Chapter 12 Holt #2
“Mother, it’s something you would’ve told me when I was younger,” Holt pointed out.
“I know.” Mina groaned at having her own words thrown back at her. “You can use my car whenever you need to,” she offered. “Until Abe’s Lincoln is fixed.”
Holt’s chest tightened with affection as he knew his mother had really not meant anything bad by what she’d done.
“Thank you, Mother. I’ll let you know if I need your car,” he said. Then he stepped closer and kissed her cheek. “I’m going to bed. I hope you and the kids had a great night.”
Mina’s face softened. “We did,” she admitted, and a tired laugh escaped her. “And I have to admit I’m too old for late nights.”
“Then you need to get to bed too.” Holt gave her a faint smile. “Good night, Mother.”
“Good night, Holt.” Mina smiled warmly as she watched her son go to his room.
Holt climbed the stairs, feeling lighter than he had all day, because the explanation was simple and human and clumsy, and the world needed more of that. He showered quickly, more out of habit than necessity, then stood in the bedroom with his phone in his hand, thumb hovering over June’s name.
He knew it was late.
He also knew he wouldn’t sleep properly if he didn’t tell her.
He typed the message anyway.
I found out why my mother’s name was on the list. It was Tyler.
She tried teaching him to drive Abe’s Lincoln, and he clipped a concrete pole at the beach parking lot.
She paid cash to fix it because she didn’t want to get Tyler into trouble and because the insurance would not have paid for it anyway.
We should check the pole out tomorrow for paint transfer and broken headlight glass, just to be thorough.
He hit send before he could talk himself out of it, then set the phone down and climbed into bed.
A few minutes later, the screen lit up again. Holt glanced at it and smiled despite himself.
I’m so glad. I thought there would be a good explanation. Now you can sleep better. Good night Holt. I’ll pick you up in the morning.
Holt felt something soften in his chest. It wasn’t relief anymore. It was the warmth of being understood without having to explain every corner of his mind.
He typed back.
Good night June. Sleep tight.
He put the phone down and closed his eyes.
Sleep came faster than it had in days, and when it did, it brought June with it, the way it always did when his guard slipped.
His dreams were full of her laugh and her voice and the memory of her hand on his arm, and when he woke in the early hours, disoriented for a moment, he felt the ache of her absence like a physical thing before he slipped under again.
By morning, the world outside the lighthouse windows looked too bright and too innocent for everything that had happened.
Holt was dressed and downstairs when June arrived. He heard the sound of Carmen’s car in the driveway, and his heart did something that annoyed him. He wasn’t a teenager. He wasn’t a man who got thrown off balance by a woman pulling into a driveway.
He walked to the front door anyway.
June was stepping out of the car, keys in hand, her hair pulled back, looking bright and determined. She paused when she saw him, her eyes flicking over him in that quick, assessing way she had, the same way she’d always looked at a situation before deciding what to do.
For a second, he forgot to speak.
Then he made himself move, made himself lean casually against the doorframe as if she wasn’t the one person who could still make him feel both grounded and exposed.
“Morning,” June said.
“Morning,” Holt replied, and he was pleased to hear his voice come out steady. “Before we go to the clinic, can we stop by the beach parking lot?”
“Do you really want to do that?” June’s question was gentle, but there was steel under it. “You don’t just want to take your mother’s word for what happened to your uncle’s car?”
Holt exhaled quietly.
“I do trust her,” Holt replied, and he meant it. “But I need it as evidence. I need something solid that I can point to and say this explains the repair and why my mother was acting so cagey about it. With everything else going on, I’m not comfortable leaving it as a verbal story.”
June studied him, then nodded once. “All right. Let’s go.” She handed him the keys. “As everyone is moaning at how slow I drive lately…” She rolled her eyes. “And because I’m tired of hearing that sloths and snails have been overtaking me, you can drive.”
Holt grinned and took the keys. Their skin touched for a brief instant, and it was like an electric current zapped his fingertips. It was so intense he nearly dropped the keys.
They drove in silence for the first couple of minutes, not because either of them lacked words, but because they both seemed to be holding them back.
Holt kept his gaze on the road, and every now and then he caught June looking at him from the corner of her eye, as if she was deciding whether to ask something and choosing not to.
The beach parking lot was quieter than he expected for the morning, the tourists still asleep or still at breakfast, the locals already in their routines. The ocean lay beyond the dunes, blue and deceptively calm. Holt parked and got out, and June followed.
He walked toward the north end of the lot, exactly where his mother had described. There were concrete barrier poles lined along the edge, meant to keep cars from drifting into spaces they shouldn’t. Holt slowed, scanning the poles.
June fell into step beside him. It took less than a minute to find what he was looking for.
One pole had a smear of paint along its side, dull and dark in the morning light, the kind of transfer that happens when a vehicle scrapes rather than smashes.
Holt crouched, leaning closer. The paint wasn’t fresh, but it wasn’t ancient either.
There were also tiny glittering pieces near the base, half-hidden in sand and grit.
June crouched beside him, careful not to touch anything. “Glass,” she said quietly, pointing to it.
Holt nodded. “Headlight glass,” he confirmed. He scanned the ground again and found a small cluster that looked like it had been kicked aside by boots and tires, but not fully scattered. “And this,” he added, pointing to the faint scrape mark across the pole that matched his mother’s description.
June’s shoulders eased, and Holt felt his own chest loosen with it. The story lined up. The evidence lined up. The world, at least in this one small corner, behaved like it was supposed to.
“Let’s take pictures and collect the glass.” He pulled out his phone, took pictures, and then stood, brushing sand off his hands. “All right,” he said quietly. “That’s one thing that makes sense.”
“I’m glad it was this,” June told him. “Well, not glad that Tyler had an accident, but glad it was just this.”
“I understand,” Holt said with a warm smile.
They got back into the car and drove to the new vet clinic, the renovated post office building that still smelled of wood and dust and effort. Holt parked, and for a moment neither of them moved, as if they were both bracing for what the day might throw at them next.
Inside, the building was quiet. Too quiet for a place that was supposed to be a hub of life and healing.
“No one’s here yet,” June noted, voice low.
“Good,” Holt said, though he wasn’t sure it was.
June headed through to the back.
“I’m going to say hello and to check on Charlie,” June said, and there was a softness in her tone that Holt recognized. June had always loved animals and had once entertained the idea of being a vet. “Do you want to come?” Her eyes locked with his. “You did, after all, play a part in saving him.”
Holt nodded and followed her. Charlie’s holding pool sat under the filtration system’s steady hum.
The manatee floated near the surface, enormous and calm, moving with slow, unhurried breaths.
When June approached, Charlie shifted, lifting his head slightly, as if he recognized her footsteps or the rhythm of her voice.
“Morning, big guy,” June murmured, crouching near the edge. “How are you doing today?”
Charlie’s whiskered muzzle rose a fraction, and his dark eyes blinked in that patient way that always made Holt feel as if the animal was quietly judging humanity’s frantic nonsense.
June smiled, and Holt felt something in his chest ease at the sight. She looked more like herself here.
June leaned closer, her voice soft. “Don’t worry, you’re safe,” she told the manatee, and she sounded as though she was trying to convince herself as well.
June’s phone buzzed then, cutting through the moment. She pulled it out, and her expression shifted immediately, the smile fading as her brow furrowed.
“Oh no,” June said, staring at the screen. “It’s a message from Judy.”
Holt’s instincts sharpened. “What does it say?”
June read quickly. “She has a migraine and can’t come in today,” she reported. “She says if there are emergencies, Lucy said she’d take them. Lucy’s at the hospital to check on Margo, Lacey, and Rad, then she’s got the day off.”
Holt’s brows knitted. “That’s a little coincidental.”
June’s gaze flicked up. “She didn’t know we were going to question her,” she pointed out.
“You’re right,” Holt said, and he knew he sounded overly suspicious. He was being paranoid. He could feel it. But paranoia had kept him alive more than once. “I guess I’ll go to the police station and see if I’ve got any information on Dr. Vernon’s background.”
“I’ll do what I need to do here and meet you there later,” June said. “Take Carmen’s car.”
Holt shook his head. “It’s not far. I’ll just walk.”
June hesitated. “Holt…”
He met her eyes. “I’ll be fine,” he said, then added, because he knew she’d worry anyway, “Lock the door behind me.”
June nodded. “I will.”
He left the clinic and walked toward the station, the morning air warm against his face, the town already stirring with that uneasy energy it had carried since the first fire.
He tried not to let his mind spin as he walked, but it did anyway, because that was what it did when he was faced with too many possibilities and not enough answers.
Ten minutes later, he was in his office at the station, switching on his laptop and opening his email. The screen's glow felt harsh after the soft light of the clinic.
He clicked through messages quickly, scanning for anything relevant.
Then he saw it.
The background check on Dr. Judith Vernon. Holt’s pulse lifted slightly. He opened it and began reading, his eyes moving fast, trained to pull out what mattered.
Employment history. Education. Licenses.
Addresses. The kind of information that usually felt dry until it didn’t.
He scrolled through the document and then froze when his eyes fell on the section about her family.
It wasn’t long, but it didn’t need to be.
There was only one name on there. A name that stood out like a huge threat.
Holt stared at it, and for a moment, the office felt too small, the air too thin, before instinct kicked in, driven by fear for June, who was alone in that very big veterinary clinic. He grabbed his phone so quickly he nearly knocked over his coffee, found June’s number and dialed.
Relief flooded him when she answered nearly right away, because for a second he’d had the irrational fear that she wouldn’t, that she’d be alone in that building with no one else there and no one knowing exactly where she was.
“Hello?” June’s voice came through. “Holt, I won’t be long. I just have a few things to do here as a new shipment of medications came in that I need to categorize and stack in the right places for Lacey.”
“June,” Holt said, and he kept his tone steady through sheer force of will, “I’ve got Dr. Judy Vernon’s background check.
And we need to go interview her. Now. Today.
Regardless of whether she has a migraine.
This can’t wait.” He paused. “Do you know where she’s staying?
Has she rented or bought a house in town, as there is no record of her current address?
” He frowned, glancing at the report. “She sold her house a few months after her husband died, and there is no new address for her.”
There was a beat of silence. Then June’s voice tightened.
“Yes. We have her address. She’s staying at an inn in Cedar Keys.” June’s words came out carefully, as if she was already hearing the danger under his urgency. “Holt, what’s going on?”
“Get the name of the inn,” Holt said, not answering the question because he didn’t want to say the name while June was still in that clinic. “Lock up and get over here now. I don’t want you there alone.”
“Okay,” June replied, and he could hear the confusion in her even through her attempt to stay calm. “But Holt… what did you find?”
Holt swallowed, his eyes still locked on the screen, the name burning in his mind like a flare.
“Dr. Judy Vernon,” he said, his voice low, “is the older sister of Gilbert Fry.”