Page 24 of Remember Her Name

Josie opened her mouth to say something about him only knowing how to make women cry rather than soothing them when they did, but another look at him under the dim glow of the streetlight stopped her. He wore an expression she had never seen before. “Are you…worried?”

Turner rolled his eyes. “This isn’t about me, sweetheart. Shit. Just talk to her, would you? I didn’t know what the hell to do.I couldn’t let her sit in that stationhouse with people coming in and out constantly, you know, seeing her like that.”

Wait. Was this Douchebag human, after all? Josie shook off the thought.

Turner said, “I hustled her out of there—and yes, she said it was okay—and into my car. She was still hysterical. Then she said to bring her to see you. Gave me the address.”

Josie tapped lightly against the window, but Amber didn’t look over. “You could have called me to come get her.”

Turner groaned and tugged at his beard again. “And waited for you to show up? While the parking lot was swarmed with press? Come on, Quinn. Do I seem like the kind of guy who could spend that much time with a sobbing woman? It was faster to bring her here.”

Josie’s phone buzzed again but she ignored it. She opened the door and touched Amber’s shoulder. Still no movement. Then Trinity was there, pushing Turner out of the way, and helping Josie coax Amber from the car. Trinity had been there the night they lost Mettner. After the shooting, she’d climbed into Josie’s hospital bed and comforted her in a way no one else could, not even Noah. Trinity knew everyone in Josie’s world of found family and was well aware of the magnitude of Amber’s loss.

Trinity put an arm around Amber’s waist. “Sometimes it just hits you like that,” she whispered. “You came to the right place.”

Amber sagged against her as Trinity helped her into the house. Josie watched them go, an uncharacteristic lump forming in her throat. Grief was a wily thing. It made you think that after a year or more, you could handle your loss. It convinced you that you were making progress, that maybe a day would come when your pain would be manageable enough to take a full breath again.

Then grief reminded you that something as small as a fucking key chain could take you out at the knees.

“I’m gonna go now,” Turner said. “You, uh, you’ve got your hands full, looks like. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He walked around to the driver’s side door. Before he got in, Josie said, “Thank you.”

She could count on one hand the number of times she’d thanked him for anything. It always made him absolutely insufferable. The gloating went on for days. Except this time, he only nodded.

“Turner,” said Josie. “You said you were looking through Mettner’s desk.”

His fingers drummed against the roof of the car. “Yeah.”

“Not your desk?”

With a sigh, he said, “Quinn, I’m a lot of things but stupid isn’t one of them. That desk will be mine when I earn it.”

For a moment, Josie’s breath hitched in her throat. Then Turner grinned at her and slapped his palm against the car’s roof. “Now I gotta go get some sleep, sweetheart, ’cause I know as soon as I get into that stationhouse tomorrow, you’re going to be right up my ass making sure I do every single little thing the way the great Josie Quinn thinks it should be done.”

Irritation flared in Josie’s stomach like acid. She bit back her immediate response, that it wasn’t how she thought things should be done, but about how the law and procedure dictated they be done. Instead, she turned away and started walking back up her driveway. Over her shoulder, she called, “I expect two dollars in my jar first thing tomorrow.”

As she stepped inside, she thought she heard him laughing. Taking out her phone, she read the latest text from Noah.

I’m thinking this guy might be smart enough to not be caught in the geofence. Or leave prints. Hummel typed theblood found in the park. It matches Cleo Tate’s blood type. He’s working overtime now to pull everything he can from the car. Chief is having DNA samples expedited.

Josie sighed. They’d already assumed the blood belonged to Cleo Tate. No surprise there. All that told them was what they already knew: she was in big trouble. Expedited DNA results in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania could sometimes still take weeks or months, depending on the volume of samples the state lab had to test. Even if the DNA results came back in a week or two, if the abductor wasn’t in the CODIS database they weren’t going to be any closer to finding him. If Noah was right and the next day brought one dead end after another, the only clue they had left was the polaroid.

SIXTEEN

Josie’s eyes burned, blurring the text on the pages she’d been reviewing for the last half hour. She’d already consumed one latte. Today she’d been smart enough to buy two at the same time before she reported for her shift. Picking the second one up from her desk, she drank down half of it. Blinking, she snatched up the packet containing Cleo Tate’s phone records again. Another half hour went by. There was nothing that could help them find the woman. Josie had been through hundreds of text messages, emails, private messages on social media, and nothing stood out. From what Josie could tell, Cleo genuinely loved being a mother. She was also exhausted from caring for little Gracie primarily on her own. Even when Remy came home from work, evidently, he didn’t take on much responsibility or attempt to give Cleo a break.

Momma needs a nap, Cleo had texted her sister, who lived in California just days before the abduction.How did I not notice before that my husband is completely useless?

Her photo gallery held well over five hundred photos of baby Gracie. Josie’s chest tightened at the thought of the poor infant possibly—probably—growing up without her mother. Everything in the phone’s contents was benign. No evidence thatCleo was being stalked prior to yesterday or that things were horribly awry with her husband.

The geofence results weren’t helpful either. Whether Google’s new policies had helped the abductor make himself invisible within the virtual perimeter or he’d found some other way to disable the GPS on whatever vehicle he’d escaped in, his identity remained a secret. The canvasses of the areas around the fifty-acre lot where Blue had lost Cleo’s scent also turned up nothing. There were no cameras within range of the perimeter of the lot so that was a bust as well. Noah had told her all this when he slid into bed next to her in the early morning hours. She hadn’t been able to sleep the entire night between obsessing over Cleo Tate and comforting Amber. Plus, the small, nagging question of how Trinity knew Kyle Turner. Josie hadn’t had a chance to ask her once she got back inside. Even after Shannon and Christian left and Drake went to bed, she and Trinity were up late talking with Amber. Then Josie had set her up in their other guest room.

Once Noah got home, wrapping his large, warm body around hers, she’d gotten a couple of hours of sleep but when she woke to get ready for her shift, the rest of the house was still and silent. Even Trout stayed in bed with Noah. Here she was now at the stationhouse, alone. Turner still hadn’t arrived even though he had been due in over an hour ago. Josie tossed the report aside and stood up, stretching her arms over her head. She walked over to the rolling corkboard that the Chief had bought over a year ago. They’d started using it with every major case. Gretchen had taken it upon herself to print out and pin up salient items. Before Josie was a map of a large part of Denton that had been pieced together using printouts from Google. Gretchen had marked the Tate household, the area of the park where Cleo was taken, the place where Charlotte Thompson had seen Cleo getinto the white car with a man, the Hamptons’ home, and now the fifty-acre lot where the car was found.

The only other thing on the corkboard was a copy of the polaroid.

Josie was studying it when Turner finally made his appearance. As usual, he was in a suit with a can of his favorite energy drink poking from one of his jacket pockets. Phone in hand, his thumb scrolled endlessly. “We’re back to staring at pictures,” he said.

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