Page 24 of Husband Missing

Josie’s fingers tightened around the shirt. “I’m not going to cry.”

Trinity picked her way across the room and lifted the mattress to peer beneath it before setting it right. “I know. You should, though. It will make you feel better.”

“It won’t.”

“You think it will break the seal and you’ll never be able to put all those scary feelings back inside so you can function, but you’re wrong.” Trinity righted Noah’s nightstand, then picked up the drawer and tried to fit it back into its slot. “Think of it as releasing a little bit of tension. Like opening the pressure relief valve on a boiler.”

She told herself she was being strong for Noah—and she was—but Trinity was spot-on. Everything she’d said was frighteningly accurate. Also, Josiehatedcrying. She chanced a more thorough look around the room. Exhaustion threatened tooverwhelm her. “I know all the things I’m supposed to do,” she snapped. “I’ve been in therapy for ages now.”

She was just choosing not to do them. Default settings were hard to undo.

Trinity knelt on the floor and started picking things up, examining them before putting them either in Noah’s drawer or on the bed. Josie should be the one reclaiming the contents of her husband’s nightstand, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. Not yet.

“Fine,” Trinity said. “Then I’ll tell you what I found out.”

SIXTEEN

Josie’s feet moved forward without any conscious instruction. “What are you talking about?”

Trinity held up a book that Noah had been reading. “Still an astronomy buff, I see. The Milky Way, huh?”

“I took him to Cherry Springs to see it last year. He loved it. He’s had his eye on a telescope for a long time. A very expensive one.” If he came home, she’d buy him one, damn the cost.

Not if. When.

“Trinity, what did you find out?”

She placed the book on top of Noah’s nightstand. “None of the neighbors’ Wi-Fi was out last night. Only yours.”

There was a flutter in Josie’s chest. The Wi-Fi outage was one of the things she’d been wondering about all night. Both Turner and Heather said it had happened with some of the recent armed robberies. Josie had only cursory knowledge of them. There’d been three in Denton—which Turner had handled—and a handful more in the surrounding areas. Most of the time, the break-ins were carried out when no one was home. However, on two occasions, the homeowner had been in the residence. Josie remembered hearing that said homeowners had been badly beaten, which meant the perpetrators had no qualmsabout using violence. Three perpetrators. Enough to subdue a grown man.

If it was the same crew, why had they left the other homeowners behind but taken Noah? Again, the seasoned detective inside her gave a detached and instantaneous answer. The most obvious one. Noah was dead.

No. She rejected the thought just as she had the night before when she spoke with Turner.He’s alive. He has to be alive.

“It’s weird, right?” Trinity said, interrupting her thoughts. “That it was only your Wi-Fi. How is that even possible?”

“There are ways to do it,” Josie said. “Not all of them legal.”

“It means you guys were targeted though,” Trinity said. “Don’t you think?”

“Maybe.”

Josie thought back to the last couple of weeks, trying to remember if anything or anyone unusual had stood out to her. People she didn’t recognize lingering outside. Cars that repeatedly drove down the block or that slowed in front of her house. There was nothing.

“How do you know about the Wi-Fi?” she asked Trinity.

There was no way the state police were giving out this kind of information to the press, even Josie’s sister.

Trinity found Noah’s phone charger on the floor and put it on top of the book. “I asked around.”

“You went door to door.” It wasn’t a question.

“Not everyone answered,” Trinity said.

“Trin, the investigation. It can’t be compromised. You can’t?—”

She looked up at Josie then, her blue eyes so intense, the words dried up in Josie’s throat. “I can. I’m not going to compromise the police investigation. I wouldn’t do that. But I am a journalist and it’s my job to ask questions.”

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