11. Holt
HOLT
Holt sat in the living room of June’s house and tried to stay still.
It wasn’t working particularly well. He’d chosen the armchair by the window rather than the sofa because he’d wanted a clear view of the front path and the street beyond, and he’d kept his phone face-up on the arm of the chair so he’d see the moment any update came through from Carmen’s group.
Carmen had taken Rad, Zane, Ace, and Margo across the road to the Airbnb to confront Clive and his fiancée.
That had been the last message. Nothing since.
Willa had chosen the pacing approach.
She’d walked between the front window and the hallway enough times in the last twenty minutes that Holt was fairly certain she’d worn a visible line into the floor.
Every couple of minutes, she stopped at the window, pulled the curtain aside a few inches, and looked out at the empty street. Then Willa went back to pacing.
“When did she call you?” Willa asked. She was at the window again. “How long has it been?”
Holt glanced at his phone. “Twenty-three minutes.”
Willa pressed her lips together.
“She said thirty minutes,” Holt reminded her gently. “She hasn’t missed that yet.”
“I know.” Willa let the curtain drop and turned to face him. “I just don’t understand why she’s coming alone. If Victoria and Alfred are with her, why wouldn’t she bring them? She knows we’d protect them if they were innocent.”
“Because your mother isn’t convinced yet that we would,” Holt replied carefully. “She’s watched too many people walk into situations thinking they’d be safe and come out the other side considerably less safe than they started. She’s being cautious. Thoroughly.”
“That sounds like my mother.” Willa gave a small, rueful breath. “Although if she knows how long the drive from wherever she’s been should take, she’ll know that the time it takes her to get here tells us roughly where she came from.”
“Unless she stops somewhere first,” Holt pointed out.
“Which, knowing my mother, is probably exactly what she’ll do.
” Willa moved back to the window. “She’ll drive in the wrong direction for ten minutes just to throw anyone following her.
She’ll take a different route home than she took out.
” She paused. “Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if she doesn’t give you everything she has, either.
Just to make sure Victoria and Alfred stay protected. ”
“June wouldn’t do that. Would she?” Holt’s brow furrowed. “I know she might withhold some information, but not all of it. That’s why she is on her way here now as she has something for us to see.”
“My mother worked as every kind of attorney you can imagine when my great-uncle realized my mother had won and was claiming my grandfather’s firm back,” Willa told him.
“When Mom finally got it back, he tried to take all the partners with him, and at first they went. She had to fill in the gaps with my grandfather’s other surviving and only loyal partner.
For a long time, she was handling corporate, family, criminal, and estate work almost single-handedly.
” She glanced at him. “Mom knows the law inside out, and she knows where the gaps are. If she thinks she needs leverage to protect someone, she’ll use it. ”
“She didn’t tell me any of that,” Holt admitted, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“I’m sure there’s a lot she didn’t tell you.” Willa turned from the window and met his eyes properly. “We were all a bit busy with the case since the two of you arrived in Sandpiper Shores.”
Their eyes held.
The silence that settled between them was the silence that had been sitting in every room Holt had shared with his daughter since the night before.
It had a shape to it now. A weight. A list of unanswered questions that neither of them had any idea how to begin answering, and the quiet acknowledgement that they would have to answer them eventually, just not yet.
“Willa,” Holt began carefully. “You and I are going to need to talk at some point. About our situation. About where we go from here.”
Willa looked at him for a long moment. “I know,” she replied.
“But not today.” She glanced back at the window.
“Today I’m putting everything that happened last night in a box.
Because my mother is out there somewhere, and I know how she works.
Her heart will overrule her head, and if she thinks she’s protecting someone, she’ll put herself in harm’s way without a second thought.
That’s what I’m worried about right now. Everything else can wait.”
“That much hasn’t changed about your mother,” Holt agreed quietly with a soft laugh.
Willa glanced at her wristwatch and turned back to the window. A frown creased between her brows.
“What is taking her so long?” Willa pressed. “It’s been almost half an hour. Was she right across town?”
Before Holt could answer, a cab pulled up at the curb.
June stepped out of the back seat.
Holt watched her pay the driver through the window. June didn’t glance up at the house. She didn’t hesitate. She straightened her shoulders, adjusted the strap of her purse, and walked up the front path like a woman who had already decided exactly how this conversation was going to go.
They waited where they were as June opened the front door and stepped inside.
Willa was out of the living room before Holt had finished standing up. He followed her into the hallway in time to see her throw her arms around her mother.
“Mom,” Willa managed. “I’ve been so worried. Don’t ever do this to me again.”
“Hello, Willa,” June greeted her daughter with a tight, careful smile.
Holt watched June over Willa’s shoulder.
She was holding her daughter with real warmth, but there was a reserve there too.
A measured distance that hadn’t been there the day before.
June was reading the room as she stood in it.
Working out her footing. Making decisions about how much ground to give.
Holt registered that reserve for exactly what it was and felt the smallest, sharpest twist of something that was not quite hurt.
He allowed himself to admit that he, too, had been out of his mind with worry for her.
He’d held it together for Willa, for Carmen, for Rad, but he’d wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms the moment she’d walked through that door. And he could see from the way she’d angled her body slightly toward Willa and slightly away from him that now was not the moment.
He pushed the thought aside and stepped forward.
“We were all worried about you, June,” Holt told her. “You left your phone here.”
“On purpose,” June admitted, her eyes cool and hooded as they met his. “Don’t worry, I have a new one.”
“I guessed as much.” Holt nodded. “You also have a lot of friends in Miami.” A slight smile curved his lips. “None of them were particularly willing to say a single word about you.”
“Which friends did you speak to?” June asked, her eyes narrowing slightly as she adjusted her purse on her shoulder.
“Dagwood and Marcus at the bank,” Willa told her, before Holt could. “Were you at the bank where Marcus works now?”
“I have a lot to tell you,” June replied, without answering Willa’s question about the bank, Holt noted. Her eyes darkened as she looked at her daughter. “Let me get my laptop. Then I’ll show you everything.” She gestured toward the living room. “Why don’t the two of you go and take a seat?”
June walked past them down the hallway toward her study.
Willa stared after her mother for a moment. The expression on her face of someone who had just been politely but firmly handled in her own mother’s house.
“I guess I deserved that,” Willa said quietly. “Although technically I should be the one giving her the cold shoulder.”
“No, Willa,” Holt replied. “Your mother isn’t giving you a cold shoulder.
She’s giving both of us emotional space.
June knows we came here because of the case as well as because of her, and she’s separating those two things very deliberately.
This is her house. Last night she was in yours with no leverage.
Today, she has a laptop full of evidence, and she’s the one holding it in her home. ”
“That’s not true,” Willa protested, following him into the living room. “We’re here because we were worried about her.”
“We’re also here about the case,” Holt reminded her gently. “You’re here because you’re worried about her, yes. But you’re also here because you want to see what Shaun sent her.”
Willa was quiet for a moment. “Yes,” she admitted. “Of course I am.”
She sat down on the sofa beside him. It was a small gesture, and Holt didn’t think Willa was aware she’d made it, but she’d chosen the seat next to him rather than the chair opposite, and she’d angled her body slightly toward him.
A small, unconscious signal of a united front.
Holt didn’t draw attention to it, but it warmed his heart.
“But my mother is still the main reason I’m here,” Willa finished softly.
“I know,” Holt told her, giving Willa a warm smile. “June knows that as well.”
Their attention was drawn to the living room door as June stepped into the room carrying a laptop under one arm.
She took the armchair across from them and set the laptop on the coffee table between them. Then she reached into the inside pocket of the jacket she’d been carrying and pulled out a thumb drive. She held it in her palm for a long moment before sliding it into the port.
“Shaun sent me two books a few days before he passed away,” June told them.
“I have them upstairs in my bedroom. I’ll show them to you in a moment.
But they led me to find this drive at Miami National Bank.
It has everything we’ve been looking for about what really happened in that cabin ten years ago.
” Her eyes moved to Willa, softening with concern.
“Sweetheart, I don’t know if you should watch this. It’s going to be hard.”