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SEVENTEEN

Seconds later, Trinity turned her phone toward Josie and pressed play on a video she had gotten from a man who lived across the street, about five houses away. The timestamp was seven thirty-twop.m. Her heart sank as she watched. With his hoodie up and his head angled toward the other side of the street, there was no way to get a clear picture of him. There were four other videos of him walking back and forth between seven thirty-two and seven forty-nine but none of them provided a view of his face.

Trinity must have sensed her disappointment. “I’m sorry, Josie.”

“Don’t be. This is—it’s amazing that you did this for me, for Noah.”

Trinity tucked her phone into her pocket and went back to Noah’s side of the bed to sort through more of the mess. “Unfortunately, none of the other neighbors’ security cameras caught him. Too far from the street. Anyway, the guy might just be a random person, but it seems kind of suspicious to me.”

A barrage of questions waited just behind Josie’s lips, but Trinity kept going. “Another neighbor, who lives at the end of the block, said she drove past your house around nine, nine thirty and saw a big, black SUV parked across the driveway. She thought it was one of your colleagues’ or something. No idea if it was old or new. She didn’t see anyone in it or even near it, no memory of the letters or numbers on the license plate, but she remembered it because it had mud crusted all over the tires and wheel wells.”

“She saw that at nine thirty at night?” Josie asked. While her body picked up the clothes at her feet, folded them, and put them back into the dresser, her professional mind whirred to life. Sweet, purposeful relief. This was where she was at her steadiest, her sturdiest. No chaotic emotions sneaking up on her, trying to crack her open.

Trinity found the comforter on the floor and shook it out. “Only because of her headlights. A different neighbor came home from work around ten and he didn’t see any vehicles in your driveway except Noah’s.”

Which meant they’d taken Noah sometime between nine thirty and ten.

“Shit. Heather wouldn’t tell me if they’d gotten the results of the geofence or not. If that guy you showed me had a cell phone or the SUV had a working infotainment center in it, if any of the people in it had cell phones, they might be able to find them that way.”

Noah had been missing approximately thirteen hours. Shouldn’t Heather’s team have something by now?

Trinity folded the comforter and put it at the foot of the bed. “These guys were smart enough to jam your Wi-Fi—only yours—would they be dumb enough to show up in a geofence?”

It was a good point. Trinity knew what a geofence was not just from her years of crime reporting but because she spent a lot of time with Josie, Noah, and Drake who were all in law enforcement. The average person might not know what a geofence was but anyone with half a brain would realize that their smart devices were trackable. Come to think of it, Turner’s geofence warrants on the armed robberies had turned up nothing.

“You’re right,” said Josie. “The SUV that woman saw in our driveway—did it have a lot of mud on it?”

“Enough for her to notice.”

If the SUV was that dirty, it might have left remnants of the dried mud in the driveway. Josie had pulled right past it, maybe even over it. So had probably a dozen police vehicles. It was a long shot but if any samples could be retrieved, their analysis might tell them something about where the truck had been and possibly, where it had gone.

Another thought occurred to her. The Denton PD also had LPRs, or license plate readers, which scanned the license plates of all moving and parked vehicles nearby and flagged any that had been stolen, had expired tags, or had warrants out on them. The department had installed LPRs on three cruisers. If any of them had been stationed or driving nearby at the time, they might have caught the plate number of the SUV, as well as its owner.

“Did any of the neighbors have video of the SUV?” asked Josie.

“None that I talked to,” Trinity said.

Even if no one on their street had caught the SUV on camera, all residential and commercial surveillance cameras within several blocks could be checked to see if any of them had. Denton’s responding officers or Heather’s team might have been able to follow its path via security footage.

Although wouldn’t Josie have heard by now if there were any developments regarding the SUV? Wouldn’t one of her colleagues have mentioned it? Let it slip? Wouldn’t they have found it by now? She hated not being in charge of the investigation. However, she was sure her department had done all of these things, and if they hadn’t, the state police would have. “Do you know if the ERT or the state police lab tried to get samples of the dried mud from the driveway?”

Trinity picked up Noah’s pillow and placed it at the head of the bed. “I’m sure they did.”

But what if they didn’t?

This was exactly the thing Josie did that drove Turner crazy. She always worried that other law enforcement officers would miss something critical. The only way to ensure that didn’t happen was to do everything herself or at least double-check everything herself. That wasn’t realistic at all, though, and Josie had had to learn to trust her colleagues to do their jobs. It had never been this hard.

As if sensing Josie’s internal strife, Trinity said, “I’ll ask Kyle to find out.”

She felt the familiar twinge of discomfort at her sister’s use of Turner’s first name. Josie had the feeling that there was much more to the story of the two of them, but all she’d been able to get out of either of them were vague details. At his old department, Turner had solved a famous cold case involving the murders of several high-end escorts. Trinity had interviewed him for a national morning show she was anchoring at the time. After that, they sometimes had lunch when he was in New York City. They both said nothing romantic had happened. Trinity insisted he was a perfect gentleman. It didn’t add up, but Josie didn’t have the time or the energy to push the issue right now.

“He can’t give out information on an ongoing investigation,” Josie said. “Even if he was privy to details, which he’s not.”

But he would find out what he could. She knew he would. Not for Josie, but her sister was another matter.

“He trusts me and I wouldn’t screw him over.” Trinity picked her way toward Josie, scanning the floor. “They took your entire jewelry box?”

Josie shook her head. “That was in pieces. The state police took the remnants into evidence. Hopefully they’ll get prints or DNA from it. They’ll start checking in with pawn shops to see if someone brings any of it in.”

That’s what Denton PD had been doing with respect to the articles stolen in the armed robberies. As far as Josie knew, nothing had turned up yet.

“I’ll get you a new one,” Trinity promised.

It wasn’t the first time a jewelry box Josie owned had been destroyed. This wasn’t even the first time her home had been invaded and trashed, although the last time had been before Noah lived with her and the damage hadn’t been so widespread. The last time was to intimidate her.

Lila Jensen, her abductor, the woman she believed was her biological mother for thirty years, had returned to wreak havoc on Josie’s adult life. She had almost killed both Josie and Trinity and very nearly destroyed everything Josie had worked to build. Even though Lila had used baby Josie to get back together with an old boyfriend, Eli Matson, she’d hated her. Back then, there were no mail-in paternity or DNA tests. When Lila showed up at Eli’s home a year after he dumped her and told him Josie was his daughter, he believed her.

He’d loved Josie fiercely, which wasn’t part of Lila’s plan. When Josie was six, he’d died, leaving her alone with Lila who was then free to abuse Josie in horrific ways. His mother Lisette, the only grandmother Josie had ever known, had fought doggedly for years to get custody of Josie. Eventually, she paid Lila to leave, and Josie’s life had been blessedly free of Lila’s wrath for sixteen years. When she returned, like a tornado upending everything about Josie’s life, it was, in her words, to “destroy everything you love.” Hiring men to break into her home, vandalize it, and steal a few items of jewelry had just been for fun.

But Lila was long dead, and Josie couldn’t shake the feeling that this time wasn’t only about stealing. Why trash the entire house and only take jewelry but no electronics?

They were looking for something. Josie was certain of it. She just couldn’t figure out what.