Page 27 of A Series of Rooms
There wasn’t much he could do to adjust his position without risking waking him, no matter how stiff his posture looked propped against the headboard, but he could try to make him as comfortable as possible. Watching for any signs of stirring, Liam pulled the edge of the thick white comforter up as far as it would go, laying it gently over the place where Jonah’s fingers rested against his sternum. Liam’s hands lingered for just an extra moment before he pulled back.
He crawled back into his own bed and propped the laptop back onto his knees, checking the word count at the bottom of the window. He was still a thousand words short on his essay, and he could feel his eyelids drooping, but there was something else pulling at him.
Between the burnout of work and school, it had been months since Liam felt inspired enough to start a new project. But something about that moment—about watching Jonah sleep in the half-light of the room—lit a spark.
Liam closed his laptop and tossed it aside, reaching instead for the sketchpad in his backpack. Grabbing the first pencil he could find, Liam began to draw.
CHAPTER 11
Jonah
His hands were shaking as the officer placed the receiver in his palm.
“What’s the number?” the man asked. He wasn’t the same one who had been in the motel room with Jonah. Jonah hadn’t seen him since he put the handcuffs on and dropped him in the back of the police car.
He closed his eyes and tried to get a grip on the panic that was clawing up his chest, into his throat. This couldn’t be happening. Dominic told him this wouldn’t happen. It was a dream. The whole thing, everything that happened from the moment he’d stepped off the bus at Union Station was just some horrible nightmare.
“The number,” the officer asked again, patience thinning. Jonah flinched.
For a wild, surreal moment, he considered calling his mom. The numbers were there at the tip of his tongue, the first he had ever memorized and knew by heart even still. It was only the thought of her rejection, the probability that she would hear his desperate voice on the end of the line and hang up the phone, that stopped him.
Instead, he asked the officer to check his phone for Dominic’s phone number. It was the only one he had saved since Dom bought it for him a month earlier.
His sweaty fingers slipped over the plastic as a voice in his ear told him that this call was being monitored and recorded. It rang three times before Dominic picked up.
“Hello?” He sounded worried. The sound of his voice tamped down on some of the fear that tried to close Jonah’s throat.
“I need your help,” Jonah said.
Jonah was careful as he told him where he was and what had happened, mindful of whoever might be listening to this call. He left out any details that would have implicated Dominic for his part in it, omitting the part where Dominic had been the one to set up the meeting with the man who turned out to be an undercover cop.
Dominic was quiet for so long that Jonah thought he hung up. Then he said, “Okay. It’s going to be okay.” Nothing in his tone aligned with the words, but Jonah nodded, desperate for some hope to cling to. “Jonah, I know someone. Okay? I know a guy who can help you out. He can... I’ll call him, and he can talk to your lawyer, and they can work it out.”
“What guy?” Jonah shook his head. “I don’t have a lawyer.”
Dominic made a sound that was almost a sigh. “They have to give you a lawyer if you ask for one, Jonah. You need to ask for one.”
There was still so much he didn’t know.
“Who is this guy?” he asked again. “What can he do?”
“He’s just...” Dominic paused. “He’s someone I used to know. He runs a program here in the city. For young guys, yourage. Keeping them clean, off the streets, out of jail. They work with the legal system. They might be able to get you a deal.”
“I can’t go to prison.” Even the words, as they trembled out of him, sounded like something from a far-off nightmare.
“I’ll call him,” Dominic promised. “Okay? He...” There was a long, crackling pause. “He helped me once before. Maybe he can help you, too.”
Something in his voice told Jonah he might be the only one who could.
If he had been able to see through his panic in the moment, Jonah might have detected the note of regret in Dom’s voice.
He wasn’t expecting that phone call to be their last.
But when Jonah was released two days later, after a brief court hearing, into the supervision of Ross Shepard, the phone Dominic had given him had been deactivated. And he was nowhere to be found.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1
“What happened to you?”
