Page 4 of The Couple’s Secret (Detective Josie Quinn #23)

Three

Denton Police headquarters was located in the most densely packed part of the city, its historic central district.

The building towered over the others along its main thoroughfare, as imposing as a castle with its gray stone facade, bell tower, and arched double-casement windows.

Seventy years ago, it had been converted from the town hall into the police station.

Josie loved the old building. Each time she pulled into the municipal parking lot behind it and entered on the ground floor, a sense of calm washed over her.

Everything always made sense at work.

Even while investigating the most difficult and unpredictable cases, there were always rules and procedures to rely on. They lent a consistency that Josie had never found in any other place in her life. Except, perhaps, with Noah.

She trudged up the stairs to the second-floor great room.

It was a large, open area filled with desks, filing cabinets, and a printer that was arguably as old as her.

Most of the workstations were used by uniformed officers for completing paperwork or making phone calls.

Only five of the others were permanently assigned.

One belonged to their press liaison, Amber Watts.

Josie, Noah, and the other two members of their investigative team, Detectives Gretchen Palmer and Kyle Turner, held the remaining desks.

They had all been pushed together in the center of the room, forming a rectangle.

It was supposed to make them feel as though they were sitting around a table together while they discussed open cases and gave change-of-shift reports, but with Turner now directly across from her, Josie hated the idea more and more.

“Hey.” Noah turned from his computer and smiled at her.

All the anxiety and sadness from earlier, at the house, drained away. He’d always had a calming effect on her. She didn’t remember needing it as much as she had since Wren came into their lives. Then again, she’d never been so afraid of screwing something up as she was with Dex’s daughter.

“You lose some weight since yesterday, Quinn?” said Turner.

As usual, he was dressed in a suit like he was headed to court for testimony.

Leaning back in his chair, he clutched his cell phone in one hand while his thumb scrolled endlessly.

With the other hand he squeezed a small foam basketball.

The day he started, he’d affixed a tiny net to his desktop.

Josie rarely saw him make a basket. It had been more than two years since their colleague, Detective Finn Mettner, was killed in the line of duty.

Just over a year since Turner joined their team.

Whereas Mettner had been fastidious, prompt, and respectful, Turner was a mess.

His reports were subpar and usually late.

He tended to disappear for long stretches of time during shifts with no explanation.

There was also the matter of his sexist and inappropriate remarks, though he was learning to behave himself there.

To say working with Turner had been an adjustment was the understatement of the century.

Josie ignored him.

“Oh, what? You’re not talking to me today?” Turner goaded.

Noah’s brow furrowed as she walked toward him and leaned a hip against the edge of his desk. He touched the fabric of the shirt where she’d tucked as much of it in as possible. “Is this mine?”

“Yes,” she said. Lowering her voice, she filled him in on the lip gloss catastrophe.

“Did you talk to her?”

Josie didn’t respond.

Noah grimaced. “It’s going to be expensive to replace all those clothes. I understand she didn’t do it on purpose, but this is definitely something that needs to be addressed.”

Josie looked away from him. At her back, she could hear Turner’s chair creak. She almost wished he’d throw his stupid basketball and miss so she didn’t have to have this conversation.

“Josie,” Noah said softly. “This is uncharted territory for all of us. Wren’s loss is pretty raw right now. She’ll come around.”

“Will she?”

The unspoken questions swirled at the front of her mind. What if they couldn’t do this? What if they couldn’t give Wren what she needed? What if they were never meant to be parents—of any kind? What if they just weren’t cut out for it?

Noah didn’t answer.

“She hates us,” Josie said. “Me more than you but still, she hates us.”

For the longest time, Josie hadn’t even wanted children.

After working through some of her past traumas, she’d changed her mind only to find out that she had fertility issues that would make it extremely difficult for her to get pregnant.

The fertility treatment options open to them were far too costly given their salaries, and were not guaranteed to work.

They’d spent the better part of last year getting approved to adopt a baby.

They’d even started painting the nursery.

Then their lives were turned upside down.

Noah was abducted and their approval was revoked.

They hadn’t even had a chance to fully process the news when Wren came into their lives.

They’d been preparing for an infant, not a grieving teenager.

Josie wasn’t sure why, but the stakes felt so much higher with Wren.

It seemed like the potential to fail her was so much bigger than it might have been with a baby, though she wasn’t exactly sure why.

More than Josie wanted anything else in the world, she wanted to be the guardian that Wren needed.

“That’s not true,” said Noah. “She doesn’t hate us.”

“Come on, Noah. She barely speaks to either of us and yet, she literally gets along with everyone else in our lives like they’re her family.”

It was true. Wren was a completely different person when she was around other people.

Open, kind, good-humored, interested, funny, talkative.

She absolutely adored Josie’s twin sister, Trinity Payne, a famous television journalist, and her FBI agent fiancé, Drake Nally.

Josie’s parents had finally moved to Denton back in March, and watching the three of them together, it would be easy to assume that Wren was their daughter.

Even the Chief of Police, Bob Chitwood, and his much younger sister, Daisy, who was college-age now, got to experience Wren at her most relaxed.

So did Gretchen and her adult daughter, Paula.

Noah frowned.

“You know I’m right,” said Josie. “She responds to everyone except us.”

Something soft hit the back of Josie’s neck. The foam basketball fell and bounced along Noah’s desk. Turner said, “Of course she hates you.”

Josie turned her body, staring at him in disbelief. “Are you kidding me right now? Eavesdropping?”

Turner held one of his large palms up, signaling for one of them to return the ball. “You’re not that quiet, lovebirds.”

Noah snatched it from the desk and scowled at Turner. “Stay out of this.”

Turner never had learned to follow instructions.

Rocking in his chair, he shrugged. “It’s not a criticism, LT.

I’m just saying. This kid lost her mom, right?

Then she spends a few years with Dad, finally gets settled in and starts to feel all happy again and then bam!

Dad dies, too, and he leaves her with two people she’s never met and now she has to start over. ”

Josie glanced at Noah to see that the shock in his expression matched her own.

When neither of them spoke, Turner kept going.

“Listen, the one thing this kid knows for sure, with one hundred percent certainty based on her experience, is that the people who are supposed to take care of her die. That’s a fact.

Why would she want to get close to the third parent or parents in line?

You’ll probably die, right? In her mind, anyway.

Plus, you’re law enforcement, so you’ve got that inherent risk of death and all that shit.

Just be glad she wasn’t here for the whole home invasion and abduction thing.

You would have never gained her trust after that. ”

Studying him, Josie wondered if she’d slipped into some alternate universe when she walked through the stairwell door.

Turner looked the same with his unruly brown curls threaded with gray, deep-set blue eyes, neatly trimmed beard and perpetual smirk, but this guy was definitely not the crass, thoughtless, irritating douchebag she’d come to know and want to throat-punch.

He was almost…insightful. Even the therapist Wren saw hadn’t mentioned this.

“Okay.” Noah tossed the ball across the desks. “What should we do?”

Turner laughed, aiming for and missing another basket. “How the hell should I know? Do I seem like the kind of guy who knows how to handle an emotionally scarred teenager?”

He definitely didn’t. Then again, Josie knew absolutely nothing about Turner outside of work.

She knew he’d come from a department a little larger than Denton and that he’d solved a very famous case involving high-end escorts that had garnered a lot of press coverage.

That was it. They had never discussed each other’s personal lives.

The only reason he knew so much about theirs was because of his eavesdropping and his work on Noah’s abduction case last year.

He didn’t wear a wedding band, but she had no idea whether he’d ever been married or if he had a girlfriend or even children.

Did he have children? The thought made her stomach turn. “How do you know this stuff?” she asked.

Turner stood and walked around until he was standing in front of her. He towered over her. Amusement danced in his eyes but now, having worked together for a year, Josie noted the tiny flicker of something else. It lasted the span of a heartbeat. Pain? Vulnerability? She couldn’t tell.

“Seriously,” she said. “How do you know this stuff?”

He pulled out a crumpled dollar bill from his jacket pocket. “After-school special, sweetheart.”

With that, he stepped to the side and stuffed the dollar into a money-packed jar on Josie’s desk.

Noah had instituted the jar system shortly after Turner joined the team.

It was a form of operant conditioning, he’d explained.

Behavior that was punished was less likely to occur in the future.

Well, that was the hope. Every time Turner called Josie “sweetheart” or “honey,” he had to place a dollar in her jar.

Any time he made an inappropriate comment, he owed her a dollar.

He owed Gretchen a dollar whenever he called her “Parker” instead of her actual name, Palmer.

It worked both ways. If Josie called him a douchebag to his face, she put a dollar in his jar.

Same with Gretchen, though her preferred name for him was “jackass.”

These days, the dollars were far more likely to find their way into a jar when one of them intentionally broke the rules, like Turner just had.

Like Gretchen did as she sailed through the door, a cupholder in one hand and a dollar in the other. As she passed Turner, she slapped it into his waiting hand. “Afternoon, jackass.”

He grinned at her back. “Detective Palmer, you’re in a fine mood today.”

Gretchen didn’t spare him a glance as she settled behind her desk, handing a coffee across to Josie. “I’ll be in a better mood when you get out of here. Let the real police handle shit.”

It was the most pleasant these two had ever been to one another.

Turner studied the bill thoughtfully and Josie knew he was weighing his options. Poke the bear or stand down?

Noah cleared his throat, drawing Turner’s attention. “Take the money, Detective.”

Gretchen didn’t acknowledge any of it. She booted up her computer and took her reading glasses from the top of her head where they were frequently nestled in her short, spiked brown and gray hair.

Josie folded her arms across her chest. “Or tell us where all this insight into the hearts of teenagers really came from.”

Turner stuffed the bill into his pocket and gave her a blinding smile, followed by a wink. “Nah. I’ve got to maintain my air of mystery. How else am I gonna get you to hang on my every word, Quinn?”

Before she could respond, he turned and sauntered off, disappearing into the stairwell.

“Good riddance,” Gretchen muttered.

“Well,” said Noah. “I guess I’m giving the report myself.”

He gave them a rundown of all pertinent information, then handed Josie a file. “I didn’t have a chance to go speak with this woman, so if you can get out to her place and take down her statement, grab any documents or anything else she’s got, that’d be great.”

Josie cracked it open, immediately recognizing the name. The poor woman had a stalker—one savvy enough to be untraceable thanks to modern technology. She’d been contacting police and documenting everything for the past year.

“We’ll go see her first thing,” Josie said.

Noah stood and took her hand, squeezing it. He was headed home now that she was on duty. They’d been working a lot of opposite shifts to ensure that one of them was almost always at the house. “Want me to talk to Wren?”

What Josie wanted was to wrap her arms around his waist and bury her head in his chest. It was hard not to touch him whenever they were in the same room after what had happened last year, but they’d always been discreet at work.

Still, with only Gretchen in the room, neither of them was worried about a little hand-holding and possibly a chaste kiss.

“No,” said Josie. “I need to be the one to do it. Just try to get a read on her, will you? She’s more likely to talk to you than me. I’m pretty positive she snuck into our room and went through my nightstand to read Dex’s letter. That also needs to be addressed.”

“I can do that,” he said. “It’s my room, too.”

“No. I need practice doing this whole guardian thing. Let me handle it. I’ll figure out how to talk to her but for now, can you just check in with her? I just want her to be okay.”

“I’ll do my best.” Noah pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Josie, we can do this, you know.”

She smiled, trying to look as though she believed him, but he saw right through that. Chuckling, he gave her one last, light kiss and whispered, “Just wait. Everything will work out.”

She wished she could be as optimistic as him.