Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn Book 6)(69)

“Do we tell her husband?” Noah asked.

Josie and Oaks looked at one another. Oaks nodded at Josie to make the call. She straightened her spine and looked around at the group. “No.”

Mettner opened his mouth to speak but Josie held a hand up. “They’re already at each other’s throats. We don’t have time for Colin to process the fact that his wife isn’t who she says she is, and that she’s been lying to him their entire relationship. I don’t think she will be more inclined to come clean with him. He’s going to be angry. I think she will shut down in the face of his anger and only clam up more. Besides, the focus needs to stay on Lucy—especially this close to the drop. We need them to be a united front with their sole purpose to get their daughter back.”

Chitwood said, “Seems to me we need to be focusing more on the drop right now. You don’t even know where it is, and what if this guy calls at six and wants the parents out to make the drop by six-thirty. Then what?”

“We’ll need to mobilize quickly,” Oaks agreed. “Like a rapid deployment team. The parents will need to be ready to move with us at a moment’s notice. We’ll need to prepare the money by recording the serial numbers and fitting the bags with trackers. I can get my team to work on that.”

“What if the kidnapper calls and says no police, no FBI, and no trackers?” Mettner asked.

“I’m not giving this guy a chance to get away,” Oaks said. “Not with Lucy Ross’s life in the balance. We can hide our presence, but the trackers stay with the money.”

“I agree,” Josie said. “Let’s get everything in place for when the kidnapper calls again. I’ll go back to the Ross home and try to talk with Amy tonight.”

Chitwood clapped his hands. “Looks like no one is sleeping tonight.”





Forty-Five





At the Ross home, the FBI commandeered Colin’s home office to prepare the money. In the dining room, Amy sat on a chair, her legs pulled up beneath her and her arms wrapped around her chest. She stared at the cell phones on the table. Colin paced behind her. Josie was about to ask Amy for a moment when her own phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and saw Trinity’s number flash across the screen. She quickly slipped out of the room, heading out the back door. “What’s up?” she answered.

Trinity gave a dramatic sigh. “Tessa Lendhardt does not exist. Not in Buffalo. Not anywhere.”

“Yeah, I know,” Josie said. “But thanks for trying.”

Trinity’s laughter filtered through the line, skittering across the silence of the backyard. “You think I stopped there?”

Josie felt a small thrill of excitement, hoping her sister had found something useful. “What did you find?”

“I checked on all Lendhardts in Buffalo,” Trinity said. “I found six, all men. Two of them are dead. One of those dead Lendhardts is survived by his eighty-seven-year-old widow, Betty.”

“How old was the other man who passed away?”

She heard the rustle of papers and then Trinity said, “He was sixty-six when he died which was two years ago.”

“Too old,” Josie said. “I’m assuming that the Lendhardt that Amy Ross was married to—assuming she was married and not just dating—would be around her age. She told me today that her actual age is forty. Anyone on that list close to forty?”

Trinity went silent for a minute before she read off the ages of the other four Lendhardts. “Twenty-six, seventy-three, fifty-seven, and eighty.”

“Not even close,” Josie said, trying to hide the disappointment in her voice. “I’ve got to talk to her again.”

“Well, first thing tomorrow I’m going to talk to the Lendhardts that I can locate and the neighbors of the ones who have passed away.”

“You think they’ll talk to you?”

“I’m famous, dear sister. Everyone talks to me. Listen, I had this idea. Can you get me a photograph of Amy Ross? A current photo?”

Josie thought about it. Holding the phone to her ear, she made her way back into the house, through the kitchen and into the living room where several framed photos of the Ross family hung. “Yes,” she said. “I can.”

“Great, send it right away, would you?”

“Okay.”

Josie hung up and studied the various photos until she found a good, crisp image. She used her phone to snap a picture of Amy’s smiling face and texted it to Trinity. Pocketing her phone, she went in search of Amy.

She was still curled into herself on a dining room chair. Josie caught her eye from the doorway and nodded toward the living room. With great effort, Amy stood and trudged after Josie.

“Where’s Colin?” Josie asked her.

“He went up to bed. I doubt he’ll sleep, but he said he needed to be alone.”

“Sit,” Josie told her, motioning toward the couch. “We need to talk.”

Amy plopped onto the couch. “Are you going to arrest me?”

“No. Should I?”

Amy stared sightlessly ahead, shaking her head. “No.”

“Why didn’t you tell me your name was Tessa Lendhardt?”

Amy’s gaze snapped toward Josie. “How did you find out?”