When he reached the last bill, his fingers stuttered, flipping over the stack as if there would be more hiding underneath. A dangerous, familiar anger stirred beneath the surface as he leaned into Jonah’s space.

“And the rest of it?”

Jonah recoiled from the stench of his cologne. “He didn’t have it,” he said, resenting the break in his voice.

“Are you lying to me?”

“No.”

“Empty your pockets.”

“I’m not lying,” Jonah repeated, scrambling to obey the command. He barely had time to pull his front pockets out before Shepard lost his patience. He grabbed Jonah by the waistband of his jeans and yanked him around, shoving him face-first against the shelf. Rough hands patted him down, digging into his pockets and lingering in places that had Jonah squeezing his eyes shut. When the search came up empty, Shepard released him and took a step back, leaving him frozen in place.

“We’ll talk about how you can earn back that money later,” he said. “I’m sure we can figure something out. ”

Jonah, desperate to take that as a dismissal, reached for the box again, but a hand wrapped around his bicep.

“One more thing,” Shepard said, deceptively casual. Jonah clenched his jaw and forced himself to meet his eyes. “Tell me your name.”

The question stopped him short. “What?”

“When you go out on a call,” Shepard emphasized slowly. “What is your name?”

His stomach pooled with icy dread. One thought played on a loop, a haunting incantation: how does he know?

There was only one right answer, and somehow there were no right answers at all. Whatever came out of his mouth next would be like stomping on a wide-open bear trap, but his silence wasn’t an option.

“Leo,” he whispered.

“See, that’s what I thought.” Shepard’s grasp dropped away, leaving a pulsing ache in the shape of his hand. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and flipped it around for Jonah to see. A message illuminated inches from his face.

Jonah, the message said, his own crucifixion in black and white. Can we talk, followed by a string of incoherent letters.

The floor dropped out from under him. When the screen clicked to black, Jonah’s petrified reflection stared back at him.

“So, what do you think your new friend wants to talk about, Jonah? ”

His pulse beat wildly in his ears, his throat, his fingertips. Jonah had messed up. He couldn’t call it a slip, because it wasn’t an accident; he had given away his real name with intention. Liam had been kind to him. He had shown Jonah the sort of thankless compassion he didn’t believe in anymore, and Jonah had very little he could repay him with except that small token of good faith. But it was a mistake he would not make again.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Any remainder of Shepard’s false calm slipped in an instant. He took a step toward him and Jonah stepped back, but not quickly enough to avoid a hand on his throat. His vision went fuzzy at the edges when his head collided with the shelf behind him. Several cans of vegetables crashed to the ground at their feet.

“Do you need a reminder of the rules of our arrangement?” His breath was hot and damp against Jonah’s cheek.

Jonah had a plea locked in his throat, but before he could even attempt to voice it, the hand around his windpipe disappeared, leaving him breathless and shaking. It took him a moment to register the sound of movement from the kitchen.

“Jonah?” He recognized the voice of one of the volunteer coordinators, accompanied by a knock on the door. “You okay in there?”

Shepard shot Jonah a look that communicated his wordless threat, then reached for the pantry door. His public persona was a skin he slipped into with effortless ease .

“He’s with me, Molly,” Shepard said, crouching to pick up the fallen cans for show. “Jonah had a spill, but we’re taking care of it.”

Molly shifted her gaze to Jonah, who quickly looked away. He waited a few terse seconds, feeling the radiation of Shepard’s quiet rage beside him.

“Alright,” she said after a moment. “It’s filling up out there, kiddo. We need you on the line.”

Jonah nodded, not trusting his voice, and watched her retreat through the swinging door and into the chaos of the cafeteria. As soon as she was gone, Shepard shoved the cans against his chest, making him flinch.

“Clean this up,” he said. “And come find me after your shift. We aren’t done talking.”