5. Holt #2
From the back of the aircraft, Willa’s voice cut through the engine noise. “How much longer?”
Ace checked his instruments. “I’ll let you know when we’re closer,” he called back, his voice warm. “I promise I’m getting you there as fast as I can.”
“Please hurry,” Willa replied. “She never lets calls go to voicemail. She never switches her phone off. Something is wrong.”
“I know, Wills,” Ace said, his voice dropping. “We’ll get there,” he glanced around again. “Are you still using the phone?”
“No!” Willa said, and Holt grinned, watching her quickly slip her phone back into her pocket.
Holt looked out at the flat, bright expanse of sky ahead and thought about June.
He was still angry. He wanted to be honest with himself about that.
The anger hadn’t gone anywhere overnight.
It had simply settled from the sharp, scalding thing it had been when he’d walked out of Willa’s house into something heavier and more complicated.
Holt had spent years making decisions he couldn’t unmake, and last night he’d found out that June had spent thirty-eight years doing the same thing, and the fact that he understood it didn’t mean he was finished being angry about it.
But if Victoria had gotten to June before they did?—
Holt’s jaw tightened.
He pushed that thought into the category of things he wasn’t going to sit with at altitude and focused on the horizon. After what felt like forever, they eventually touched down in Miami. They managed to rent a van, which was the only vehicle large enough for their group.
Ace drove them with Holt taking the passenger seat, which he was grateful for because it meant he didn’t have to pretend he didn’t know the way to June’s house. He’d been to June’s house a few times eighteen years ago. Holt remembered the street clearly enough.
From the back of the van, Carmen’s voice rose slightly above the general conversation, grabbing his attention.
“I’m sorry, little Missy,” Carmen said, her voice ringing with indignation. “But you also kept a lot of secrets from your mother. Should I list some of them off? Things she still doesn’t know. Like, for instance, the money for your first year of law school. Which you didn’t attend.”
“Aunt Carmen,” Willa said, her voice dropping to a hiss.
“Uh-oh,” Ace murmured, his eyes on the road. “Maybe I should put the radio on.”
“What did Carmen mean about Willa’s first year of law school?” Holt asked, keeping his voice low.
Ace pulled a face. “Not my story to tell,” he replied unapologetically.
“You’ve been spending too much time with Carmen,” Holt told him. “That’s her favorite line.”
From the back of the van, Carmen’s voice continued, steady and unapologetic.
“Everyone has secrets, young lady. Sometimes they are kept for very good reasons,” Carmen pressed.
“June and your father had their reasons for not telling you. Right or wrong, they had reasons. And you had the greatest childhood anyone could ask for. You never once lacked for love on either side of your family. And you didn’t even know that Trevor wasn’t your real father because he never treated you that way.
” She sucked in a breath to control her anger.
“You were his daughter, and that’s how he saw you. ”
Holt sat very still.
He stared out the windshield at the Miami streets moving past and felt the words land in his chest with the unavoidable weight of something true that he hadn’t wanted to receive just yet.
Another man had raised his daughter.
Another man had been there for Willa’s first words, her first steps, the school mornings, the heartbreaks, and watched her grow into the young lady she’d become.
While that was happening, Holt had been building a career two states away and telling himself he’d made the right call walking away from his marriage to June.
He pressed the bridge of his nose between two fingers and breathed.
“For what it’s worth,” Ace said quietly beside him, his eyes still on the road, “I know June. And I know she wouldn’t have kept something like this from you without an extremely good reason.”
Holt looked at him.
Ace didn’t elaborate. He just drove.
Holt gave him a tight nod and looked back out the window.
The van slowed, and Ace pulled up in front of a house on a quiet residential street. June’s house.
“Oh, thank goodness,” Willa breathed, pushing past everyone before the van had fully stopped. “She’s still not answering, and no messages are going through.”
She was at the front door before the rest of them had climbed out, knocking and calling for her mother. Holt moved quickly up the front path behind her.
“Wow,” Rad said beside him, looking at the house and the street. “Nice neighborhood.”
“It is,” Carmen agreed, already moving toward the door.
Willa was searching beneath potted plants and under the doormat. “Can you reach up above the door?” she asked Holt. “There should be a spare key.”
Holt reached up and felt along the top of the door frame. Nothing. He shook his head.
“Aunt Carmen, where’s the spare key?” Willa asked, knocking again. “Mom. Mom!”
Silence from inside.
“Your mother doesn’t leave the spare key there when she’s been away,” Carmen told her. “The neighbor has it. I’ll go get it.”
“I’m faster,” Willa said, and was already moving down the path before Carmen could respond.
The rest of them stood on the front porch. Holt looked around the quiet street, taking in the houses, the parked cars, the stillness of a neighborhood in the middle of an afternoon.
A car turned into the driveway of the house directly across the road.
Holt watched it pull in. He narrowed his eyes as the garage door started to open. He saw someone duck down in the passenger seat. Suspicion shot through him.
“Who lives across the road?” Holt asked Carmen.
“That one’s an Airbnb,” Carmen replied. “Why?”
“Someone in that car just ducked down in the passenger seat when they pulled into the driveway,” Holt told her, already moving down the path.
He crossed the road at a purposeful pace. By the time he reached the driveway, the garage door was already halfway down. He waited a few moments before knocking on the front door.
He was greeted with silence.
He knocked again, louder.
This time footsteps could be heard. Then the door opened, held only slightly ajar, and a young woman looked out at him. She was about Willa’s age, her expression politely cool as she looked at him.
“Can I help you?” She asked.
“Hello,” Holt said pleasantly. “I’m sorry to bother you. Do you live here?”
“I’m renting it for a couple of months,” the woman replied. “Why?”
“I was just wondering if you happen to see anyone go into the house across the road today?” Holt asked.
“I’ve been out all day,” the woman told him. “Sorry.”
Holt kept his expression easy. “Of course.” He tried to peer inside behind her. “Is someone with you? I thought I saw them in the passenger seat of your car when you pulled in. Maybe they saw someone there today?”
“Oh, that’s Clarence,” the woman said.
“Would he know if anyone’s been there today?” Holt asked. “Do you think you could ask him?”
“Sure.” Something akin to smug amusement flashed in her eyes as she turned her head. “Clarence, did you see anyone across the street?”
The sound that followed was not footsteps but the clicking of large paws on tile, which grew louder and more purposeful as its owner approached the door.
Holt looked down.
The Cane Corso that filled the doorway was the largest dog he’d seen outside of a working farm. It stood at the door with the calm, absolute confidence of an animal that had never once needed to prove anything to anyone and stared at Holt with eyes that were a deeply unsettling shade of amber.
Clarence did not bark. He didn’t have to. The dog simply looked at Holt with a patient, evaluating expression, as if daring him to challenge his owner.
“I don’t think Clarence saw anyone either,” the woman told him, her smug smile growing larger. “Is there anything else? I have some studying to do.”
“Right,” Holt said. “Thank you very much for your time.”
“Sure,” the woman said, and closed the door.
Holt crossed back to the house where Zane, Rad, and Margo were watching him from the porch with expressions ranging from amused to carefully neutral.
“Are you finished interrogating the neighbors?” Carmen asked.
“I thought I saw someone duck down beside her in the car,” Holt said, pulling out his phone. He opened his messages and typed a quick request to a contact at the Miami field office, asking for a check on the Airbnb rental and whoever had booked it.
“Nice dog she’s got,” Zane observed, grinning. “I’d hate to come across that brute at night.” He gave a shudder.
“Yes, it’s an enormous animal,” Holt agreed. “And its eyes were amber.”
“I’ve got the keys!” Willa came rushing back up the path with the key, moving past all of them to unlock the front door. “The neighbor just got back from vacation. He hasn’t seen Mom since she arrived home.”
The door swung open, and they moved inside, Willa and Carmen calling out immediately.
“Mom!”
“June!”
Holt moved through the hallway into the front living room. A phone sat on the side table, plugged into a charger, its screen dark. Carmen picked it up, turned it over in her hands, and frowned.
“It’s switched off,” Carmen said. “She never switches it off.”
“Maybe it was dead as it’s on charge.” Willa came back from the hallway, her face tight. “Mom’s been home. Her bags are unpacked, and there’s a used towel in the bathroom. But she’s not here.”
Holt moved to the kitchen. On the counter sat the remains of a Chinese takeout, the containers stacked neatly in the recycling. The dishwasher was empty. The sink was clear. Everything was clean and put away.
“Her car,” Willa said behind him, moving toward the internal garage door.
“She doesn’t have a car here,” Carmen reminded her niece, stopping Willa in her tracks. “She bought a new one, but it’s still being delivered, and mine is back in Sandpiper Shores.”
“Then where is she?” Willa’s voice was climbing. “She’s left her phone. She never goes anywhere without her phone.”
“Willa.” Holt turned to face her. “Come with me to your mother’s room. You and I will have a closer look around together.”
Willa stared at him for a beat, then nodded.
“June might just have gone to the store,” Carmen said, keeping her voice light for the room.
“Without her phone?” Willa asked.
“Go with Holt,” Carmen ordered. “The rest of us will check the house.”
Holt followed Willa down the hall to June’s bedroom.
He felt the discomfort of stepping into her private space the moment he crossed the threshold.
The room was June in every detail, the particular way she organized things, the specific colors she’d always been drawn to, a photograph on the dresser of Willa and the children at what looked like a birthday dinner.
Holt stood in the doorway for a moment before he made himself move properly into the room.
Willa went straight to the dresser drawers, checking quickly.
“Her everyday wallet isn’t here,” Willa said. She pulled open the closet and looked. “Her favorite purse is gone.”
“That’s a good sign,” Holt told her. He took out his phone and dialed a contact at the Miami field office. No answer. He sent a message instead, asking for a check on any cab or Uber pickups from this address in the past few hours.
The response came back faster than he expected.
On it. Give me two minutes.
“My contact is checking cab records,” Holt told Willa.
Willa stood in the middle of her mother’s room and pressed her eyes closed for a moment.
“I know I was angry with her,” she said quietly.
“I had every right to be angry with her.” She opened her eyes and looked at him.
“But I need her to be okay.” She went and plopped down on the edge of June’s bed.
Holt looked at his daughter. Again struck by that word—daughter. He had a daughter. He gave himself a mental shake.
Holt crossed to the bed and stopped beside her. “May I sit?”
Willa moved over slightly, nodding. Holt sat.
“Your mother is going to be okay,” he told her, and meant it.
Whatever June was facing right now, whatever had taken her out of this house without her phone, June Carter was not a woman who went down without a considerable fight.
“If Victoria has found her, I promise you Victoria has met her match.”
“I hope you’re right,” Willa said softly.
His phone buzzed.
Holt looked at the screen. His contact had come through with a cab pickup from this address earlier that afternoon, destination confirmed.
“She took a cab,” Holt told Willa, showing her the screen. “Do you know what your mother would be doing at this address?”
Willa looked at the address and frowned. “That’s near the city center. There’s a coffee shop, a small mall.” She looked up at him. “Why would she go there?” Her brow furrowed. “It’s not a place she’d usually go to.”
“Let’s go and find out,” Holt told her.