by Lisa Regan
Chapter Fifty-Nine
JOSIE – FOURTEEN YEARS OLD
Josie woke to the sound of Dex screaming like a wild animal caught in a trap—a sound that would haunt her dreams for years to come. She sprang out of bed and ran into the hallway to find smoke billowing from her mother’s room. Inside, Dex’s head was a ball of flame, and he was running around throwing himself against the walls like he was stuck in a pinball machine. On the bed, one of the pillows was alight, and fire was spreading quickly across the bedspread. A gust of air from the open window billowed the curtain into the flames and set them alight too. Dex slapped his hands furiously against his skull, but the flames were taking over faster than he could snuff them.
Josie ran back to her room and snatched her comforter from her bed. Back in the main bedroom, she screamed Dex’s name to get his attention, but he seemed not to hear her. Finally, she climbed onto the bed, trying to stay on the side that wasn’t burning, and as he passed by her, she threw the comforter over him. Her hands found the round hardness of his skull, and she pounded it with both palms. He kept screaming. She had to get him out of the room. Jumping down off the bed, she guided him toward the door. He stumbled and fell into the hallway. Josie pulled the door closed behind her, trying to contain the fire, and tried to find his arms beneath the comforter. Her hand closed around one of his. “Dex,” she said. “Come on. We have to go.”
He teetered but came to his feet. The comforter was still over his head, tendrils of smoke floating from beneath it. The smell of burnt flesh singed Josie’s nostrils as she guided him out into the living room, toward the front door. Her mother watched them from the couch, unmoving, a glass of vodka in one hand and a satisfied smile on her lips.
Chapter Sixty
Josie paused before getting in the car to snap a picture of Lila’s face with her phone. She sent it to Noah and Gretchen so they could get it out to the news outlets as quickly as possible. As she drove, the photo sat on the passenger’s seat of her Escape, drawing her gaze toward it again and again. Her mother standing outside of their trailer, slender but shapely in a pair of jeans and a lavender V-neck T-shirt. Long, shiny black hair cascaded down over her shoulders. Her thin face, high cheekbones, square chin, and blue eyes set on the slightest angle gave her a slightly exotic look. Josie remembered well the steady flow of male attention that Lila Jensen attracted—when she wanted to.
Josie’s thirteen-year-old self stood beside her mother in a sleeveless sundress that was two sizes too large for her, her blue eyes vacant. I’m here but I’m not really here, said the look on her face and her stiff posture, her body leaning away from her mother even though they stood shoulder to shoulder.
Josie didn’t remember the photo being taken. Few people they knew had cameras, and Lila hadn’t generally allowed them when they did—now Josie understood why. Josie was grateful that Dex had kept this one photo. It was the most tangible lead yet.
Back at the station house, Gretchen reported that there were four Lila Jensens in Pennsylvania, and only one of them was within the age range that Josie’s mother would be—and she’d had one apartment in Bellewood in 1983 before disappearing off the grid forever. It was a dead end. All they knew for sure was her true birth date. Not in October, but July. Josie faced a mound of paperwork on her desk from administrative duties she’d been putting off all week. Jitters ran through her body, making her fingers tap her pen in a drumbeat on her desk as she sat in her chair, trying to focus. She called and checked on Misty and Harris. Then she called Rockview again. No reports of anything out of the ordinary.
Gretchen had tracked down Lila Jensen in the foster-care system, but in a county many hours away whose DHS office was having difficulty locating such an old file. Josie had a sinking feeling that the Lila Jensen file had gone wherever the Belinda Rose file had gone. She wondered if Judge Malcolm Bowen had had anything to do with it before he died. He was the only person who would have had enough influence to make two foster care files disappear. Again, the thought that Sophia Bowen hadn’t been truthful when they interviewed her niggled at Josie’s mind. Now that they had a photo, perhaps they could bring her in, question her formally, and see if they could get something more from her. She called Bowen’s home but got the voicemail. She left a message asking if Sophia could come to the station for formal questioning and gave her office and cell phone number. It was Sophia’s move.
Giving up on the idea of getting any paperwork done, Josie decided to drive over to the Eudora and face Trinity. But there was no answer when Josie knocked on the door to her room. She waited in the hall for fifteen minutes, texting Trinity that she was there, but got no response.
Night fell around her as she drove away from the hotel and aimlessly around the city until fatigue burned her eyes. She wanted to keep moving, keep doing anything that would keep the memories at bay. But the clock on her dashboard said midnight, and Noah had texted her twice already to remind her that she needed rest; he suggested she stay with him again for her own safety.
Noah.
The lights of his little house glowed brightly as she pulled up in front of it. Wordlessly, he let her inside. His thick brown hair was still wet from a shower, and he wore shorts and a Denton PD T-shirt.
Josie went upstairs and changed into a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. She took up position on Noah’s couch again, staring at her reflection in the blackness of the television screen: drawn face, haunted eyes.
Noah joined her on the couch. There were no dirty chai lattes. No meatball subs. He didn’t even ask if she had eaten. She knew he was truly angry with her this time; she hadn’t been forthcoming with him about Needle, and then she had run off to talk to Dex alone. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“I’ll respect your boundaries,” Noah said. “You don’t need to shut me out.”
“I’m not—I didn’t, I—”
He waved a hand. “It’s okay. Just let us protect you. You’ve got a whole department at your disposal. If anyone on your staff had been robbed and attacked in the same week, you’d want someone on them—you know you would.”
This was true. It was also true that she didn’t like admitting weakness or vulnerability, and she certainly didn’t want her staff to view her that way. “I’ll try,” she said.
“Lila Jensen’s photo ran on the eleven o’clock news,” Noah said. “It’s already up online on all the local news sites. You’ll be notified immediately if any good tips come in.”
“Thank you,” Josie said.
“Gretchen tried to get something out of Zeke, but he wouldn’t talk.”
Josie kept her eyes on her reflection in the television. “I told you he wouldn’t. He’s got nothing to lose. He meant what he said—he wouldn’t cross my mother even if he knew where she was.”
“Josie, do you really think she’s that dangerous? That she would go after your grandmother or Misty and the baby?”
She shook her head. “Maybe not directly. You’ve seen—she had someone else rob my house. I doubt she is very computer-savvy. She probably had someone else place the craigslist ads. One of those teenage idiots working at the Spur Mobile store has probably been giving her my number—hell, that same teenager is probably the one placing the ads. She uses people; there were always people willing to do things for her for drugs or favors or because she had something on them. She’s been working at this for over a month now. She won’t stop until everything I love is gone.”
Noah let a moment pass. She sensed him trying to figure out a tactful way to ask the question. “Why… why does she—”
Josie met his eyes. “Why does she hate me so much?”
He looked away.
“It’s okay. Look.” She pulled her hair away from her face, turning so that he could see the long, silvered scar running down the side of her face. “She did this to me when I was six. The man you brought in tonight? Zeke? He stopped her. I used to call him Needle because I didn’t know his name, and that’s what he always brought with him.”
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“I’m sorry,” Noah said.
“That was probably the least horrible thing she did to me. The man I visited today was her boyfriend. She was angry with him because of something I did, so she set fire to his hair when he was sleeping. Or at least, I suspect she did. There was never any proof. They both smoked, and it was assumed he must have fallen asleep with a lit cigarette in his mouth. But I just know she did it.”
“Jesus.”
“In my sophomore year of college, I had some… struggles. I was depressed. Drank too much. I had to see a therapist. I didn’t go for long, but what I got out of that experience was the realization that my mother hates everyone—not just me.” She laughed, a mirthless sound. “In other words, it’s nothing personal. She only cares about herself, which means she cares about other people only if they have something she wants or needs. Once they’ve served their purpose, she takes pleasure in making them suffer. She is spiteful, jealous, and vengeful, and most of all, she’s unpredictable. And very, very dangerous.”
“I had no idea,” Noah said.
“Of course you didn’t. No one knows. It’s not something I talk about. Ever. Only Ray knew what she was really like, and even he didn’t know everything. For a long time, I was the only thing keeping my dad around. Once he was gone, she kept me from my grandmother just to be cruel. So, the answer to your question—she hates me because that’s just who she is. What I don’t know is why she’s come back. Why now?”
A feeling of bone-deep fatigue spread through her as she spoke. She closed her eyes, and a moment later she felt Noah’s hand slide into hers, squeezing gently. There was nothing he could have said to comfort her, and she appreciated the steady silence he let her have. She squeezed back.
When she opened her eyes again, she caught him staring at her intently. As tired as she was, the electricity between their clasped hands gave her a jolt. With his other hand, Noah reached over and pressed a palm to her cheek. It was warm, and Josie let her head sink into it. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she blinked them back. She wasn’t sure if she could take this kind of tenderness. He searched her face and leaned in slightly, his lips inches from hers, testing the air between them. She lifted her lips to his, and he kissed her, long and slow and deep until her legs felt weak and her whole body tingled. Kissing him was strange and nothing like she had expected; it was better than anything she’d ever expected, and that terrified her.
He broke the kiss but held onto her, pressing his forehead to hers, the two of them breathing into one another for a moment.
“Noah,” she said. “You don’t—you shouldn’t—”
“What?”
“You don’t want me. You’re so good and I’m too—damaged.”
He moved his head back just enough so that she could see his smile. He cupped both her cheeks. “No,” he said with absolute conviction. “You’re not damaged. You’re extraordinary.”
It was like their bodies had caught fire as her mouth crashed down onto his, and then both of them were reaching, pulling at one another’s clothes. With Noah’s frenzied hands and mouth on her body, the trauma of the last several days fell away. There was only him and the sensations he provoked in her body. It was like trying to stop a forest fire with a watering can, but somewhere deep inside, the more reasoned part of her made her pull back. She didn’t want to be this person anymore—a woman who used the heat and ecstasy of sex to hold back her demons whenever she thought they might overwhelm her.
“Stop,” Josie said. “We have to stop.”
Her last two relationships had been colossal failures. Maybe not entirely because of the sex and whiskey she used to escape her feelings, but they’d failed nonetheless.
Noah’s mouth was hot against her throat. She pushed him away gently, disentangling herself and standing up. She needed some distance between them, even as every cell in her body yearned to be close to him again.
His chest heaved. “What is it?” he gasped, staring up at her. She’d managed to get his shirt off. The scar near his right shoulder from where she’d shot him during the missing girls case drew her gaze. He had forgiven her easily, but her guilt lived on.
“You deserve better than this,” she said.
A crease appeared over the bridge of his nose. “What?”
“I’m not—I’m not good enough for you.”
He jumped up. He was down to his boxer shorts, and she could see that he was ready for her. “I think that’s a judgment I need to make, not you,” he said.
She was suddenly aware of the air on her skin. She looked around but didn’t see her T-shirt anywhere. She folded her arms over her bra and met his eyes. Emotions of every kind roiled within her. She tried to find some kind of focus. “Noah,” she said, “this just isn’t a good idea.”
He lifted a hand to touch her, but she moved back, out of his reach. The edge of the coffee table cut into the backs of her calves. The confusion in Noah’s eyes was replaced with hurt. The sight felt like a knife in her chest.
“I’m sorry,” she managed. “I just don’t think we should—”
The sound of their cell phones ringing simultaneously cut her off.
Noah tore his eyes from her, looking around blindly for his phone.
“On the table,” Josie said as she looked around for her own. She found it between the cushions of the couch. It had stopped ringing, but the missed call was from the police station. Noah was already talking to someone. “Yeah, I got it,” he said. “I’m on my way.”
“What is it?” Josie asked.
He sighed and pushed a hand through his hair. He wouldn’t look at her. “Big college party at one of the off-campus houses. You know those big ones up on Turner Hill?”
“The ones with the big drop-off behind them?”
“Yeah, the creek runs behind them. One of the neighbors called police because of the noise. Patrol showed up, a bunch of kids ran out the back, and one of them fell from the drop-off trying to get away. He’s alive but had to be life-flighted to Geisinger.”
“My God.”
Noah found his T-shirt on the floor next to the couch and pulled it on. “They’ve got a bunch of underage drinking arrests. I’m going to head over and help out.”
He disappeared up the steps. Overhead, Josie could hear him opening and closing drawers in his bedroom. When he came back down, he was wearing jeans and his shoulder holster.
Arms still folded over her semi-naked torso, Josie stepped toward him. “I’ll go with you.”
He shook his head, snatching his keys from the coffee table. “I can handle a college party. Go upstairs. Go to sleep.”
Josie watched his back as he walked away from her toward the foyer, and felt a panic start deep in her chest. “You have to be careful,” she blurted, running after him. “My mother—she’ll try coming after you too. She’ll know—”
Noah’s hand was on the doorknob, but he still wouldn’t look at her. “Know what?”
She reached for his back, her fingers brushing his shirt. A hot flush crept up her cheeks. “That I…” She broke off. Beneath his shirt, she saw the muscles of his shoulders tense. She tried again. “That I care about you.”
He pulled the door open. Over his shoulder he said, “Somehow, I don’t think that’s true.” Then he was gone.
Chapter Sixty-One
The glowing green numbers of Noah’s digital clock announced that it was after ten a.m. Josie sat up with a start, throwing the covers off her. Sunlight peeked around the edges of his bedroom shades. Why the hell hadn’t he woken her up? Was he really that angry with her? Had he come home at all? Snatching her cell phone off the nightstand, she saw she had no messages. Something wasn’t right. She threw on some clothes and went downstairs. Everything was exactly as she had left it when she’d trudged up to Noah’s bedroom the night before. The coffee pot was empty, a sure sign he hadn’t come home.
A small kernel of unease settled in the pit of her stomach. Since she had been chief, there hadn’t been a si
ngle day that she hadn’t gotten at least three phone calls before ten a.m. Even on her days off. She raced upstairs to grab her things before dashing to her car. Hopping into it, her right foot searched for the gas pedal but didn’t find it. It was then that she noticed how far back her seat was from the steering wheel.
“What the hell?”
A slow panic tingled through her. She slid her seat back up and broke three traffic laws getting to the station house. Sergeant Lamay sat at the lobby desk. Josie could tell by his wide eyes that something wasn’t right. She passed through the door that separated the public from the rest of the building and advanced on Lamay. “What the hell is going on?”
Lamay spoke in a whisper. “There’s been an incident. Well, a murder. Bad one. Boss… I know it wasn’t you. We all do. But the fire marshal called the mayor ’cause he didn’t trust Fraley or Palmer to handle it. Least, that’s what he said when he showed up here with her a few hours ago.”
Josie’s heart began to race, the tingle in her body now a hard vibration. “A few hours ago?” she hissed.
Lamay looked behind her to make sure they were still alone. “They were going to pick you up.”
“Pick me up? You mean arrest me?”
Lamay nodded. He leaned toward her, and the chair creaked beneath his rotund frame. “You can still go, Boss,” he told her. “I’ll take care of the cameras.”
Josie put a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you, but that’s not necessary.”
“Boss, it’s bad.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I am the chief of police in this town, and this is my department, my station house. Where are they?”
Lamay’s shoulders rounded. He fidgeted with one of the buttons on his uniform shirt. “Conference room.”
