Page 56

FIFTY-FIVE

The muscles in Josie’s legs ached. Her chest felt tight. Perspiration poured down her forehead and into her eyes, searing them and blurring her vision. The cool night air did nothing to help her overheated body. All she could hear was her own labored breathing and her sneakers pounding against the asphalt. Light fixtures had recently been installed along the jogging paths in Denton’s city park, casting dull circles along the ground every five feet. Ahead of her, Drake’s lean form was briefly illuminated as he passed under each one. Soon, he was four lamps ahead of her and her irritation burned worse than the sweat stinging her corneas. This run had been his idea, and he was kicking her ass.

Maybe that was the point.

If he thought he was going to best her, he was out of his damn mind. Her rage was a living, breathing thing now just waiting for an opportunity to be unleashed. With a grunt, Josie willed her body to move faster. She blocked out all the pain—every sensation—and pumped her legs harder. One lamp. Two. Three. Four. As she passed Drake, adrenaline surged through her, propelling her forward more quickly. When she finally looked back, he was gone.

It was almost ten o’clock at night. Josie’s earlier headache was a distant memory thanks to a large dose of ibuprofen. Trinity had declined to run with them. She was probably at Gretchen’s snoring next to Trout at that very moment. Noah had been missing for seventy-two and a half hours. Three days and thirty minutes. This probably wasn’t the ideal time to go for a jog in the city park, but Josie knew that no would-be attacker stood a chance against her. Not when she was so close to her breaking point. Not when the tumult inside her was so desperate for an outlet.

By the time she reached the park entrance where they’d arrived, her T-shirt and shorts were soaked through. Fatigue spread through every inch of her, bone-deep, until she felt like she might collapse. Her muscles felt loose and jelly-like. For a few minutes, she was out of her head, floating over the snarl of questions and messy feelings that had inhabited every moment since Noah was abducted.

She knew she should stretch but all she could do was lie on her back across one of the benches as she tried to catch her breath. From the pocket along the side of her skintight running shorts, the hard shell of her phone case dug into her hip. She didn’t bother to adjust it. Minutes later, Drake appeared, looking like he hadn’t even broken a sweat.

Bastard.

With one large hand, he tapped her sneaker, and she drew her feet back, bending her knees to make room for him to sit. He leaned forward, elbows on his legs, and rested his chin on steepled fingers.

For a while, they just sat there and breathed. Josie watched moths and other flying bugs dive at the overhead lights that surrounded the little courtyard. The park was eerily quiet. All she could hear was a plane high above them, invisible in the night sky.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she blurted out.

Drake nodded. “I know.”

“I’m even more shut out of the investigations than before. I know why the rule is in place—why I can’t be anywhere near the case—any of the cases—but I can’t take this.”

She wasn’t sure if it was her physical and mental exhaustion or Drake’s stoicism that made her comfortable talking so honestly, but the words kept coming. There was no stopping them. No energy to stop them.

“We’re talking about Noah. My husband! This is my life!”

“I know.”

“I just want to punch someone.” Josie used her forearm to wipe the moisture from her forehead. “Everyone, actually.”

Drake looked at her. One corner of his mouth tipped upward. “That’s relatable.”

“Lila had a baby. A baby! Erica is a grown woman now, but still. It’s…I don’t know what it is.”

She had told Drake everything. All the things she shouldn’t even know because she was supposed to be home waiting for news. He would never breathe a word of it to another soul. Josie knew that beyond the shadow of a doubt.

“After chasing the Lila connection, this Baby Lila thing seems like it should be important but I’m not sure it matters at all.”

“Because Erica’s relationship to Lila doesn’t get you closer to finding Noah,” Drake said.

“Right,” Josie agreed. “It’s her relationship to the guy who stabbed Gina that’s most important and I don’t even know if she gave up his name.”

“If she didn’t talk to Gretchen, she’s not likely to talk to the state police,” Drake pushed a hand through his thick hair. “Like you said, there’s something else going on. She’s frightened. Whoever this guy is that she’s tangled up with, he’s got absolutely no qualms about stabbing a woman to death in broad daylight on a city street. He’s part of some crew that’s brazenly committing armed robberies and didn’t even blink at abducting a law enforcement officer.”

Josie was glad he said “abducted” and not “killed” even though any seasoned investigator would assume Noah had already been murdered. As far as they knew, he was alive. He had to be alive.

She sighed. “I know. It’s not a stretch that this guy could be abusive toward his girlfriend, even one as spunky as Erica.”

“This is how it is with domestic violence survivors,” Drake continued. “You know this. The most dangerous time for them is when they’re trying to leave. From the latest statistics I’ve seen, it’s something like seventy-five percent of women are killed when they attempt it. Clearly, that’s what this guy intended to do to Erica. He probably brought her to Denton, she saw an opportunity to escape, so she took it. Gina Phelan paid the price.”

All of it made perfect sense. The entire Gina Phelan case wrapped up neatly like a gift with a giant bow on top.

“It doesn’t really matter whether she talks or not,” Drake added. “Now that her identity is known, Denton PD or Heather Loughlin’s team will be able to track this guy down through phone and social media records. It’ll solve the Phelan murder, all those armed robberies, and we’ll find Noah.”

“I hope so.”

Everything fit together so perfectly. All the pieces fell into place. Why did every fiber of Josie’s being resist this narrative? Was it just her fear that Noah wouldn’t be found alive? Or was it easier for her to pick apart the tidy package than to think about her husband and what was going to happen to her life if she didn’t get him back?

Those messy feelings strained against the limits of her emotional armor.

“There are loose ends,” said Josie quickly, forcing herself to focus on anything besides the ever-widening cracks in that shield.

Drake swatted at a bug hovering near his head. “There always are.”

“But this is different. The Lila thing. Erica’s boyfriend was one of Lila’s victims. What are the odds that her daughter just happened to end up with one of her victims? Well, the son of one of her victims.”

Drake held out a hand to Josie and she took it, letting him pull her upright. He said, “Erica’s boyfriend was in trouble. That’s why he was searching for Lila’s trophy box. If Lila targeted his father after she finished ruining Alec Slater’s life, it’s possible that he tracked down Erica the same way you and Trinity did—using the article. Or maybe Lila told him how she screwed Alec over. She loved to taunt people, especially kids, from what you’ve said. Maybe he didn’t even know about Erica, or that she was Lila’s daughter, he was trying to get to Alec because he thought he had something to offer. Meeting Erica was incidental. Or he did know about Erica and thought she had the box?”

Josie thought about the brown lock of hair tied with blue ribbon. Was that Erica’s hair? She’d always assumed it was either hers or that of some other unlucky child Lila had victimized.

“Both of those explanations make sense, I guess,” she said. “If this kid was that desperate, he might have thought he could get something out of Alec, just like Lila had. Embezzlement is a white-collar crime, and Alec never went to prison. This kid wouldn’t have known from the article that he’d lost everything. Or, if Lila told him about Erica, then it stood to reason she would be in possession of the box. He clearly knew about it and its contents.”

They lapsed into silence. Moths batted against the park lights, making soft little taps. Fear and frustration oozed from the cracks in Josie’s mental shell. The quiet was dangerous now. It let in too many thoughts, too many feelings. She forced her attention back to the loose ends.

“Why was Gina Phelan outside the construction site?” It wasn’t a question she expected Drake to answer, and he didn’t. She continued, “Maybe she was looking for weaknesses in the perimeter or places they could install more cameras or lights, but she didn’t bring her clipboard.”

“Maybe she was walking to a nearby corner store for a snack,” Drake suggested.

It was plausible but Josie still didn’t buy it. She closed her eyes and replayed the day of Gina’s murder, from her arrival on the scene to when she left. Something about Gina’s actions that day had never sat right with her.

“She moved her car,” Josie said. “Drove it off the site to get lunch and parked it back inside near the trailer and then about forty minutes before the stabbing, she took it back out and parked it a few blocks away. Why?”

Drake remained silent, letting her work it out for herself.

“Even if she didn’t want her car inside the site for some reason, she could have just parked it on the street that runs behind it where all the other employees do. Not blocks away.”

“Maybe she was outside the site because she was walking to her car,” he said.

“She left her purse in the trailer. Her ID.”

“You said she had her fob. Maybe she was just retrieving something from her car.”

Josie thought about Gretchen’s interview with Erica and the way she’d used “us” and “we” when she spoke about her and Gina being attacked. Before that, she’d said that she hadn’t met Gina prior to the day of the stabbing. Josie believed she was telling the truth but the “us” and “we” made it sound like they were a unit. Like they’d been walking down the street together. Maybe Josie was reading too much into it, but a voice in the back of her mind whispered that she wasn’t.

“I think that Gina and Erica met before the stabbing,” she said. “I don’t know how or where or in what capacity, but I think they had already talked to one another. They were going somewhere together.”