Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn Book 6)(91)

No answer. She turned the knob. It twisted easily in her hand. She kept her gun at the ready and pushed the door open. There stood the kidnapper, pressing Colin up against the wall. He held a forearm against Colin’s throat and a large knife in the little hollow where Colin’s solar plexus was located. Both heads turned toward her. Josie aimed at the kidnapper. He was taller than she expected. Everything had happened so quickly on the mountain, she’d barely had a chance to register anything about him before he shot her. Now she took a good look at him. His shaggy brown hair looked greasy and unwashed. Mud streaked his face and clothes. His brown eyes widened when he saw her.

“I shot you,” he said.

“Put the knife down and step away from Mr. Ross,” Josie said.

Colin’s voice came out strangled and raspy. “Let him kill me. He can have the money. Just get my Lucy back. Bring her home.”

Josie aimed at his ribs, but she knew she didn’t have a clean shot. Not with the kidnapper pressed so close against Colin. Still, she didn’t waver. “I said, drop the knife and let Mr. Ross go. Now. You’re under arrest for the kidnapping of Lucy Ross and three murders.”

He smiled at her. “Three murders?”

“Jaclyn Underwood, Wendy Kaplan, and Natalie Oliver.”

His smile failed. His mouth moved but nothing came out.

“That’s right,” Josie said. “We ID’d your girlfriend, and we know you shot her. This ends now. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt, including you, so just put the knife down and step away from Mr. Ross.”

Colin’s hands were trapped between his own body and the man’s forearm, keeping just enough room between the two for him to breathe and speak. “Please,” he said. “I don’t care if he kills me. Do whatever he says to get Lucy back. He can have the money.”

The man looked at Colin briefly. “I don’t want your money, asshole.”

In her mind, Josie calculated that back-up units should be there within the next five minutes. Although, she realized, that might not stop this guy from plunging his knife into Colin’s chest or her from having to shoot him.

“What’s it about?” Colin asked, eyes bulging from his head. “Whatever it is, I’ll help you. I just want Lucy back.”

“Maybe one day your wife can tell you what this is all about. Or is she dead?”

Josie said, “Tessa is still alive.”

His eyes darted toward her and she saw his knife-hand slacken a little. “She told you?”

“Told me what?” Josie said.

“The truth. What she did to me.”

“What did she do to you?”

His knife hand lowered, his forearm coming away from Colin’s throat. Still, his arm held Colin in place. “You’re bullshitting me. If she had told you what she did—the truth, the real truth—you would have arrested her. She’d be in jail right now and not in a hospital.”

“Amy would never hurt anyone,” Colin gasped. “You must have the wrong woman. This is all a huge mistake. Please, just bring Lucy back. Whatever you think my wife did, you’re wrong. Lucy has nothing to do with this. Just bring her home and I promise you, we can forget this whole thing.”

The man shoved Colin hard with his forearm. Colin’s neck whipped back and forth, the back of his skull smashing against the wall. “You’re the one who’s wrong, asshole. You know nothing about your wife. She’s an evil, lying bitch. You think she cares about Lucy? You think she ever cared about Lucy? About anyone but herself? Look at what she did to me. Look!” With his free hand, he tore at his shirt, popping buttons and exposing a pale chest with a smattering of hair. In the places the hair didn’t grow were large silvery scars. Old welts or cuts, Josie couldn’t be sure. There were cigarette burns and a large scar on his left lower torso that looked like the permanent imprint of a belt buckle. They were old and faded but so indelible on his skin that even now in adulthood, they were unmistakable.

Childhood scars, a faint part of Josie’s brain registered, but she quieted that voice because the part of her brain that was on high alert recognized that he had finally taken the knife away from Colin’s body. It hung now at his side, opposite Colin. Slowly, Colin slid down the wall to the floor.

Josie said, “If Amy did that to you then we need to have a serious conversation. Put down the knife. I’ll put down my gun. I’m willing to listen to you, but we don’t have to do it like this.”

He laughed bitterly. “I don’t think so. You know when people listen? When you have a knife in your hand.”

“What do you want?” Josie asked.

“I want her to pay.”

“Who? Tessa? Don’t you think she’s paid enough? You took everyone she cared about away from her—Jaclyn, Wendy, and most importantly, Lucy. Plus, now she’s in the hospital in critical condition. What else do you want? You want her dead?”

He shook his head. “I want her to suffer. The way I suffered.”

Josie’s mind was still working at breakneck pace back over everything she knew about this case and what Trinity had just told her. The man before her couldn’t be older than twenty-six or twenty-seven. His accomplice had only been twenty-four. Both would have been infants—or at least very small children—when Amy was living in Buffalo as Tessa.