by Mira Gibson
Holly touched eyes with Lucas, her smile waning until she looked at Sarah and cleared her throat. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“Nonsense,” said the older woman before Warren quieted her by clasping her shoulder.
Getting to his feet, he said, “If Holly needs to think about it...” He assisted the waiter by taking the French-press from the tray and pouring coffee into a mug. “Black if I remember correctly,” he said to Holly and she nodded.
As he handed her the steaming mug of dark roast, he said, "Excuse me," then padded off towards the library.
Holly kept her bright eyes on Lucas as she sipped her coffee, and he could almost see what she was thinking—she loved him too.
But they were no closer to discovering who had killed Rose and Benjamin.
Lucas didn't understand why Roberta had taken Tucker, though he had theories about how her dark past might have compelled her to save the boy in a mixed-up effort to prevent his abuse, whether or not severe mistreatment was truly on the horizon. One thing was clear, however. Roberta and Lucas had met at Diamonds at the time of Benjamin's murder, which meant she couldn't have killed him. Likewise, she hadn't killed Rose since she was holed up with the husband at the resort during that window. As seedy as Ron Conover was, he hadn't done it either. Whoever was behind this had attempted to take Holly's life by rigging explosives to a trip-wire in the garage, and an identical method had been employed to blowup Diamonds and kill Conover.
Lucas puzzled. He agreed with Holly that the double homicide revolved around Tucker, but it couldn't be for reasons of paternity. Lucas hadn't killed the couple. It seemed the further he got in this investigation, the farther from the truth he became. Would Holly and Tucker ever be safe?
Sarah pulled Tucker into her lap and draped her shawl over him, juggling the children's book in her hand, which she resumed reading quietly.
When Lucas glanced at Holly, he noticed she looked suddenly exhausted—her eyelids heavy, her gaze soft, her mouth flexed. Barely gripping her mug, which was resting at a precarious angle between her legs, her eyes drifted shut. After a moment, her brow lifted bringing with it her eyelids. She was drained, or so he thought until he reached for the mug, and realized she actually seemed disoriented.
The mug was empty so he set it on the coffee table, as Warren returned.
Quietly, he said, “Holly?” She murmured, Hmm? “You look like you could use some rest.”
"Oh, she's fine," said Sarah, waving him away.
It was odd.
“Detective,” said Warren and for a second Lucas thought the man was addressing him. When he turned, however, Cody was entering the library.
After briefly greeting Warren with a firm handshake and offering Sarah a warm smile, he neared Lucas, but Holly stole his attention. "Long day?"
Speaking for her, Warren explained, “She needs to sleep,” and began rousing Holly to her feet. “I’ll help her to her room.”
As he grasped her arm, she perked up enough to understand that she needed to get to her feet and began taking slow, rubbery steps on her own, though the older man tightly shadowed her through the library and out into the hallway.
“We need to talk,” said Cody in a discrete tone, but Lucas was still staring at the door where Holly had disappeared, a bad feeling swelling in his chest. “Why didn’t you call me the second you found Tucker?”
Brushing off his partner’s complaint, he said, “We had to get him to the hospital.”
“You should've kept me informed. I just got a call from Mr. Wythe? Hey,” he barked to get Lucas’s attention. “I drove over here like a bat out of hell the second I heard. And Warren couldn’t even tell me anything because you didn’t let him know where you’d found Tucker?”
Sarah was staring at them so Lucas turned his back, facing Cody.
“Because the fewer people who know the better or else our investigation could be compromised,” he said quietly.
“No, not our investigation,” he corrected. “I’ve been investigating. You’re off this case.”
“Fine,” said Lucas to shut him up.
“I’d prefer to do this quietly,” he interrupted, as he lifted a pair of handcuffs from out of his jacket pocket, just enough to make his point crystal clear.
Stunned, it took him a moment to jump-start his brain into working properly. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I had a talk with Holly yesterday. She was planning on coming in to make a formal statement. The next thing I know she’s unreachable and it turns out she was with you.”
Keeping his tone low wasn’t enough to hide the aggression in his voice. “You think I took her against her will?”
“I think we have a number of things to talk about.”
“Am I under arrest?” he challenged, but Cody didn’t answer except to take him by the arm, which he quickly jerked free, starting for the door of his own volition.
As they crossed down the hallway—Lucas fuming, wracking his brain for what his partner could possibly be thinking, circumstantial evidence would ultimately get him nowhere and Cody had to know that—he slowed nearing Room 112.
“Let me check on Holly,” he said but it wasn’t a request.
Blocking him before he could knock, Cody said, “Don’t make this hard.”
He had to grit his teeth not to shove the man, but then continued on, rounding the front desk when they reached the lobby, and pressing onward to the entrance door.
The frigid temperature outside wasn’t enough to pull the heat from Lucas’s face. “I don’t want to leave her,” he stated, locking eyes with Cody as they started through the parking lot.
“I’m not going to get sidetracked with diversions.”
Lucas felt eyes on him and glanced over his shoulder to find Roberta staring at him from the driver’s seat of her idling Audi.
Impulsively, recklessly, insanely, he hooked his leg behind Cody's and shoved his chest hard. As his partner fell onto the snow, swearing and scrambling for his weapon, Lucas bolted towards the car and gripped the windowsill when he reached it, out of breath and hunching out of his partner's view. “I remember.”
As she held his gaze, he thought he saw a glimmer of remorse behind her eyes.
Her voice was a whisper when she asked, “You stole him from me?”
The fact that she seemed hurt by this had him thrown, but there was no time.
“You can’t do this,” she said. “You can’t be a part of his life. You’re brain is wired all wrong. You’ll hurt him and you’ll hate yourself for it, and...” She locked eyes with him. “And I’ll end up killing you.”
“So you kidnapped him?” When she didn’t respond, he asked, “I’ll hurt Tucker but you won’t? We have the same past.”
“That’s what I think, yes.” She clenched her jaw, looking away and gripping the steering wheel.
Placing his hand on her shoulder, he squeezed until she met his gaze. “I’m not going to hurt him, not for any reason. Do you believe me?”
When she faced him, her eyes were misty. “I believe you, I believe you think that, but I don’t trust it.”
“Who killed them?”
She stared at him and the light behind her eyes went out. “Am I in trouble?”
“Answer me.”
“Did you turn me in for taking Tucker?” she demanded, acting deaf to his question.
A swell of memories rushed back—Lucas hunched on his couch, sobbing, Roberta’s arm draped around him, as she cooed into his ear; the secrets they swapped, the laughs they shared, her skill for warming the vast loneliness in his chest, for filling the dark hollows of his heart—and Lucas knew, in stark epiphany, he would never turn her in, never risk severing their connection, which was his lifeline.
“No, I would never,” he admitted.
An appreciative smirk spread across her face as she held his gaze. Quickly, he peeked over his shoulder at Cody who was starting after him. When he looked at her again, he insisted, “Tell me wh
at you know?”
“Does Holly know I took him?”
“Stop being self-centered,” he hissed impatiently, anxious that his partner would apprehend him in seconds. “I'm about to be arrested. You have to tell me what you know."
Roberta studied his face and the anticipation pitched Lucas into gut-clenching, heart pounding panic. His vision dimmed, but he fought to stay in his right mind, remain himself, desperate not to slip into the dark prison that had stolen so much of his life. The words, “Who killed them?” seeped through his lips, Lucas hanging on by a thread he feared was disintegrating. Pleading, he spit out, “You were there that night. Tell me.”
An excruciating moment elapsed, but just as Roberta was about to answer, Cody clamped his hands on Lucas's shoulder.
BOOM.
Lucas didn’t just hear it. He felt it, the asphalt rumbling under his feet, as he ducked. Cody had the same reaction, though he quickly straightened up, staring at the west end of the resort where shards of granite were raining over the snow, a plume of smoke rising from the blast.
It was a long moment before the dust settled then, calmly, one of the construction workers took charge, directing the team towards the freshly carved hole in the earth. He shouted orders and the workers began collecting the larger chunks of granite, dropping them into wheelbarrows, and carting them off.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Holly had no way of knowing how much time had passed—minutes? Had it been hours?—by the time her eyes cracked open. The room was dim, or was that her mind? Her body felt like sand. She was lying on a bed, the back of her head pressing hard against the wooden headboard, her shoulder blades digging into it as well, the pillow behind her doing little. Her hands were resting, palms up on the comforter, her boots splayed. She felt heavy and numb like a corpse resurrected.
Her thoughts were slow and simple, childlike. It didn’t occur to her that this was a reaction to the coffee she had drunk, that she wasn’t simply tired. Her thinking wasn’t dynamic enough to understand that she’d never in her life felt this degree of exhaustion, or that this wasn’t exhaustion—the heavy eyelids, the slack jaw, the shallow clipped breathing that seemed to happen without her—but rather the serious dampening of her central nervous system.
She had been drugged.
But didn’t know it.
She was vaguely aware she wasn’t alone. The sound of papers faintly rustling compelled her to turn her head and she hazily spied knuckles brushing over wood—the desk?
It was Warren. Seated in profile, lamplight bathing him in a strange, amber glow, he was thumbing through some kind of document, but his very presence bogged her in dazed confusion.
Pressing her hands against the comforter, she tried to straighten up, but she was too punch-drunk delirious to exert the kind of effort that getting to her feet would require.
A heavy exhale escaped her and Warren shifted in his chair, delighted she was lucid the second he saw her.
Sarah Wythe came to mind, as he said, “My dear,” but Holly had never seen the woman as inebriated as this. “How are you feeling?”
“Tired,” she groaned.
Sitting on the bed beside her, Warren ran his fingers through her long hair, tucking the strands behind her ear.
“You’re quite beautiful, you know,” he said softly as though the compliment might soothe her.
Oddly, it did, yet some part of her knew she was in danger.
“I could let you rest,” he offered and she found herself nodding heavily, her eyes floating shut, slipping away except for her sense of hearing. She listened to him smile, which came breathy and amused like a master in awe of his silly pet. He stroked her hair once more. “Or I could give you a pick-me-up.”
She murmured, “Hmm?” lolling between wakefulness and sleep, though her stomach clenched, instincts warning her of what her rational mind couldn’t.
“It must be hard,” he said, his cold hand now resting on her thigh, his thick fingers draped between her legs, “being a mother.”
Confusedly, she struggled to open her eyes and make sense of his comment by reading his expression, but his warm, knowing smile, the way his white brows arched up sympathetically as he drank in the sight of her withering state, only muddled her grasp on what was happening.
What was happening?
She couldn’t make sense of it.
Was it daytime or night? The curtains allowed almost no light into the room—the hotel room. She was at the resort. She and Lucas had found Tucker. She recalled sleeping last night, hours of deep sleep spent in Lucas’s arms. At the hospital she had been sharp and alert. The coffee should’ve kicked her into high gear...
Forcing her mouth to work, she corrected him. “I’m not a mother.”
“No,” he cooed in slick agreement. “You’re not. Your sister wasn’t much of a mother either.”
On his feet, he was doing something at the desk she couldn’t see since his back was to her, though she gathered he was tapping it—tapping something onto the desk, a familiar sound.
Plastic to wood.
A credit card breaking up white powder.
Rose...
“I’m going to need you a bit more alert than you are, my dear.” He was pivoting now, something in his hand, a flat surface—a mirror, lines of cocaine on top.
When he returned to the edge of the bed, Holly tried to ball her hands into fists, but her fingers felt like wet noodles.
He placed a rolled bill to the glass. She hadn’t even seen him take it out of his wallet.
As he offered her the drug, angling the bill towards her nostril, the mirror close behind, he said in a promising tone, “Trust me.”
She thought she was asking, “You turned her into this?” But it came out as an uneven groan.
“Shhh,” he whispered, pressing her other nostril closed.
Wanting to refuse, to spit in his face, and fight and punch and scream her way out of the room, some small voice in the back of her mind was screaming, take the bump.
It was her only way out.
If she wanted the strength to escape, she had to inhale.
So she did.
Brain stinging, eyes flaring wide, she lurched, bolting upright as cocaine ripped through her bloodstream. She saw stars, white specks flickering in her vision, as the feeling returned to her hands. The back of her head tingled and her chest was heaving so hard that she didn’t realize Warren was chuckling.
She took the mirror and helped herself to the second line then the third, all the while trying to steady her racing thoughts—had he been doing this to her sister, had he gotten her hooked, did he have some tenacious interest in Tucker, in them living here, what did it all mean?
Why did he want Tucker?
Why would he kill Rose?
Why would he murder his own son?
He was staring at her, but she couldn’t meet his gaze. Bile stung the back of her throat, as she pieced it all together. She had to get out of here, get Tucker, drive to the precinct, and get help. Her skin was zinging. She didn’t trust her legs.
She didn’t trust that Cody and the Center Harbor police would believe her unless she brought them proof.
Remembering her cell phone in her back pocket, she whispered, “More,” and handed him the mirror.
He seemed pleased with the request and slid off the bed.
As soon as he turned his back to her, preparing the next ounce of cocaine by tapping his credit card to break up chunks in the grains, Holly slipped her cell phone out of her pocket and fumbled pulling up the recorder app. Her hands were trembling and she felt an incredible pressure in her head—uppers and downers fiercely competing throughout every cell in her body.
He was turning so she snuck her cell behind her back, easing it between the pillow and comforter, and blindly, she tapped the screen, hoping like hell she was hitting the record icon.
“Holly, tell me,” he began, passing the mirror to her along with the bill, “are you ready for motherhood
?”
“Why do you want him?” she asked bluntly before snorting the first line.
Her strength was returning hard and fast. He was old, she thought, sizing him up on the sly. She could level him if need be.
But she didn’t need to get out of this resort as badly as she needed a recorded confession.
“I only want to be a part of his life,” he said easily.
“Then what’s that on the desk?”
“Do you feel cognizant enough to discuss it?”
She held his gaze as if debating.
“You’re so much like your sister,” he mused, his gaze traveling the length of her in a way that made her stomach lurch.
“Do you know why Rose stopped coming here? Why she let you see Tucker less and less?”
He inhaled a deep breath giving her question careful consideration. “She had her secrets.”
“Which you knew about,” she supplied.
“I discovered them, yes.”
“Not them, one,” she corrected. “One secret you couldn’t live with.” When he said nothing, holding a plastic smile, she provoked him with, “You don’t know who the father is, do you?”
His smile hardened into a grimace then receded until he was glaring furiously at her. “Benjamin is his father. Tucker is my grandson.”
“He isn’t. That’s why Rose changed the Will. You hooked her on a drug that nearly destroyed her.”
“Rose and I were very close.”
“You were killing her from the start.” Dismissing her, Warren sprang to his feet and grabbed the paperwork from the desk, but Holly didn’t stop. “You found out Rose worked at Diamonds. You found out about the paternity test. You knew Rose was going to leave Benjamin for another man. Mother’s always get custody. You probably pressured Benji to go after full custody, but he didn’t care because he knew Tucker wasn’t his. So you killed Rose and then your own son. Why? Because he found out?”
He was cool and unaffected turning around, the contract in his hands. “You have no idea what that boy means to me. Benji was a failure. I need Tucker. And the...” He cringed, his face turning red, quaking as if he could kill with his bare hands. “The insult I suffered. Your whoring sister, who thought she could lie to me, abandon the family, and take Tucker away from me...” Warren clenched his jaw and ordered, “You are going to sign this and award me sole custody of Tucker.”