That he targeted Samantha, not because of Katrina, but confirming what he believed about Milton?” I bit my thumbnail. “I still think there’s a connection between CyberTech and all of this, the timing is too coincidental. I wonder if Milton is an investor?” I walked back to my desk and jotted a note to go through the CyberTech file again. “All of this, I believe, is about keeping the past in the past.”
“Meaning, the identity of the baby and the father of the baby?” Zac clarified.
“Yeah. Learning of the baby, lends credence to murder. I think someone was trying to stir shit up with Samantha, who and why, I don’t know. But I think the intention of our killer isn’t altruistic, just self-preservation. If Milton is Jason, the baby is a loose end that, if found, exposes the whole ugly mess,” I offered.
“So, who’s the baby?”
Tony and Ellie Dent were not the same people we visited a couple months back. He was aggressive, and she was afraid.
“Why can’t you leave it alone?” Tony demanded.
“You pimped out your daughter to cover your gambling debt. I understand why you’d want us to leave that alone.” I didn’t hide my anger.
“How dare—”
“Enough. You are getting very close to obstruction, and we will absolutely charge you, so cut the shit. We know you owed a loan shark fifty thousand, a loan shark that had links to Gregory Enzi senior. We know you introduced Jason Benjamin to Katrina, that you even footed the bill for his plastic surgery. How did you meet Jason?”
Tony’s complexion turned an alarming color, but it was Ellie Dent who said, “I can’t do this anymore.”
Tony’s head jerked to her. “We can’t…”
“Yes, we can. We’re not living. We haven’t been living since we traded our daughter for fifty thousand dollars.” She showed spine when she turned determined eyes on us. “We owed the money. The man we owed offered us a solution. He was the one who introduced us to Jason.”
“How did they know about your daughter?”
“We lived in Brooklyn, it’s a tight community. Katrina used to do the local theater. She always had a presence. It was hard not to love her. It wasn’t the first time she was approached to model, or to act, but she wanted to be a teacher.” Tears collected in her eyes. “We took that away from her.”
“And Jason?”
“He worked for the loan shark,” Ellie said.
“And who was that?”
“Terence Baker.”
Zac’s head snapped to me, because we knew that name. He was the same man who had encouraged Samantha to interview for Kade’s company. If Terence worked for Enzi, why the hell would he stir this all up? The impact on Kade, my heart sank; he was getting pulled into this shit again.
“Terence Baker worked for Enzi?” Zac clarified.
It was Tony who answered. “We never knew that for sure, but Enzi was the boss. Nothing happened in the city that he didn’t know about.”
“So Jason makes your daughter a star and you follow on her coattails. Tell us about Milton?”
“We knew of him, but he was very behind the scenes. Katrina spoke fondly of him, though.”
Zac and I shared a look before I asked, “So you never met him?”
“No, not in person. But we spoke a few times on the phone,” Ellie offered.
Our theory was thin but definitely a possibility. “And the baby?” I asked.
“What baby?” Ellie said, her back going rod straight.
“Katrina had a baby when she went away in eighty-four for that mental health break.”
They were either great actors themselves, or they really didn’t know about the baby. “We have a grandchild?” Tony demanded.
They had, but that child wasn’t a child anymore, and they’d missed it because of their fucking greed.
“You really didn’t know?” Zac asked.
“We’re not complete monsters,” Ellie cried. “A boy or a girl?”
“We don’t know. So you aren’t aware of a man, your daughter was keeping company with, who wasn’t Jason?” I asked.
“No.”
“Do you know where Jason is now?” Zac asked.
“After Katrina died, we never saw him again.”
“Yes, but do you know who he is?” I pushed.
“Not if he walked right up to us. He’d changed his appearance before and after—” Tony caught himself.
“After what?” Zac demanded.
I guess they realized they were in too deep, so he confessed. “After she came back from that year off, she was different. We didn’t know there was a baby, that actually explains so much, but she started to withdraw, was late for shoots, just wasn’t the same woman. It was why they made it