Chapter 16 Willa #2
There were documents attached. Three of them.
He could see the attachment icons without opening anything, and his stomach had been doing something uncomfortable since he’d first sent the request through, the quiet, persistent unease of a man who had started pulling on a thread without being entirely certain he was prepared for what might unravel.
Rad was about to click the first attachment when a knock at his office door pulled his head up.
The officer from the front desk leaned into the doorway. “You’ve got a visitor, Detective.” She stepped aside.
“Send them in.” Rad closed the email without opening the attachments.
Sienna walked through the door.
Rad kept his expression neutral and gestured to the chair across from his desk. Sienna sat down, smoothing her sweater as she settled, her fingers moving immediately to the cuffs and pulling them down over her hands in the habit he’d noticed every time she sat anywhere for more than thirty seconds.
It was a warm afternoon. The kind of afternoon that made a long-sleeved sweater an unusual choice.
“Hello, Sienna,” Rad said. “What can I do for you?”
“I was wondering whether you’d found my mother yet,” Sienna replied.
“Or Alfred.” She paused. “Or Mrs. Clark.” Her eyes moved across his desk and back to his face with the quick, scanning quality of someone checking their surroundings before committing to a direction.
“Does Director Dillinger believe my mother was responsible for the fire? The one ten years ago?”
“You know I can’t discuss an active case,” Rad told her. The alarm bells that had been quietly present since Sienna’s visit to his father’s office were ringing a little louder now. “If you have specific questions about where the investigation stands, you’ll need to speak directly to my father.”
Sienna nodded slowly. Her fingers were working the sweater cuffs again.
“I understand,” she said. “I’m also concerned about my personal items. The ones that were in my safe.
” Her eyes met his. “My grandmother’s jewelry.
My grandfather’s pieces. They were all in there alongside my mother’s things.
” She glanced down at her hands briefly.
“I marked my items with an M on the list I gave you so they’d be distinguishable from my mother’s. ”
“Ah,” Rad replied. “That explains the M markings in the inventory.”
“Yes,” Sienna confirmed, looking relieved. “I just want to make sure that if the safe is recovered, my items are identified correctly and returned to me.” Her voice was measured and entirely reasonable. “They’re irreplaceable.”
“I’ll mention it to my father,” Rad told her. “If there’s anything further we need from you, we’ll be in touch.”
Sienna thanked him, stood, and left.
Rad watched the door close behind her.
He sat for a moment with his hands flat on the desk, looking at the closed door and thinking about the sweater and the cuffs and the careful, reasonable way she’d framed every single thing she’d said.
Rad was a little curious about her nervous habit of cuff-pulling.
Sienna didn’t strike him as someone with a nervous habit.
Out in public, she held herself with a confidence that was designed to make everyone around her feel inferior.
Yes, the last few times he’d been alone with Sienna, she’d sat like a little frightened mouse.
Rad’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. He could understand why his father and June had both felt something was off.
Rad had been skeptical, as he always was, of instinct until the evidence caught up with it.
And the evidence was starting to catch up.
Rad blew out a breath and made a mental note to talk to his father about Sienna’s visit before turning back to his laptop and reopening the email.
His cursor hovered over the first attachment for a moment. Then he clicked it.
The document opened, and Rad leaned forward, scanning it quickly, his eyes moving to the date at the top of the page. He found it, wrote it on his notepad without recording the document’s contents, and closed the attachment.
August. Thirty-nine years ago.
Rad opened the second attachment and did the same.
His heart gave a quick, involuntary thud as he read the date. He wrote it down on the notepad below the first entry.
March. Thirty-eight years ago.
Rad stared at what he’d written. Then he added three words next to it in small, careful letters.
Seven months later.
He held his breath and opened the third attachment.
The date was there at the top, clean and unambiguous.
Rad wrote it down.
September. Thirty-six years ago.
He looked at the date. He looked at what he’d written next to the second entry. Then he picked up his pen and wrote slowly next to the third date.
Eighteen months later.
He set the pen down.
He looked at the three lines on his notepad, at the dates sitting in sequence beneath each other, at the careful, quiet arithmetic of them.
No. That couldn’t be right.
He was still staring at the notepad when a knock at his door made him start. He turned the page over in one fast, smooth movement and clicked out of his email.
“Come in,” Rad said.
Holt walked in.
Rad’s father looked at him with the assessing expression he brought to any room he entered, the quick, comprehensive read that took in everything and filed it before most people had registered he was doing it.
“Are you in the middle of something?” Holt asked, looking at the closed laptop and the turned-over notepad.
“Just a project,” Rad replied. He kept his voice even. “Trying to work out some things that aren’t quite adding up yet.”
“This case has all of us feeling that way,” Holt agreed, settling into the chair across the desk. The same chair Sienna had occupied ten minutes earlier.
Rad looked at his father and said nothing about the notepad.
“June mentioned that you, Margo, Willa, and Harvey are going to the concert in Gainesville tomorrow night,” Holt said.
“That’s right,” Rad confirmed.
Holt’s eyes sharpened slightly. “Did Willa and Margo decide to go after they found out Ace was going?”
“I’m not sure,” Rad replied carefully. “Why do you ask?”
Holt leaned back in the chair and looked at his son for a moment with the particular expression of a man deciding how much to say.
“We didn’t want to bring more people into this,” Holt began.
“But since you’re already going and it seems you’ve got your own doubts about the Victoria narrative, I’m going to read you in.
” He paused. “Ace is going to that concert wearing a wire. He’s going undercover with Sienna.
We need him close to her because we believe she’s hiding something significant. ”
Rad absorbed that without a visible reaction.
“I need you to keep Willa and Ace apart tomorrow night, and until we’ve wrapped this case up or at least until we no longer need Sienna and have cleared her,” Holt continued. “We need you to do this without telling anyone why you’re doing it.”
“Dad.” Rad kept his voice level. “You know what’s just started between Ace and Willa. You’re asking him to—”
“I know exactly what I’m asking him to do,” Holt cut in quietly.
“And I know what it costs.” He looked at Rad steadily.
“I know better than most what it costs to walk away from someone you love because the job demands it.” Something shifted in his expression, a brief, private thing that arrived and departed before Rad could fully read it.
“Leaving June was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.
I walked away from her, and from everything we could’ve had together.
” He ran a hand through his hair, and raw pain resonated in his father’s eyes for a few seconds.
Rad went very still.
“June would’ve been your mother,” Holt said, with the directness of a man who had been carrying something for a long time and had decided to set part of it down. “And I would’ve had Willa, too. She would’ve been there for you as your sister.”
The words landed in Rad’s chest and did something he hadn’t anticipated.
His mind went immediately, involuntarily, to the notepad under his hand. To the three dates sitting in sequence on the turned-over page. To the arithmetic he’d been doing when his father had knocked on the door.
He looked at Holt.
Holt was watching him with the expression of a man who’d said something personal and was waiting to see how it was received, unaware that his words had just collided with something Rad had been sitting with for the past forty minutes.
“You just walked away,” Rad said. He kept his voice neutral with an effort. “From June. From your marriage and having a family together. From all of it.”
“I had to,” Holt replied. “June’s life was in Miami.
She had her career ahead of her and a chance to reclaim her father’s law firm after her mother’s brother took it from him.
I couldn’t ask her to give that up.” He held Rad’s gaze.
“My life was in Virginia. The Bureau was everything I’d worked toward.
We were also so young, and the world was pulling us in opposite directions.
I made the only decision I could make.” He paused.
“I’ve lived with it every day since. But like June had to reclaim what was stolen from her father, I had to stop the man who had taken mine. ”
“So you just left,” Rad said, again, his mind whirling. My father, the man who valued family over everything, just left June! “Without a backward glance or care…”
The words came out carrying rather more weight than he’d intended, and Holt frowned slightly at the edge in them.
Before Rad could finish his sentence or Holt could respond, his desk phone rang.
“Detective Dillinger.” Rad picked it up.
“Rad.” The voice on the other end belonged to one of the patrol officers who’d been at the memorial earlier. “You need to get out to the burned-out cabin at Ember Lake. The floor has been ripped up. The whole place has been gone through.” A brief pause. “And… We found a body.”
“Who?” Rad’s eyes moved to his father’s face.
“Mrs. Clark,” the officer replied. “The Morrisons’ housekeeper.”
“We’re on our way,” Rad told him and set the phone down.
He looked at Holt. “They found Mrs. Clark’s body at the old cabin, and the floor’s been torn up throughout.”
Holt was already on his feet. “June and I will meet you there,” he said, and turned for the door.
Rad watched him go.
Then he looked down at the notepad on his desk. He picked it up, carefully tore the page free, folded it once, and pushed it deep into the pocket of his dress pants.
He logged out of his email.
He closed the laptop.
He stood up, straightened his uniform, and followed his father out of the office.
Rad knew that what was on that page had now become his business, and it was long overdue for the truth to be told.
Because he was sure the one person the truth affected the most was totally unaware of what he’d just found out.