12. Elliot
CHAPTER 12
ELLIOT
T he Galveston Port is home to cruise and cargo ships, and there is no shortage of either docked today. After we dropped our stuff off at the hotel, Jane and I had changed and headed straight here.
She walks beside me, studying everything, and I have to imagine the woman doesn’t miss much. Our earlier discussion has had me wondering all day what it was she must have done to land her in that creek.
Honestly, I’m leaning toward cop or private investigator. With her self-defense skills, the way she acts, dresses—I’d bet my money she did something to help others. Social worker, maybe?
“Any of this jogging your memory?” I ask as I guide her down a walkway and toward the Port offices.
“Not really,” she admits, frustration lacing her tone. “I wish I could say it was.”
“Maybe once we get into the building.”
She forces a smile. “Maybe.”
I rush ahead and pull the door open for her then close it behind us. The offices are small, just an older building with a desk up front and a series of offices in the very back.
A woman with curly gray hair and black-rimmed glasses glances up from the book she’s reading. “Hi, can I help you?”
“We’re here to meet with Victor Fontana,” I tell her. “I’m Elliot Hunt, and this is Jane.”
“Great. I’ll let him know you’re here.” She sets her book down then lifts the receiver of the phone next to her. “Mr. Fontana, your four o’clock is here.” After a brief moment, she hangs it up. “He’ll be right out. You can wait over there.” She gestures toward a small waiting area tucked in the far corner.
“Great, thanks.”
Without thinking, I place my hand on Jane’s lower back. The moment my palm touches her, a jolt of attraction shoots straight through me. Especially when she hesitates a moment and leans into my touch.
Man, I’m in trouble.
Between the truck ride here and the time we spent talking, I’m opening up more and more to her. Which means those lines I was so careful to keep drawn are beginning to fade. Little by little.
Solve it quickly, Hunt. Then you can see what can happen from there.
“Mr. Hunt?”
I turn and greet a middle-aged man as he crosses over to us. “Mr. Fontana, thanks for agreeing to see us.”
“Of course. Us?” he asks.
I realize that Jane is hidden from view, so I step aside. “This is?—”
“Gena,” he chokes out, eyes widening and face paling.
She looks from him to me then back to him. “Wait, you?—”
The man turns and sprints from the building, moving so fast he might as well have left a cartoon-sized hole in the side of the building. I take off after him, shoving through the door and leaping over the yellow barrier that will take me toward the docks.
Boots slamming against the pavement, I push my body faster, closing the distance between us in a few short seconds. I throw myself forward, slamming my body into his and taking us both down to the grass.
“Wait!” he yells as I pin him to the ground. “Stop! You don’t understand!”
“Then stop moving and tell me,” I growl.
“I didn’t do anything! It wasn’t my fault!”
Standing, I pull the man up with me, keeping a hold on his arm as I tug him back toward the building. “How about we go and have a chat so you can fill me in, huh?”
* * *
“Talk,” I order as soon as we’re back inside and he’s seated in a conference room alongside the woman who’d been working the front desk.
I flipped the closed sign, locked up, and took both of their cell phones. So for now, we’re all alone.
“You know who I am?” Jane asks.
“Of course I know who you are. One doesn’t forget someone who broke their nose.”
Jane straightens, her eyes widening. “I broke your nose?”
Victor looks from her to me. “What game is she playing?”
“No game,” I reply, glancing back at Jane, then turn my attention back to the worm in front of me. “See, someone shot her and left her for dead in a creek. She has no idea who she is or why that happened. But I’m guessing you can give us some answers.”
He pales. “I don’t know who shot her.”
“Then why did you run?” she demands.
“Because you told me that, if anything happened to Rosalie, you were going to hunt me down and break more than my nose.”
I turn to her, honestly amused. The more the guy talks, the more she makes sense.
“Why?”
The man lets out a sigh. “Look, Rosalie and I were a thing, okay? And she told you that she thought I was messing around on her, so you came down here to threaten me. The next day, Rosalie stopped returning my phone calls.”
“So we were friends?”
“No. She barely knew you.” He sneered. “You just showed up at her old place, flashing a smile, saying you needed her help with something.”
“What did I need?”
“How am I supposed to know? She dumped me, and I didn’t hear anything else about her until they called saying she got herself killed.”
Jane’s face reddens. “That’s a callous way to talk about someone you cared for.”
“She dumped me, remember?” he snaps. “Dumped me and left without a trace. She didn’t even move out of her apartment. The landlord wouldn’t give me much, but he said some woman with red hair came in and paid the rent up through two years.”
“Two years of rent payments?” Jane looks at me. “That’s no small amount of money.”
“No,” I agree, “It’s not.”
“I knew you were slimy from the moment I met you. Took a good, obedient girl like Rosalie and started putting thoughts in her head.” Victor scowls.
“I think I’m understanding why I broke your nose.”
He glares at her.
“You expect me to believe that you have no idea what Jane—Gena—needed with Rosalie?”
“No clue. You ruined my life,” he snaps. “Took my girl and almost tanked my business in the process.”
“And how did I manage that?”
“Ever since Rosalie left, clients have been leaving us. Big clients too. It stopped about a week ago, but for over a year, I lost people that I brought in. They all claimed to have found a better deal with another company.”
I consider, piecing together what he’s saying.
Jane comes here and recruits a woman who works for a cargo shipping company. She threatens the boyfriend when she finds out the woman wasn’t being treated properly, but then the woman leaves anyway, not taking any personal belongings or breaking her lease.
Clients start dropping him.
The woman ends up dead, and someone tries to kill Jane.
“I’m not trying to get into trouble here. I just want to run my business.”
“I don’t know anything about any of this,” the secretary insists. “I just work the phones.”
She looks honestly terrified, but until local PD gets here to iron things out, I’m not letting either of them out of my sight.
“What’s my last name?” Jane asks.
“How should I know? It’s not like we exchanged business cards,” he barks.
“Do you know?” Jane asks the secretary, who shakes her head.
“I only started working here a couple of weeks ago,” she insists.
“Fine. Then where was I from?” Jane asks.
Victor glares at her, fury etched in every line of his face. “Even if I knew that, why would I tell you?”
I lunge forward and grip the front of his shirt, ripping him up out of the chair. “You’re going to answer the woman. Now. Or I’m going to start breaking things.”
Victor swallows hard. “Rosalie told me she’d met some woman out of Dallas who was going to change her life.”