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Jessie gritted her teeth.

The only thing that kept her from balling her hands into fists and audibly growling was the fact that Detective Aaron Riddell had his arm wrapped around her waist and would likely notice the change in her demeanor.

“Which guy was this?” Jessie asked slowly, doing her best to sound like she was merely curious and not envisioning who she’d like to gut like a fish.

“Robbie Chandler,” he answered immediately. “He was one of the worst of them.”

“One of?” Jessie repeated.

“Yeah, he and Joel Cisco were the ringleaders as far as I could tell.”

“And you think that these guys made the same kinds of threats against other women who partied with them?” she wanted to know.

“Yeah, when I thought back on those mornings after the parties, a lot of the girls were really quiet. Not just like ‘hangover’ quiet. Like they were scared. They usually bolted off the boats the second we reached the dock. When I put it together, I thought about going to the cops.”

“But you didn’t,” Riddell said.

"No," Dawson said, his voice thick with guilt. "My big brave move was to decline the next time they asked me to bartend for them. I guess I must have had some attitude when I said it because later that night, a few of them cornered me in the bathroom. That's when they threatened me. They said they better not hear about me spreading rumors about them. If there was a whiff of that, they'd sue me, get me fired. The same sorts of threats that girl said they made to her. They even hinted that they’d have me beaten up. I said I didn’t know what they were talking about, that I just couldn’t work overnight parties anymore because I was busy with a lot of morning auditions.”

“Did that work?” Jessie asked.

“Not really,” he said. “They started harassing me. They’d do little things like bump into me when I was at urinal to make a mess. But they’d also tell other club members that I was a bad bartender, that I’d short them on alcohol in the drinks I mixed. My car got keyed in the staff parking area. Eventually my boss told me that he was going to have to let me go, that there was too much bad word of mouth about me.”

“Who was that?” Jessie asked.

“Oliver Stanton,” he said.

Jessie looked at Riddell. It seemed that Mr. Stanton had been holding out on them. He’d never mentioned a word about the kind of pressure campaign the yacht bros engaged in.

“Anyway,” Dawson continued, “after I got fired, I decided to grow a pair. I filed a harassment suit against them and a wrongful termination suit against the yacht club.”

“How did that go?” Riddell asked.

“They both came back to me within 24 hours,” he answered. “The club doubled my severance pay, and Stanton wrote a letter of reference saying that I was only let go because of budget cuts; that I was great employee. The yacht bros gave me a payout of a $100K, if I signed an NDA. It was more money than I’d ever had my hands on, so I signed it. Of course, it wasn’t everything I thought it would be. My lawyer took a big cut. I had to pay taxes. And the money comes in installments over three years. When all is said and done, I’ll see less than half of that total.”

“Can I ask you something?” Jessie said, turning around to look at him. “After all that, why do you still work less than a mile from that club and those guys? Why not move?”

He stared at her like the question was ridiculous.

“I grew up here. I went to the local high school. I know just about everyone in this town. This is my home. Why should I leave?”

“Maybe for a fresh start?” she offered.

He shook his head.

“It hasn’t been a problem until now. I’ve minded my business, and they’ve minded theirs. It’s like that thing that enemy governments do when they don’t want to go to war.”

“You mean détente?” she suggested.

“Yeah, that,” he said. “But the détente is over now.”

“Why now?” Riddell asked.

“Because I can’t sleep,” he said. “I keep having nightmares about what those women went through. And I’ve been drinking too much—I think to block it all out. I’ve been wanting to come clean for a while now but didn’t have the courage. I was scared of those guys and of what might happen to my career if I spoke up. So when you came into the restaurant earlier, I thought ‘this is the universe giving me a second chance to set things right no matter what the consequences.’ That’s why I’m here.”

“All right,” Jessie said. “We’re going to need you to make a formal statement. Now that we have claims of potential crimes committed by these guys, maybe we can finally force them to come in and talk.”

“That would be nice,” Riddell agreed. “It’s be great to bust these guys while getting some clue as to who they think might be killing them.”

Dawson grunted at that.

“What?” Jessie said.

“I’m happy to help bring these guys down,” he answered. “But to be honest, I kind of hope you don’t catch whoever’s picking them off. These guys should be in jail. And if that can’t happen, dead is just as good.”