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SIXTY-FOUR

Josie’s hands clenched the steering wheel of Trinity’s rental car. On the horizon, the first rays of sunlight bled through an array of striated clouds, painting them pastel pink edged in fiery orange. A soft ding came from the dash, indicating that she had forty-five miles before she had to fill the gas tank. She’d been driving for hours, ever since she left Alec Slater at his hotel, both of them bewildered and hopeless. The smart thing to do would have been to return to Gretchen’s and get some sleep, but she couldn’t. It was as though her body was keeping vigil, like she wouldn’t sleep again until Noah was found.

Calls and texts to Gretchen and Turner had gone unanswered. With nothing left to do but wait, Josie started driving, visiting each place on the list of properties she’d made, starting with the closest one and working outward in an ever-expanding circle. It was pointless, since she couldn’t actually search any of them. She didn’t know what she expected. Noah trying to squeeze through a gap in the fencing around one of the construction sites? Or escaping through the window of one of Mace Phelan’s residences? Maybe some inexplicable psychic pull when she drove past the place they were keeping him? She’d been blindly following her instincts for days, counting on them to steer her in the right direction. If she was being honest with herself, she was counting on them to provide that psychic pull.

Obsessing over Erica Slater’s necklace kept her awake more effectively than any cup of coffee. She kept feeling the weight of it in her palm. The smooth metal against her fingertip. That flicker of recognition, too fleeting to pin down. The more she thought about it, she felt certain that she hadn’t seen the five in Lila’s box before she and Trinity had found them in her garage. Recalling the way the liner had separated—or been torn—from the inside of the lid, Josie wondered if Lila had hidden them there. But why? They were unremarkable. Even the men who’d broken into their house hadn’t taken them.

They weren’t valuable. Nothing in that box held any monetary value. Lila kept things because they meant something to her. Each object was a memento from one of her evil conquests. A symbol of the damage she’d so gleefully inflicted. Yet, she’d hidden these. Kept them but secreted them away in a hidden compartment. Were they a reminder of a failed conquest? Was that why she didn’t want to look at them every time she opened her trophy box? Then why give one to her daughter as a parting gift? According to Alec, even Erica didn’t know what it was. Or were they so precious to Lila that she didn’t want to risk losing them should someone access her collection?

Regardless, Josie couldn’t shake the feeling that the small, confounding items were the key to unlocking a crucial question that she hadn’t even articulated yet. She also had the sense that both question and answer were tantalizingly close, hovering just out of reach of her consciousness.

The chime of Josie’s cell phone jarred her from her thoughts. She’d connected it to the in-vehicle infotainment center so she could use the hands-free feature. Trinity’s name flashed across the console. When Josie answered, her voice filled the car.

“Where are you?”

“I’m…” she glanced at the GPS, “near Lewisburg. On my way to the state game lands in Clinton County.”

“What?” Her sister was not pleased. “Why in God’s name are you driving around in my rental car, with my laptop, in Lewisburg? And why are you going to Clinton County?”

She’d just circled Mace Phelan’s sprawling Lewisburg mansion a dozen times, her only takeaway that it was gaudy and not remote enough to effectively dispose of a body. It was, however, only a half hour from Williamsport and roughly an hour from Lock Haven. Erica could easily have been invited to one of Mace’s infamous parties. Now Josie was heading to his hunting lodge.

None of those things seemed like a sane answer to the question but she was talking to Trinity, so that’s exactly what Josie told her.

There was a long silence, followed by a sigh. “You made that list, didn’t you?”

Josie had shared all her crazy theories right before Trinity passed out in bed next to Trout.

“Forget it. I already know the answer and clearly the sleep deprivation has fried your brain because you didn’t wake me up and take me with you.”

“Trin, I don’t want you in danger. This could?—”

“Josie, we both know you can’t enter any of those properties without causing a series of events that could, at best, mess up your career, and at worst, give the men who took Noah a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

“At best, find him, Trin.”

Because Noah had been gone for eighty-one hours, and Josie was approaching the point of no return. What she didn’t say out loud, what she hadn’t even admitted to herself, was that if she found a property that seemed remote enough for Mace and his associates to do their dirty work, no rule, no threat to her career, not even the possibility of justice not being served, was going to stop her from searching for her husband.

“You’re right,” Trinity conceded. “But you still should have brought me. There’s no reason I can’t go onto these properties and start knocking on doors. I’m just a little old civilian journalist.”

Sleep deprivation really had gotten Josie’s wires crossed. “I’m turning around now to come get you.”