Page 9 of Husband Missing

Shirley leaned over Josie’s shoulder to watch the seventeen seconds in which the blonde appeared. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t.”

Josie rewound to when the blonde first came into view and pressed pause. “Do you know why Gina was outside the site?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Was she grabbing lunch?” Josie asked.

“No. She’d already gone out for lunch around noon, and she took her car for that. Oh, wait. When I saw her this morning, she said something about surveying the fencing to see if there were any places people could slip in. Maybe that’s what she was doing? Although…”

Trailing off, Shirley walked over to one of the windows and peered outside. “Her car’s not here.”

“But she did come back after lunch,” Josie clarified. “Could she have parked it elsewhere?”

Shirley turned back toward Josie, frowning. “I suppose.”

“What kind of car does Gina own?” As Shirley answered, Josie took out her phone. Dried white flakes of primer skidded across the screen as she punched in her passcode. She sent Brennan a text with the make and model of Gina’s car and instructions to have units search the area for it.

Josie beckoned Shirley closer and pointed to the blonde frozen on the computer screen. “I’m going to need stills of this woman. As many as you can get. Fast as you can. Text them to me.”

“Sure thing,” Shirley said. “I’ve got a tablet on the table over there. I can grab them from that. I’ll also get you copies of all the footage so you can take it with you.”

As she shuffled off to the other end of the trailer, Josie fast-forwarded to the point where the blonde fled the scene. Six seconds later, Gina Phelan followed the same path, staggering as though she was drunk. She wasn’t carrying a purse of any kind. Blood seeped from the two wounds in her abdomen, forming the streaks on her clothes that Josie had seen on her body. Her hands fumbled at her shirt, palms trying to stem the flow. It took her longer to reach the tussling throng. In the throes of their attack on the guards, the protestors on the fringe let Gina slippast without notice. She reached out, trying to touch the closest person, but soon she was swallowed up by the writhing bodies, batted around like a pinball until she collapsed.

That was when someone finally saw her.

The rest was just as Brennan had described. Josie closed out the footage and brought up the video from the east-facing camera even though she doubted it would offer much. As she watched, focused on the blonde and Gina Phelan, Josie lifted her hair and fanned the back of her neck. She was concentrating so hard that she didn’t hear the door to the trailer open and close.

Hot breath cascaded down her neck a moment before she heard Kyle Turner’s voice. “Quinn, is that paint?”

Josie jumped, making the chair creak. As the video concluded, she looked over her shoulder. He was directly behind her, his huge frame taking up an unreasonable amount of space. One of his fingers pointed at the nape of her neck.

Josie quickly let her hair fall. She kept her voice low. “None of your business. Also, you’re standing too close. Again.”

With a sigh, Turner stepped back, bumping into a filing cabinet. In an attempt to look cool and casual, he draped an arm over the top of it. Matching the volume of Josie’s voice so that Shirley wouldn’t overhear them, he said, “I thought we were getting along.”

Josie had warmed up to him somewhat, as nauseated as it made her to admit, even laughing at a joke he’d made during their last big case. He had, after all, saved her from being mauled by a dog and also from plummeting down the shaft of a crumbling stairwell. There were even a couple of times she’d swallowed her pride and asked him to do things for her and, in response, he wasn’t a raging asshole at all. She’d been shocked to find out that her sister had a connection to him, though both of them had been very close-lipped about it. Trinity would only say that the Kyle Turner she knew wasn’t anything like thedouchebag who had joined the Denton PD. Josie often wondered if he was actually human, but she wouldn’t go so far as to say they were getting along.

“Debatable,” she told him. “Nice of you to show up, by the way.”

“Hey, I came in early,” Turner protested.

“You left your last shift early.”

She shouldn’t complain. He would be relieving her at midnight.

“Whatever.” His fingers drummed against his thigh as he shifted his attention to Shirley, whose back was to them.

Josie’s phone vibrated with the still photos she’d requested. As the pictures came in, she forwarded them to Brennan with a brief explanation. He replied before she’d even sent them all, promising to get units out to search for the mystery woman as well as have officers show her photos to the guards and protestors to find out whether anyone knew her or recognized her. Additional units would check with local residents and businesses.

The blonde was covered in blood, running away from a dying Gina Phelan, and she’d fled the scene without so much as glancing back. Either she had stabbed Gina Phelan, or she had seen the person who did. Maybe she, too, had been wounded. Regardless, she was the key to finding out what the hell happened.

Josie sent the last photo and looked up to see Turner’s eyes sweep slowly from Shirley’s thick, messy bun to the jeans hugging her ass.

Josie glared at him. Hard. She didn’t know whether to be glad or disturbed that he keyed in on it right away. It meant they’d officially worked together so often that they were developing an unspoken language. The thought was like a verysharp stone in her shoe. Or worse, plantar fasciitis. More painful and not fixed by taking off your shoe and shaking it.

What?Turner mouthed.

Josie gave him a look that she hoped he read as “You’re disgusting.”

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