Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn Book 6)(32)

The phone rang again, making them all jump. Amy bobbled it in her hands. “It’s Jaclyn again.”

Colin said, “Don’t.”

Josie reached over and swiped the answer icon. She nodded and Amy pressed the phone to her ear. When she said hello, her voice could be heard from a small speaker on the other end of the table. But the voice that answered her was not female—not Jaclyn. It was male—deep and cold.

“Hello, Amy.”

It felt like all the air in the room had been sucked out. Colin sprang out of his chair. The two seated agents began tapping away at their laptops. Oaks leaned into the living room and waved Mettner in. Amy reached out a hand and Josie took it.

“Who is this?” Amy asked.

The man laughed. “I’m the man you’ve been waiting for. You have been waiting for me to call, haven’t you? The police let you see my note, didn’t they?”

Amy turned to Josie, eyes wide and uncertain. Josie mouthed the words: Ask him about Lucy.

With a small nod, Amy asked, “Where’s Lucy?”

Oaks and Mettner leaned over the shoulder of one of the agents, looking at the laptop screen. Oaks read off the address in a low voice and Mettner said, “We can be there in ten.”

“We were already there once today after the nanny gave us permission to search her apartment. Take the unit outside,” Oaks told him as Mettner ran out the door.

On the phone, the kidnapper laughed. “Oh, Amy. You really don’t understand what’s happening, do you?”

“Where is my daughter?” she shrieked.

“I can’t tell you,” he replied. The glee in his tone made rage boil in Josie’s stomach.

Colin went over to his wife. He held out his hand for the phone, but she turned away, releasing Josie’s hand and moving into the corner of the room. “What do you want?” she asked.

“What do I want?” he echoed. “What I want is to know how it feels, Amy?”

“How what feels?”

“Oh come on now, Amy. We both know what I’m talking about.”

Her voice was a screech. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I want my daughter back. Give me my daughter back.”

“Only if you tell me how it feels, Amy. How does it feel?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Just tell me what you want. We’ll do anything. We just want Lucy back. Just bring her back to me.”

“You know I can’t do that, Amy.”

“You can. Just tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you.”

“I want you to wait.”

The line went dead.





Nineteen





Oaks rushed from the room. Amy sank to the floor, sobbing. Colin dropped to his knees and gathered his wife into his arms. He held her tightly, whispering into her ear. It took a moment for Josie to realize what he was saying. “It’s okay. You did great. We can still get her back.”

“I lost her,” Amy cried. “I lost her again.”

“No,” Colin told her. “You didn’t lose her. You asked him what he wanted. That’s what they told us to do, remember? Ask him what he wanted. You did exactly what you were supposed to do.”

“He doesn’t want anything,” Amy said.

“It’s a game,” Josie said. “He’s playing some kind of sick game. He’ll call back.”

She walked over to the agent that Oaks and Mettner had been speaking with, whose screen showed the address of a small apartment complex near the university. She pointed to the screen. “I’m going there.”

The man nodded. “We’ve already got several teams en route. I’ll radio in and let them know you’ll be joining them.”

Outside, Josie jogged through a throng of reporters to get to her car. She sped off in the direction of Jaclyn Underwood’s apartment. Amy and Colin were so upset and so focused on getting Lucy back, that it hadn’t yet occurred to either of them to wonder why the kidnapper was calling from Jaclyn’s cell phone. Jaclyn—who had already been vetted by the FBI and who had only returned to Denton hours ago, if that.

Josie’s heart gave a wobbly beat as she pulled down Jaclyn’s street. Emergency vehicles clogged the area in front of the complex, a two-story blocky building with twelve units on each floor. Every unit had its own small patio—with the upstairs units boasting balconies. There was a main entrance in the front, center of the building. FBI agents jogged back and forth from this entrance to their vehicles. The Evidence Response van was already there. Josie’s eyes tracked the lower units until she found Mettner standing outside one of the patios on the end unit.

“Mett,” she called as she approached him.

He turned to look at her, and she could tell by the pallor of his skin that what she’d suspected when she left the Ross home was true.

“The nanny’s dead,” Mettner said. “He must have just left here. We’ve got local units out searching the streets while the FBI processes the scene here.”

“Where’s Oaks?”

“Inside. Go around the front.”

Josie showed her credentials to the agent at the front door, noting the overhead camera at the entryway. Inside, she went down a short hallway and then turned left. At the end of the hall was another agent with a clipboard. Beside him was a female agent doling out protective equipment. Josie donned a Tyvek suit, skull cap, booties and gloves and stepped through the door. She counted three agents processing the scene—taking photos, vacuuming for fibers and dusting for prints. The apartment was small, it’s living area only big enough for a loveseat across from a small table with a television on top of it. Behind the television, gauzy curtains swayed. Beyond them, Josie could see Mettner standing outside. She stepped closer and saw that the sliding glass doors had been left partially open. Next to that was the kitchen which was barely large enough for the table and chairs crammed into it. She turned away from the kitchen and walked down a small hallway. There was the bathroom on her left and a bedroom with a desk and several bookshelves in it across from that. At the end of the hall Oaks stood in what Josie assumed was the doorway to Jaclyn’s bedroom. He turned when he heard her approaching. “How did you know?” he asked.