“Megan,” a voice behind me called and I turned around to face Officer Manolo. He looked at the woman behind me. “I’ve got it from here. Thanks, Makenna.”
“Phil’s innocent,” I blurted out. “He’s always been innocent. It was my brother—it was Brent. This proves it, right?”
Officer Manolo put his arm on my shoulder. “Why don’t you take a seat, Ms. Jacobs?”
“After you left, I searched the apartment,” I said, unable to stop talking. “I found this stashed away in the back of his closet. It’s the only place in the apartment he keeps locked.”
I pushed the carrier bag into his hands and he took a look inside. “This was all in your brother’s closet?”
“Yes.” I nodded.
“Is it possible that your brother and Phil were working together?”
“No,” I said with certainty.
I had failed Phil before by ignoring my instincts after my gut reaction calmed down and listening to my brother simply because he was my brother. Now I needed to listen to my own voice and it was telling me that Phil had been set up.
“Phil had nothing to do with this,” I insisted. “My brother set him up.”
“You sound sure?” Officer Manolo observed.
I looked him straight in the eye. “I am.” I nodded.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Phil
I kept staring at the ceiling of my cell, seeing people’s faces in the grainy gray stains of the wall. The more I stared, the defined their features got until I was staring at someone from my past, wondering how I’d gotten to this place. It seemed almost inevitable that I would find myself in a jail cell, and that scared me more than any other thought. I realized that I had felt that way since I was fourteen or fifteen years old.
I had watched my dad’s life and then I had watched my brother, and somewhere along the way I’d become part of a drug gang. I suppose that given the life I’d led, it would be realistic to assume that this was where I would end up. I shook my head and frowned. That was the very reason I had given it all up. I didn’t want to end up in a jail cell for any significant period of time. I wanted to become more than the men I had seen around me growing up.
I wanted to contribute to society. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to help people. Those were the reasons I gave people when they asked me what had led to my decision to become a firefighter. They were the selfless reasons that made me look a better man than I probably really was.
There were more reasons, though, and they were less selfless. I wanted to be respected. I wanted to be liked. I wanted people to look at me with admiration. I wanted to be included in a society that I didn’t think had any real room for me. I had watched my mother, my father, and my brother and the one thing they all had in common was the fact that they were all misfits. They didn’t fit in anywhere. They were loners who built walls around themselves, and it had succeeded in keeping everyone out.
I thought about my mother. I had been so young when she left, but I still remembered the atmosphere at the time. Dad was furious, but I sensed a deeper pain hidden beneath the fury, and it wasn’t until a few years later that I was able to identify it as hurt. Somehow that knowledge made me feel a little better about my father. If he could be hurt, then that meant he had had some feeling towards my mother, right? Maybe in his own way he had loved her…just a little. And maybe that meant he might have loved Paul and me a little, too.
I knew that being trapped in this cell was letting my thoughts run wild. I wondered if I was making up scenarios just to entertain myself. I wondered how Paul had lived like this for years. I knew that his prison had a large courtyard, a garden, a television room, and a library. But it was still one contained space—it was still a cage, and Paul had never been one to stay in one place for long.
He had been angry when they sentenced him. No one but me could have said as much, but I saw the emotion plain as day on his face. He blinked rarely and the vein in his forehead popped slightly so that I could see its purplish tint against the pale white of his face. He didn’t make eye contact with me as he walked away with his jailer and I understood that. It must have been hard to look at anyone who was free when you yourself were trapped.
I wondered if prison had changed him, and if it had, I wondered how it had changed him. Had he softened, seen the error of his ways and reformed, or had he hardened, gotten angrier, and more likely to fuck up his life after being released? It was a tossup, and I realized that I had no clue who my brother was anymore. He was a stranger made up of biased memories and foggy recollections.
I wondered if I would end up in the same prison that he was in. I almost laughed at the thought. What if that really happened? Would he even recognize me? I had changed a little since we’d last seen each other. I had built muscle and lost facial hair. I didn’t look like the boys we had rolled with when we were teenagers. Now I looked like I had a chance. I looked like someone you could trust…at least, I liked to think I did.
I was trying to imagine Paul’s reaction to me if we happened to land in the same prison when I heard footsteps approaching. I sat up quickly and turned to my cell door. A few seconds later, Manolo appeared. He opened my cell door and walked inside. I stared at his face, hoping that his expression might give something away.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said impatiently. “Any news?”
“We’re working on things.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You’re working on what?” I asked desperately. “Did any of the leads I gave you pay off? Did you find Brent? Was he in his apartment? Was Megan there?”
“Whoa…” Manolo said, holding up his hands. “Calm down, Phil.”
“Sorry,” I