1. Holt #2
“Morning,” Rad glanced up as Holt walked in.
“Morning, where is your grandmother?” Holt asked, looking around the kitchen.
Rad’s eyes were cool and distant. “After how you spoke to Gran last night,” Rad replied evenly, “she thought it was best to leave early and take Tyler to day camp.”
“He’s still going to day camp?” Holt stopped dragging a chair to sit on, and his brows shot up in surprise.
“It’s at the campground,” Rad told him. “The kids wanted it to stay open. It’s helped some of them talk through what happened on the island and get comfortable outdoors again.” He turned back to the counter. “Get back on the horse, essentially.”
“I suppose that’s a good thing,” Holt said.
“It is,” Rad confirmed, without particular warmth.
He went to the warming drawer, took out a plate, and set it on the counter in front of Holt without ceremony.
“Gran was going to leave you without breakfast,” Rad said, pouring coffee. “I talked her into making it before she left.”
Holt looked at the plate. He looked at the coffee. He picked up the mug.
“Your grandmother knew about Willa,” Holt said.
“She did,” Rad confirmed, leaning against the counter with his own coffee. “Did you really not?”
“No,” Holt said. “I did not.”
Rad looked at him with an expression that wasn’t entirely convinced but was willing to let the point stand for now.
“Anyone who wanted to see could tell that the math where Willa was concerned wasn’t quite ‘mathing,’” Rad said.
Holt looked at him.
“Don’t say that to your grandmother,” he said. “She’ll tell you that’s appalling English.”
“Gran isn’t speaking to any of us right now,” Rad replied. “I wasn’t particularly gentle with her myself when I realized she’d known from the day Willa was born.” He paused. “After all, Willa is?—”
“Named after her,” Holt said at the same moment.
They looked at each other across the kitchen.
“I was going to say my older sister…” Rad told him. “But there’s that too.”
“It was right there,” Holt said quietly. He turned the coffee mug in his hands. “She even looks like Carly.”
“Now that I know, I can see the likeness,” Rad agreed. “I went through some of your old family albums last night when I got home. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Neither could I,” Holt admitted.
Rad’s expression shifted slightly. The coolness was still there, but underneath it was something far more complicated. Rad had been the one who’d gone looking for the information, written down those dates, and understood exactly what they meant before anyone else in that room had.
“What happened after I left?” Holt asked.
Rad wrapped both hands around his mug. “Willa walked out without giving June a chance to say anything more. June held herself together, apologized for the family drama, and went upstairs. Then Carmen arrived.”
“I’m glad I wasn’t there for Carmen.” Holt let out a slow breath.
“She asked Margo and me what had happened,” Rad explained.
“Ace told her. Just like he’d called Gran the moment you stormed out of the house.
” He paused. “Carmen told us that she’d been telling June for years to come clean.
But one thing led to another, time passed, June’s husband died, Willa had her own family.
” He looked at Holt directly. “Carmen said June thought, why cause more pain. Why disrupt what was already built for both your family and Willa’s? ”
“How gallant,” Holt said, and heard the edge in his own voice. “And look how that worked out for June.”
Rad’s eyes sharpened.
“I’d suggest, Dad,” Rad said, and the word had something measured underneath it that Holt registered without being able to fully read, “that you go and speak to June properly before you decide what tone to take about any of this.” He set his mug down.
“I think when you hear the full story, that particular expression is going to look a little different on you.”
“What does that mean?” Holt said.
“It means I have to get to work,” Rad replied.
He picked up his keys from the counter. “Tom is back, so you’re not needed at the station today.
” He looked at his father for a moment with the expression of someone who had said what they were going to say and was done.
“Take the day. Think. Then go and talk to June.”
He walked out.
The kitchen door swung closed behind him.
Holt sat in the quiet kitchen, looked at the breakfast he wasn’t tasting, thinking about what Rad had said and the specific quality with which he’d said it.
When you hear the full story.
He pushed the plate aside and stood up.
Holt needed to go to Willa’s house.
Duchess was asleep on the hallway floor, and opened one eye when Holt came downstairs in his jacket.
She didn’t move from her position when he suggested a walk, which told him everything he needed to know about the household’s current opinion of him.
He sighed, shook his head, and walked out without her.
The morning was clear, warm, and the beach route to the Parker house took twenty minutes at a reasonable pace. The water on his left was carrying the indifferent brightness of a Florida morning that had no interest in anyone’s personal circumstances.
When he got to Willa’s house, he knocked on the front door, drew in a breath, and waited.
It wasn’t too long until Willa answered the door.
The shift in their dynamic was immediately present in the space between them on the doorstep. It was the complicated, awkwardness of two people whose relationship to each other had been permanently altered in the span of twelve words and hadn’t yet found its new shape.
She looked at him with a cool, assessing expression that told Holt that she was withholding judgment on extending him trust just yet.
“If you’re looking for my mother,” Willa said, “you’re too late.”
“What do you mean, too late?” Holt stared at her, his heart jolting as the worst scenarios those words could conjure up sped through his mind.
“My mother left sometime during the night,” Willa told him. “Or early hours of this morning.” She shrugged. “All I found when I came down to the kitchen was a note on the refrigerator.” She paused. “ I’m sorry. When you’re ready to talk, I hope you’ll hear me out. Love, Mom .”
Before Holt could respond, a voice he was not ready to face came from behind Willa.
“If it had been me,” Carmen said, appearing in the hallway. As she drew near to where they were, her eyes were blank, giving away nothing. “I wouldn’t have left even that note.”
Willa’s brows lifted at her aunt’s tone.
“Aunt Carmen,” Willa drawled. “Mom lied to me for thirty-eight years. I think I deserved more than what she left taped to my kitchen appliance.”
“Come in,” Carmen told Holt, in a voice that was not an invitation so much as an order. She ignored Willa’s jibe.
“For a lecture?” Holt looked at her suspiciously. “I don’t do those until well after noon.”
“Advice,” Carmen replied, her eyes carrying an anger she was keeping carefully controlled.
She glanced toward the staircase and kept her voice measured.
“June would not have kept something like this from either of you without a reason. I know you’re both in shock.
Anyone would be.” Her gaze moved between Willa and Holt with the even, unsparing attention of someone who cared about everyone in the room and was not going to pretend otherwise.
“But neither of you gave her a chance to explain a single thing.” She shook her head.
“Like father, like daughter. Hot heads that immediately assume they’re under attack.
” Her eyes moved to Holt and sharpened. “And for a senior FBI director, you are occasionally the most obtuse person I have ever encountered. Willa is thirty-eight years old. How long have you and June been divorced?” She let that land.
“And I happen to know that you’re aware of exactly when June got married.
” Something flickered in her expression.
“Because I saw you that day. Standing along the tree line. I’ve always wondered what you were doing there, so I did a little digging. ”
Willa turned to look at him.
“What does she mean?” Willa asked Carmen, her brow furrowing questioningly.
“That,” Carmen said firmly, “is his truth to tell. Not mine.” She looked at Holt steadily. “And I’d suggest he tells it.”
“What does she—” Willa started.
“Mom!” Andy’s voice came from the top of the stairs. “Look.” He came down the stairs two at a time, holding something in his hand. “Those sneakers Dad gave me a few days before he passed away actually fit now.”
Willa’s expression shifted to the soft, complicated warmth she reserved for moments involving Shaun and their children.
“You’ve been waiting ten years to wear those,” she said with a soft laugh.
“I promised Dad I’d keep them in the box until I grew into them,” Andy confirmed, holding up the sneaker box with the pride of someone who had kept a promise they’d made at five years old and was pleased with themselves for it.
“They are so comfortable.” He grinned proudly.
“And they are personally autographed by Aiden Bass.” He glanced at Holt.
“He was my father and my favorite basketball player. Dad told me that Aiden’s mother’s brand sponsored him and named it after Aiden’s favorite City—Miami. ”
Holt looked at the box. Something at the back of his mind moved, slowly at first and then with gathering speed as the logo on the box registered.
“Andy,” Willa said, and the change in her voice pulled everyone’s attention immediately. Something had shifted in it, a tightening, a recognition of something she was still catching up to. “Come into the light for me, sweetheart.”
Andy walked forward into the stream of morning sunlight coming through the open front door. His new sneakers squeaked on the polished floor.
“Can you turn for us and show us your sneakers from left to right?” Willa asked him.
Andy nodded and turned, showing off his sneaker, totally unaware that he’d just dropped a huge clue to their case in their laps.
As Andy turned, Holt read the lettering on the left side of the shoe in glittery red stitching: Look
The letter I was on the left heel, the letter N was on the right heel, and Miami was on the right side.
Look in Miami.
It was the brand slogan. Aiden Bass’s signature line, the one that had appeared on everything his mother Barbara Bass had produced for the past decade. The tagline that had started on a cooking show in Miami and had become one of the most recognizable phrases in Florida merchandising.
Look in Miami.
Judy’s voice in the hospital. Barely conscious, using the last of what she had to push the words out.
Look in Miami.
Shaun Parker’s voice to Willa, the day he died.
Look in Miami.
Holt felt his heart rate change.
Willa was already looking at him, her face pale, her eyes wide with the same realization arriving at the same moment from a different direction.
“Barbara Bass didn’t just sell sneakers,” Willa said quietly.
“Barbara Bass did everything,” Carmen confirmed, her voice carrying a note that suggested she’d arrived at this particular place a few seconds ahead of both of them.
“Recipes, merchandise, branded goods. Ten years ago, around the same time as the fire, she was here doing a promotion in Sandpiper Shore.” She looked at Holt steadily.
“That’s where Shaun bought those sneakers for Andy, but they only had them in large sizes. ”
Holt looked at the sneaker box in Andy’s hands. Another vision flashed in front of him. It was part of a logo. A logo that looked just like the one on Andy’s shoe box.
He looked at Willa.
Willa looked back at him, and the color had now completely left her face.
“Oh no!” Willa breathed in shock. Worry flashed in her eyes as a realization dawned on her. “Holt, I know where Victoria has gone.”