Page 73 of Husband Missing

FIFTY

A deep sadness took hold in Josie’s gut. What happened to Alec and Erica Slater was tragic. She’d like to believe that if he simply went to the authorities from the beginning, he could have avoided all of this and brought Lila and her merry band of mercenaries to justice, but she knew better than anyone that sometimes, in spite of all of law enforcement’s valiant efforts, the bad guys got away with some of the worst crimes imaginable. Josie certainly couldn’t fault Alec for wanting to protect his child the only way he felt he could at the time.

“Did you get a good look at the men who attacked you?” asked Josie. “Could you describe them?”

“Not going there.” Alec shook his head. “So don’t even bother.”

Trinity said, “Once your sentence was handed down, did you have any more encounters with Lila or the men who jumped you?”

He jammed his hand into his back pocket and pulled out his phone to check the time. One-handed, he used his thumb to punch in his passcode, the small footprint undulating. “Nope.”

A young woman’s smiling face filled the screen, but Josie caught only a fleeting glimpse of her before Alec angled it awayfrom them. A fragment of a thought tumbled through Josie’s mind, too quickly for her to latch onto it. She was too busy staring at the tattoo.

“You never saw Lila on the news?” asked Trinity.

“Nope.”

Josie stepped closer to him, eyes following the motions of his hand as he kept scrolling. Four toes. A paw maybe, except it wasn’t quite the right shape for that. There was no delineation between the metacarpal pad and the toepads. It was all one solid shape. Long digits, round toes. It looked more like a hand.

Trinity kept the conversation going. “Where is your daughter now?”

Alec gave a bitter laugh before stuffing his phone back into his pocket. “She’s supposed to be in college. Lock Haven University—well, I guess it’s Commonwealth U, Lock Haven campus now, with that whole state university consolidation thing. Anyway, it’s about a half hour from here. I figured it would be easier for me to keep an eye on her if she was close.”

“I know where that is,” said Trinity. “She’s not there?”

It’s an ink splotch. Or a hand or something.

It’s missing a finger.

Lots of people had similar or even identical tattoos. It was just a coincidence. Josie thought about the conversation Alec was having when they approached him. What she thought she’d heard. Did it mean anything or was she trying to make connections that weren’t there out of desperation?

Sixty-three hours and forty-two minutes.

“She still has a bit of a lying problem.” Alec sighed and took out another smoke, staring at it as if trying to decide whether he had time for another. Josie wanted to tell him he probably had all day to sit back here given his coworker’s finely honed powers of observation.

“I’ve been paying for her to go to college.” At the way Trinity’s eyes widened, he barked a laugh. “Yeah. I’m paying for that, too. A portion of it anyway. My ex-wife was paying half. All this time I’m paying my half to my ex-wife and sending Erica spending money and turns out she wasn’t even going. That’s what my ex-wife’s after me for now—she wants me to pay her back for the tuition expenses she put out because she thinks it’s my fault Erica blew off school.”

“Why did she blow it off?” asked Trinity.

“Guess.”

“She met a boy,” Josie said.

Alec lit his cigarette. On his first exhale, he said, “Bingo.”

“Have you met him?” asked Trinity.

“Hell, no. Besides, they’re already broken up. I’m gonna have to help clean up this mess now, I’m sure. Another heartbreak. She’s got shit taste in men.”

The idea taking shape in Josie’s head seemed absurd. Maybe she was cracking under the strain of her husband’s abduction. What would Noah say if he were here?

That she should remember that her gut was rarely wrong. He wouldn’t think it was absurd because, like Trinity, he’d follow her off a cliff. His faith in her was unshakable. Maybe her inchoate idea wasn’t so ridiculous.

She flashed to Lila entering her dream last night, beckoning. What was she trying to show Josie?

“Mr. Slater,” said Josie. “Have you watched the news in the last three days? Gone on social media?”

Alec pinched his cigarette between his thumb and index finger, holding it a few inches from his mouth. “What?”

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