“All right, so you owed him some money? Did your father refuse to help you pay him back?”
“Actually, I never told my father. I continued to borrow more and more money from Escabar. I was only able to pay back the interest payments over several months. Then, my father totally cut me off financially. He stopped paying for everything, and I didn’t even have enough money to pay the interest payment.”
“That’s bad news.”
“Yes, sir. Escabar brought me in to his house and threatened me and my family if I didn’t pay him back in two weeks. I don’t have the money. I don’t have access to the money. I panicked and grabbed his black book as I left his house.”
“Yeah, that was a bad move,” Captain Bastrop said as he leaned b
ack in his chair.
“Yes, it was. The next day, I was getting ready to go into work and two of his men shot through my front door. I pushed Jordan into my safe room with the black book and the men beat the shit out of me to try and get the book,” I said as I stood up and showed him my bruised abdomen.
The bruising looked horrendous. It was dark brown and yellow in many spots and still dark purple in others.
“Shit, we’re going to need to get some pictures of that. Is that what happened to your face, too?”
I had totally forgotten that I had some bruising around my eye still, from when Marco had slugged me leaving Escabar’s house.
“Marco popped me in the eye when I left Escabar’s house.”
“Does Marco know you took the book?”
“No, but he was with the two other goons who showed up at my house. They think I took it, but there were a couple other people at Escabar’s house that day who I tried to implicate to get them to leave my house and not kill me.”
“Do you think Marco would cooperate with an investigation?”
That was a good question. I didn’t think Marco wanted to work for Escabar anymore, but I also knew that he would be the first person to get killed if he decided to help the police.
“I’m not sure.”
“Weren’t you two old high school friends?”
The Captain had been friends with my father for many years. It was true that Marco and I had once been friends, but I didn’t count him as a friend, anymore – that was for sure.
“Yeah, we were friends. But I don’t know if he wants out or not.”
“We can deal with that later. There’s another piece of this puzzle that I’m missing, though. How did your wife get kidnapped?”
I took a deep breath and cringed at the thought of having to explain my relationship with Jordan and how we had already gotten married. There was one piece of that story that I didn’t want to share at all, one crucial piece that I thought Captain Bastrop didn’t need to know. He didn’t need to know that I had intended to marry Jordan just so my father would give me his company and think I was responsible. That part of the story I would just have to leave out.
“I met her online. We hit it off, so I had her come out here. After I had been pummeled by Escabar’s goons, she had to go to the store and, apparently, met a woman who was nice to her. She called the woman Salina and the man Salvador. I thought it was pretty fishy, but I couldn’t convince her that those two weren’t her friends. She agreed to meet them to go bowling, and they took her to Escabar.”
“All right, Chase. I’m going to play devil’s advocate here for a minute. How well do you know Jordan? Is it possible that she is actually working for Escabar?” Captain Bastrop said.
“No! What? Absolutely not.”
“Chase, I’m just putting the dots together. You meet this girl online, and she convinces you to invite her over to the States. Within a week, she has you marrying her. She conveniently gets kidnapped by the man who has it out for you and from all stories I’ve heard, he doesn’t hurt her at all. In fact, he left her unharmed for you to pick up at his house. It’s a pretty wild story.”
His words sunk into me like a brick as I played the story out in my head. It wasn’t possible. I had picked Jordan from the online profiles. She hadn’t picked me. I was the one who invited her over, and I was the one who wanted to get married so I could get the company from my father. But the way he spun the story, the way he thought about Jordan, did make me questions things for a moment.
Was it possible that she was working for Escabar? She did seem to very willingly go to meet Salina and Salvador. For being so new to the country, it had struck me as odd that she would want to venture out on her own like that, especially after I had just been beaten so badly in my own home. My mind reeled with the thoughts that Captain Bastrop had put in my head.
“No, it’s not possible,” I said firmly as I tried to hide my uncertainty.
“All right, I was just putting it out there.”
“You don’t know her. She took care of me. She’s stood by me. We have a connection!” I screamed at him.