Chapter 17 Margo #2
“There’s no one in here,” Ace said as he and Rad walked back into the kitchen.
“No forced entry either,” Rad told them. “We need to check and see if someone…”
Before he could finish his sentence, all four phones pinged.
The sound sliced through the kitchen.
They froze.
Then, almost in unison, they all reached for their phones.
Margo looked down at hers to find a new message flashing on her screen, and the caller’s number was blocked.
“Did you all get a video clip?” Rad asked, and three heads bobbed in sync.
“Should we open them?” Margo asked, her heart hammering.
“Yes,” Rad said.
Margo’s mouth went dry as she opened it.
The latest Hidden Truths episode came up, but not the way Margo had last seen it. This version had been altered. And real faces had been aligned with the avatars. Each one of them were familiar faces eerily covering the correct narrating avatar.
For one long, awful second, Margo forgot how to breathe.
“What the…” she breathed when her lungs started to complain.
Margo looked up.
Willa was staring at her phone as though it had turned venomous in her hand. Ace had gone completely still. Rad’s expression had hardened in that particular way it did when he was furious and trying not to show the full extent of it.
Then the back door opened. Margo nearly jumped out of her skin as all four of them turned toward it.
Rad and Ace moved first, not dramatically, but with enough speed and readiness to tell her exactly how quickly this room could become something else if it needed to.
Willa’s hand closed around the heavy skillet she had just taken from the cupboard.
Margo looked down at the spatula she was still holding and raised it before she could think better of it.
“Stand down,” a familiar male voice said as a tall, imposing figure stepped into the room, and all eyes widened.
Margo felt they all thought the same as she did, not knowing whether to breathe a sigh of relief or run in the opposite direction in fear as his eyes took in the room in one sweep.
The skillet in Willa’s hand. Rad’s stance.
Ace braced slightly near the door. Margo was standing there in her sweater and bed hair, holding a spatula like she meant business but had not fully decided what sort.
His eyes dropped to the spatula and narrowed as he drawled, “If you’re going to wield that,” one of his brows arched, “you need to know how to do some real damage with it.”
Margo looked at the spatula, felt color rise in her neck, and quickly lowered it.
“What… how did you get in here?” Margo managed to croak.
“With everything going on, Margo dear,” the woman stepped in behind him, “you really should improve your security.” Her eyes assessed the room. “Good, you’re all here.”
“You broke into my house and sent that message to everybody!” Margo accused, her jaw dropping slightly as realization dawned.
“We did.” She nodded.
“You two broke in here and did that?” Willa let out a breath and looked from one of them to the other. “Mom! Really? You scared us all half to death. We thought Margo was in real trouble…”
“She is,” June pointed out.
“You all are,” Holt finished for her.
Another realization hit Margo as she lifted her phone once again and tapped the screen showing the video that had just landed in their messages. “And this?”
“We did that too,” June said. “It’s amazing what AI can do these days.”
“I’m honestly impressed you figured that out.” Willa blinked, then looked at her mother.
“We had a little help,” Holt said, as June stepped aside from blocking the back door.
“That would be me,” Harvey said as he stepped into the kitchen behind her.
Four heads turned toward him at once.
“Harvey!” Willa, Rad, Ace, and Margo said together, the accusation in their voices so united it almost would’ve been funny if Margo’s pulse had not still been racing.
“Traitor,” Ace muttered.
“Hey, this isn’t my fault.” Harvey shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at the floor for a second before glancing back up. “To be fair, I didn’t tell them.”
“You absolutely did something,” Margo said. “Or we wouldn’t be here right now.”
“As I said, I got ambushed just like the four of you did,” Harvey explained.
“A heads up would’ve been good,” Rad pointed out, his eyes narrowing on Harvey.
“They barged into my apartment before dawn like a raid from a very well-dressed government agency.” His voice rose slightly.
“Then they confiscated my phone before I had time to react. I thought I was about to be dragged off to some black ops cell the way they came in and then never let me out of their sight for hours.”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Harvey,” June stated, but Margo didn’t miss the slight smug smile on her face.
“How did you find out?” Willa asked.
“Well, sweetheart,” June answered her daughter. “I recognized a piece of art in a video. A piece of art you bought for Harvey for his birthday a few years ago.”
“Harvey!” The four of them hissed once again, their eyes glaring at the young man.
“What is that phrase that’s used for a situation like this?” June tapped one finger lightly against her chin and glanced at Holt. “You know when people get caught doing something shady or underhanded or not telling the truth, and it gets found out?”
“You’re all busted,” Holt told them, his stance shifting slightly as his arms folded across his chest.
Margo felt the room shift at that.
Not because they’d been caught. She’d known that already the moment she saw the altered clip. No, it shifted because Holt hadn’t said much yet, and when he finally did, the entire temperature of the kitchen changed.
“And I think,” Holt said, his voice controlled and calm, “it’s time to start telling the truth.”
Silence met him.
His eyes traveled between them, making Margo feel like shrinking or wishing the floor would open up and swallow her whole.
“Because June and I,” Holt went on, “are not interested in being tricked into cleaning up a mess you created that has now spiraled far beyond any of you having control over it.”
That did it. Like when someone broke their parents' favorite vase, and no one wanted to own up.
The four of them did what everyone would in that situation—they all started talking at once.
Not answering, exactly. More trying to rush past the accusation before it landed properly with a barrage of nonsensical excuses.
“It wasn’t supposed to go—”
“We were handling it—”
“You don’t understand—”
“We were going to tell—”
“Stop!” Holt didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. The word cut like a crack of a whip through everything, and every voice in the room died under it.
Margo swallowed, and her breath caught in her throat for a few seconds. Something in Holt’s tone hit an odd place in people. Not fear exactly. Command. The sort that left very little room for debate.
If he had told them all to sit right then, she thought, every person in that kitchen would have done it.
“What on earth were you thinking?” June asked. Her voice was also cool and controlled, which was somehow worse than if she had shouted.
Margo had known June when she was angry. She’d seen flashes of it over the years, directed at injustice, bureaucracy, bad policy, and the occasional particularly obnoxious human being. But this was different. This was anger held on a leash so short it looked almost calm.
“This is not a game,” June continued. “Whatever Gilbert Fry was investigating ten years ago may be what got him killed.”
Her gaze moved across the room, resting nowhere and everywhere.
“And the way he died,” Holt flawlessly picked up from where June had left off, “the way all five of them died, was public and violent for a reason.”
June nodded once. “It was a message.”
Margo’s stomach tightened.
“A brutal one,” Holt said, “to tell anyone else who started digging into what Gilbert and those four men knew that their fate was likely to look very much the same.”
The air chilled a few degrees more in the room as what Holt said sank in.