“Who?” I demanded. “What’s his name?”
She didn’t answer.
“Who did you go with?” I snarled through clenched teeth. I already knew the answer. The little fucker had been trolling around my apartment, and he had sucked Bridgett into whatever his sick little game was to take my position in Moretti’s organization.
“Take my position in his life.”
“What?” Bridgett whispered.
“Tell me his name!”
“His name is Terry! I didn’t know him. He just found me!”
“And you told him what?”
“I didn’t want to tell him anything,” she said. “I stopped talking to him a long time ago.”
The cold feeling I always associate with what it must feel like to drown coated me from my head to my feet. My knuckles went white as my hands gripped the steering wheel, and I made a quick turn towards the boss’s office building.
“A long time ago?” I repeated.
“Yes,” she whispered back. “He used to…to ask me about you all the time.”
“What did you tell him?” I asked in a low voice.
“Nothing,” she replied.
I didn’t believe a word of it.
We were nearing Moretti’s primary office building, and the parking lot behind it was devoid of any cars this late at night. I pulled up to the side of the building near the door and then thought better of it.
“What are you doing?”
Ignoring Bridgett’s question, I maneuvered the car back behind the row of dumpsters on the far side of the lot instead. I got the car mostly out of sight before turning it off.
“You have to explain,” I informed her. “It doesn’t make any fucking sense, and you have to explain it!”
“Please, Evan, you’re scaring me!”
I looked over to my passenger and smiled.
“Maybe you ought to be scared,” I suggested. “Get out.”
“How did you know this was the place?” she asked.
“Just get out of the car.”
Moving swiftly around the Audi, I made it to the other side before she was completely out the door. I took her elbow again and led her across the lot and down the back stairs to the basement. There weren’t many rooms down there, and Bridgett showed me which one she had been staying in.
I’d been in it before once or twice, though it didn’t serve any specific purpose. There was a time I recalled some goods being stored there very briefly before they were moved over to the docks by the river for shipment, but that was it.
Now there was a twin sized bed in the room, a small table, and a suitcase with women’s clothes in it. The whole scene reminded me of Arizona, which made my already pissed-off self angrier.
There was no one there.
“Damnit.” I turned back to Bridgett.
“How do you know him?” I interrogated.