Chapter 16 Holt
HOLT
“As we’re in Lacey’s office,” Holt said. “And you’re going through her boxes, I’m guessing you’re looking for something to tie her to all this?”
“I think I have something that will,” June told him.
He moved closer as she crouched by one of the boxes. “Why Lacey?” He glanced around. “Why are we starting here?”
“Because of Mexico,” June told him.
Holt’s eyebrows shot up at that remark. “What are you thinking?” He watched her. “Or rather, what do you know that I don’t?”
She tugged another box partway free. “Can you help me get this on the desk?”
Holt nodded and lifted it easily, setting it down where she indicated. As he did, their hands brushed when she steadied the box.
The contact was brief. Barely anything.
Still, something in him reacted with ridiculous immediacy.
It was no longer just a memory. Not only an old reflex or an old feeling.
It was worse than that, because sitting across from her at dinner, walking beside her on the boardwalk, and now standing close enough to catch the warm, familiar scent of her hair and skin had peeled back something he had spent years pretending was settled.
But now Holt knew he’d only been fooling himself. His feelings for June had never gone anywhere.
They had quieted. Hardened. Been buried under distance, pride, divorce papers, time, grief, and the practical business of survival.
But they had never completely gone.
That knowledge landed heavily and cleanly inside him.
Holt stepped back before it could show on his face.
June had found a pair of scissors in a drawer and slit open the top of the box. He had to concentrate on their conversation as he realized she had yet to answer his question about Mexico. June started rifling through the contents inside.
“You didn’t answer my question.” Holt glanced into the box of neatly labeled files.
She finally found what she wanted, but instead of pulling it free immediately, she looked at him again.
“It started with that pink letter,” June told him. “There was something about it that just doesn’t fit everything else that’s going on.”
June glanced up briefly, meeting his curious gaze.
“I don’t follow.” Holt frowned. “What feels different to you about it?”
“It’s different from the other notes. You know the ones, Willa, Margo, Rad, and you got.”
“How so?” Holt’s interest piqued. June always had a way of taking a scene and flipping it in a way no one else could.
She looked at the file in her hand, hovering half hidden in the box.
“All the other threatening notes are direct. Back off. Leave town. Stop asking questions. But the pink letter…” June shook her head and turned back to him.
“It sits oddly.” Her brow furrowed thoughtfully.
“It’s time we met face to face…” Her eyes widened.
“Did you try to trace the number on the letter?”
“It was a burner phone that went dead just after Lacey called the number,” Holt answered her.
“I get a feeling we took the wording of it wrong,” June told him. “I’m not convinced it was a threat…” Her words trailed off, and he could see her mind working overtime again.
“Not a threat?” Holt breathed. “Look what happened to Lacey when she went to meet the person who left it.” He shook his head, not following or agreeing with June’s interpretation of the note.
“I’m not seeing how you could not see that as anything but a threat.
One that was clearly set as a trap to hurt both you and Lucy. ”
“Unless Lacey went to the meeting instead of Lucy, maybe whoever sent the note panicked,” June suggested. “Maybe they even see Lacey as some sort of a threat?”
“Why see Lacey as a threat?” Holt asked, playing along with June’s logic.
“Let’s think about it this way,” June said and then went on to remind him. “The envelope was addressed to Lucy and me. Unlike the other threatening notes, this one was in an envelope that was probably hand-delivered to Lucy's office or sent to her post office box she has in town.”
“Lucy’s mail gets sent to a P.O. Box at the post office?” Holt looked at June in surprise, making a mental note to check whether there was video footage at the post office and to go in to find out. “I’ll go there in the morning and find out if anyone knows anything.”
June nodded in confirmation. “So it got caught up with the rest of Lucy’s mail, which she left in Lacey’s office, and that is the only reason Lacey ended up with it.”
“Lacey wasn’t supposed to get it,” Holt had realized that, but he’d honestly not looked at it in the light June had, and suddenly he was seeing what she was seeing, and June was right. The letter didn’t match the other threatening notes. “I wonder when it was delivered?”
June stopped and thought a moment. “I’m not sure.” She shook her head and finally pulled the file from the box. “There were no stamps on it, so…” She shrugged. “I guess unless you find someone on camera at the post office or going into Lucy’s office, we won’t know.”
“Regardless of where or how the note was delivered, the contents still read like a threat.” Holt’s eyes fell on the file in her hand questioningly.
“Or a warning.” She looked at him and cocked her head slightly.
“Then why is Lacey in the hospital with a head wound?” Holt asked.
“That I’m still trying to figure out,” June said, not sharply, but with the strain of someone trying to hold three thoughts at once. “I’m not dismissing what happened to Lacey or that the letter might very well be a threat. I’m saying the letter itself doesn’t feel like the others.”
“I can see that now,” Holt admitted.
“When Lacey was brought in and briefly woke up, she told Dean, ‘Not my enemy, find the letter.’” June reminded him.
“Why would Lacey say that? Not my enemy?” She tapped the folder against the palm of her hand.
“When Lacey was shocked, thinking she had an enemy that wanted to run her off the road…” Her eyes narrowed.
“There was a flash of fear in Lacey’s eyes.
And now when I think of how she said it and how flustered she’d gotten… ”
“That she wasn’t surprised by it but more fearful of it?” Holt added.
“Yes, or like someone whose past had finally caught up with them,” June told him. “Those words she uttered were a very strange choice of words, not my enemy.”
“I get it. Like she was admitting she had enemies, but the one that attacked her wasn’t hers.” Holt figured out what she meant.
“Exactly. Then we immediately linked that to the current case,” June said. “Maybe because it was the obvious thing to do.”
She finally opened the folder. “But, if I look at the letter as more warning than threat, then the whole thing shifts.”
“You think it’s separate from the larger case.” Holt leaned one hip against the desk.
“No.” June glanced up at him and shook her head. “I think it is connected. But not like we think it is.”
“I never thought I’d say this,” Holt stated. “But you’ve got me stumped here.”
June smiled, and she flipped through the file. “There are four people who we know of who’ve been actively looking into what happened ten years ago,” she pointed out.
“Margo. Willa. Rad.” Holt looked at her. “And me.”
“While you, Willa, and Rad have had threats and incidents around you, three people, two of whom, as far as we knew, weren’t actively looking into the case of ten years ago, have been brutally attacked.”
Holt went very still as his eyes landed on the folder she was flipping through once again, and it started making sense where June was going with this and why they were in Lacey’s office.
“The difference matters,” June said as she stopped on a page and used her finger to scan it before making a small snort, her eyes met his.
“A couple of months ago, Lucy told me that she didn’t know if Lacey was going to be back for the summer.
I asked her why, and she said because Lacey was working on something big out of the country.
” She moved behind Lacey’s desk and turned on the laptop.
She typed in the password, then her fingers flew over the keyboard.
“I should’ve seen this earlier. I thought it was fishy. ”
“Are you going to let me in on this?” Holt moved closer to the front of the desk.
“You once told me there was no such thing as a coincidence,” June reminded him. “I’ve always kept that at the back of my mind.” She turned the file for him to see.
Holt looked down.
His brows rose.
It was a record of one of the Vet Without Borders missions from a few months earlier. It was from Mexico, and the exact town that one of the YouTube videos was from.
He looked back up at her, stunned.
“I was so surprised when Lacey sprang that she’d already gotten a new vet placement from out of the blue.
” June sighed. “But Lacey did have a lot going on. She’d been in a car wreck, and her vet’s practice was attacked.
I let it go that it really had slipped her mind.
But even in the interview with Judy, Lacey was rushing over questions and made the decision to hire Judy instantly.
” She turned the laptop toward Holt. “And this proves Lacey knew Judy before Judy ever came to work here.” Her head rounded the monitor.
“Look at the name on the Vets Without Borders Staff sheet.”
Holt’s eyes dropped to the list.
Dr. Judy Vernon.
For a moment, everything inside him seemed to click into a sharper pattern.
“What the…” Holt breathed.
“Yes, turns out, Lacey is a great actress after all,” June said slowly, “I also think we’ve just found at least two of the faces behind the avatar hosts on the Hidden Truths channel.”
Holt stared at the page in his hand, then back at her.
Pieces of the puzzle snapped through Holt’s mind. Dr. Vernon gets her jam from Teacups. Three people have been targeted the most. One of the newer avatars mostly concentrates on what’s happening around Florida…
“Margo is their third avatar,” Holt realized.
“I’m guessing so,” June confirmed, her thoughts aligned with his. “And someone else has figured it out, too!”