Where the Blame Lies(74)

If it had even been Marshall . . .

Zach smoothed her hair back, kissed her temple. “They had the best detectives in our department working on your case. Men who know how to tell if someone’s lying.”

Josie nodded, but she still felt unsettled.

“Jimmy’s looking more thoroughly into Landish’s background right now,” Zach said. “Because all the evidence pointed to him at the time, and because it was assumed you were his only victim, there wasn’t a need to do an in-depth information pull on his past.” Zach paused. “Jimmy did get his medical file from the Army though and found one thing that was unique.”

“What?” she asked, her muscles tensing.

“He was color blind.”

She frowned. “Color blind. What . . . what does that mean?”

“It’s nothing that would have been visually distinguishable. It just meant that he couldn’t perform certain duties in the Army.”

Josie’s heart clutched. Did you not wear these r-red panties for me, you slut? Her eyes flew to Zach’s. She shook her head. “I don’t think the man who abducted me was color blind.” She told him what she remembered.

His jaw clenched and his eyes went dark as she spoke the words Marshall Landish—or the man she’d believed was him—had said to her that awful, horrific night. He glanced away, obviously considering. “Are you sure?”

“Very. I’ve been going over those memories, Zach. I’ve . . . allowed my mind to go back . . . there.”

His jaw ticked again. “There’s no other way he could have known the color of your . . . clothes?”

She shrugged, a small movement of her shoulders. “I don’t see how.”

They were both quiet for a moment, Josie’s mind traveling back to that moment. Unlike the days prior, she didn’t just probe the memory, she lingered there, recalling the way he’d ripped her clothes and later, the way he’d looked standing in front of that window, the light shining in. There had been something about that moment . . . something, but it remained out of her grasp.

Everything she came up with felt incomplete or circumstantial, like the recollections that didn’t exactly fit could still be explained away. A band of frustration tightened around her.

“I need to talk to his sister,” Josie said. “I wasn’t emotionally able to back then. But I need to now.”

“You don’t need to. I can talk to his sister. Jimmy can talk to his sister.”

She shook her head. “No, no. I need to. If I was wrong about him. If it was someone . . . I don’t know, posing as him somehow or . . .” She let out a frustrated breath. “I don’t know, but I need to look in her eyes and talk to her about her brother. About who he was. Zach, I have to.”

His eyes—those kind, expressive, beautiful eyes—moved over her face for a moment before he nodded. “Okay. I’ll set it up.”

She put her hands on his bare shoulders. “Thank you.”

She wondered if every path she’d gone down to find her son had been wrong. If it wasn’t Marshall who abducted her, it wasn’t Marshall who’d taken her child from her either.

“We need to leave. I . . . I have to do this. This guy might be looking for his next victim even as we speak, and if I have a key that might open a door that will lead to capturing him, we can’t waste any time.”

She was missing something. She felt it in her gut.





CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE


Before



Josie inserted the straightened spring once more, her eyes trained on the wall in front of her—unseeing—as she listened to the tiny clicks inside the keyhole of her shackle. Her hand cramped and she grunted in frustration, dropping the sharp piece of metal. This is useless. It’s never going to work.

Sweat dripped down her forehead, stinging her eyes, the small burn stopping her from dropping her head forward so she could curl beneath the soiled quilt and just sleep for a little while. Instead, she wiped at the wetness tracking into her eyes, a sharp cramp causing her to grimace and bring her knees up. She felt blood dripping down her thigh. That had begun earlier in the day, just a small trickle at first, but now she could feel the flow of it increasing. At least the fever was keeping the pain of the freezing room at bay.

She was so weak and could hardly sit up. She picked up the straightened spring and rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling as she reached over her head and once again, inserted the tool into the lock. Dusk had arrived, but the streetlamp hadn’t yet come on. Josie could see the stars beginning to emerge in the pale gray sky. A few snowflakes fluttered down, collecting in the corners of the window. She drifted, her gaze locked on the tiny, faint twinkles of starlight, her fingers spinning the skinny tool she’d fashioned. She felt the metal catch on something and rather than pull it out, she pushed it down, a loud click echoing through the room.

Her hand fell away from the shackle.

For a minute, Josie didn’t comprehend what had happened. It didn’t compute that she was free. That her hands were both lying on the mattress above her head, the lone shackle she’d been wearing having fallen away.

Shock rolled through her. She scrabbled up, a cry falling from her lips, her gaze seeking what she couldn’t believe had just happened despite that there was no pull holding her hand close to the wall, no metal cuff felt around her wrist. She peered at the open shackle on the mattress, bringing her hands to her mouth to hold back her wail of disbelief and desperate wonder.