A few people in the crowd shifted. One woman near the fountain looked down at her own glass like she'd suddenly remembered something she'd said earlier. Gerald Pruitt found his voice then, though it came out strangled. "Mr. Reed, I... sir, I had no way of knowing."
"The protocol for unrecognized guests is... I was just following procedure. I was doing my job." "You were doing your job," Travis repeated. "Yes, sir."
"Your job was to call the police and have an old man's motorcycle impounded because a rich customer didn't like the look of him." Travis let that sit in the air for a second. "Is that the job? Because if that's the job, Gerald, then I've got some real questions about who's been training my staff."
The blood drained out of Pruitt's face. "My staff." The word landed on him like a brick. He'd spent six years believing the owners were a faceless holding company in a tower, and now the holding company was standing three feet away in cracked boots.
The holding company had just watched Gerald Pruitt try to throw it off its own property. "I want to be clear," Pruitt said quickly, desperately. "I never said anything personally insulting to you, sir. I was professional the entire time."
"It was these two who—" "You hid behind them," Travis said. "That's worse." Pruitt shut his mouth.
The lead attorney, Daniel, cleared his throat softly. "Mr. Reed, do you want to handle the signing now, or—" "Give me a minute, Daniel. I'm having a conversation." Travis didn't take his eyes off Ethan.
"Forty-one million in revenue, you said that. Pretty proud of it." "I..." Ethan swallowed. "That's... yes. Whitmore Holdings. We're in commercial real estate, and—"
"I know what you're in." Travis tapped the leather folder under his arm. "You want to know something funny? You want to know why I came here today? Personally, on a Saturday, riding 400 miles through the desert, when I could have sent any one of these gentlemen to handle it?"
Ethan didn't answer. He didn't want to know. Every instinct in his body was screaming that he did not want to know. "I came because of this folder," Travis said.
"There's an acquisition in here, a company my people have been looking at for eight months. A real estate outfit that overextended itself buying buildings at the top of the market, took on a mountain of debt to do it, and started missing payments about a year ago." He pulled the folder out from under his arm and looked at the cover almost lazily. "Company's about three weeks from going under."
"Couldn't make payroll last month. Took a bridge loan from a lender that doesn't forgive late payments. You know the type." The courtyard had gone so quiet you could hear the fountain.
Ethan Whitmore's face had changed. The arrogance was gone, now replaced by something raw and animal. The look of a man who has just felt the floor shift under his feet and doesn't yet know how far the fall goes. "What's the name of the company?" Ethan said.
It wasn't really a question. His voice had gone flat and small. Travis opened the folder. He looked down at the top page.