Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn Book 6)(7)

“I know, buddy,” she said. “I’m going to call your mom to come get you. She should be on her way to my house right now.”

They thanked Logan, instructed him not to let anyone else inside the perimeter and walked over to the small crowd of parents. The uniformed officers hadn’t yet found any signs of Lucy on the photos and videos the parents had provided. While Josie contacted Misty and asked her to come to the park instead of Josie’s home to pick up Harris, Gretchen got consent from the parents to address the school-age children. She had them sit on the grass in a circle and she told them that a little girl named Lucy had gotten lost in the park after riding the carousel. She passed around Josie’s phone with the photo of Lucy on the screen. Josie watched them hand the phone around the circle. She estimated the youngest of them to be four years old and the oldest somewhere around ten. Three of them remembered seeing Lucy at the playground. One even remembered seeing her on the carousel ride with her mother, but none of them had seen her once the ride stopped.

As the gathering of parents and children dispersed, Misty DeRossi appeared at the playground’s main entrance. Josie’s boyfriend, Lieutenant Noah Fraley, trailed behind her, moving rapidly on a pair of crutches. It had been about a month since he broke his leg jumping from the upper window of a burning building.

“Mommeee!” Harris cried, reaching for Misty as she got closer. She took him from Josie and hugged him tightly.

“Noah wanted me to bring him,” Misty explained. “I was already at your house when you called me. You sounded like something was wrong.”

Noah reached them a second later. “A kid went missing?” he asked.

Josie explained the situation to both of them.

Misty said, “Are you sure she just ran off?”

All three of them had been deeply scarred by the missing girls’ case that had rocked the city of Denton three years earlier. Any reminder of it was difficult to process. “I don’t know,” Josie answered honestly. “But I want to stay and help with the search.”

“Of course,” Misty agreed.

They said their goodbyes and she headed off with Harris. Noah stood in place, leaning on his crutches. Josie said, “You didn’t have to come.”

He smiled. “I can find a way to make myself useful.”

Josie spotted a bench near the entrance to the play area. “Come on,” she told him. “You can monitor who goes in and out while we search.”





Five





Josie had just left Noah on the bench when Mettner returned with Colin in tow. Lucy’s father’s face had paled by two shades since Josie last saw him. She knew immediately that his daughter had not somehow made her way home.

“She’s not there,” Mettner confirmed.

“Where’s my wife?” Colin asked.

Josie gestured toward the forested areas behind her. “She joined the search. We’ve got a dozen officers out there looking for Lucy right now. If she’s wandered off, we’ll find her.”

“What if she didn’t wander off?” Colin asked, voicing the question that had been running on a loop in Josie’s head since she heard those first few strained, desperate notes in Amy’s voice as she called out for Lucy.

Josie opened her mouth to give some stock police response, but Colin just walked away, off to join the search himself. The three of them watched him go.

Mettner said, “Apparently he travels a lot for his job.”

“Well,” Josie said. “That explains their little spat over Lucy’s sense of direction—and the need for a nanny. Did he mention what the wife does for a living?”

“She’s a stay-at-home mom,” Mettner answered. “She doesn’t work.”

Noah interjected. “Did you say she has a nanny? She must do something. I mean why would you have to hire a nanny if you were a stay-at-home mom?”

Josie raised a brow in his direction. “Kids can be a lot to handle alone. Misty struggles.”

“Misty works sixty hours a week,” Noah pointed out. “And she has you and Harris’s grandmother to help her.”

“Maybe Amy Ross doesn’t have family nearby,” Mettner suggested.

Josie raised her hands in the air. “We don’t have time for this. We need to get out and look for this little girl.” She glanced at Noah. “I’ve got my phone if you need me. Gretchen will be stationed right over there. She’s coordinating. Mett, let’s go.”

With Mettner only a few yards away from her, they set out into one of the patches of forest surrounding the playground. They could hear the sounds of others searching all around them—the rustle and snap of tree branches and several different voices calling out Lucy’s name. Occasionally, Josie paused to text Gretchen to see if anyone had found anything. There was nothing. Gretchen had sent additional units to the houses that sat across from the park to conduct door-to-door enquiries and to search their backyards in case Lucy had exited the park instead of going deeper into it. An hour passed, then another, then another. They emerged from one forested section, crossed a different area of the park, and entered an entirely different section of trees. They walked until they reached the edge of park where the Denton University campus began. From somewhere behind her, Josie heard Amy calling out her daughter’s name again and again in a strained, near-hysterical tone. The light overhead faded, casting darkness over the forest.