June felt the air in the room change.
“Did she do this to you?” June asked carefully.
Judy’s lips pressed together with the effort of what she was trying to do. Lucy moved quietly to the other side of the bed, her eyes on the monitors, her attention divided between her patient and the conversation.
“She’s very weak, June,” Lucy reminded her in a low voice. “Her brain is working hard just to keep her present right now.”
June nodded. She kept her eyes on Judy and waited.
Judy’s grip on her hand tightened very slightly. “Victoria,” Judy breathed. Her eyes were fighting to stay open. “Get her.” There was a pause that lasted long enough for June to worry. Then: “Find her.” Another pause. “Look.” Her voice dropped further. “In… Miami.”
Then her eyes closed, and her head lolled to the side, alarming June at its lifelessness.
“Judy?” June’s voice was sharper than she intended as her heart thudded in her chest.
Lucy was already moving, her hands professional and quick, checking the monitors, checking Judy’s pulse, running through the swift, practiced assessment of someone who knew exactly what she was looking at.
“She’s all right,” Lucy told her after a moment. “She’s just gone back under.” Lucy straightened and looked at June across the bed. “I wasn’t going to call you, but Judy was getting herself worked up, insisting she had to speak to you. She fought to stay conscious long enough to say what she needed to say.” She glanced at the monitors. “That took everything she had.”
June looked at Judy’s still face against the pillow for a moment longer.
Then she stood up, set Judy’s hand down gently on the blanket, and followed Lucy out of the room.
The corridor outside was quiet. A nurse passed them at the far end without looking up from the chart in her hands. Somewhere further along the hall, a phone rang twice and stopped.
June stood with her back against the wall and looked at Lucy.
“You heard what she said,” June stated.
“I heard it,” Lucy confirmed. “She wants you to get Victoria.” She shook her head slowly. “You know, I knew Victoria was capable of cruelty. I’ve had a lifetime of watching her be cruel to people who didn’t deserve it.” Her voice was measured. “But setting fires. Attacking people like she did Judy, Lacey, and Margo…” She looked at June directly. “Do you think she also had something to do with what happened ten years ago?”
“I honestly don’t know yet,” June admitted. “But it’s looking like we have her for Judy. We have her on several other serious charges as well.” She paused. “If only Lacey could remember.”
Lucy’s expression shifted into something apologetic. “She still has nothing. Not a fragment.” She straightened slightly. “I know you need it, June. But I can’t have anyone pushing Lacey to remember something her brain has decided to protect her from. That’s not a line I’ll cross for any case.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to,” June told her.
“I’ll call the moment anything changes. With either of them.” Lucy reached out and squeezed her arm briefly.
June thanked her and walked back toward the elevator.
She pushed the button and stood waiting, turning it all over in her mind as the floors ticked down on the display above the doors. Judy had confirmed it. Victoria’s name, spoken with the last conscious effort Judy had been able to summon. Miami, repeated like the most important thing she could give them.
It felt like confirmation. It felt like the case clicking into the alignment it had been resisting for weeks.
And yet.
The feeling that wouldn’t settle was still there.
June got into the elevator, pressed the ground floor button, and stood looking at the closing doors, and tried, as she had tried every day for weeks, to put her finger on the thing that wouldn’t stop nagging at her.
It stayed just out of reach.
Holt was in the corridor outside Tom’s room at the Sandpiper Inn when June arrived back. He came toward her the moment he saw her.
“What did Judy say?” he asked.
June told him. All of it, exactly as it had happened, including the effort it had clearly cost Judy to stay conscious long enough to say it.
