Page 36 of One Cry Too Loud (Coastal Crime Unit #9)

“ I want to show you something,” Caroline said, moving about the house with the poise of someone who thought they were above the world and the freedom of someone who considered herself untouchable. “But first, I need you to put all of your weapons on the table.”

“We’re not doing that,” Kat said flatly.

“Yes you are,” Duncan replied. “You don’t have a choice, and you’re going to do it honestly. There’s a metal detector where you’re going, and if it goes off at all, so does the bomb sitting beside Cindy.”

My body shuddered at the thought of that.

Someone’s daughter, Holly’s daughter, was in grave danger.

Her life was on the line. One flick of a switch from this madman and a little girl’s entire existence would stop in one of the bloodiest, most brutal ways I could ever imagine.

It took all I could do not to strangle him as I pulled the gun from my hip and placed it on the table.

Kat followed suit, and given the fact that Holly and Joe weren’t armed, that was enough. Or, at least, I thought it was.

“Everything,” Duncan repeated. “Unless, of course, you’d like to gamble with that little girl’s life.”

“That is everything!” I said, but as I spoke, Kat leaned forward. She pulled a knife from the inside of her sock and sat it on the table as well. She nodded at me as her eyes met mine, and I kicked myself a little for not thinking of it.

“There,” I said, turning back to the old couple. “No weapons. Let’s get this over with.”

“You people certainly are in a hurry, aren't you?” Caroline asked, turning away from us and heading toward the back door. She motioned for us to follow.

“You’ll have to forgive us. Given the fact that your husband just told us that Cindy could freeze to death at any moment, you might understand that we’re looking to get this over with and get her out of there as quickly as possible.”

“I think you’ll find my capacity for forgiveness is quite vast,” Caroline said. “And you’re about to find out why.” She pushed open the back door, revealing a large, sprawling backyard.

Looking behind me, I saw Kat, Holly, and Joe following my steps.

Behind them, trailing back a bit, stood Duncan.

He was trying to hide it, but I saw that he had picked up one of the guns and had it in his left hand, albeit hidden halfway behind his back.

My heart sped up. Were they bringing us out here to kill us?

The idea didn’t seem farfetched, given what Duncan had put us through recently.

Still, I had to keep my wits about me. I hadn’t survived this much to die in the backyard of a European cottage, and Holly hadn’t freed this palace the way she did just for it to become her final resting place.

“That’s where we’re headed,” Caroline said, pointing to a shed a few hundred yards away.

“Mother. No,” Holly said, but her voice was weak, quiet. “Why would you-”

“Because they need to understand,” Caroline cut her daughter off.

“They need to know why all of this is happening. They need to know what you’ve done, how you’ve hurt everyone in your life, and how you still won’t take responsibility for it.

” She looked over at the shed. “That starts here. It starts with her.”

“Her?” I asked, looking over at Holly.

“Edie,” she said. “My sister.”

“You should bite your tongue clean off for saying that name,” Caroline said, resuming her trek to the shed. “You don’t deserve to say her name. You don’t deserve to have ever known her.”

“She was my sister, Mother,” Holly said. “She was my best friend.”

“All these years, and you’re still lying about everything? You never fail to disappoint me, Holiday.”

“I’m not-” Holly stopped short, shaking her head. “You’re not worth it.”

“I was going to say the same thing about you,” Caroline said. “You’re not worth the air you breathe, not when my sweet Edie can never breathe again.” Though she was turned away, still heading toward the shed, it sounded like she was crying when she spoke again. “And it’s all your fault.”

“It’s not my fault, mother!” Holly yelled. “Edie died in a car accident.”

“And why was she on the road?” Caroline asked. It was very clear now that she was crying. “Why wasn’t she at home, in bed, where she was supposed to be?”

“Just because I called my sister to come pick me up that night doesn’t mean I caused the crash,” Holly said, blinking back tears of her own.

“You put her in a position to have that crash,” Caroline said. “You killed her. You took her away from your father and I, and then what did you do? You became a criminal and took yourself away as well.”

“I made mistakes,” Holly said. “Because I was hurting. I did stupid things. I trusted stupid people.” She looked over at Joe. “But I needed you and Father. I needed my parents, and I didn’t have them.”

“You destroy my entire family, and you try to place the blame on me for it?” Caroline scoffed. “That’s quite rich.”

“I’m not blaming you,” Holly said. “You’re the one who's blaming me. You always have. You want to know why I lost my way? It’s because I never had anyone to count on.

I had a mother who called me a murderer and a father who was too weak to stand up to her about it.

There’s little wonder that I went outside of our home looking for some sort of comfort, for some sort of validation. ”

“Holiday, I play many instruments, but none of them are the violin. Stop fishing for sympathy,” Caroline said.

“I’d know better than to think I was going to get sympathy from the likes of you,” Holly said.

“And I’d know better than to ever think that you’d deserve it,” Caroline said. “You stole my family away from me, Holiday. You took my future away. So, imagine my surprise when I realized that you hadn’t stopped with just one generation.”

“Cindy,” Holly said in a whisper.

“Duncan began coming to visit after your father died,” Caroline said.

“We grew close, and then we grew very close.” She turned as she reached the shed, wiping tears off of her cheeks.

“I even asked him about you one day. I wanted to know if he was still in touch with you. You two had been so close when he served as your mentor. He told me he hadn’t.

He said that you stopped responding to his letters after a few months in jail, but you’d said something in one of your initial responses, something about morning sickness.

” The old woman shook her head as her mouth turned down in disgust. “Imagine my disappointment when I realized what you had done.”

“I didn’t do anything to you,” Holly said.

“I already told you. You stole my family,” Caroline said.

“Or, at least,I thought you had. When Duncan said that, I asked him to look further into things. It took a very small amount of time for him to come across the knowledge that you’d had a baby girl in jail, and only a little longer to find out where that girl was.

” She scoffed. “Really, Holiday? Witches? And worse than that. Americans.”

“I put her where I thought she’d have a good life,” Holly said.

“You stole her from her family,” Caroline said.

“Just like with Edie, you took her from me. Worse than Edie, though, Cindy is alive. And I never knew about her. You lied to me about my own grandchild. You robbed me of my opportunity to have a second chance and things. You took that from me, and now you speak to me as though you hold some sort of moral superiority. It’s insane, but then again, you never were quite stable. ”

“That’s why you did this?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “Because you want to have Cindy for yourself?”

“Partly,” she said. “Family is everything, Mr. Harrington. Certainly, as a father-as a grandfather , you know that.”

“What I know is that there’s nothing in the world that would convince me to put my granddaughter in danger,” I said. “And I would never, ever put her in the same room as a bomb.”

“Well, that’s because you haven’t been through what I have,” Caroline said. “And I won’t have you judging me.” She shook her head. “I buried my daughter.”

“I’ve buried people too,” I told the woman.

“People I loved way more than myself. It doesn’t give you the right to turn into a monster.

It doesn’t give you the right to give up on the people who are still in your life.

” I took a step toward the older woman. “I’m not perfect.

When my wife died, I let the grief I was feeling hurt the relationship I had with my daughter.

I almost lost her forever, and I wouldn’t have swallowed my pride and tried my best to see things her way, I probably wouldn’t have her in my life now, her or my granddaughter. ”

I saw a flash of something like hurt move through Caroline’s eyes. It was quickly replaced with more cold anger.

“Then you’re in no position to judge her, are you, Mr. Harrington?” Duncan asked, rounding the group of us and settling in front of me. “And you’re certainly in no position to call my wife a monster. All she wants is what you have. All she wants is her family.”

“You can’t steal family,” I said. “And you certainly can’t threaten the people in it into loving you.

You need to bring us to that little girl.

You need to let her go and you need to turn yourselves in for what you’ve done.

That’s the only way you’re ever going to even begin to try to earn your daughter’s respect back.

And that’s the only way to ever even think about having a family again. ”

“Her respect?” Caroline balked. “What about my respect? I’m tired of you people looking at me like I’m the villain here.

Holiday is the person who lied to me! She’s the person who stole years away from me, years I could have had with my grandchild.

” Caroline looked past me and at her daughter.

“If you didn’t want her, if you didn’t think you could raise her, you could have given her to your father and I. ”

“For what?” Holly asked. “So that you could treat her the way you treated me? Or worse? So that you could treat her the way you treated Edie and turn her against me.”

“I would have told her the truth,” Caroline said. “If the truth is enough to turn your daughter against you, then that’s a problem I can’t solve for you.”

“It doesn’t look like you’re doing much solving here,” Kat said, and I could tell from the tone in her voice that she was tired of holding her tongue. “Bring us to the girl right now. I won’t ask again.”

“Strangely enough, this shed was very special to Edie,” Caroline said.

“She was a true genius with a paint brush, and when she came of age, we converted this space into an art studio for her. Some of her paintings still hang in here. I come and look at them daily, so that I remember what beauty is, and so that I can think about what I’ve lost.”

“Caroline, I’m not going to-”

“You want to see Cindy?” Caroline cut into Kat’s words as she twisted the handle and pushed the door open. “Be my guest.”

The door flung open, and there-sitting with her knees curled up to her chest and with a thick silver ring wrapped around her neck, was Cindy. She wasn’t in some nondescript set of storage buildings miles away from us. She was right here. We had finally found her.

I rushed into the shed. I heard Holly’s screams rung out behind me and a flurry of footsteps, scrambling in the same direction I was. I didn’t need to turn around and look to know that Kat, Holly, and very likely Joe were following me into the three hundred square foot box.

The little girl looked up at me. She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head. She didn’t look afraid. In fact, she looked more delighted than anything else. I slid toward her, falling on my knees as I looked her over.

“Are you part of the game?” She asked. She didn’t have the English accent that so heavily painted both her parents’ words. In fact, she sounded more like Kat. That made sense. After all, both of them had grown up in Florida.

I looked her up and down. She didn’t seem to be hurt, and I could tell from the infliction in her words and the way she smiled as she looked at me that she wasn’t in any pain.

So all that was left was to look at the thick silver band around her neck.

It covered her tiny neck in full, locking with hinges that didn’t seem to have any sort of release mechanism.

On the front there was a little screen. I knew what this was.

With sickening clarity, I understood what I was looking at.

Duncan might have lied about where Cindy was being held, but he was lying about the bomb.

It was right here, and it was strapped to that child’s neck.

“There we go,” Duncan said. Looking back at him, I could see him and Caroline standing on the other side of the doorway. “Now the endgame begins.”

And, with that, he slammed the door of the shed shut. I heard a twist and a red light illuminated atop the door. I didn’t need to be told we were locked in here. I knew it. Just like with the vault back in the United States, Nefarious had trapped us all again.