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“Dead?” I ask, surprised. “When did that happen?”
“Two years ago,” Joshua says. “The loan you gave him, and had to forgive, by the way, might have kept his business afloat. But it wasn’t a panacea for a man whose time had passed him by. Seven years after you left, he was voted off the board and his kid took over. He ‘retired’, dropped off the radar for the most part until he died. My sources say he drank himself to death.”
“Let me guess, his funeral was well attended, and there were nothing but dry eyes in the house?” I ask, and Joshua nods. “How long until that’s my fate?”
“Hopefully, it’s not going to happen,” Joshua says. “I’ve seen how your coming back has affected Lynn... Kiersten. Whatever. I’ve also seen how this fight between you two has her broken up inside. Now, I’m not intervening, but I’m also going to do my best to keep the road between you two smoothed over.”
“Should that road even exist at all, though, Joshua? What if... what if someone knows and is coming after me through Kiersten?”
“No way,” Joshua says. “Gabriel, if it were any other man in the world saying that, I’d take it as an insult. From you, it’s just a worry. There’s no evidence. I destroyed it all, and anyone who might know anything is either dead or has done worse shit by now.”
“Worse?”
Joshua chuckles darkly. “You and Kiersten... you two deserve each other.”
For a moment, I feel a bit of relief. Just the thought of the two of us being together again, of spending what’s left of my life with her... Subconsciously, I check my phone again. No messages, and the dread comes right back.
“No news yet,” he informs me. “We’ll find something.”
“If we had a name, it would be faster.”
“I told you there was no reason you couldn’t come back. Whoever this is... they can threaten all they’d like, but they don’t have shit on you,” he reassures me, but I don’t buy it.
“So what the hell is going on, then?” I ask, reining in my frustration. “If nobody can touch me, if everything is taken care of and all the years that I spent away from her were supposed to bury this deeper than the fucking Titanic... who the fuck is doing all this?”
“Gabriel, she’s safe,” Joshua reminds me. “We’re going to find him.”
As if on cue, his phone pings and then pings again.
He answers with, “Yeah?” and then he’s quick to stand, and every muscle tightens as he puts the phone on speaker.
Roland speaks on the other end. “We have a partial and two more from the shoe shop footage. We started with the night you got the note, and we have a hit on facial recognition.”
“Send it now.”
“I don’t have to. Sir . . . It’s Holden.”
Everything slows down at this moment. Time ceases as it hits me. Holden. He was here all along. “It can’t be” are the first words from Joshua, stunned and in disbelief.
“We had three images pulled. All three matched.”
“I have two men assigned to Kiersten. Holden is one of them,” Joshua says with urgency, his face going white. “Get down there now!”
I’m quick to text Kiersten,Where are you?
Kiersten! Where are you?
All the while, panic and chaos stay on the edge of my periphery. I nearly type that he’s a threat, but I don’t want him to know that we know. I struggle to know what to message, so I call her while Joshua barks orders. No answer. I call again. No answer.
With the order given, Joshua dials someone else quickly, pressing it to his ear. When there’s no reply, he tries a different number, and then a third. “Yeah... where’s Holden and where’s Madam Lynn? What the fuck do you mean, you’re not at your station?... Well,get there. And find them.Now.”
Fear races through me from his tone and the urgency as I grab my keys and head out, not waiting for the explanation, although he gives it to me.
“Holden separated the internal security team,” Joshua says. “Said that there was a suspicious person outside.”
The only thing I can think is that he’s hurt her. I have no fucking idea who Holden is or how he knows anything about her past unless she told him. Fear runs rampant in every move I make as we rush to the car.
“I swear to God—”
