Page 40 of Her Dying Secret

Great.

Another voice cut through the night, from where the dog had appeared. “Kiki! Kiki! Come!”

Suddenly, the onslaught against the fence ceased. The owner’s voice carried again. “Kiki! Get over here!”

“That monster’s name is Kiki?” Turner mumbled, brushing at his pants. “I hope you’re happy, sweetheart. I didn’t shoot the dog, but these pants are torn.”

Hauling herself to her feet, Josie said, “Thank you.”

“I think I messed up my knee again,” he said, by way of answer.

Josie searched around for her pistol, finally finding it under a lawn chair. “Did you call in more units?”

From his jacket pocket, he pulled his cell phone. “I’m doing it now. Not that I need to ’cause Mrs. Better Homes and Gardens in there will probably have a SWAT team here before I get through to dispatch.”

Josie pointed in the direction of Mira’s development, voice rising to a shout dimmed by the feeling of gravel in her throat. “I told you to call back there!”

Turner put the phone to his ear. “I was backing you up. What do you call what I just did? By the way, you’ve got dirt in your hair.”

THIRTY

The moment Josie stopped moving, pain flooded her system, aches erupting in almost every single part of her body. The fingers and knuckles of her right hand, her forehead, her cheek, her back, her shoulder. The scrapes along her forearms burned. The skin of her throat was tender and bruised and every time she spoke or swallowed, an unpleasant stinging sensation assailed her. Everything hurt. It had been hours. Every available resource on Denton’s police force had been called in to search for Seth Lee. Officers had canvassed blocks and blocks of residences, interviewing people and requesting their surveillance footage. Patrol units prowled the streets. After being safely escorted out of the yard she and Turner had landed in during their escape from Kiki the menace, they’d apologized to the owners and joined the search.

Seth Lee was gone, and Josie was thoroughly exhausted.

She’d made her way back to her vehicle, which was parked in front of Mira’s house. A couple of members of the ERT were still inside, documenting where Josie had been attacked. She noted that Turner’s vehicle was still there although she had no idea where he’d gone. As usual.

“I’ve been looking for you.” She was so tired, she hadn’t even heard Noah pull up behind her car. He walked over, brows furrowed. She didn’t realize just how tense she was until he gently lifted her chin to study the bruising on her cheek and then her neck. The moment he touched her, the tightness in her jaw, neck, and shoulders started to drain away.

“Heard you got banged up pretty good,” he said.

On her scale of having her ass kicked, this night was fairly low. “I’m sore, but I’ll survive. I know I have to go to the hospital later to document these injuries and make sure there’s no permanent damage to my vocal cords, but tell me, did you get anything? Anything at all?”

He dropped his hand and reached into a pocket for his phone. “We found Mira Summers on camera several times. At the end of this street a neighbor has a security camera. It shows her headed toward her home in the afternoon while Bobbi Thomas was at work. On foot, walking slowly. About two hours later, she appears on a residential camera moving in the other direction, about two blocks from here.”

Josie ran her tongue along the shredded portion of the inside of her cheek. “She came home. She was here for two hours.” She’d come home and had coffee with someone in her living room. “There were flowers in her kitchen. What was left of the note said, ‘sorry.’ I don’t know when she received them, but?—”

“Roses?” Noah asked.

The coppery taste of blood still clung faintly to the inside of her mouth. She kept her voice at a near whisper to avoid more pain. “Yeah.”

Noah pointed toward the end of the block in the direction Mira had come when she arrived at her house. “We got a guy carrying a bouquet of roses on that camera there about forty, forty-five minutes after Mira passed by. Figured he was delivering for a florist.”

“What did he look like?”

“Hard to tell because the camera only caught his profile. He was wearing a hat. Possibly late teens or early twenties. The quality of the footage isn’t great.”

Not Seth Lee then.

“We’ll get someone to start calling florists though,” Noah added. “See if we can track him down and find out who sent the flowers and whether he saw anything or anyone else when he delivered them.”

“I don’t know that it’s important,” Josie said. “But it’s odd.”

Noah smiled. “Everything is important until we know it’s not. We’ll run it down.”

Josie rubbed her shoulder. She was going to need a very hot, very long bath when she finally got home. “Were you able to follow Mira on cameras from here?”

Noah took out his phone. His index finger flew across the screen. “Yes. About five blocks west of here. Not sure where she was headed but she kept looking around like she thought someone might be following her and then…” He turned the screen toward her where black and white footage showed a large front yard with a picket fence. Beyond that, cars whizzed by along the street. On the opposite sidewalk, a tall, loping figure appeared. It was difficult to make out but there were white wraps around her forearms. Mira Summers. She kept looking behind her. Then a white box truck entered the frame, only its cab and half of the cargo area visible. From the distance of the camera, it was impossible to make out the driver. The truck jolted to a stop, eclipsing the view of Mira. Josie watched the timestamp at the bottom right of the screen as the seconds ticked by. Fifteen seconds. Sixteen, seventeen. The truck pulled away. Mira was gone.

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