“Margo nearly died in Teacups. She found out she’s been a target for months. And then she gets into a motorboat in a storm to go after people she loves.” June drew in a breath. “Then your son, without even thinking, and after getting dragged into a cold case he had nothing to do with, for people he barely knows, risks this storm.” She finally turned and met Holt’s eyes. “They are brave and remarkable people.”
“Yes, they are,” Holt agreed.
He thought about Rad at the bow of a small boat fighting these seas and felt the thing he’d been holding at a careful distance for the past two hours push forward against the barrier. Holt stubbornly pressed it back.
He wasn’t going to be useful to anyone if he let fear run ahead of function.
Holt had learned that lesson the hard way, more than once, over more years than he cared to count. Fear had its place. It sharpened attention, accelerated decision-making, and told you when the stakes were real. But fear, running loose and unmanaged, did none of those things. It only consumed.
Holt looked at the water beyond the glass.
Rad was out there somewhere in the dark, in a small boat, in conditions that made Holt’s chest tighten every time he let himself picture it clearly. His son, who had grown up without a mother and never complained, had become a good man. And a darn good detective and a good father through a combination of inheritance and sheer determined effort, and mostly on his own.
“We’re going to get them back,” June said again. “I’m sure they are all together in the cave.”
Holt nodded, trying to absorb some of June’s confidence. They stood together in the particular silence that had developed between them over the past weeks, the kind that wasn’t empty but full of things neither of them had yet found the right words for. Holt was aware of her beside him in a way he’d stopped trying to qualify or contain. He still had, no, that’s not right, Holt had never stopped having feelings for June. Seeing her again, working beside her day after day, had made him start to face up to that fact.
Holt’s hand was close to hers on the window ledge. He didn’t move it away.
She didn’t move her hand either. Holt was so close to her that he kept getting wafts of her scent that teased his nostrils and made his pulse race. The entire time they’d been here, and even before they’d arrived, Holt had to rein in the impulse to take her into his arms. Give her comfort while drawing some from her. His mind skittered to the kiss they’d shared earlier, right before their phones had blown up with the news of the weather. After that, there was no time to analyze what had happened. No time to cement the date they’d agreed to go on. His eyes widened, and he glanced at his wristwatch.
“I guess we’re not going to make those reservations now,” Holt tried to lighten the mood.
“And that will give your mother the leeway she needs to keep meddling in our relationship,” June said with a soft laugh, her eyes meeting his.
They locked, and the room shifted around them without changing at all. Same noise, same light, same rain against the glass. But something in the quality of the air between them moved in a way that had nothing to do with the storm outside.Holt swallowed and again nearly lost control to grab her and crush her soft lips with his. Instead, his mind flashed back to eighteen years ago to a secret he was holding close to his chest. Something he knew needed to have been said back then. Something that had caused him endless bouts of torment and guilt. The thought sat in his chest with the same weight it always carried, heavier tonight than usual, pressed forward by fear and proximity with their children and grandchildren in imminent danger.
Holt ran a hand through his hair, the movement breaking their eye contact. June turned back toward the window as if staring at the weather outside would somehow change it, while Holt went over the many, many times over the past eighteen years, he’d nearly knocked on her door in Miami. How many times had he rehearsed versions of what he wanted to say? So many times more than Holt would admit to anyone. In the years after the divorce, when the silence between them had hardened into something permanent. In the years after Mina had told him June had lost her husband, Holt had picked up his phone and then put it back down because of the guilt that flooded him. But if he was honest, it wasn’t only the guilt that had stopped Holt from making the call. It was also because he never wanted to be the one to put the look of hurt and devastation on her face as he’d done the night Holt had walked out on their marriage. What he needed to tell June… Holt swallowed. He knew he would do just that. He turned and looked at June.
And tonight wasn’t the night for it. Tonight, Rad and Margo were somewhere on that water and Willa and a group of teenagers were all hopefully in a cave on an island two miles offshore. Holt glanced back at the busy room where the Coast Guard crews were standing by, and the launch window was still thirty minutes away at the earliest. No, tonight was definitely notthe night for Holt to be fighting his demons over the guilt he felt where June was concerned. Tonight, they shared a deep-rooted fear of two parents and grandparents waiting anxiously for word of when their loved ones would be rescued.
Lieutenant Reyes’s voice cut across the room, dragging Holt from his thoughts.
“The interval pattern is holding,” Lieutenant Reyes said, her voice carrying the particular crispness of someone moving from assessment to action. “We’re moving the launch window forward.” Her eyes moved across the room to her crews, both of them already on their feet and waiting. “Both crews prepare to deploy in fifteen minutes. We go by boat as soon as?—”
“Lieutenant.” One of the Coast Guard officers appeared in the doorway, his expression tight. “We’ve got a problem with the harbor approach. The surge has pushed debris across the southern channel. There’s a submerged obstacle, possibly two. We can’t confirm what we’re dealing with until it’s light enough to see properly, and sending boats through an uncharted debris field in these conditions is going to put the crews at serious risk.”
Lieutenant Reyes turned toward him fully. “How long will it take to clear it?”
“We don’t know yet,” the officer admitted. “Could be twenty minutes, could be longer. We would need to get divers in first to assess, and the current is still too strong for that.”
The energy in the room shifted immediately, the momentum that had been building for the past hour pressing up against a new wall, and Holt felt it in his chest like something physical. Beside him, he heard June draw a slow, controlled breath.
“There has to be another way,” Carmen said from across the room. She was already on her feet, her eyes moving between Lieutenant Reyes and the door. “What about the rescue helicopter? You have one on the pad outside. I saw it when we came in.”
“Our pilot is unavailable,” Lieutenant Reyes replied, and the flatness in her voice told Holt there was more to that than a scheduling conflict. “He was called out an hour ago to assist with a downed power line situation on the northern road. There was an accident. He’s been taken to the clinic.”
“He’s injured?” June asked sharply.
“Yes, ma’am,” Lieutenant Reyes confirmed. “Nothing life-threatening, but he won’t be flying tonight or any time soon. My co-pilot can assist in the air but isn’t certified to fly the rescue helicopter alone. Without a qualified pilot, the helicopter stays on the pad.”
The silence that followed was the particular kind that came when a room full of capable people ran out of immediate solutions and hadn’t yet found the next one.
Then Dean spoke.
Holt had almost forgotten Dean was still in the room. He’d been standing near the far wall for the past twenty minutes, quiet and still assessing weather patterns. His eyes moved between the operations board and the window, then to the people around him in slow, methodical sweeps.
“What helicopter is it?” Dean asked, looking at Lieutenant Reyes.
