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.
