Page 3 of Her Dying Secret

An hour later, little remained of the pizza, and they were still working on the kitchen. Noah stood on a ladder, using a cloth to wipe at the spots on the ceiling. Trout sniffed every square inch of the room, occasionally licking a speck on the floor that Josie had missed.

Her cell phone rang. She walked over to the kitchen table and glanced down at the screen. Discomfort turned the slice of pizza she’d just eaten into a stone, heavy in her stomach. A generic outline of a man showed up where the contact’s photo was supposed to be. Josie hadn’t added a photo for their newest team member because she didn’t want to see his face any more than she absolutely had to. But she knew it was him because the word Douchebag appeared over the top of the non-photo. One day, after a particularly irritating shift with him, she’d saved him in her contacts under that name.

“Who is it?” said Noah.

Josie sighed. She swiped the red icon to decline the call. “It’s Turner.”

“Great.” Noah sounded anything but thrilled.

Over a year ago, they’d lost a beloved member of their investigative team, Detective Finn Mettner. He’d been shot and killed in the line of duty. Josie had held his hand while he bled out. She had been so deeply affected by Mettner’s death that she’d even gone on a retreat to help deal with some of her trauma. That hadn’t gone as expected at all. Then, upon her return, she met the department’s new hire, Detective Kyle Turner.

He wasn’t a good fit.

He was arrogant and rude. He took forever to finish reports and he frequently passed off more difficult cases to the rest of them instead of handling them himself. He also disappeared for hours at a time during his shifts with little or no explanation as to where he went or what he was doing. Their other detective, Gretchen Palmer, who had more experience than Josie and Noah combined, detested him the most. She frequently called him lazy, and Josie couldn’t disagree. She still wasn’t sure why he’d been hired in the first place. Their Chief had had nearly a hundred applicants for the position.

Her phone rang a second time, the word Douchebag floating across the screen once more.

Noah said, “Don’t answer it.”

“But why is he trying to get in touch with me? I’m not on call.”

Noah dabbed at what remained of the spaghetti sauce stain on their white ceiling. “Maybe he has a question about something.”

Josie sent the call to voicemail again, irritation rising in her throat like acid reflux. “Then he can send a text message like a normal person.”

She went back to scrubbing the cabinets. A moment later, her phone chirped.

“There’s your text,” Noah muttered.

With a groan, Josie walked back to the table and picked up her phone. Turner had texted two words in all caps: PICK UP.

He wasn’t going to stop until she spoke to him. With another sigh, she stabbed the call button under his name. The phone rang eight times. A headache started to pulse in her temples. She was about to hang up when he finally answered. “Quinn, I need your help.”

“Gretchen’s on call today.”

“I know. She’s busy with a shooting. I’ve got a bank robbery in the shithole part of town. There’s some big accident out on Prout Road. The middle of damn nowhere according to Google Maps. Dispatch asked for a detective but I’m fresh out. Can you come in?”

She felt Noah’s presence behind her. He’d come down from the ladder and now leaned in toward her shoulder, listening to the conversation.

There was only one reason the uniformed officers would need a detective at a motor vehicle accident. Josie said, “There was a fatality?”

“That’s what I heard.”

Noah groaned softly and Josie knew what he was thinking. Beyond the sad reality that someone had lost their life, the paperwork would take hours.

“Did the Chief authorize me to come in? Have you talked with him about this?”

Having served as interim chief at one point, Josie knew that one of the most pressing things about the job was the constant worry about going over budget.

“He’s MIA. Look, it’s not like this will cost the department extra. You come in and he’ll give you your paid time off another day. Easy-peasy.”

He was so cavalier about everything, although he had a point. They could cover all the bases without pissing off Chief Chitwood, which Josie was all for.

“Have you called anyone from the Fatal Accident Reconstruction Team? You’ll need one of their officers. They’re in the station directory. Labenberg is probably on. She works afternoons.”

Turner snickered. “You want me to call the FART?”

How old was this guy?

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