Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn Book 6)(77)

“I can’t leave her out there,” Josie yelled back over her shoulder. “If she’s hit, she could bleed out.”

“Just wait,” Gretchen said, huffing after her. “Wait for help.”

As Josie burst into the daylight, she saw Amy’s crumpled form twenty yards away on the edge of the field. She heard Gretchen’s labored breath behind her. “Go,” Gretchen told her. “I’ve got your six.”

Keeping her weapon pointed at the ground, Josie ran toward Amy. She was on her back, eyes fixed on the sky. “Please, God, oh please, please,” she said over and over again. A pool of blood spread beneath her. Josie dropped to her knees, one hand searching the woman’s body for the bullet wound. “Where are you hit?”

“I don’t know,” Amy said. “I think, I think down—” she pressed a hand into her lower abdomen, just beneath the vest. “Down here.”

Josie found the source of the blood. She’d been shot in the lower right side of her abdomen. Josie holstered her weapon and took Amy’s hand, pressing it over the hole in her pelvis. “Keep your hand here. Keep pressure as best you can.”

She put one arm under Amy’s legs and one under her shoulders, lifting her into the air. She was lucky that the woman was small in stature and didn’t weigh much.

Amy said, “I have to live. I have to get Lucy back.”

“We’re going now.”

Gretchen ran out and took up Amy’s other side. Together they ran back toward the door at the center of the bottom of the bleachers. They were halfway there when another shot rang out. Josie braced for the impact of the bullet, for it to slice through some uncovered part of her body or Gretchen’s body, or for it to hit Amy again, knocking her from their grasp. But it didn’t come.

They banged through the door, Amy screaming out in pain. Once inside, they carried her down the steps and into the anteroom. Gently, they laid her out on the floor. Josie used both hands to put pressure on her wound while Gretchen called for an ambulance.

“Hold on,” Josie told Amy. “Just hold on.”





Fifty-Three





The ambulance had been on stand-by in case anyone was injured during the operation. Within five minutes, it was behind the bleachers where Josie and Gretchen had entered. The paramedics went to work on Amy. Josie listened to the chatter on the comms. Oaks’s agents were moving into the woods.

“Stay with her,” Josie told Gretchen. “I’m going out there.”

Josie sprinted out the back and moved in behind two FBI agents dressed in tactical gear headed toward the Stacks. They ran in a column, crouched down, guns at the ready even though a shot hadn’t been fired in several minutes. Just inside the forested area, where the Stacks began, the agents in front of Josie converged on another agent sprawled on the ground. As Josie got closer, she was relieved to see he was still alive.

“He pushed me,” the agent said, his face twisted in pain. “I think my leg is broken.”

As his colleagues called for paramedics, Josie moved along the vertical rock face, looking for the shortcut she’d used as a teenager—it was a break in the stone, a dirt-filled crease with enough of an angle that you could grab onto the tree roots protruding from either side of it and climb quickly to the top of the ridge. Once she found it, Josie holstered her weapon, fitted her body into the crevice, grabbed onto the nearest tree root and clambered up to the top within seconds. She looked around before running in a low crouch toward the other FBI agent who had been stationed in the woods. He lay curled on his side, both hands clutching at his leg.

Josie knelt over him and checked his pulse, which was strong. “What happened?” she asked.

“He shot me, that’s what happened,” the agent said. “In the leg. He came out of nowhere behind us. Pushed Morgan right off the ridge, I shot at him and he shot back. Hit me. Jesus. I need to get to a hospital.”

Josie saw the blood spilling out from around his fingers as he held the side of his thigh. “I need help up here,” she screamed. “We have a gunshot wound.”

She pressed her hands over the top of his to keep pressure on his wound. “Did you see him?” she asked, hoping to keep him talking and alert until help made it onto the ridge.

“Yeah. About six foot. Brown hair. Caucasian. Young, maybe mid to late twenties. I think there was someone with him though. I thought I saw someone behind him. He ran back into the woods.”

“Probably the woman,” Josie said. “Hey, look at me. Just hold on, okay?”

He nodded but his face was pale, and the energy seemed to leave him with each breath. “I need help up here,” she screamed again over the side of the ridge.

A moment later, she heard the heavy tread of boots crashing through the forest floor and she was relieved to see two more agents and two paramedics with a spine board. She watched as they loaded the injured agent on it and started making their way back down off the ridge, the long way around. The agents stayed behind, and Josie motioned away from the ridge, deeper into the forest, where the land inclined. “That way,” she said. “We should spread out. The woman is with him.”

They nodded at her and fanned out, walking carefully through the forest, their weapons drawn. Josie stayed south, creeping along, keeping close to the trees. In her mind, she mapped out the area ahead. When they were teenagers, Josie and her late husband Ray had run through these woods many times after hanging out at the Stacks. When the police raided the area, they’d flee deeper, following paths only they knew about. Sometimes they’d hide in particular places they knew and other times, they’d make it up and over the top of the hill, scrambling down the other side to the abandoned mill. From there, they’d walk home. She found one of the narrow paths she remembered and followed it up, the incline getting steeper and more difficult to walk the higher she went. She stayed on course, though, because she remembered a cave that used to sit on this side of the mountain. It wasn’t deep or all that small. It was just big enough to take shelter in from the rain.