14. Elliot
CHAPTER 14
ELLIOT
“M om, this was great, thanks.”
“You are so welcome.” She smiles then starts to stand, but I shake my head.
“I’ve got it. You cooked; I clean. That’s the deal, remember?”
With a sheepish smile, she sits back down. “Well, fine. But I really don’t mind. I miss the days of taking care of you kids.”
“You earned a break,” I tell her.
“So true, honey.” My father stands. “And since I also ate this delicious meal you prepared, I will help with cleanup.” He retrieves the bowl containing a few leftover rolls then follows me into the kitchen.
“Well, there’s no rule that says I can’t make tea too, right?” My mom grabs her kettle and starts filling it.
I laugh. “Fair enough.”
Working in silence for a few moments, Dad and I manage to finish half of the dishes before he finally lets out that sigh, the one I know means a difficult conversation is going to follow. “How are you doing, son?”
I dry a plate and stick it into the cabinet. “Fine. Why?”
He eyes me the same way he did when I was growing up and he’d suspected I wasn’t being entirely truthful.
“Honestly, I’m doing okay. Staying focused on the case and hoping to find some answers.”
“You’re sure? If you need to talk?—”
“Dad, I know. But there’s nothing to talk about.”
“She looks like Renee,” my mother says from the corner.
I turn around and lean back against the counter then cross my arms. “She has red hair. That’s where the similarities end.”
“Jane is strong too, like she was.”
“She still doesn’t want to be called Gena?” my dad asks.
I shake my head.
My father’s brow furrows. “Why not?”
“She told me that it just doesn’t sound right. That until we know for sure, she wants to keep being called Jane.”
“Interesting.”
“She’s struggling,” I tell them truthfully. “With the weight of the unknown. I just want to find her some answers so she can move on with her life.”
“Move on?” my mother asks. “You’re ready for her to leave?”
The tightness in my chest constricts further at the mere thought of her leaving. Which makes absolutely no sense as I barely know the woman. “I’m ready for her to have her life back. Who knows who’s out there waiting for her to come home? For all we know, she could have kids. A husband.”
And that tightness becomes impossible to deal with. I reach up and rub the heel of my palm against my chest.
“Maybe.” My father finishes washing the last dish and sets it in the drying rack. “It’s a shame nothing has popped up.”
“Gibson has run her through everything he can. He’s trying to keep it relatively quiet, given the attack in the hospital.”
“Understandable,” my father replies.
“After church tomorrow, I’m taking Jane out to the park where we found that woman. I’m hoping it’ll jog her memory a bit. Help her to—” I trail off because they’re both staring at me like I grew a third arm. “What?”
“Church?” my mother asks, her eyes misting just a bit. I can see the happiness on her face, and it brings a fresh wave of guilt over me. “You’re coming to church?”
I nod. “Jane wants to go. I said I’d go with her.”
“That’s great, son.” My father grins.
“So great,” my mother agrees. “You know what, I think we need pie with our tea.” She heads over to the refrigerator and reaches in to grab half an apple pie.
“I hardly think my going to church with Jane is worthy of pie.”
“It absolutely is,” my mother replies. “Three years, Elliot. We’ve been trying to get you back in a pew for three years.”
More guilt. Not because I haven’t been to church but because my mother has apparently been holding on to her concern for so long. “Mom, I’m working on it.”
“We know you are. And we’re not trying to be pushy,” my father says as he heads toward the small round dining room table in the corner of the kitchen.
“You guys have been great about it. Truly.” For two people who never miss a Sunday, they’ve been nothing but supportive as I took a step back. Even if they did continue talking to me about faith and forgiveness, it never felt uncomfortable. If anything, it was their support that helped me keep what little faith I still have alive. “I’m just still not sure about any of it. About where I fit into it.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” my father asks. “Thank you, honey,” he adds when my mother hands him a plate of pie and sets a mug of tea in front of him.
“Not particularly,” I reply honestly. “But just know that I’m thinking about it.” My cell rings, so I withdraw it and check the readout. After seeing Tucker’s name pop up on the screen, I answer it. “What’s up?”
“You still at Mom and Dad’s?”
“Yeah, we just finished dinner, why?”
“I need you to come by before you go home. Sooner the better.”
Unease churns in my gut. His tone is all business. Which is only typical of Tucker when something serious comes up. “What is it?”
“I found something you should see.”
* * *
I haven’t even had the chance to knock before Tucker is pulling open the door. Tango is beside him, tail wagging happily, as Echo races in past me, and the two immediately start wrestling.
But even seeing the happy pups doesn’t ease the dread in my belly. “What is it?”
“This way.” He heads down the hall and into the home office directly across from the master bedroom. The window on the far wall has been covered by dark curtains while the wall to the left of it has a large projector screen mounted to it. On the wall opposite of the screen is Tucker’s desk, adorned with three monitors placed side by side. His computer is humming loudly, processing whatever data he’s been working on. There’s a server tower tucked away in one corner and a laptop perched on a standing desk in the other.
Honestly, I don’t know what half of the stuff in this office does, but I do know that, if anyone ever found out just what Tucker Hunt has access to, he’d likely be in a whole lot of trouble.
“So, I’ve been doing some digging. Checking surveillance cameras in and around Dallas and all that. After writing my own script, I was able to cross-reference Jane Doe’s description with the processed data in hopes I would find a facial match.”
“Just give me the Barney-style details, Tuck.”
He nods. “Fair enough.” After tapping a few keys on his keyboard, he retrieves a remote from beside him and turns on the projector screen.
I face it, and seconds later, a grainy image fills the large screen. Clearly taken by an exterior security camera, it shows three people standing in an alley. It’s in black and white, so while it’s hard to make out much in terms of the features, I can tell that there are two women, one with darker hair and the other with lighter hair.
They’re arguing with a man who is clearly frustrated.
“What am I watching?”
“Just hang tight. Zooming in.” Tucker uses a small device to enhance the image, zooming in on the three people.
And then the woman with darker hair turns toward the camera. “Rosalie Wallace.”
“Bingo.”
I hate that I already know who the other woman is before she even turns around. Which she does less than a second later. “Jane.”
“Yeah. Took me quite a bit to find this one, and so far, the program hasn’t found anything else.”
“We already knew they were acquaintances. Based on what Victor told us at the docks.”
“Yeah. But it’s what happens next that I think you’re going to want to see.”
Jane waves her hand, and the man turns to storm off. She spins and lands a kick to the center of his back, throwing him forward into the dumpster. Rosalie jumps back and reaches into her pocket, withdrawing what looks to be zip ties.
As Jane pins him to the ground, Rosalie binds his hands behind his back. They’re finishing securing him as a dark SUV pulls into the alleyway. Two men climb out and grab the third, throwing him into the SUV.
Jane crosses her arms and says something to one of the men then turns and heads back out of view of the camera. The screen goes black, but I’m already desperate to watch it again. So I can pick it apart and find some logical reason for what I just saw.
“Do we know who any of those men are?”
“I ran the two that got out of the SUV and got no matches. Whoever they are, they’ve managed to stay out of police and federal databases. As for the man they grabbed—that I have answers to. Unfortunately.”
He taps on the remote again, and a crime scene photo populates on the projector screen. A man lies on the ground, eyes frozen open, a bullet wound to his chest. “That’s the man they grabbed?”
“It is. Hector Frankfort. Known to deal drugs out of downtown Dallas. He’d been brought in for questioning quite a few times, but police haven’t been able to get anything on him. He was found dead two days after that surveillance video was recorded. Police assumed it had something to do with him trying to expand his area. Doesn’t look like they looked too hard for his killer, to be honest.”
Bile rises in my throat as my conversation with Jane earlier echoes in my mind.
“Who knows what I was wrapped up in? What if I’m the killer? Or what if I helped trap that woman into slavery? What if I promised her the world and instead trapped her in hell?”
From the looks of it, Rosalie was right alongside her when that man was abducted. Was he another victim? Or was she herself being held against her will? As I told Jane, it’s no secret that traffickers will sometimes force women and children to lure others in. Is it possible that Jane was a victim of the same circumstances as Rosalie?
“I’m scared, Elliot.”
Her tortured tone still torments me. I’d told her that, no matter what the truth is, we’d deal with it. But how can I protect her from this? How can I shield her from the very serious implications that video places on top of her shoulders?
“And if I was a bad person? If I did truly horrible things? Will you let me turn myself in? Because you need to promise me that you will. If we learn the truth before the cops do, you have to let me turn myself in.”
I’d made that promise to her. But now, as I stare down the barrel of a truth that would land her in cuffs or, at the very least, the opposite end of an interview table, I’m not sure that I’m strong enough to follow through.
“What do you want to do?” Tucker questions.
“Who else has seen this?”
“Just you and me, brother.”
I study the image of a dead man last caught on video alongside Jane. All of the evidence points to her being an accomplice to murder. But every one of my instincts says otherwise.
There’s more here.
There has to be.
“Bring Riley, Bradyn, and Dylan in so they can watch it. Then bury it. No one else sees this video, Tucker. Not even Gibson. Not until we have a better understanding of what’s going on. I won’t let her end up behind bars because some hotshot detective out of Dallas catches wind she might be a part of it.”
“Might be? She’s on camera.”
“We don’t know what’s going on, though,” I tell him. “It could be she’s a victim in this too. Bury it. You asked what I wanted you to do. That’s what I’m asking you to do.”
Tucker clenches his jaw but nods. “If this is true though, then Jane isn’t the victim we thought she was. And I hate saying this, but you need to consider the possibility that she’s lying.”
Anger flares within me, tightening my chest. “No. She’s not.”
“It’s possible she does remember and just wants to avoid the truth.”
“No,” I snap. “It’s not.”
Tucker shakes his head. “I don’t want to believe it either, but I just need to make sure you’re looking at this from all sides. With her staying in such close proximity to us, we can’t afford to take chances.”