Jordan was prowling next to a Black Cadillac Escalade, pacing back and forth, wired with nervous energy, his eyes on the ground.
He looked up as we approached. “What took so long?”
Gina held out her hands. “Relax, Jon.”
He glared at her for a moment before leveling his gaze on me. “You haven’t seen my daughter?”
“I saw her yesterday afternoon after school,” I said. “That’s it.”
He kept his eyes locked on me. They were bloodshot and tired. I doubted that he’d slept for even a moment the previous night. I remembered those nights.
He glanced at Gina. “You tell him?”
“Just that you wanted to talk to him,” she said, leaning against the back of the SUV.
“Tell me what?” I asked.
Jordan stopped his pacing and ran a hand over his jaw. “I’m going to hire you.”
“You’re going to hire me?”
He started pacing again. “I want you to find Meredith. Find out where she is, what’s happened to her.”
“Have you contacted the police?”
He waved a hand in the air. “She's eighteen and it'll be hours before they even finish the paperwork. I'm hiring you.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“You’ve already started looking into her life,” he said, ignoring me. “Talking to her friends about what happened between her and Winslow. It makes sense.”
“No.”
“And I want you to start tonight,” Jordan said. “Right now.” He stopped in his tracks and looked at me. “You need some kind of retainer or something?”
“You need to listen to me,” I said. “I’m not working for you. I’m not for hire.”
“Doesn’t matter how much,” Jordan said, staring through me. “Just tell me what your fee is and I’ll triple it to find Meredith.”
I looked at Gina. “Is he deaf?”
She pursed her lips and turned in Jordan’s direction. “Tell him what you’re offering, Jon.”
“I don’t care what he’s offering,” I said, irritated that they were talking around me and not listening to me. “It doesn’t matter. Both of you need to open your fucking ears. He treats me like an asshole, sends his two gorillas after me, threatens me? Are you kidding me? I’m not working for him.” I pointed to Jordan. “I’m not working for you.”
Jordan’s eyes bore into me. “You find my daughter, your friend walks.”
I wasn’t expecting that and it caught me off guard.
“Did you hear me?” he asked. “Locate Meredith and we drop the charges against Winslow.”
“I heard you,” I said, working it over in my head. “But if Meredith is gone, there’s no witness against Chuck. Charges will fall if she’s not around to corroborate.” I paused. “I don’t think I need your offer.”
Anger flashed through his eyes and he took a step toward me. “I will make certain that he rots in that prison.”
I shrugged. “Good luck.”
He started to say something, then stopped, his mouth hanging open. Then it closed. He took a step closer to me, looking at me, like he was trying to get a read on me. “I’d think that with your history, you’d wanna help out a father looking for his daughter,” he said, staring at me. “Or maybe what I heard was true.”
His words sliced like razor blades down my spine. “Do not talk about my daughter.”
His mouth turned into a small sliver of a smile. “They couldn’t find her, right? And a few of the cops, some of your colleagues, what was their theory?”
“Don’t,” I said, feeling it coming up from my gut.
“They think maybe you did it and hid her so well no one will ever find her,” he said, pointing at me. “That this whole grieving thing is an act.”
I reached out, grabbed his finger and snapped it back. He screamed and I used my left hand to smash him in the jaw. He sagged to the ground and I let go of him.
Gina approached quickly from my right. I blocked her first strike and grabbed her by the throat, feeling her larynx against my palm. Both of her hands went to my wrist and she started gagging immediately. Her eyes bulged. The pulse in her neck beat against my fingers.
And then Jordan started whimpering.
It wasn’t just from the broken finger and the punch to his face. It was something else, something distinct and unique, something that forced its way out of your gut because panic and fear and hurt were all merging into something foreign and the body didn’t know what to do with it. So it sent it out in the form of a howl, a cry, a whimper.
I recognized that whimpering because it had once come out of me. It had nearly broken me.