Vanishing Girls (Detective Josie Quinn #1)(66)

Her voice was small. “Did he hurt you?”

“I’m okay,” Ray said, although by the small catch in his voice, she suspected he was keeping something from her. Her hands began searching his body for injuries, but he caught them and held them fast in both of his. “I’m fine,” he assured her. “Really.”

She wished she could see him. She leaned back into him, and they sank to the floor together. “He took our phones,” Ray said. “Not that there’s any service up here. I tried kicking my way out, but it was a no go.”

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Gosnell’s… bunker.”

“Bunker?”

“Well, whatever you want to call it. He built this place out in the woods behind his house. Like one of those earth houses or whatever.”

A structure in the earth. A hole in the ground.

“Have you been here before?”

“No. Yes. I mean, I’ve been to his house before, on the property, but I didn’t—I never made it inside here.”

She laid the side of her head against his jacket. The smell of blood and sweat mingled with the earthy smells of the tiny room. “Are you bleeding?”

“No,” he said, too quickly. “I mean, yeah. I think he put a pretty bad gash in my leg, but I’m alright, Jo.”

“What is this place? What does he use it for?”

Ray didn’t speak for several seconds. The only proof she had that he was still alive was the rise and fall of his chest beneath her cheek. She wondered if he’d fallen asleep. “Ray?”

“He uses it for… I mean, I think he uses it to keep… you know, women.”

Her tone was more strident this time. “‘Keep women?’”

His voice remained calm but sad. “Jo, when you came out here, what did you think you were going to find?”

“Is Isabelle Coleman here?”

“No,” he said with absolute conviction.

“How do you know?”

“Because I know.”

“We’re going to die here,” Josie said.

“No. I won’t let that happen.”

“Because you’re such good friends? You can just ask him to let us go and he’ll do it?”

He gave an exasperated sigh. “Josie.”

“I want the truth, Ray. All of it. How much you know and when you knew it. I need you to keep talking to me, or I’m going to lose it in here.”





Chapter Fifty-Seven





“Last year,” he began and she cut him off with a high-pitched, “Last year?”

“Do you want to hear this or not?”

“I’m sorry. Go on.”

He took another tack. “You know after things went down between us, I was a little out of control, right?”

She could feel his discomfort in the tensed muscles of his body. Revulsion churned her stomach. “That didn’t happen after we broke up. You were out of control long before that, and you know it.”

“Jo, you know I’m sorry. I don’t know how many times I can say it.”

She didn’t say anything because it was old territory. They’d been over it a thousand times. Ray remembered nothing from the night that had essentially ended their marriage, even before Misty came along.

“Jo, you know I didn’t mean it—”

“Don’t,” she snapped at him. “Just tell me what happened.”

He sighed. “Well, last year, me and Dusty and a bunch of the guys were out drinking. We were really tying one on, you know?”

“Yes, I do know.”

“Jo.”

“Just tell me.”

“I was upset. I was upset about losing you. I knew… I knew things would never be the same. I saw it your eyes every time you looked at me.”

She shook in his arms, half with rage and half with the remembered trauma of that night. “You told Dusty to stay,” she said.

“Dusty always stayed over.”

“You got so drunk, you told him he could fuck me if he wanted—and he tried, Ray.”

She remembered waking from a deep sleep to hands roaming all over her body, thinking it was Ray, and then as she floated closer to consciousness realizing that nothing about the person touching her felt like Ray.

“Dusty was drunk too, Jo.”

“Not as drunk as you, and that doesn’t excuse him. It doesn’t excuse any of it. I was asleep.”

She had sprung out of the bed, hitting and kicking Dusty so furiously that his cries brought Ray up the stairs. He had pulled Dusty away from Josie and, in that moment, she had been relieved. But then she saw his face. His blank eyes. Like he was looking at her but not seeing her at all. They flashed with anger. He had gone after her, calling her a bitch and a whore and accusing her of cheating on him with Dusty. It was at that point that Dusty, standing naked on the other side of the room, had said, “Dude, chill. You told me I could fuck her.”

“Jo, you know I never would have said that if I wasn’t drunk.”

“But you were that drunk, Ray. Drunk, angry, jealous, out of control. Just like your father was with your mother.”

She felt him tense but he said nothing. She was angry with him for what happened, but she hated him because he didn’t remember. He had flown into an explosive rage then, punching Dusty hard enough in the mouth to draw blood. When she told them both to get out, Ray had turned and punched her too. Just like that. He’d hit her so hard she hit the floor.