Page 76 of Husband Missing

“He’s downstairs. Don’t worry, he’s not going anywhere.” Gretchen set a can of Cherry Coke and a bag of Doritos on the table, sliding them over toward Erica. “He went to the store down the street and got these for you.”

Erica stared at the offering wistfully before wiping a tear from her cheek. She took a deep, shuddering breath and said, “You can send him home. Everything’s fine. He doesn’t need to be here. If he misses work?—”

“That’s not really our call. If your dad wants to wait, we can’t stop him.”

Erica’s shoulders slumped.

Gretchen sat in the chair closest to her, introduced herself, and read Erica her Miranda rights. The girl mumbled a yes when asked if she understood them. Again, she drew her legs beneath her sweatshirt.

“I don’t think everything is fine,” Gretchen began softly. “A lot of people have been looking for you. The last you were seen,you were covered in blood. Your dad says you told him you weren’t injured. Is that true?”

Erica didn’t answer.

“You can tell me,” Gretchen said. “I won’t report back to him if that’s something you’d like to keep private. I do, however, need to get you medical attention if you’re injured. We can arrange that without telling your dad all the details.”

Erica rested her chin on her knees. Her voice was so small that it hit Josie right in the gut. “I don’t want him to worry. That’s all he does is worry about me.”

Gretchen smiled. “That’s kind of what parents are for, and I can tell you that even if your life was perfect and nothing went wrong, he’d still worry ’cause he’s your dad and he loves you.”

Erica used the sleeve of her sweatshirt to wipe away a few more tears. “I’m not hurt.”

It was a lie. Maybe she hadn’t been stabbed but someone had hurt her. Given the coloring of her bruises, Josie guessed it happened before the stabbing.

Gretchen knew it too but chose not to push, turning instead to the reason they were there. “Tell me about Monday.”

“Monday?”

Repeating the question. Buying time. Josie wondered if she was going to claim it wasn’t her in the videos of the protests and stabbing.

“The day you were outside of the construction site for the new children’s hospital here in Denton,” Gretchen clarified, taking a notepad and pen from the back pocket of her khakis.

Erica kept her eyes downcast. “I, um, was walking down the street and this guy came up behind me. He grabbed me by my shoulder and turned me around. There was a knife in his hand. He said something but I was so freaked out, I didn’t hear it. I thought he was going to stab me but then this lady came out ofnowhere. She was yelling at him, right in his face. The next thing I know, he’s stabbing her. She told me to run so I did.”

“Who was the guy?” asked Gretchen.

Erica’s eyes snapped to Gretchen’s face, her mouth forming an O for a second before she found her composure. “I don’t know.”

“You never saw him before he came after you on the street?”

“No.”

She was lying. Josie felt a simultaneous surge of excitement and anger. If Erica knew the attacker, it unlocked the entire case—three different cases, in fact—and brought them closer to finding Noah. But if she continued to lie about knowing him, she was effectively standing between Josie and her husband. The thought that the best lead they’d had in almost three days was right there, so close, and still out of reach caused hot rage to pour through the cracks in her emotional armor. This was one of the reasons Josie wasn’t allowed in that room. Her fists clenched with the need to stalk in there and shake Erica until she told them what they needed to know.

Noah had been missing for sixty-nine hours.

FIFTY-TWO

“Easy there, killer,” Turner murmured. His hand pressed down on Josie’s shoulder, keeping her in the chair. The anger rolling off her body must have been palpable. For once, she wasn’t annoyed by his uninvited touch. She was on a razor’s edge right now, spinning out, self-control a flimsy thread she could no longer catch. Without Turner holding her in place, she didn’t know what she might do, but she knew it would blow up her entire world. Some dispassionate, professional part of her pushed through the chaos in her mind, reminding her that with witnesses like Erica Slater, a certain amount of finesse was necessary. It would take as long as it took and there was no guarantee they’d get what they needed from her anyway.

“If this was a domestic dispute that Gina Phelan got in the middle of, you know we’ll be able to track this guy down pretty fast,” said Turner. “Palmer’s got this.”

Josie didn’t have the mental resources to reflect on the fact that hell had just frozen over. Never in her life did she think she’d see the day Turner complimented Gretchen.

As if sensing her thoughts, he said, “Don’t tell her I said that.”

Gretchen put on her reading glasses. She flipped a page in her notebook. “Your dad tells me you’re from Williamsport,but you were living in Lock Haven. What were you doing in Denton?”

Erica’s legs slid down to the floor again. “Don’t judge me, okay? I met a guy online. I know, I know, no story that starts like that turns out well, right?” She didn’t wait for Gretchen to respond. “We were messaging on Snapchat for a while. He wanted to meet but I was really nervous. I don’t trust that sort of thing, you know?”

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