8. Holt
Chapter Eight
HOLT
I wake before five with Juliette's gorgeous hair spread out on my pillow. The phone on the nightstand feels like an unexploded grenade.
She sleeps sprawled out, one arm flung across my chest, one bare foot hooked over my shin, like she’s claiming territory. Six got the door open at some point in the night and is a warm weight across both our feet, and for about ninety seconds I lie in the dark grinning.
Then I ease out from under her arm and tuck the quilt up over her shoulder. I pick up my phone and go stand in the cold woodshed.
Dane picks up on the second ring.
“Newell.” His voice is smooth and unhurried, a voice built for telling billionaires their itinerary changed. “You didn't call back yesterday. That's not like you.”
“Busy. What do you want, Dane?”
“A favor, maybe. Or to do you one.” Paper rustles. He's at his desk already. “We took a locate contract three days ago. Family out east, serious money. Daughter went missing from her own wedding, and the family's worried sick. Twenty-four years old… a Juliette Ashton."
Ashton. She’s been living in my house and I get her last name from a contract brief. It goes through me like ice water, and I keep my voice level and bored, the way all those years on the job taught me.
“And this is my problem how?”
“Her car was flagged on a traffic cam on Route 20, headed into the high country. Your general direction, big guy. Thought I'd ask if you'd seen anything before I send bodies up there to freeze.”
“What's the brief say about why she ran?”
“That's the sad part… father says she's unwell.
Off her medication since the spring, episodes, paranoia, the works.
Wedding stress tipped her over. There's a fiancé, Corbin Vance, even more serious money, apparently still deeply in love, still wants to go through with it.” Paper rustles in the background.
“Family wants it quiet, no police, no press, just their girl home safe before she hurts herself.”
I look at the axe in the chopping block. Dane's not a bad man. He talked me down, after the hospital, sat with me and said the right things.
But Dane is good at his job. If I give him Juliette’s name and location, it goes in a file, and the file goes to the client. Suddenly it'll be lawyers and a family with the money to make “unstable” official. And I don’t believe she’s unwell for a second, that’s just their cover story.
“Haven't seen anything,” I say. “But I'll keep my eyes and ears open.”
“You do that… good to hear your voice. Don't be a stranger."
I stand in the shed, clenching my fists. The name of Juliette’s fiancé rang a bell. I have one more call to make, and it can't wait for a decent hour. He answers on the fourth ring, his voice gravelly with sleep.
“Somebody better be dead.”
“Good morning to you too, Hawk.”
“Holt.” My cousin is awake fast. Nothing like the military for training that into you. “What's wrong?”
“Maybe nothing. I need to know what you know about a name.” I watch the tree line turning gold with dawn. “Vance.”
The line goes quiet, and I hear the bedsprings creak as he sits up.
“Where'd you hear that name?”
“Paperwork that followed somebody I care about up my mountain.”
“Huh. So the hermit’s got a somebody. Give me a couple of hours, I'll call you from a burner. Until then, whoever your somebody is, keep them close to home.” A creak, boots on floorboards. “And Holt. I mean close.”
He hangs up. Hawk never tells me to be careful about anything, including the time we jumped the quarry at fifteen. My cousin runs with a motorcycle club that doesn't scare easy, so whatever he knows about Vance already has my hackles rising.
Inside, Juliette is up, wearing my flannel and nothing else. She’s feeding Six his kibble ration and looks up when I walk in.
“Everything okay?”
“Generator. Needs a part.”
The lie comes out easier than it should.
I drive her to her shift, wrestling with the overwhelming desire to lock her in the cabin and stand guard over the door with my rifle.
I spend the day on the mountain, trying to lose myself in my work.
I’ve activated the tracker on Juliette’s phone, which I check every five minutes.
I only relax once I’ve picked her up after work.
Hawk calls at nine from a number I don't know. I take it out on the porch.
“Your Vances are money people for an outfit called Rotmere. Lodge up in the hills past High Vale, spa-and-hunting operation on paper.” A drag on a cigarette.
“It's not a spa, Holt. It's the kind of business where problems go into the forest and don't come out. Our MC have... an interest in investigating them. That's all you get over the phone, and you didn't get it from me. Don’t speak to anyone about this. I’ll drive up and tell you more as soon as I can.”
“So my somebody had a lucky escape.”
“Your somebody did. But they will now be a loose end with a paper trail. And Holt? You need bodies, you call me.”
He's gone.
I stand on my dark porch weighing up the options.
Dane's people on one side, following the traffic cam lead. If I try and get her away somewhere, they’ll track us down.
And inside my cabin, washing up our dinner plates and singing to Six, is the loose end herself.
She told me tonight that Nora's teaching her latte art tomorrow, a huge smile on her face. I’ll give her one more day, then she needs to stay at home, where I can watch her.
One part of me wants to tell her what I know. To ask her about the things her family said. And the other knows she might try to run on her own, to keep me out of it. And if she manages to do that, she won’t have me to protect her. Leaving her in the dark keeps her here… and it keeps her alive.
The screen door creaks and she leans out into the cold, my flannel riding up those soft bare legs, dish towel over her shoulder.
“You've been out here twenty minutes,” she says. “Everything okay?”
Another lie. “Just liking the quiet.”
She comes out and fits herself under my arm, warm against the night, and looks at the stars twinkling above the mountains with me. I kiss the top of her head and say nothing. I’m going to watch her work from the truck all day tomorrow, just to be sure.
In my pocket, my phone buzzes. I read it later, in the bathroom, with the water running.
Dane: Client's pushing. You hear anything, I need it inside 24 hrs. After that all bets are off. You don't want trouble on your mountain, Holt. And neither do I.