Page 11 of One Cry Too Loud
“He didn’t,” Holly said.
“A hole in the front of a pottery studio would say otherwise,” I replied.
“If he wanted to kill me, I’d already be dead. That was a warning,” Holly responded.
“The only reason you’re not dead is because I saved you,” I reminded her.
“Listen,” she sighed. “I know this is hard to understand, but you don’t know Joe. He wouldn’t hurt me. He loved me. Hestillloves me. That’s why he was watching me, watching what I did online. It has to be.”
My eyes went wide as I grew closer to the woman. “Do you-Do youwanthim to still be in love with you, Holly?”
“Yes,” she said quickly. “But not for the reason you’re probably thinking. He disgusts me. I don’t ever want anything todo with him ever again. The idea of him makes my skin crawl, but if he loves me, maybe that’ll stop him from hurting my daughter. Maybe I can use that as leverage to get her back.”
“I get it now,” I said, nodding. “That little girl has been gone for a week. You want to believe that Joe wouldn’t hurt anyone who you care about because, if that’s true, it means he wouldn’t hurt your daughter either. It means she’s safe and we’re not too late to stop him from-”
“I just-I know him! That’s all. I know him,” she said.
“Right,” I said, nodding. Turning to Nate, I continued. “If you’d like to pull your head out of your phone and listen, I think-”
“I have been listening,” Nate said, still looking down at his phone. “And you’re right. Her reasons are nothing more than a coping mechanism, and we can’t work within the confines of her metaphorical security blanket.” He finally looked up, but his eyes didn’t meet mine. They met Holly’s. “We’re doing the mission. Of course, we are, but it’s too dangerous this way. I’m sorry, Holly. I hate to do this, but if we’re going to do this, everyone needs to know everything.” He shook his head. “The secret is out.”
CHAPTER 8
“So, that’s what it is,” Holly said, pulling at her fingers as she took a seat in the War Room. She wasn’t behind her series of monitors this time, though. Today, Holly was sitting in the main area with the rest of us. Looking at her, that struck me as strange. The way she moved, the way she straightened her skirt as she looked around the room; it was like she was trying to hide. I wondered, for a moment, if this had to do with more than just her telling her story today. I wondered if, in addition to allowing her to do her job, those monitors and that desk maybe helped hide her. I wondered if that was something the woman wanted.
She looked up at Kat and then, blinking a few times in a row,she let her eyes drift to Charlie for just a moment. It was just for a second, but in that second, I saw an extra layer of something in her eyes. As much as she might have been afraid for Kat to know all of this, she seemed even more afraid of Charlie knowing.
“I’m sorry,” she finally said.
“Who on earth are you apologizing to?” Kat asked. The woman shook her head, stood from her seat, and moved as closeas she could to Holly. From there, she dropped to her knees so that she was on eye level with the computer genius.
“To you,” Holly said. Her eyes flickered to Charlie again. “To him. To all of you.”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” Kat said, taking the woman’s hand and squeezing it.
“I lied to you,” she said. “I almost got myself killed. I almost got Jack and Nate killed. I got some poor young girl hurt, and it was all because I lied.”
“You don’t owe your past to us, “ Kat said. “We don’t get to know every inch of your history just because we work together.” She wiped a tear from the woman’s face, pushing her glasses a bit up the bridge of her nose. “We don’t even get to know it because we’re friends…or because we’re practically family.”
“We are, aren’t we?” Holly asked, breathing in deeply as though she was trying to steady herself, as though she was trying to make herself steel. “We’re family, aren’t we?”
“We’re the closest thing to family that I’ve known in years,” Kat answered.
“I just, I didn’t know what it would mean if you knew,” Holly answered, looking down at the floor. “I spent so long trying to keep this secret. I even kept it from myself for a while. I think I convinced myself that it wasn’t real, that it was just some dream or something. Maybe part of me wanted it to be. Does that make me awful, Kat? Does the idea that I wanted my daughter not to be real make me a terrible person?”
Kat looked over at me, and the pain in her eyes broke my heart.
“You are one of the kindest, most charitable people I have ever known in my life. Your heart could fill up a football field. There isn’t anything about you that I would consider as awful, Holly. That’s who you are.” She took a slow, methodical breath. “You are something else, though. You’re traumatized. You havebeen threatened and hurt and screwed over by a person who did not deserve you. I won’t call him a man, Holly, because men don’t do what he did. Men stand behind their choices. Men do the right thing. Men are a boon to the women they interact with and they take pride in the lives they build, create, and better. He’s no man, Holly. What he was, and what I assume he is, is a scoundrel and waste of space. What is he, in addition to a terrible cyber criminal who has bitten off more than he can chew, is someone who has missed the opportunity to have you in his life. And, Holly, as someone who has had the immense honor of knowing you, I could tell him that the mistake he’s made is monumental. He doesn’t get to know how amazing you are. He doesn’t get to know how absolutely life changing knowing you is. He has to do without that, and I pity him.”
“Thank you, Kat,” Holly said, crying openly.
“Don’t thank me. I’m not saying any of that to make you feel better. I’m saying it because it’s true. Something else is true too, though,” Kat said. “Wewillfind your daughter. Wewillget her back to her adoptive mother, and wewillmake sure the person behind it pays the price for what he’s done to that little girl.”
“He’s powerful, Kat,” Holly said, her voice cracking. “He’s dangerous.”
“So am I,” she said, squeezing the Englishwoman’s hand. “So are we. We’ve fought back bigger and badder monsters than him, and we’ll do it again. This time, though, I’m doing it for you, Holly. I’m doing it because you’re amazing and you deserve it.”
“I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” Holly said, tears rolling down her cheeks.
