Page 14 of Jealous Mountain Man
The guy stepped away from the counter, but he kept his focus on Enzo. “You think I’m stupid? You said just minutes ago your boss was back there, watching. It’s pretty obvious now that he isn’t. You lied about that, so I doubt there’s a camera.”
Enzo didn’t even glance at me. He didn’t dare take his eyes off the man in black.
“You had no right to turn me in,” Chuck said to Enzo. “The girl walked out in front of my car, and you know it. So, what if I was drinking? I would’ve hit her if I was stone-cold sober.”
From the look on Enzo’s face, it was clear he doubted that. I trusted Enzo a thousand times more than this guy.
“You threatened my life, multiple times,” Enzo said. “Both before I enlisted and after my discharge. It’s the reason I settled here instead of Cheyenne.”
The man laughed. “You legit thought I’d hurt you? Dude.”
“You killed a woman.”
“Girl,” Chuck corrected, as though that made it better. “And she walked in front of my car. I think she did it on purpose.”
“I was in the car when it happened. You fled the scene. Until I went to the police, her family had no idea what happened.”
“Did it fix anything, having them know? She’s still dead.”
This conversation was getting nowhere. Enzo could reason all he wanted, but this guy wasn’t going to budge on trying to justify what he did.
So I jumped in. “Why are you here? You came to town looking for Enzo.”
“Good question,” Enzo said. “If you aren’t here to follow through on your threats, why are you here?”
“A buddy shared your little video with me,” Chuck said, looking at me.
That look creeped me out. I had to resist the urge to step back and put some distance between us. Luckily, he flipped that stare back to Enzo.
“Really, I guess I was just looking for some closure myself,” Chuck said.
“What kind of closure?” Enzo asked.
Chuck shrugged. Suddenly, he didn’t look nearly as scary.
“I guess I’m looking to find out why you did it, man. We were good friends until you ratted me out.”
Enzo straightened, squaring his shoulders. This was a true showdown.
“Correction,” Enzo said, a muscle in his jaw twitching as his eyes filled with fury. “We were good friends until you ran over a seventeen-year-old girl and left her for dead. We were good friends until you ignored me shouting for you to go back. We were good friends until you threatened me with your dad’s gun, saying you would use it on me if I said a word to anyone about what happened.”
“And then you took off for the military,” Chuck pointed out.
“But when I returned home to find the town still talking about it, I finally turned you in.”
“Yeah, well you see where that got you,” Chuck said. “I did my time, and now I’m free and clear.”
This guy was a criminal, but he didn’t seem to be part of some big, organized crime syndicate. That seemed comforting to me, but I wasn’t sure it should be.
“I made a mistake,” Chuck said. “A mistake that cost someone her life. What was it to you, anyway?”
Enzo narrowed his eyes. “I let you slide for twenty years. The family had no idea what happened to Pamela. Your arrest gave them closure.”
“And landed me in the slammer for two years.”
“Two years is a small price to pay, considering you get to walk around while Pamela never even saw her eighteenth birthday.”
“If you really wanted to do the right thing, wouldn’t you have done it earlier?” Chuck asked.
