Page 53 of Wells

His hands curl into fists on his thighs.

"The night my father died. Who hired you?"

Dane swallows. His voice comes out rough.

"Duvall."

"What was the job?"

"We stood outside the warehouse. That's it. A grand each to stand there and call a burner if anything went down."

"That's it? Did you go inside? Did you see Duvall, hear any commotion?"

"Never went inside. Nothing happened, so we never even called anyone. Just stood there and shot the shit. We had nothing to do with your father's murder. I never even saw him."

He's talking faster now, defensive, trying to convince me he's not what I think he is.

"Once we heard it was Robert Stone who died in there the next morning, we got the fuck out of town. Both of us. Ronnie went west. I came here. We didn't⁠—"

"Stop."

I lean forward slightly, just enough to put weight behind the words.

"I'm not here for your confessional. Call your priest for that. You stood outside the door the night my father was murdered. You took money to be part of it. I don't care if you didn't hold the knife. As far as I'm concerned, you're culpable."

Dane's breathing gets shallow, and a bead of sweat forms on his forehead.

"I'm not here to kill you. That's not how I work. I take men apart in other ways. What I want is the rest of the story."

His eyes snap to mine, wide and wet.

"I told you everything."

"You told me what Duvall paid you for. Now tell me what you saw."

He stares at his hands, working through whatever calculus keeps a man alive when he knows too much.

"There was an envelope of cash left for us in the back of my truck. A thousand each. We were told to be outside the warehouse at seven that night and stay there until someone called to tell us we were done."

"What time did the call come for you to leave?"

"Just before midnight."

Something tightens in my chest. Ridge got his call at the same time while we were all sitting at the Black Orchid that night. It was the one telling him to come to the warehouse on Poydras, where he found our father.

"Duvall called you?"

"I don't know who it was. It was an unknown number. The voice was wrong, like it went through something robotic."

My jaw sets once before I loosen it. That's the same call Ridge got: unknown number, distorted voice.

"Who came and went while you were there for those five or so hours?"

Dane shifts in the seat, pressing his back against the door. His hands rub up and down the navy blue utility pants, leaving a damp trail on his thighs.

"Only two men came after we got there. One was Vin Moreau. I knew him from the docks, but we didn't speak. The other guy had a birthmark on his neck. That's all I remember. Juno, I think. They called him Juno."

Vin doesn't land wrong on me. He was my father's right hand. If anyone got a call about a Stone warehouse going sideways that night, it would have been him, same as Ridge. It's the other name I write down, the birthmark, the man I've never heard of standing somewhere inside while my father bled out.