12. Holt
HOLT
Holt stood deadly still. His mind was already running ahead of his body.
Willa was in the bedroom at the end of the hallway.
The closed door between her and the living room was the only thing keeping her from walking into this, and he had no way of knowing how long that was going to last. His heart slammed hard against his ribs as he moved a fraction of a step to the left, putting his body more squarely between June and the woman at the door as he kept his eyes on the man.
“So it’s true,” June breathed, moving closer to Holt’s side as the man crossed from the kitchen archway to stand beside the woman in the living room doorway. Holt and June turned fully toward them, keeping them both in view.
“It depends on what you’re talking about,” the man drawled.
“You poisoned the man who was your best friend,” June hissed. “You poisoned the others. You killed an innocent firefighter so that you could disappear and take over his life.”
“We all do what we have to do to survive,” the man replied. His eyes carried no remorse at all. “I told Shaun we should leave the case alone. Let the authorities work it out on their own timeline.”
“But that nosey, irritating Gilbert Fry had to come to Sandpiper Shores and stir everything up,” the woman added, her voice sharp with contempt.
“Brought here by—” She stopped suddenly and tilted her head slightly.
“Was that a noise? Is there somebody else in this house?” She leaned back into the hallway, glancing down it.
“No,” Holt and June replied in unison.
“It’s probably the neighbor’s cat,” June told her smoothly. “He’s always letting himself in through the kitchen door. The latch doesn’t catch properly.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. She turned her head toward the man beside her.
“Babe,” she pressed, her voice dropping into something colder. “I thought you checked the entire house?”
In that single moment, Holt saw clearly that what his mother had said about this woman a few days ago was completely true.
She was a stone-cold liar and apparently a killer, too.
There was a brief, cold flash of angry impatience across the woman’s face that told Holt everything he needed to know about which of these two ran this operation.
It was her.
It had been her from the beginning.
“I checked,” the man confirmed, his voice carrying the faintest edge of something that might have been defensiveness. “There’s nobody else in this house.”
“Have you finished dousing the kitchen and this room?” the woman asked.
Holt’s heart slammed again.
Dousing? His head turned slightly, and his breath caught in his throat when he saw the familiar red gas can near the kitchen door.
“Just this room,” the man replied with a small, pleased smile. His eyes moved to Holt and June. “And then them, if they decide they don’t want to give us what we came for.”
“What are you looking for?” June asked carefully.
“Oh, you know what I’m looking for,” the woman told her. “What was taken from me. I want it back.”
“I genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about,” June replied, glancing at Holt. “Do you?”
“No,” Holt confirmed evenly. He shook his head. “What are you looking for? Maybe if the two of you put the guns down, we can talk it through and work out where it might be. You haven’t committed anything yet tonight that can’t be walked back. What comes next is a different conversation entirely.”
“Oh, save it, Director,” the woman snapped. “Don’t insult me. Tell us where my?—”
Thwack.
The sound came from directly behind her.
The woman’s eyes went wide.
She crumpled forward without finishing her sentence.
Her gun went off as she fell.
Holt moved on pure reflex. He hit June with his shoulder and took her down to the floor behind the sofa as the bullet cracked past both of them and buried itself somewhere in the wall near the kitchen archway.
The shot set off something, a small, bright spark at the edge of the kitchen tile, and in the same heartbeat Holt registered the sharp smell that had been hanging at the edge of the room since they’d sat down and had dismissed as background without understanding it.
Accelerant.
The room behind them was soaked in it.
Holt pushed himself up on one elbow and shouted as he saw the small figure that had attacked the woman.
“Willa!” Holt shouted just as the man lunged forward, raising his weapon.
Willa acted quickly, raising the black hose of the fire extinguisher in her hand and firing.
It sounded like a large hissing snake— Pffsssssssstttttt .
A thick white cloud of fire extinguisher gas hit the man directly in the face.
He fired three shots wildly into the air as he staggered backward, and Holt heard Willa’s voice behind the cloud of gas, sharp and absolutely controlled.
“Drop it!” Willa shouted. “Drop the gun, or you get the canister next!”
The man coughed and swung blindly.
Willa didn’t hesitate. She brought the heavy red canister up and cracked it hard against the hand holding the gun. The weapon clattered to the hardwood floor. Holt was already moving, already reaching, but Willa swung the canister again and caught the man squarely against the side of the head.
He dropped to the carpet with a sound that told Holt he wasn’t getting up on his own.
“Mom!” Willa called out. “Holt!”
A small blue flame licked up from where the spark had caught in the kitchen doorway.
It grew as Holt watched.
“Willa, stay back!” Holt barked, already rolling to his feet.
But Willa was already moving forward, sweeping the extinguisher nozzle across the base of the flames and aiming low the way she’d been trained to.
A steady cloud of white powder and gas hit the accelerant line, and for a moment, the fire near the kitchen door went out, but their eyes widened as the flame beyond had struck up.
“We need to get these two out of the house!” Willa shouted over the hiss.
“Now, before the fire finds the rest of the line!” Running further into the kitchen with the fire extinguisher than toward the front door.
Holt froze for a moment, his heart seeming to stop, as he wanted to dash forward and grab his daughter.
“Holt! Mom!” Willa yelled. “Get them and get out of here now!” She turned back to the fire, which was growing. “Get help.”
June scrambled toward Holt as they rushed toward the two bodies at the living room door.
Holt dropped down, checking her for a pulse, confirming she was alive but unconscious.
He grabbed her under the arms just as the front door banged open.
Zane charged in with Carmen, a half-step behind him, and Rad, Ace, and Margo right on her heels.
“We heard gunshots,” Zane announced, his eyes sweeping the room and landing on the flames along the kitchen tile. “Willa. Where are the other extinguishers?”
“There’s one mounted in the kitchen,” Carmen told him quickly, already moving. “There’s another in each of the bedrooms and one in the hall cupboard.”
“On it,” Ace called out. “I know where they are. Margo, come with me.”
Ace and Margo were down the hallway before Carmen had finished speaking.
“Rad!” Holt shouted. “Help me here.”
Rad reached the living room doorway and stopped dead for a beat. His eyes had landed on the man on the floor.
“Is that—?” Carmen had turned as well. Her eyes went wide as she registered the man’s face. “But. But he’s dead.”
“We’ll explain later, Carmen,” June told her, already moving toward the woman on the floor. “Right now, we need to get both of them out of this house.”
Carmen nodded sharply and moved to help June. But Rad stepped up.
“I’ve got her,” Rad told them and glanced at his father. “Can you take her, and I’ll take him?”
The flames along the kitchen doorway found something new and brightened.
“Yes,” Holt said and swapped places with his son, accepting that Rad was a bit stronger than him and could lift the man on his own.
Ace and Margo rushed down the hallway. Ace gave Carmen an extinguisher.
She took it, and the three of them went to help Willa and Zane.
Holt, Rad, and June got out of the front door. They were just nearing the sidewalk and could hear the sound of fire-engaging sirens when Zane’s voice echoed behind them.
“Move!” Zane shouted from the hallway. “Move, move, everyone out!”
They came out of the front door in a stumbling, uneven line.
Holt had the woman over his shoulder now, carrying her while Rad had the man over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes as they ran, June leading the way across the street.
They had no sooner cleared the pavement when they were joined by Ace and Margo.
They turned toward the house. Holt’s heart slamming into overdrive.
“Willa!” June yelled and Holt put the woman down on the grass just in time to grab June as she turned to rush back toward the house, where smoke now billowed from it. “Willa.” She screamed louder, struggling against Holt’s arm.
Zane rushed out the door, stopped, turned, disappeared back in, then reappeared, dragging Willa with him, pulling her through the door, and both of them rushed away from the house.
Clive and his fiancée rushed out of the house.
“I called the emergency services,” Clive said as he and his fiancée stopped dead when his eyes landed on the woman Holt had just laid on the grass next to the man his son had put there.
“Sienna?” Clive shouted, already starting forward. “What happened to my sister?”
“Clive!” Holt stopped him with the flat of his free hand against his chest. “Your sister is under arrest. Please step back. You can’t approach her right now. She’s alive. I promise you but we had to subdue her.”
“Arrest?” Clive stared at him, his face shifting through three different expressions at once. “For what? Holt, what the?—”
“Clive.” His fiancée gently laid a hand on his arm. “I’m sure the director will explain everything once things calm down.”
“No. I’m not going anywhere until I know what’s happening to my—” Clive stopped. His eyes had moved past Holt and Sienna to land on the second figure, the man lying next to Sienna. Clive went absolutely still.
“Is that?” Nobody answered him. Clive took a half-step forward, his face draining of color. “Basil Vincent?” His voice cracked on the word. “No. No, that isn’t. He’s—” He swallowed hard. “Basil’s been dead for ten years.”
“No, Clive,” June said, stepping over to him. She kept her voice as gentle as she could. “He wasn’t in that cabin. He killed Lieutenant Brandon, placed Brandon’s body with the others, and took over Brandon’s life.”
“You son of—” Clive hissed.
He started forward again.
Rad stepped smoothly between Clive and Basil.
“I knew Lieutenant Brandon,” Clive said, still staring past Rad. His jaw had locked tight. His eyes were glittering with something considerably harder than grief. “He was a good man.” His voice dropped dangerously. “Did Basil kill them all? The firefighters? The whole team?”
“Clive,” June pressed, keeping her tone carefully steady. “He didn’t do it alone. We have very strong reason to believe your sister was running this entire operation.”
Holt watched the wave of expressions move across Clive’s face.
Disbelief. Rejection. The specific, sharp pain of a man recalibrating every memory he had of the woman currently unconscious on the ground.
Holt had seen that expression before on people learning terrible things about family members they thought they knew, and he recognized the exact moment Clive moved from denial to acceptance.
It was the moment Clive stopped arguing.
“We need to get further back!” Zane shouted from the sidewalk across the road as he and Willa hurtled toward them. “Now. The whole downstairs is catching alight, and it’s moving toward the gas hob. These fire extinguishers haven’t helped.”
Holt moved forward to go get Willa, who was now halfway across the road with Zane.
But, before Holt had taken three steps toward her, a low, heavy whump rolled out from the back of June’s house, the percussive explosive sound of a kitchen fire reaching something it shouldn’t have reached, and the front of the house lifted slightly as the pressure wave moved through the walls.
A second window cracked outward. Glass sprayed onto the front lawn.
“Down!” Zane shouted, grabbing Willa and knocking them to the ground, covering her with his body.
They all went down, ducking. The second explosion, when it came, was considerably louder than the first.
A bright, hot bloom of orange and black punched out of the kitchen side of June’s house, throwing glass and debris in a wide arc across the front lawn and onto the road.
The echo rolled down the quiet Miami street and slowly faded.
Then there was just the sound of the fire burning and the distant, rising sirens of first responders somewhere on the far side of the neighborhood.
Holt lifted his head. “Is everyone all right?” he called out, his voice tight. “Anyone hurt? Anyone hit?”
“I’m fine,” June replied beside him, pushing up on her elbows. “Willa?”
“Here, Mom. I’m okay.” Her daughter got up and rushed toward June.
“Carmen?” June called.
“I’m all right, June,” Carmen answered. Her voice was shaky but steady. “Zane?”
“I’m fine,” Zane confirmed. His voice was slightly winded but entirely clear. “Just bruised my pride a little.”
“Ace? Margo?” Willa called.
“We’re good,” Ace answered from the curb.
Holt stood still for a moment, letting the adrenaline ease off.
He kept one hand on June’s shoulder for another beat, making sure she was steady, before he let it fall to his side.
The two unconscious figures on the sidewalk had not moved.
Clive was crouched beside his sister now.
His fiancée had her hand on his shoulder, whispering to him.
Holt felt for him. It was a terrible thing to discover that a family member you’d loved your whole life was not the person you’d always believed them to be.