7. June
JUNE
June absorbed what Lucy had just told her.
Her mind reeled with questions as she dealt with the shock of finding out Lucy had kept so much to herself.
But looking back, it explained a lot as to why Lucy had seemed to hold herself back from everything that was happening.
It also explained why she was so ferocious about no one bothering her sister and Judy.
If Lacey’s memories returned or Judy was well enough to explain what happened to her, they would be in danger.
“Do you know where Nigel and his father are?” June asked.
“I won’t answer that. Alvin is a patient,” Lucy replied. “I can tell you, June, that Alvin has dementia, and Nigel will do whatever it takes to help him. Just like I did to ensure no one got to my sister or Judy again.”
“Oh.” June’s expression softened. “I... I had no idea about Alvin.”
“Nobody knows,” Lucy told her. “Nigel has taken his father somewhere safe, and they’ll stay hidden until this is sorted. He left all his files at the police station. He was certain Rad would eventually find them and put it together.”
Things began to fall into place. Nigel must have been the one who’d nudged Margo into looking at the case after he’d left Sandpiper Shores. June pinched the bridge of her nose and breathed.
“Lucy, we’ll have to figure all of this out later,” June told her. “I’m not safe where I am right now. I need you to tell me one more thing. Did you notice anything else unusual about the bodies? Anything at all?”
“Why are you asking this, June?” Lucy sounded hesitant.
“Because I don’t understand how four highly trained firefighters didn’t try to get out of a burning cabin,” June replied, astounded that the question hadn’t been asked before.
“There were multiple escape routes. Four of them could have overpowered Gilbert if they thought he was a threat. None of this fits, Lucy.”
“Okay… Tell me what you’re thinking?” Lucy asked softly.
June paused for a beat. “Lucy. Could we exhume the bodies?”
“What? Why?” Lucy’s voice resonated with alarm. “What do you think we’ll find?”
“Poison,” June said, pulling Shaun’s note from the side pocket of her purse and looking at it once more.
“I want to know if they were poisoned. It would be something slow-acting. Something administered days before, maybe in their food or drink. Something that wouldn’t have a quick antidote.
” Her brow furrowed. “Is there even such a thing?”
“Aconitine,” Lucy replied. “Or ricin. Both can be administered hours or days before death. Both are extremely difficult to detect unless you’re specifically looking for them.
And both can incapacitate someone enough that they wouldn’t be able to fight or escape, even if they were aware of what was happening. ”
“Where would somebody get something like that?” June’s eyes narrowed as she pressed the phone closer to her ear.
“Aconitine comes from the monkshood plant,” Lucy replied. “Ricin from castor beans. Either could, in theory, be made by someone with the right knowledge and resources. Or somebody with the right connections.”
“Or someone with connections to the criminal world?” June pressed.
“Yes,” Lucy confirmed. “But, June, exhuming the bodies is risky. It would immediately alert whoever’s behind this. They’d know we’d worked it out.”
June was quiet for a long moment as another thought hit her.
“Do you believe Victoria is behind this?” June asked.
“No,” Lucy replied without hesitation. “I never have. But as long as whoever is really behind this thinks we suspect Victoria?—”
“I understand that line of reasoning. But I believe she’s innocent, and if we don’t figure this out, she’ll go to jail for something she didn’t do,” June reasoned.
“Victoria has been set up for both the fire of ten years ago and what’s happened recently in Sandpiper Shores.
That’s a long prison sentence for something she didn’t do, and let’s face it, we’re all heading for sixty.
It’s not a place for someone of her age either. ”
“June…” Lucy began, but June cut her off.
“Lucy, we have to find out what really happened to Shaun and the other men in that cabin. We owe them that.” June’s jaw clenched as she thought about what might really have happened to Shaun.
“I have a theory that they were all poisoned and might have already been dead or close to it before that fire was started.”
“So you want to exhume their bodies?” Lucy asked incredulously.
“How else will we find out if they were poisoned or not?” June asked.
“You can’t just go digging up graves,” Lucy reminded her. “Wait. There might be another way.”
“How?” June asked.
“Before the bodies were released,” Lucy continued, her voice careful, “I was able to collect what samples I could. Bone marrow from the larger bones that survived, deep liver tissue from the two bodies where the abdominal cavity was still partially intact, and some stomach contents from one of them. I bagged everything and labeled it as routine post-mortem specimens. When I was ordered to release the bodies, I should have submitted those samples with them, but I held them back. I told myself I’d test them later, when things were calmer.
After the threats started, I hid everything.
I labeled the storage container as expired veterinary samples and placed it at the back of the clinic’s cold storage unit. Nobody’s looked at it in ten years.”
“Could those samples still be viable?” June’s heart began to beat faster.
“If they’ve been kept properly frozen and sealed, yes,” Lucy replied.
“Bone marrow and liver tissue preserve extremely well in cold storage. Toxins like aconitine and ricin can still be detected in both, even after years. Stomach contents are more fragile, but if anything survived, it could tell us what was ingested in the hours before death. I’d need to run very specific tests, but it should be possible. ”
“Could you do it?” June pressed. “Quietly?”
“Yes,” Lucy replied. “But it’ll take time. I can’t rush this without raising flags.”
“Do it as quickly as you safely can,” June told her. “If Holt and the others are already on their way to Miami, then they’ve worked out where Victoria is. We don’t have much time.”
“Is she with you?” Lucy asked.
“Lucy, I’m not going to answer that,” June replied gently. “Please. Just find out what I need to know.”
“I will,” Lucy promised.
“Oh, and Lucy,” June said. “Can you check for anything strange? Like anything that doesn’t fit with the five people.”
“Like?” Lucy said.
“Like one of them not being who we thought they were,” June answered.
“What do you mean…” Lucy’s voice trailed off. “You mean you think someone in the cabin was someone else?”
“Something like that,” June said. “Oh, and please don’t tell anyone about this, Lucy.”
“Okay,” Lucy said. “And, June. Be careful out there.”
“You too, Lucy. And I think maybe just tell Dean what you’re doing. At least you’ll have backup,” June suggested.
“I will,” Lucy agreed. “Oh, and June, just because I haven’t told Tom doesn’t mean I don’t trust him. I love him. I do. It’s just?—”
“I understand,” June said softly. “It’s his ex-wife who’s implicated right now.”
And his daughter, June thought, but didn’t say.
They said their goodbyes, and June set the receiver down.
She tore the top page off the legal pad with Lucy’s number on it, folded it, and put it into the inside pocket of her purse, where Shaun’s note was.
Then she tore off the next two pages beneath, just to be safe, and folded them in with the rest.
As June reached for the thumb drive, the office door flew open.
June shoved the drive into her purse in one quick movement, snapped it shut, and looked up.
Victoria and Alfred stood in the doorway.
“They’re here,” Victoria announced, her voice tight.
“Who?” June asked, her stomach dropping.
“Holt, Willa, and Rad,” Alfred told her.
“They’re here already?” June muttered. Her head swiveled toward the office window. “How did they get here so fast? Where are they?”
“Just outside, in the street in front of the bank,” Alfred replied.
“Did they see you?” June’s brows rose.
“No,” Victoria replied. “We came in the side entrance the moment we saw them pull up.”
“All right. We need to find a back way out of here.” June stood up quickly and grabbed her purse. She turned back to the desk and looked at Marcus’s phone. “Wait. How do I erase the last number called from this phone?”
“You can’t,” Marcus said calmly from behind Victoria and Alfred.
He stepped into the office, closed the door behind him, and looked at the three of them with the steady, practical expression of a man who’d just made a decision about which side of something he was on.
“I don’t know what’s going on here,” Marcus continued, “but I’ll get you out. Just tell me who you’re running from.”
“Holt Dillinger,” June replied. “He’s FBI. And my daughter, Willa, is with him. Marcus, we just need a little time to sort something out. I promise it will all be explained soon.”
“It’s all right, June.” Marcus held her gaze. “I understand.”
“You’re a wonderful man, Marcus,” June told him.
He led them out a side door of his office and down a narrow service corridor that ran behind the vault. At the end of the corridor was a heavy steel security door.
“I’ll stall them as long as I reasonably can,” Marcus told her. “I won’t mention you used my office. As far as I know, you came in, accessed your box, and left through the front lobby some time ago.”
“Thank you, Marcus.” June touched his arm. “Truly. Thank you.”
He pushed the door open. “Be careful out there.”
The three of them stepped out into a narrow alley running behind the bank.
The door closed and locked behind them.
June drew in a long breath of warm Miami air and looked at Victoria and Alfred.
“Well,” June said. “It looks like I’m now a fugitive too.”
“Yes, it would seem so,” Victoria replied.
Then Victoria did something June had never seen her do in all the years she’d known her. She laughed. A real, genuine, delighted laugh that transformed her entire face into someone June barely recognized.
“Welcome to mine and Alfred’s new life on the run,” Victoria said, snorted, and laughed again. “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?” She laughed again. “You and me… fugitives!”
June found herself smiling despite everything.
The circumstances had just become considerably more dangerous, especially given what she now had in her purse, but Victoria’s laugh was strangely contagious.
She was also correct when you said it out loud, like she just had, and she laughed as well.
It was crazy! June had never in a million years thought she’d end up in this situation.
“All right.” June looked up and down the alley when they sobered up and then started walking. “We need to get to a store where we can buy a laptop. And we need cash.” She spotted an ATM on the corner. “Mostly cash. They’ll be tracking my cards by now.”
“We can’t use ATMs,” Alfred warned. “They’ll flag any withdrawal.” He raised his brows. “You’ll be tagged as aiding and abetting us now.”
“I have to risk it,” June told him. “We don’t have a choice. You two head to that small mall across the road.” She pointed. “Wait for me at the entrance. I’m going to double back to the ATM around the corner so it doesn’t link back to us walking together.”
Victoria and Alfred crossed the road and disappeared into the mall.
When June was sure they were safe, she rounded the corner, slid her bank card into the ATM, and withdrew the maximum allowed in a single transaction.
Then she walked half a block to a different machine and did it again with a different account.
By the time she’d finished, her purse contained more cash than she’d ever carried at one time in her life.
She held her purse close to her body and started back toward the mall.
She was almost at the corner when she stopped and quickly slipped into a small alley.
Across the street, in front of the bank, three figures were walking inside. It was Holt, Willa, and Rad.
June’s heart lurched.
She stood frozen on the sidewalk for a long moment, watching them disappear through the heavy glass doors of the bank.
Every part of her wanted to run across the street and call out to them.
To put everything she had in her purse into Holt’s hands and let him take it from there.
June wanted to pull Willa into her arms, hold on tight, and try to begin the conversation that had been thirty-eight years overdue.
But Lucy’s voice was still in her head.
Whoever this is, they can get to anyone. They’ve been watching us for years.
If June handed everything over now, before they understood the full scope of what they were dealing with, she could put her daughter and Holt in the same kind of danger.
Lucy and Nigel had been living with for a decade.
Whoever was behind this had managed to coordinate the murder of five men, manipulate a fire chief, threaten a town doctor and detective, and frame Victoria, the police chief’s ex-wife, so thoroughly that even Holt had been convinced.
While June was convinced that Sienna might be involved, Sienna wasn’t working alone.
Not by a long stretch. Someone close to all of them was pulling the strings.
Until they knew who, no one was safe.
And no one was beyond suspicion. She stared at the door through which the three people she knew and loved had disappeared.
June hated that she was once again keeping secrets and knew they were probably worried about her.
But June had been trusted with this information by Shaun for a reason.
And June had a feeling it was because someone in Sandpiper Shores was a traitor.
Someone would’ve never thought that one would be a criminal.
The enemy within. June’s jaw clenched as she stared at the door for a few seconds longer.
No one was beyond suspicion, and Shaun wanted her to watch whatever was on that disk before giving it to anyone.
June straightened her shoulders, took a deep breath, turned away from the bank, and walked toward the mall where Victoria and Alfred were waiting for her.