Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn Book 6)(85)

“So did Amy Ross, and now she’s fighting for her life. You know damn well those vests don’t make you invincible. You could have been killed.”

“Noah, I’m sorry.”

“I had to find out from a couple of Feds who carried you out of the woods. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Josie put a hand on her hip. “They didn’t carry me,” she said.

He pointed a finger at her. “Don’t change the subject.”

What could she say? She didn’t tell him because she had wanted to go home first and make sure she wasn’t pregnant before she got checked out at the hospital? Because, had she been pregnant, she wouldn’t have known exactly whose it was? What a mess she had made of things.

Noah said, “I just lost my mother, Josie. I can’t lose you, too.”

“You’re not going to lose me,” Josie said, softening her tone. “I promise.”

“You can’t make that promise,” he shot back. “Not in this line of work.”

“Neither can you,” she pointed out. “You’ll be back on full duty in no time and back in the field with me.”

He didn’t respond.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth,” Josie said. “But wait, did you say Amy Ross is alive? Did she make it through surgery?”

Noah looked away from her, and she could tell by the muscle twitching in his jaw that he was taking a moment to compose himself. He met her eyes once more. “Yes. She made it. She’s in recovery now. Heavily sedated. They had to take an ovary and one of her fallopian tubes. They were able to save her uterus though.”

“My God,” Josie murmured. A wave of sadness enveloped her. Almost of its own will, her hand went to her own bruised abdomen. Amy was forty and likely hadn’t had any plans for more children, but still, her injuries would deeply affect any decisions she made about having children going forward. Lucy was missing, the Ross family had one million dollars on the line, and now Amy’s body had been irreparably damaged. What more would this case take from the woman?

“Let’s go inside,” Noah said. “Oaks wants to do a briefing.”

Josie followed him into the tent where once more, dozens of agents as well as state police, sheriff’s deputies and many members of Denton PD—including Gretchen, Mettner, Chitwood, and Lamay—were gathered around Oaks, waiting for him to speak. He held up his hand, signaling for five more minutes and walked over to Josie. “You okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “I’m fine,” she said, feeling exactly the opposite.

“I’d like you to brief everyone on what happened at the football field.”

“Of course.”

Oaks called everyone to attention. Josie delivered an account of what had happened at the football field and behind it, in the woods beyond the Stacks. Gretchen stood and gave a report on Amy’s medical condition. Mettner briefed everyone on the drop at Lover’s Cave which had been uneventful and gone without incident except for the fact that the money Colin had left there was still there, untouched. Lamay spoke about the rescue of Violet Young. Then Oaks picked up with what Josie had found out from Violet.

“Sometime between the abduction of Mrs. Young from the school and the phone call that the kidnapper made to the Ross family to give the final instructions for the drop, these perpetrators did something with Lucy Ross. We don’t yet know what.”

“But,” Josie said. “They had Violet Young’s phone with them so I think we should start by searching the same two-mile radius where they dumped Violet Young.”

Mettner dragged a large foam board with a map tacked to it into the middle of the room. “Here is the radius,” he said, indicating an area of West Denton outlined in red. “Here is where Violet Young was found.”

Josie added, “It’s possible the kidnapper stashed Lucy somewhere in this radius before the drop and then went back and moved her, but this is a good place for us to start our search. We don’t know for certain that that’s where he left her so we should work outward from there. Any evidence that we find that indicates she may be elsewhere, we’ll need to pursue immediately.”

Someone from the back of the tent said, “Isn’t the kidnapper supposed to deliver Lucy to the carousel tomorrow?”

Josie said, “We have to consider the possibility that he has no intention of delivering Lucy. He hasn’t taken the money, and we believe he murdered his own accomplice, Natalie Oliver. We know from Violet Young that the two of them were fighting prior to the drop. We also know that both of them were at Denton East High, leaving the Lover’s Cave drop completely unattended. It’s not clear exactly what their intent was, but we know that the male suspect had deviated from the plan and that Natalie Oliver was not happy about it.”

She nodded to Oaks, who nodded back and addressed the crowd. “Natalie Oliver had gunshot residue on her hands. The round that doctors dug out of Amy Ross’s pelvis was a .308, which as you all know, came from a rifle.”

“A rifle powerful enough to have hit her when fired from the cave that Natalie Oliver was hiding in,” Josie added.

“The round that the medical examiner pulled from Natalie Oliver’s brain was a nine millimeter, and based on the degree of damage to her skull, we believe it came from a pistol,” Oaks said.