9. Rafes Intel #2
"I don't give a damn what you saw," she snaps, taking another step into my space, forcing me to look down at her furious face. "If you think for one second that because we spent a single night together in a cheap motel, you suddenly have the right to control me, you are out of your mind."
"That's not..." I try to say, but she holds up a finger.
"If you think that gives you the right to stalk me, to ambush me at my own front door, or to insult my integrity, you will have to think twice. Let's keep things professional, Jax. The world doesn't revolve around you."
She doesn't wait for a response before she turns on her heel, her hair flying over her shoulder in a red whip. She grabs the brass handle of the front door, pulls it open, steps inside, and slams the heavy wood shut directly in my face.
The deadbolt slides home with a loud crack, and I am left standing alone on the porch, staring at the chipped white paint of the door.
My chest is heaving. The silence of the morning rushes back in, filled only by the distant hum of a boat motor on the river and the buzzing of cicadas in the pines.
I came here looking for a liar.
I found a woman who had already been bleeding.
And then I put my boot directly on the wound.
I dressed it up as justice.
I let out a slow, ragged breath, my shoulders finally dropping.
Now that she has put it that way, staring at the locked door, the red-hot haze of anger begins to clear from my brain. The cold, ugly truth settles into my stomach.
I acted irrationally.
"Hell. I'd crossed half of Moonrise because another man touched her."
I run a frustrated, heavy hand through my thick hair, pulling at the roots until my scalp stings. What the hell did I just do?
I saw his face and I came here. That is the whole truth and I am not proud of it.
I look at my phone, the screen still glowing with Stanley Hargrove's face, and realize I missed something.
Her reaction wasn't the reaction of a corporate shark caught in a lie. When I accused her of flipping the land, she looked like I had stabbed her. And when I showed her the picture of Stanley, she didn't look guilty.
She looked like she already knew exactly what he was capable of.
That is a specific kind of knowing.
Not business. Not money.
The kind you carry in your body.
The kind that makes a woman freeze when a man reaches across a table.
I mutter a vicious, profane curse under my breath. I unlock my phone screen, open my messages, and attach the screenshot of Stanley Hargrove III. I select Rafael Dalton's contact name.
I type a single, short text.
Find out every single fucking thing you can about this guy. Now.
I hit send. I turn around, walk down the porch steps, and stalk across the damp grass toward the property line.
The walk back to the salvage yard is a miserable, heavy march. My boots tear through the switchgrass, kicking up dust. The heat of the day is fully settling in, baking the earth and pulling the smell of rust and old oil from my inventory of crushed cars.
My mind is a chaotic mess, anger at myself battling with a deep, consuming confusion about the woman next door.
I reach the workshop, bypassing my bike entirely. I walk into the dark shade of the corrugated tin roof, pull a dirty rag from my back pocket, and wipe the sweat from the back of my neck.
I don't have to wait long.
Ten minutes later, my phone vibrates in my hand, the screen lighting up with Rafe's name.
I pick it up immediately, swiping the screen and holding the phone to my ear.
"Spill it," I order roughly.
"Well, hello to you too, sunshine," Rafe says, his voice completely calm. I hear the clicking of a keyboard in the background. "You picked a hell of a target, Jax. The Hargrove family isn't exactly a small-time operation."
"Tell me what I need to know, Rafe."
"His father is Victor Hargrove Senior," Rafe begins. "Houston oil money, fifth generation. The guy is legitimate, but he is completely ruthless. He owns Whitfield Development Group through a series of holding companies."
"He eats small towns for breakfast. There has been an ongoing rumor in the commercial real estate sector for months that they are planning to build a massive luxury eco-resort on the coastal bend. They are looking strictly at Moonrise."
I let out a low, heavy grunt in reply. "I know as much."
"Right," Rafe says, the keyboard clicking faster. "But here is the interesting part. Victor Senior rarely delegates ground-level acquisitions. But for Moonrise, he isn't the one making the calls. The son, Stanley Hargrove III, is handling Moonrise personally. He volunteered for the assignment."
I pull the phone away from my ear for a second, looking back at the screenshot of Stanley Hargrove III.
I put the phone back to my ear. "Why does a guy like that volunteer for a swamp acquisition?"
"Beats me," Rafe says. "I ran the plates on that silver rental car we saw at the café. It is registered to a corporate account under Whitfield. The guy in the picture you sent me? That is the sonofabitch we saw sitting with Nora this morning."
My jaw grinds so hard my teeth ache. The confirmation makes me even more annoyed, the feral dog of jealousy thrashing against its chain. "I know it is him."
Rafe pauses and the clicking stops. "Are you digging information on him because he was with your woman?"
"She is not my woman," I snap. "I am digging because his company also wants to buy me out. They left a voicemail offering a blank check for the salvage yard."
"That is fucked up," Rafe says, his tone shifting from tactical to brotherly concern. "If Hargrove wants the dirt, he isn't going to take no for an answer. How do you plan to handle this?"
"Fuck if I know," I say honestly, leaning my weight against the heavy steel of my workbench.
I look out the open bay doors. Across the fifty yards of wild brush, I can see the Beckett property. A single, warm yellow light has been turned on in the kitchen window, cutting through the shadows of the old oak trees.
I stare at that light.
I think about her face on the porch. Not the anger. Before the anger. The moment she looked at the photograph of Stanley and her breathing went to pieces.
I think about the tears that were already drying on her face when she opened that door.
I think about the way she shrank back against the wall when I said his name.
I know what fear looks like.
That wasn't fear.
It was something older.
That reaction does not match a business dispute.
It does not match a woman who is trying to flip land for a profit. It matches the reaction of a woman who has a predator standing in her living room.
I have a feeling she has some history with Stanley Hargrove. And Stanley Hargrove didn't come to Moonrise just for the land. He came for her.
Piece of shit.
The thought lands the same way it did on the porch. Flat. Final. Not about the resort. Not about the deal. About Stanley Hargrove and whatever he did to make that woman look the way she looked.
"Jax?" Rafe asks, pulling me back from my thoughts.
"I am here."
"There is one more thing you need to know," Rafe adds, his voice dropping into a serious, heavy cadence. "One of my aviation contacts flagged a corporate arrival tied to the Whitfield travel schedule. Hargrove Senior plans to visit the Moonrise site in person in exactly two weeks."
I frown, my grip tightening on the phone. "Why the hell should I care when the old man flies in?"
"Because," Rafe says bluntly, "whatever his son is doing down here, he is doing it off the books to secure the perimeter before his father arrives. Whatever you plan to do, Jax... it needs to be sorted before then."
"They can all go straight to hell," I rumble.
"Two weeks, brother," Rafe warns.
The line clicks dead.
I lower the phone, staring out at the eastern property line.
I look back at the light in Nora's kitchen window.
I don't know what happened to her.
I don't give a damn about Victor Hargrove Senior. I don't give a damn about the corporate lawyers, or the millions of dollars they want to shove down my throat.
I care about why a polished, soulless bastard from Houston makes the woman who is ready to fight me tooth and nail for my dirt look like she wants to stop existing.
And I care that it is bothering me a hell of a lot more than I am ever going to admit.
The light in her window stays on.
My mother used to tell me that people will show you when they're hurting if you stop talking long enough to look.
Back then I never paid much attention.
Maybe that is what loss does.
It teaches you to read the things people cannot say out loud.
And Nora Beckett was saying plenty.
The light stays on.
And so do I.