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!”
“Someone they’re about to expose,” Holt said.
The words fell into the room with awful certainty.
June nodded once, her face pale now with the force of the realization.
“What we have to figure out is who. And whether that connects to ten years ago.” Her words once again echoed Holt’s thoughts.
“Or,” Holt said quietly, “to a cat burglar.”
Neither of them moved after that.
The office around them seemed suddenly smaller. The boxes, the files, the unfinished shelves all receded under the weight of the new possibility.
Judy. Lacey. Margo.
Not just random victims crossing the path of an investigation.
Not just collateral damage around a mystery.
Possibly part of a hidden line running under the entire thing.
June stood and moved around the desk to look at the screen with him. She was standing close, and she touched the file she’d put on the desk in front of him. Close enough that if he moved even slightly, his hand would brush hers again, where she gripped the edge of the file.
He looked at her.
She looked back.
So much of what had always existed between them sat in that silence. History, loss, trust, and the unbearable familiarity of knowing how easily one wrong word might change everything.
He wanted, with an abruptness that startled him, to reach out and smooth the crease between her brows. To tell her she was brilliant. To tell her she had just done what she had always done best, which was to see through noise into structure. To tell her he had never stopped thinking about her in the quiet moments when he had nothing to occupy his mind. Or he saw someone with her hair color or a physique that matched hers in a crowd. Or how many times through the years he wanted to pick up a phone and call her, just to hear her voice. Holt swallowed as another memory flashed through his mind. One that ripped through him with such a force, he had to stop himself from gasping as the guilt felt like a punch in the gut. A memory that had almost landed him at her door a few times, but he’d always stopped himself. His excuse was that he’d put her through enough pain and betrayal after having chosen his career over the life they’d originally planned. But deep down, Holt had always known that wasn’t the only reason he’d never allowed himself to face her and say he was sorry. He couldn’t bear to see even more hurt and betrayal in her eyes as he’d seen the night he’d walked out of their marriage.
Holt forced the feeling away and clamped his jaw, and instead of saying the words that needed to be said, because really, now was not the time, he said the only thing that belonged to the moment. “We need to be very careful here and tread lightly.”
“I know.” June’s fingers tightened slightly on the folder as she lifted it. “I’ll take a photocopy of this page if you can screenshot the record on the laptop. I don’t want to send it to either of us, so there’s no trace we were on the laptop.”
Holt looked back down at the page on the screen and nodded, pulling out his phone to take a snapshot, then stared at the screen while June went to get a copy of the page. His mind raced.
