Page 52 of The Couple’s Secret (Detective Josie Quinn #23)
Forty-Eight
Heat blasted through the vents of Josie’s SUV.
Water dripped and sloshed and splashed across the upholstery, the dash, and the console.
The rain still came down in sheets. Even on the highest setting, her windshield wipers barely kept up.
The chatter of her portable radio filled the vehicle.
The hum of the heater and the pounding of the rain nearly drowned it out.
Josie had left At Your Disposal immediately after giving the paramedics directions to the back of the lot.
Zane was in good hands and Gretchen could handle the scene there.
Since Jackson’s truck was no longer available, he had calmly walked up to Ellyn’s desk and asked to borrow the keys to her car, citing an emergency that had to do with Captain Whiskers.
Josie was about to show him the meaning of emergency. Also, someone needed to take Captain Whiskers into protective custody.
She used the hands-free feature to call dispatch and give them the tag number, make and model of Ellyn Mann’s vehicle as well as Jackson Wright’s name and description.
Within moments, every unit in the city would be on the lookout for him although Josie was fairly certain she already knew where he was headed.
In reality there was nowhere for him to hide.
Running had been a knee-jerk reaction. He hadn’t been thinking clearly.
Sometimes that worked in favor of the police and other times it benefited the suspect.
In this case, Josie wasn’t sure what the hell to think.
Mentally replaying everything he’d said up until the moment he tipped the Coke machine onto his brother, she realized that he hadn’t actually admitted to any criminal acts.
Not even one.
But she knew now that he was behind it all. Denton PD wouldn’t be able to charge him or even hold him in connection with the murders of Tobias, Cora, and Riley but they could definitely arrest and detain him for what he’d just done to Zane. Then she would hand him his reckoning.
Traffic was backed up as she left South Denton and approached the central part of the city.
The other drivers moved sluggishly, probably because they saw what she saw when they looked at the road ahead—distorted whorls of color and light, buildings that looked like melted candles, and bumpers that were nothing more than ink splotches.
Pulling to a stop behind a long line of unmoving vehicles at a green light, she threw her SUV into park and got out.
It took only seconds to find the emergency beacon she kept in her hatchback.
Once it was affixed to her roof and flashing red, the cars in front of her began to part.
She zigzagged through them until she found a cross street and turned onto it, weaving through a series of side streets at a speed that bordered on unsafe given the conditions.
Now that she was out of the rain, away from the horrific scene on the At Your Disposal lot, feeling returned to her body.
A bone-deep cold from being damp through and through enveloped her.
A minor shift in her seat and the chafing of the thick seams of her pants and the straps and underwires of her bra against her skin stung painfully.
Her fingers ached. There were cuts and abrasions on her forearms. She had no idea where those came from.
Probably from when she tore apart the storage area in her frenzy to find anything she could use to give Zane some cover.
The dull throb in her lower back was the worst.
All of it would have to wait.
She powered through a deep puddle that had formed at the base of the hill she was approaching. Water gushed in waves in her wake.
Then her heart did a double-tap because in front of her, on the exact same road that she and Gretchen had been traveling along on the day they got the call for a car in the river, was Jackson Wright.
Josie didn’t even need to confirm the license plate number—not that she could in this weather—because she had known before she even fired up her SUV that there was only one place he was going.
Back to the scene of his crimes.
With him in her sights, she contacted dispatch again to let them know she had found him and rattle off the location so that backup units could be sent. Ahead of her, the sedan accelerated. He’d seen the beacon. He knew he was caught.
He kept going, speeding up as much as he dared, as much as Ellyn’s car could handle.
Josie wondered if he would still head for the boat ramp or if he’d try to outrun her.
There was a sort of fatalism in choosing the boat ramp.
A desperate defeat. She got her answer when he took the turn onto the road that led down to the abandoned state mental hospital so hard that he nearly spun out.
Josie’s SUV handled the corner perfectly. Except that once she made the turn, it was clear that Jackson was drawing ahead of her at an alarming rate.
“Shit.”
He wasn’t going to the boat ramp. He was going to crash through the trees at the bottom of the road and sail straight into the river—into the same watery grave where he'd once left Tobias and Cora.
That wasn’t happening.
Josie punched the gas, holding the pedal down so hard that her foot ached.
The engine roared and the silky glide of the tires on the road told her she was dangerously close to hydroplaning.
The muscles in her shoulder blades pulled taut.
Her knuckles whitened as her fingers clenched around the steering wheel.
The back of the sedan got closer, a dark red blotch strobing between the manic swipes of the windshield wipers.
The trees at the bottom of the hill loomed ahead, an amorphous green blob flying toward them at terminal velocity.
Jackson was going entirely too fast to make the turnoff onto the street that ran parallel to the river.
If she needed more reassurance that she was doing the right thing, that was it.
Her heart fluttered, skipped a beat, then another, and finally thundered back to life, pounding so hard she heard it in her ears.
This was it. She had one shot at this and if she didn’t get it right, didn’t pull it off before they reached the bottom, Jackson was as good as dead.
Her chances didn’t look that good either.
“Wren.”
The name pushed past her lips, threatening to break the seal on the tornadic inner conflict she now lived with: give one hundred percent on the job, or shirk the more dangerous parts to ensure that she was alive and present for the girl whose care she’d been gifted?
In this line of work, anything less than one hundred percent was a betrayal of her oath to serve and protect and yet, now, for Josie, there was a person whose needs and safety and well-being trumped every other soul in the world.
But Dex hadn’t entrusted her with his daughter because she gave in to her fears.
Only a few feet away now. The sedan shimmied but quickly regained control.
The wall of trees was so close now. This was it.
She had to trust herself even though she hadn’t done the PIT maneuver since she was on patrol.
That was Precision Immobilization Technique, a fairly safe way to stop a fleeing vehicle.
Usually there was a lot more road to work with.
She ignored her galloping heart and the tightness in her chest. Ignored the frantic thwip thwip of the wipers, the hard drum of the rain on the roof and windows. Dismissed the shitty visibility. She could do this. She would do this.
Finally, she was almost touching Jackson’s bumper.
Yanking the steering wheel to the right, she gave herself enough room to pull up beside him but just until the front of her SUV overlapped with the back of his sedan by a few feet.
Then she gave the wheel a jerk back to the left, hitting the rear quarter panel of his vehicle with the left-side bumper of her own.
On contact, she gave her steering wheel a quarter turn toward the sedan just as it spun out in a one hundred eighty-degree turn.
Josie instantly straightened out her SUV, slamming on the brakes.
She passed the sedan as it slid onto the shoulder of the road and finally came to rest, facing uphill.
A film of sweat coated her forehead, her cheeks, the back of her neck.
Her palms left sweaty impressions around the steering wheel as she let go and got out of her SUV.
The closer she got to the sedan, the less she felt the vise squeezing her chest. As she strode toward his door, her pistol drawn, he lifted his head, the battle in his midnight-blue eyes apparent, even now.
Keep trying to run or face his fate?
Whatever he saw on Josie’s face made the decision for him. Before she barked a single instruction, he lifted both hands in surrender.