Chapter 13
Thirteen
RIOS
The Sea Breeze was an old boat who showed her age in the rust spots along her mostly white hull.
The green trim might’ve been bright once, back when I was young enough to be something other than a cynic.
Now it was a pale imitation that hit somewhere between mint and seasick.
A few guys were working onboard, hosing decks, checking lines, doing the million small chores that kept things afloat.
Nobody paid me much attention. Another guy on the dock didn’t mean much.
But they noticed Madden.
Of course they did. Pretty woman, all neat and tidy and smelling, inexplicably, of fresh flowers.
She’d look like temptation personified to guys who’d been out on the water for days or weeks at a time.
Hell, she’d been occupying way the hell too much of my brain today, when it should’ve been fully on the case.
It wasn’t her looks—though she was unquestionably attractive, even winnowed down by stress and poor sleep.
It was the whole package. I loved a puzzle, and the more time I spent with her, the more it became clear that Madden Reilly was a big one.
Which didn’t matter one good damn because we were only allies in the name of running an investigation the cops were ignoring. Once this was over, we’d go our separate ways. So I shoved my reluctant fascination down deep into the mental what-the-fuck locker and shut the door.
If she was aware of the attention, she didn’t show it.
She simply strode down the dock as if she owned it, head held high, shoulders back.
Somehow, it wasn’t the kind of entitled strut I associated with her parents.
This felt like confidence rather than privilege.
As if it never occurred to her that there was anywhere she didn’t belong.
I couldn’t decide if that was bone stupid or envy inducing.
Either way, I edged just a little closer. It was unlikely anyone would bother her with me around, but I wasn’t taking the chance.
At the gangplank, she hesitated, and I noted the unconscious flex and clench of her fingers. Maybe she wasn’t quite as confident as she appeared.
“How do we handle this?” she murmured.
“We ask.” I curved one hand at my mouth and hollered, “Ahoy!”
Two guys on deck glanced my way.
“Willie Sanders around?”
The closer of the two men jerked his head toward the end of the pier and continued coiling line.
I followed the direction of his nod and spotted a man slumped on an overturned five-gallon bucket, elbows on knees, phone in his hands.
I moved in his direction, noting the messy, overgrown brown hair and peeling sunburn on the back of his neck.
“Willie,” I called.
His head whipped up. For a second, he froze, and even from a distance I spotted the too bright eyes and semi-glazed expression. Then he saw Madden, clocked both of us together, and bolted.
He came off the bucket fast, phone nearly flying out of his hand, heading for the narrow slot of dock between boats like he was going to sprint up the ramp and pretend he’d never seen us.
I moved without thinking, stepping sideways into his path.
He tried to dodge around me. I caught him by the upper arm. Not hard enough to hurt. Enough that he knew he wasn’t getting loose unless I wanted him to.
“Easy,” I said. “We’re not the cops.”
“Man, let me go,” he blurted, breath already a little ragged. “I didn’t do anything. I’m not holding, I swear—”
“I don’t care what you’ve got in your pockets,” I said. “We’re here because of what you told people you saw behind Home Port. That’s it.”
That bought me half a second. He stopped pulling, eyes flicking to Madden.
Her expression was steady, controlled. Not the hard-edged prosecutor from the other night. Just… focused.
“We’re trying to find out what happened to a girl who’s gone missing. Lacey at the marina office mentioned you’d seen something. It might help. That’s all we’re after.”
Willie swallowed. His pupils were blown, swallowing almost all the color of his irises. Whatever he’d taken wasn’t subtle.
“You promise you’re not with Carson?” he asked.
“If we were, you’d already be in cuffs,” Madden said. “We’re not looking to get you in trouble. We just need the truth.”
He looked between us again, weighing his options. There weren’t many. Jumping in the water wasn’t going to help him, and he knew it.
“Fine,” he muttered. “We can talk. Just… not right here.”
He jerked his head toward the Sea Breeze.
I let go of his arm, keeping myself between him and the ramp out of habit, not distrust. He stepped onto the boat with the easy balance of somebody used to moving on wet decks.
I followed, then turned to offer Madden a hand out of reflex.
She ignored it and hopped down on her own, landing light. Of course.
Willie dropped back onto a bench built into the stern, heel bouncing against the boards. Up close, the jitter in him was even more obvious. His fingers tapped an unsteady rhythm against his leg. “So, you wanna know about the girl.”
“Start with when,” I said. “The night you saw something behind Home Port.”
He scratched the back of his neck, eyes unfocusing a little as he chased the memory. “Uh. Few nights ago.”
“Few, as in two? Three? A week?” Madden’s phone was already in her hand, screen dark but ready.
He squinted. “Had that big haul of flounder. We got in late. That was… four nights ago. Yeah. Before the storm came through.”
Four nights put it two days before Priya vanished. Close, but not perfect.
“Okay,” I said. “Walk us through what happened.”
Willie blew out a shaky breath. “I was heading home. Cut through by the back of Home Port. Faster than going up by the office.”
“What time?” Madden asked.
He gave a helpless little shrug. “After midnight. Closer to one? I don’t know. We didn’t dock ’til late.”
“Had you been drinking?” I asked.
“Couple beers,” he admitted. “Nothin’ crazy.”
“Using anything else?” I kept the cop and the judgment out of my voice.
He raked a hand through his hair. “Couple hits. Took the edge off. I wasn’t… gone. But I wasn’t church clean either.”
Fine. I’d worked with worse.
“Go on,” I said.
“I hear something.” His foot sped up on the bounce against the deck. “Sounded like… scuffling? At first, I thought it was just something in the trash or some drunk guy. Then I heard this noise. Like somebody got hit hard. Or shoved. Made my stomach drop.”
“What did you do?” Madden asked.
“I went to check it out,” he said.
Which made him brave or stupid, or a little of both.
“Didn’t walk right into the light—I’m not an idiot. I eased up by the corner, tried to keep to the shadows.”
He swallowed, throat working. His gaze shifted somewhere over my shoulder, out past the pilings.
“Some guy had a girl pinned against the wall. One arm across her chest, the other on her shoulder. She was pushing at him, trying to twist away. He had her jammed in close. I… I thought he was gonna—” He cut himself off, jaw clenching.
“Did you get a good look at him?” I asked.
“Not his face,” Willie said. “He had a cap pulled down and a hood up. White guy, I think. Not real tall. Maybe couple inches shorter than me. Dark clothes. He was… solid. Not huge, but not little. I mostly saw shape.”
“And the girl?” Madden’s voice softened.
“Smaller,” he said. “Maybe a little over five feet? She had dark hair, swinging around. Her skin wasn’t pale. Darker. Tan, maybe. Hard to tell with the light and all.”
“What was she wearing?” I asked.
“Tank top. Jeans,” he said after a second. “I think. It all happened fast, okay?”
“You’re doing fine,” Madden soothed.
He nodded like he was trying to believe her.
“What happened next?” I asked.
“I thought about yelling,” Willie said. “Or going in hot. But the dude had fifty pounds on her and probably twenty on me, and I was alone and not totally sober.” Shame flashed across his face.
“I hesitated. Couple seconds. Then she kneed him. Hard, from the sound of his choke. She shoved him off, cracked him with her elbow, and he crashed sideways into the wall.”
He lifted his hand to his own face like he remembered the impact himself.
“She took off toward the front. Fast. I mean, she was gone. Didn’t even see me. He kinda lunged after her, but he was doubled over. Ended up half-stumbling the other way.”
“Away from the front of the bar?” I confirmed.
“Yeah,” Willie said. “Street side to the back.”
“You didn’t follow her,” Madden said. Not accusing. Just naming.
“No.” The word came out small and a little ashamed.
“By the time I got my feet moving, she was gone. So was he. I walked around front. Music was going, people laughing, nothing looked wrong. I told myself she made it inside. I… I should’ve gone in and checked.
Or called it in. I know that. I do.” He gripped the edge of the bench hard enough his knuckles whitened.
“Did you see her face at all?” I asked.
“Just a flash when she ran under the light,” he said. “Side view. Hair in her face. I couldn’t pick her out of a lineup on that.”
I pulled out my phone and brought up Priya’s photo again. “Could it have been her?”
He stared at the picture for a long time. Too long.
“Maybe,” he said finally. “She’s the right size. Dark hair. Skin kinda like that. But… it was dark. And I was high. And I only saw her from the side for, like, half a second. I don’t wanna say yes and screw you over if I’m wrong.”
“If you had to put a number to it?” Madden asked. “How sure or not sure are you?”
“Forty percent,” he said, almost immediately. “Like… not nothing. Not enough to swear on.”
Honesty. I’d take that over a convenient certainty any day.
“Okay,” I said. “Forty percent we’re talking about the same girl. Sixty that we’re not. Either way, someone was attacked out there.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That part, I’m one hundred on.”
“Did you tell anyone?” Madden asked. “Besides the guys on the dock.”
He shook his head. “Who’s gonna listen? ‘Hey, Chief, your favorite stoner deckhand saw some shit in a dark alley while he was high.’ They’d laugh me out of the station. Or write me up for something else.”
He wasn’t wrong about how that would go. Not with Carson.
“How did Lacey find out?” I asked.
“Told some of the crew next day,” he said. “I guess it made the rounds. She asked what was wrong. I told her. She’s… you know. Decent. Didn’t act like I was making it up.”
Madden slid her phone back into her pocket. “Can you take us there?” she asked. “Show us exactly where you were, where they were.”
He winced. “Now?”
“Now,” I said. “While you’re talking about it.”
He shifted on the bench, heel tapping faster. “Look, I wanna help. I do. But I’m not… clear right now. You want details to stick, I should… maybe not be like this.”
It was a fair point. Sloppy recall now would give Carson ammunition later if this ever came up in any formal context.
“When’s your next run?” I asked.
“Tonight,” he said. “Sea Breeze goes out at eight. I gotta be here by seven.”
“And you’re back?”
“Depends on what we pull,” he said. “Midnight, one.”
“Tomorrow morning,” Madden said. “After you dock, eat something and sleep an hour or two. Then call us. We’ll meet you behind Home Port, and you can walk us through it in daylight.”
He hesitated. “You really think that’ll make a difference?”
“If this girl is the one who’s missing,” Madden said, “every detail matters. If she’s not, someone else was attacked, and that matters too. Either way, you’re the only one who saw what happened. We need you clear.”
Something about you’re the only one landed. His shoulders slumped.
“Yeah,” he said. “Okay. Tomorrow. I’ll find you.”
I rattled off my number; he punched it into his phone with clumsy fingers.
“Don’t disappear on us, Willie,” I said. “We’re trusting you.”
He nodded hard. “I won’t. I swear. I should’ve done more that night. I’m not screwing this up again.”
I believed him. I also knew how easily good intentions were lost between now and sunrise.