"A Sanctuary Safe and Strong"(Marianas Trench)

Chapter 62

Bzz-bzz. Bzz-bzz. Bzz-bzz. Josh had just managed to get each string threaded through the bridge of the acoustic guitar when his cell phone vibrated against his hip. He stared up at Matt, instantly wondering if he'd flaked out on a studio day with the rest of the band. "Mike or Ian?" he asked. Matt simply shrugged his shoulders and crossed his arms, leaning back. 

Reaching into his pocket, Josh dug the object out of his pocket, swiping a finger across the screen to answer it. "Hello?" He stood to pace as he spoke, stupidly taking the guitar with him when he left his seat. Josh leaned back against the edge of the desk and crossed his legs at the ankles. He didn't recognize the number as it scrolled across the screen, so it was no one he knew well enough to consider a friend.  

The brunet stood and followed Josh, arm stretched out, hand open. The singer surrendered the instrument to Matt and watched as the younger man took the empty spot on the loveseat, settling himself in and pulling the "E" string up the body from the bridge where Josh had already attached it, straight to its respective peg, tightening it by hand just enough to keep it taut, but letting Josh, ever the purist, do his own official tuning. Josh appreciated that. Matt was always a good-enough-but-not-quite-perfect kind of musician, and it drove the singer crazy enough to tune Matt's guitars for him, too, when it was necessary.  

Josh dipped his head a bit and stared down at the floor while he spoke, trying to keep his focus on the conversation rather than the fact that Matt had just sliced the tip of his finger wide open on the point of the thin metal. The brunet sighed loudly, set the guitar down carefully and disappeared from the room, but not before catching the blond's attention with a bright, shiny streak of liquid red, contrasting with the colour of the natural wood grain. He bit his tongue at that as he listened to an operator ask him to please hold on for Officer St. Ledger. 

The phone call lasted for only five minutes, and Matt was walking back into the room just as Josh set the phone down on the desk, frowning. The news he'd received was disappointing, but predictable. He knew what he should have expected from the beginning. He knew there was little to no hope. He'd foreseen that from the start, though he'd let everyone around him believe that he had total faith in the police department. But Josh had known better than to be that naïve all along. 

"What's up? You okay?" Matt asked, laying a hand on Josh's shoulder. The singer noticed the double bandaids crisscrossed over his ring finger almost immediately. They seemed so out of place against his tanned skin. 

Clearing his throat, Josh nodded his head toward the phone and Matt dropped his hand, stepping back a bit. "That was the cop who investigated this whole fucking mess." 

"Yeah?" 

"He, uh, he called to tell me that my file was downgraded to a 'cold case' as of this morning because they've had no leads at all. And since nothing was stolen, there were no fingerprints, no blood or hair samples from the guy, no...well...no anything to go on, there's not a whole lot they can do unless something eventually, somehow randomly turns up in the future. So the motherfucker who... He's still out there somewhere and he got away with it. He fucking got away with it, and that's all there is to it." Josh pushed his body away from the desk and turned to consolidate some of the sheet music behind him, changing the order of a couple of the pages and tucking it all back into a folder hand-labeled "Possible Future Shit" in his own nearly illegible writing. He'd reorganize the entire thing some other time. For now, he needed a minute to process everything he'd just been told. Even though he had been skeptical that his attacker would ever be found, it still twisted in his gut to hear the words that he'd simply become just another victim spoken out loud. Just another unsolved case. Another statistic.