Page 37 of One Cry Too Loud (Coastal Crime Unit #9)

“ I s that what I think it is, Jack?” Holly asked me. I looked back at the woman. Her eyes were wide and swimming with tears. She had her hands clasped over her mouth and her entire body was shaking. “Is that-”

“Part of the game,” I said, remembering what Cindy had asked me just a second ago.

She didn’t know what was going on right now.

The little girl had no idea how much danger she was in, and I intended to keep it that way.

The last thing we needed was for this child to freak out about the fact that there was a bomb wrapped around her neck.

“It’s part of the game, Holly. Cindy here is playing a game. Isn’t that right?”

“With my grandparents,” Cindy said. “I’ve never had grandparents before. This is kind of fun.” She looked past me. “Who are your friends? Do they know how to play?”

“This is Kat,” I said, motioning to the woman.

Kat knelt down beside the little girl. “I actually don’t know the rules, but I’m sure you can teach me.” Ever the professional, Kat didn’t let any of her nerves show as she spoke. She ran a hand through the little girl’s hair and gave her a slight smile.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know the rules,” Cindy replied. “My grandparents said they would tell me once everybody got here.” She looked past Kat. “Maybe your other friends know.”

“This is Holly and that’s Joe,” I said, motioning to the pair.

“Holly?” Cindy asked, smiling wide. “Grandma says my first mom’s name is Holiday, and that’s kind of like Holly.”

“Did she tell you a lot about your first mom, sweetpea?” Holly asked. “What kind of things did she tell you?”

“Just that my first mom got into some trouble and couldn’t keep me,” Cindy said.

“She said that Holiday got confused and didn’t think she could give me to her mom.

So, she gave me to somebody else instead, and that’s how I got the mom I grew up with.

I had a dad once too, but he-” Her eyes flickered over to Joe. “Oh, hey. It’s you. You’re my dad.”

“You remember me?” Joe asked, his voice breaking.

“A little bit, but my mom still has a picture of you on the counter in her office,” Cindy said. “She said you got scared and left. What were you scared of?”

Joe blinked a few times and wiped a tear away from his face. “At this moment, I honestly can’t remember.”

“That’s okay,” Cindy said. “I get scared too. I guess it’s better not to remember something if it scares you too much.”

“You’re a very smart girl, Cindy,” I said. “Are you scared now?”

She shook her head, blonde curls-like Holly’s went flying. “No. I’m not scared of games. I like games.”

“How about this?” I asked, motioning to Holly. “Why don’t we let Holly look at that necklace you’re wearing? She’s gonna see if she can get it off, and you can really still while she does. It’s part of the game. How does that sound?”

“It sounds okay, but my grandpa says that the necklace can only come off when the game is over,” Cindy said. “I don’t know if I even want it to come off then. It’s really pretty.”

“It is really pretty,” I said, standing to meet Holly.

“I’m not an engineer, Jack,” she said nervously. “And I’m certainly not a ballistics expert.”

“You’re what we have,” I answered. “You’re the smartest person in here and the smartest person I know bar none. Do what you can.”

“And if I can’t?” She asked.

I looked back down at the girl. “Then we’ll find another way.”

I walked back toward the door of the shed. As I did, Duncan’s voice blared through the room. It was no longer distorted. It no longer sounded like Nefarious. Now, it was just him, just an old Englishman who had us by our throats.

“This is where it ends,” Duncan said.

“It doesn’t have to be,” I answered. “You said you did all of this because you wanted a second chance with Cindy. How is this-this game going to do that?” I was careful not to say anything that might scare the little girl.

Since Cindy thought this was a game, I was going to speak about things as if they were.

“We did this so my wife could have a second chance with her family , not just Cindy. This game is the only way we can do this, now that you’ve done what you’ve done.”

“We’re not the ones who took a child from her home,” I said.

“You found us,” Duncan said. “Even since that little cyber amateur broke through my systems and found a point of origin, I knew you would show up here. It was only a matter of time. Now that you have, we can put an end to all of this once and for all.”

“What does that mean?” I asked. “How do we do that?”

“ We don’t do anything. That was for Holly. She’s the one who decides how all of this ends.”

“Me?” Holly asked.

“This has always been about you,” Caroline added, also coming through whatever speaker system had been set up in this shed. “You’re the one who started it-all those years ago, and you’re the one who is going to decide how it ends.”

“Mother, I-”

“Do you remember The King’s Rhapsody, your sister’s final painting?” Caroline cut her daughter off. “It’s sitting on the Western wall.”

I looked and found an absolutely stunning painting on the wall.

It depicted a grand party outside of a castle.

The namesake king was featured prominently in the center.

He was dancing with a beautiful woman, but there was no smile on his face.

It spoke volumes in a single image, and even though we were here, trapped in this cell with a bomb beside us, I had to take a moment to appreciate the sophistication of it.

“There’s a box sitting on a table under it. It’s locked with a code. The contents of the box are for you,” Caroline said.

“I don’t want whatever is in that box, Mother,” Holly said.

“Oh yes you do, Holiday,” Caroline said. “You want it more than anything in the world, because what is in that box is the only thing that can save your daughter.”

“What are you talking about?” Holly asked, her jaw tight. “You’re lying to me. You’re lying to us all. I looked all around this stupid necklace. It’s too thin. There’s no explosive device in it.”

“You’re right,” Duncan said. “Call that another little fib of mine. I thought if you knew what it actually was, you’d find it a bit too distressing. You see, bombs are loud and messy, but you can strangle someone to death as quietly as you’d like.”

As he spoke, a countdown appeared on the small screen at the front of the necklace. It started at five minutes and continued counting backwards.

“What is this? What are you doing?” Holly asks.

“It tightens,” Duncan replied. “Slowly, but it does. Once that clock reaches zero, it’ll cut her off her airway. That sweet little girl, blood of your blood, will gasp for air until she dies in front of you. That is, unless you stop it.”

Holly threw herself in the other direction, scrambling across the floor on her hands and knees until she reached the box. She pulled it off the table. “It’s locked. There’s a combination!”

“Your favorite of Beethoven’s symphonies and then your sister’s favorite sonata,” Caroline replied.

“14,” Holly breathed out, fumbling at the combination lock. “14 and 6.”

She pulled the lock off and opened the case. As she looked down at it, her face went white. She reached in and pulled out a gun. “What is this about?” She asked.

“I know,” I said, remembering what happened back inside the vault, what Nefarious wanted Charlie and I to do.

“It’s fairly simple, Holiday,” Caroline started. “If you want to save your daughter, you have to kill the others.”