Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn Book 6)(39)

A shiver ran the length of Josie’s body.

Beside her, Amy had picked up a stuffed unicorn. She hugged it to her. “They all smell like her,” she told Josie.

Josie looked behind them at the row of colorful stuffed animals all neatly seated along the wall. She reached out and touched a teddy bear with a red bowtie around its neck. How she would have loved to have a room like this when she was a child. She hoped they could bring Lucy home to this room so she could sleep in her beautiful princess bed again.

“Oh, careful,” Amy said.

Josie pulled her hand away. “I’m sorry. I should go.”

“Oh no,” Amy said. “I didn’t mean—that bear is one of those stuffed animals you can record messages on. Colin leaves a standing message on it for Lucy when he travels, but it’s really sensitive. Once, he was on a trip and I was cleaning up and moved the bear and somehow erased his message. Lucy cried for hours.”

“Oh,” Josie said. “That’s a good idea. He travels a lot, it seems.”

Amy nodded. “He’s barely here at all, to tell you the truth.” Gingerly, she picked up the teddy bear. “Lucy still worships the ground he walks on even though she hardly sees him. This bear is her special connection to him.” She did a mock impression of Colin, making her voice low like a man’s. “I love you, little Lucy. Sweet dreams. That’s usually what he says.”

Josie couldn’t help but think of the note the kidnapper had left inside Lucy’s butterfly backpack. Little Lucy cannot play. Was it just a coincidence?

“Sometimes if he knows she’s got a test coming up or he’s promised her something when he gets back, he’ll mention it. I think this last trip was his standard love you message.” Amy felt the bear’s paws until she found what she was looking for. “Here,” she said. “It’s a little button inside.”

She squeezed the bear’s paw, but it wasn’t Colin’s voice that filled the room.

The kidnapper’s voice turned Josie’s insides to ice. His tone was cold, his words dripping with contempt and getting louder and louder with each word until he was shouting. “Hello, Amy. How does it feel? How does it feel? How does it feel?”





Twenty-Five





Amy let out a bloodcurdling scream. Josie jumped up from the bed. Before Josie could stop her, Amy threw the bear from her lap. “Don’t touch anything,” Josie said, but her words were swallowed by Amy’s shrieks. Within seconds, the two FBI agents stationed downstairs in the dining room burst through the door. Josie used her body to block them where they were. “Stop,” she said. “Don’t touch anything. Go back into the hall. This is a crime scene.”

Amy collapsed onto the floor inches from where the bear had landed, still screaming. One of the agents looked over Josie’s shoulder at her and then back at Josie, his eyes wide with shock and confusion. “What the hell happened?” he asked. “Is she hurt?”

“No,” Josie said. “Just get back. Please.”

Both agents raised their hands in the air and backed out of the room. With adrenaline surging through her veins, Josie walked over to Amy, squatted down, picked her up in a fireman’s lift and lugged her out of the room. She turned to her left and kicked open the nearest door, which luckily was Amy and Colin’s bedroom. She gently deposited Amy onto the bed. The woman’s screams had receded to grunts. Her eyes stared straight ahead, wide with terror but seeing nothing at all. Josie spent several minutes trying to soothe and comfort her, to bring her back from the edge of hysteria but this time, it didn’t work. It wasn’t until Colin appeared in the doorway, face stricken, and called Amy’s name that she finally snapped back.

“He was here,” Amy told him. “He was here in our house.”

“What are you talking about?”

Amy looked at Josie. “Show him.”

The last thing that Josie wanted to do was hear the awful sound of the kidnapper taunting Amy again, but she drew herself up and went into the hallway. The two FBI agents stood like sentries on either side of Lucy’s bedroom door. Josie walked past them into the room. She took a pair of gloves from her pocket—she always carried some on the job—and snapped them on. She pressed the bear’s paw just as Amy had, and again the terrible message played. Colin stood in the doorway with the two agents, looking like he might throw up. Josie felt the same.

One of the agents said, “I’ll get Agent Oaks on the line. Get our team over here to process this.”

Josie shook her head. “They’ve got their hands full at the murder scene. I’ll call my team. They can be here in five minutes. We’ll brief Oaks as soon as he’s free.”





It felt like an eternity had passed by the time Lucy’s room was processed and Oaks returned from the Jaclyn Underwood murder scene. It had grown dark outside though none of them would ever know it thanks to the number of press vehicles outside with their cameras and lights ready to go for the eleven o’clock newscast. At some point that day, the case had gone national even though Oaks’s press liaison hadn’t told reporters much other than that they were now treating Lucy’s disappearance as an abduction. Reluctantly, Josie called Trinity.

“You have something for me?” Trinity asked. “I’m going to come there and cover this story myself.”