Page 97 of Husband Missing

Noah stirred, groaning. His good eye opened. “Josie?”

She stood up and leaned over so he could see her. “I’m right here. We’re almost to the hospital. I’m not going anywhere.”

His arms and legs were strapped down. There was no way for him to reach for her, but she felt his fingers twitch under her palm and she squeezed them.

When he drifted off again, she resumed her seat but kept her hand on top of his. She never wanted to break contact with him again.

“Forty minutes out,” shouted the driver.

Josie’s brain went back to work. Lila must have made contact with Clint Phelan at some point. Obviously, he hadn’t welcomed her with open arms. Why would he? She was living, breathing proof of his greatest sin. Forcing himself on a troubled young woman who wanted so badly to be free from her father’s abuse that she chose to live alone in the woods, stealing from campers and hunters to clothe herself and trapping small game to eat.

Small game.

Another flicker in the recesses of her brain. She let it lie.

Even if Clint Phelan had wanted to acknowledge Lila—even if he believed his encounters with Roe Hoyt had been consensual—admitting his paternity would tie him to one of the state’s most disturbing criminal cases. It wouldn’t have been a good look for the public face of one of the biggest construction and development companies in Pennsylvania. He would be the man whose mistress turned out to be a violent, feral woman who killed her own children. Five of them.

It was more likely that Lila had tried to blackmail him. That was her specialty, after all. Maybe she had succeeded, but why take blunt-tipped arrowheads for a souvenir?

Five of them.

No. Six. Lila was the sixth.

Clint was an accomplished hunter and archer. Blunt-tipped arrows were used to hunt small game. Squirrels, rabbits, grouse, pheasants. A sharper broadhead would obliterate a creaturethat tiny and delicate. Blunt-tipped arrowheads did just enough damage to kill.

Her stomach lurched. She hadn’t eaten in hours but bile threatened to come back up.

Five tiny skulls, their round white surfaces fractured like cracked eggs.

“They had skull fractures. From a small, unknown blunt object.”

“Oh God.”

The paramedic looked up from the clipboard he was scribbling on. “You okay, miss?”

Josie forced her nausea down. “Fine,” she replied with a stiff smile.

Roe’s arms returned to the cradling position, rocking and rocking. This time, she looked from the invisible infant to the clock high on the wall to their right.

It hadn’t been about time at all. She’d been trying to indicate something in the distance, maybe someone in an elevated position, on the top of a hill. The clock just happened to be there.

Slowly, she brought her hands up, angled toward the clock. Then she arced them down toward where the crook of her left elbow had been. “Roe,” she said. “Roe.”

Roe.

Arrow.

It wasn’t a random sound. It wasn’t meant to be her name. She’d been trying to tell everyone. For over sixty years, she’d been trying to tell everyone that an arrow had killed her children.

SEVENTY

Erica’s ass hurt from sitting in what had to be the hardest and most uncomfortable chair on the planet for hours, maybe days. As interrogation rooms went, this one was pretty clean and it had an actual carpet, but it still smelled weird. Like body odor and onions. She wondered what kind of fat-ass perverts sat in this chair before her, sweating while the pretty blonde detective tricked them into confessing to their disgusting crimes. As police detectives went, Heather Loughlin was pretty savvy but Erica would have preferred the one from Denton with the short, spiked brown and gray hair.

“Erica? We’re almost finished here.” Heather had her notepad out again. “You’ve told me how you started dating Holden Doyle. He took you to one of Mace Phelan’s parties at his Lewisburg residence. Holden, Mr. Phelan, and two of his associates held you against your will for one week, during which they kept you at the hunting lodge. They later transported you to the children’s hospital construction site. As you understood it, they were going to kill you and dispose of your body there. Gina Phelan found you while she was inspecting the site and tried to get you off the site without anyone noticing. Holden saw you two fleeing and pursued you. He tried to stab you but Gina Phelanput herself in front of you and told you to run, which you did, hiding out until Denton PD located you.”

As recaps went, it was pretty good. “Can we take a break?” Erica asked. “I’m hungry and I want to see my dad.”

She thought they’d arrest her as soon as they rescued her but instead, they’d had her checked out at the hospital, put her and her dad up in a hotel, provided clean clothes, and some takeout, all so she would be cooperative in this never-ending interview.

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