Vanishing Girls (Detective Josie Quinn #1)(61)

“I’m not fucking crazy, Noah. You want to know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy. Isabelle Coleman went missing twelve days ago. There are men on this police force who know where she is, or at least where she was, and yet she’s still missing. What’s crazy is that I found one of her acrylic nails by her mailbox that day you let me into the crime scene—a crime scene in the middle of the damn woods, a good quarter mile from that mailbox. What’s crazy is that June Spencer is wearing Isabelle Coleman’s tongue piercing, but June was missing for a year, which means that June was being held with Coleman at some point. Yet she was found in the home of Donald Drummond who’s not here to tell us what the fuck happened because the chief shot him dead.”

Her voice escalated. “What’s crazy is that six years ago a woman named Ginger Blackwell was lured onto the side of the road and drugged by a woman calling herself Ramona and the police never even looked for her. What’s crazy is that in the face of indisputable physical evidence they labeled it a hoax. What’s crazy is that as soon as I found out about Ginger’s case, my fiancé was shot. What’s crazy is that his ex-girlfriend, who I was with yesterday, is being framed for the crime. What’s fucking crazy is that there is some fucked-up shit going on in this town, and I am the only person who gives a shit. Now let her out of that cell!”

With each new nugget of information, Noah’s face grew one shade paler, and his right arm dropped a fraction of an inch lower, toward his gun. Noah had never pulled his weapon in the line of duty, and he would be slow on the draw. His fingers brushed the gun’s handle, but he hadn’t even unfastened his holster. He didn’t stand a chance.

Josie placed a shot into his right shoulder, the sound of the rifle deafening in the tiny room. Guilt assailed her, but she pushed it aside. By the time he hit the floor, she was already standing over him, unfastening his holster and disarming him, tucking his weapon into the back of her waistband. He lay on the ground, holding his shoulder, turning his head, straining to get a look at the blood blooming on his blue shirt. “You… you shot me,” he gasped.

“It won’t kill you,” she said. “It’s a .22 and I’m a good shot.”

He didn’t respond, his eyes gaping at the wound in disbelief. She had a minute, tops, before the desk sergeant made it downstairs. If Noah wasn’t involved, then at least they wouldn’t think he had helped her. If he was involved, then she was glad she had shot him. Snatching up the keys, she stepped over him and unlocked June’s cell. The girl shuffled out, her eyes raking warily over Noah’s prone frame. Using one arm to keep her gun up and at the ready, Josie led June out by the upper arm. She didn’t put up a fight.

Before they left, Josie took one last look at Noah lying on the floor, blood oozing from the wound in his shoulder. Biting back an apology she pushed June out into the dark, cold night.





Chapter Fifty





June sat in the front of Carrieann’s pickup truck, staring out the window as the lit-up buildings of Denton proper gave way to the inky blackness of rural roads. Josie kept glancing over at her. She didn’t know what she expected; the girl had viciously and violently killed a woman with a fork, and yet she was as meek and mute as an abandoned pup. A shiver ran through Josie’s body even though the heat in the old truck was on full blast.

“I’m going to take you somewhere safe,” she told her.

No response, and Josie had a sudden flash of how absurd that must sound to June. She’d been rescued from Donald Drummond by people who were every bit as evil as Drummond. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. No wonder she had snapped.

“I mean it,” Josie told her. “This place is safe. It’s a woman I know. She won’t let anything happen to you. She’ll look after you until…”

Until what? Until Dirk woke up from his coma? Until Lara could come out of hiding? Until they no longer had targets on their backs? When would June be safe? When would any of them be safe?

“Until I get things sorted out,” she finished, limply.

June’s dull eyes never left the window.

They still had an hour in the car before they reached Carrieann. Josie doubted she would get anything out of her, but she had to try. “June, I need to know. Did Donald Drummond take you?”

Silence.

“Or was it Ramona?”

June’s head swiveled slowly in Josie’s direction, her dark eyes flashing in the low lighting from Carrieann’s dashboard. She looked into Josie’s eyes just as she had in the nursing home.

“It was, wasn’t it? A woman named Ramona. She picked you up or offered you a ride. Or maybe you met her before and she led you to believe she could help you get out of town. Maybe back to your mom or your friends in Philadelphia. Except she didn’t take you there, did she?”

June continued to stare at Josie, unblinking, but her eyes were alive again. She was in there, somewhere.

“You saw Isabelle Coleman, didn’t you?”

Nothing, the stare slipping back into a vacant deadness.

“No,” Josie said. Reaching over, she touched June’s forearm. “Don’t go. I know you’re in there. Please talk to me. I need to know what you saw. I need to know what you know.”

But her head was turned back to the window, back to the nothingness flying past outside.