Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn Book 6)(49)

Oaks walked up beside her. “What’s on your mind?”

Josie pointed to the chair. “That’s bothering me.”

“The office?”

“The chair. If she stood up and pushed her chair back, it wouldn’t be that far across the room.” Josie stepped back into the room, positioning herself between the chair and the desk. Oaks followed.

“You would only need this much room if you were trying to get under the desk.”

“Maybe she dropped something,” Oaks suggested.

Josie dropped to her hands and knees and peered beneath the desk. There, all the way in the back, against the wall, was a small mass of white paper. Josie wrestled her phone from inside her Tyvek suit and turned on her flashlight app, shining it onto the crumpled paper.

Oaks squatted and looked in over her shoulder. “See,” he said. “She dropped a piece of paper.”

Josie studied it a moment more, realizing quickly where she’d seen something like this before. “It’s not a piece of paper,” she said. “It’s a chrysalis.”

“What?” Oaks asked.

“A cocoon,” Josie said. “It looks exactly like the one I saw inside Lucy Ross’s desk at school. Oaks, she was here. Lucy was here. The killer brought her with him. That’s why Wendy Kaplan let him in. She put Lucy in here while she and this guy talked in the kitchen.”

“That means Lucy could have seen the struggle, the murder,” Oaks said.

“Or maybe she just heard it and so she hid under here. When he was done, he came in here looking for her.”

“He tossed the chair back,” Oaks said. “Dragged her out from under there.”

“But she left this,” Josie said.

“You think a seven-year-old is smart enough to leave us a clue that she’s alive?” Oaks asked.

“I think that this gave her something to focus on besides what was happening in the other room. She’s doing whatever she can to mentally distance herself from whatever she’s seeing and experiencing,” Josie answered. “But if she’s still alive, we’ve got a chance of bringing her home.”





Thirty





I woke up and she was gone. My nose felt cold. Without her in the bed, the blanket did little to keep me warm. I crept out of the bed, to the door which was cracked. The outer rooms were dark. Even the glow of the television had been extinguished. Then I saw her, just a shadow, moving through the rooms. I watched her for several minutes. She had some sort of sack and she was throwing things into it. Finally, she came to the door. “Oh good,” she said. “You’re awake.”

I stared at her. She knelt down and touched my face. “Remember I told you we’d leave this place?”

“To go home?”

“Yes.”

I nodded.

“We’re leaving now. You have to be absolutely silent and still, do you understand?”

Again, I nodded. She scooped me up and carried me through the darkness. With infinite slowness, she turned the two locks on the big door that led outside and pulled it open a fraction at a time. The fresh air felt good against my skin. Anticipation tickled the back of my neck. I couldn’t wait to leave.

Once she stepped out into the night, she ran, jostling me against her, her bare feet slapping against the ground. Lights shone from overhead, casting circles on the sidewalk in front of us as we fled. Her breath was a series of gasps. She held me so tightly against her that my ribs ached.

After several minutes, her pace slowed and her grip on me loosened. She looked behind us and when she turned to me once more, a smile split her face. It was the biggest smile I’d ever seen. “Do you hear that?” she whispered.

Confused, I glanced all around us, listening as hard as I could. There was nothing. “Hear what?” I asked.

“The silence,” she said. “We made it.” She set me down, holding onto my hands. “Come on. We have a long way to go still.”

There was a lightness about her then, a sort of joy that seemed to radiate from her. I felt it envelop me. I started to skip along beside her to keep up and she didn’t even tell me to stop.

It was only when a bright light appeared behind us that I felt tension in her hand. Then came a roaring noise, shattering the stillness of the night. She looked back and with a cry, turned and ran between two houses, dragging me along with her. I glanced back and saw two bright lights. They followed us, then stopped. A door slammed. Our bodies crashed against a fence. Then came his voice, sending ice down my spine.

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing? Get back in the fucking truck. Now.”

“No,” she gasped. “No.”

Hands grabbed roughly at our fused form, dragging us backwards. I held tightly to her neck, not wanting to be separated from her.

“If you think I’m letting you take that kid, you’re out of your damn mind. I told you, I’ll kill you.”

He pushed us into the cab of the truck and the door slamming sounded like the last thing I might ever hear.





Thirty-One





Mettner was given the unenviable task of returning to the Ross home to let them know that Wendy Kaplan had been murdered. While Josie and Oaks were at the Kaplan scene, Gretchen called to say she had John Bausch, the bug expert, at the Denton PD headquarters.