Vanishing Girls (Detective Josie Quinn #1)(3)

Josie pulled out her cell phone and punched in a number she had dialed four to six times a day for the last six months. He let most of her calls go right to voicemail, but occasionally he would answer, and today he picked up on the third ring.

“Jo,” Sergeant Ray Quinn said, sounding out of breath.

“When did you guys find the scene?” she asked without preamble.

He wasn’t too breathless to give her one of his trademark heavy sighs. The kind he always gave her when he thought she was being a pain in the ass. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “You’re out on leave. Stop calling me. We’ve got this under control.”

“Do you?”

“You think we don’t?”

“Why hasn’t the chief called in help? He’s saying Coleman was abducted. Has he asked for support from the state police or the FBI? We don’t have the resources for this.”

“You don’t know anything about this case, Jo.”

“I know enough. If this really is an abduction, you need to call in backup, like, yesterday. You know that missing kids who aren’t found in the first forty-eight hours—”

“Stop.”

“I’m serious, Ray. This is serious shit. This girl could be anywhere by now. Have you shaken down the registered sex offenders yet? Please tell me you’ve got someone out there doing that right now. I mean, this isn’t rocket science. Pretty blond teenager is abducted? Hiller would be good. You should get him to do it, and I’d have LaMay go with him. Call over to Bowersville and see if they can get a couple of people in their department to hit the register there. That’s not that far from here. Tell me you’ve done this already?”

She could feel his annoyance over the line, but she was used to it. She tried to remember a time when they’d been loving toward one another. Sweet, caring, patient. She had to go all the way back to high school for that memory. They had liked one another once, hadn’t they?

Ray sighed, “Here we go again. You think you know everything. You think you’re the only one on the force who can do the job. You know what, Jo? You’re not. You know nothing. Nothing. So shut up and stop fucking calling me. Take up knitting or whatever the fuck women do when they don’t work. I’m hanging up now.”

She was stung by the force of his words. He used the word nothing like a knife. Stabbing her fast and quick, a prison shanking. He was always abrasive—she could be too—but never cruel. Recovering quickly, she blurted, “Sign the divorce papers, Ray, and I’ll stop calling.”

Silence.

Now it was her turn to stab back. “I’m marrying Luke. He proposed. Yesterday. In bed.”

He didn’t respond, but she could hear him breathing. They’d been separated for months, but their relationship had been broken for a long time. She knew he hated Luke, hated the thought of another man with his wife. Even if she was his soon-to-be ex-wife.

She was listening so intently to the sound of his breathing, waiting to see what he would say, what tack he was going to take on hearing this news, that it took a moment for her to register the sharp report of gunshots in the distance. It wasn’t that unusual in Denton; during hunting season, in the wooded outskirts of the city, shots went off all day long like fireworks. But it wasn’t hunting season, or the Fourth of July. It was March, and there was no good reason for anyone to be firing off that many rounds.

Phone still in hand, Josie tossed her coffee cup into a nearby trash can and took a few steps out into the parking lot. The shots were getting closer, shattering the cool stillness of the morning. People at the gas pumps froze in place. All heads craned, searching for the source. Josie met the wide-eyed stares of a few of the patrons, but all they could do was exchange the same puzzled look.

Something was coming, but they didn’t know what, or from where.

Instinctively, her free hand reached to her waist for her service weapon, but it wasn’t there. Fear was a fist in her chest, squeezing her heart into her throat.

Ray spoke into her silence, “Jo?”

From around the corner, a black, bullet-riddled Escalade barreled toward the Stop and Go, jumped the curb and sailed directly toward Josie. Her feet were like cement blocks. Move, she told herself. Move. As the Escalade hurtled past her, the driver’s side mirror caught the corner of her jacket, spinning her around and sending her flying through the air. She hit the asphalt hard, landing on her left side, her body rolling away from the vehicle until her stomach hit one of the metal pillars that blocked the gas pumps.

The Escalade smashed into the front of the Stop and Go, metal screeching and windows blowing out in a cacophonous boom. Even after the SUV lodged in the wall, the engine continued to rev and squeal. Plumes of dust from the crumbled cinderblock rose around the vehicle. People fled from the building. Josie’s lungs screamed for air that wouldn’t come.





Chapter Two





Trying to catch her breath, Josie rolled to her other side, causing a sharp pain to shoot through her left leg. A glance at her jeans revealed a large tear going up the side of her calf. Shredded, pink skin peeked out from underneath. She took a deep, full breath at last. Her entire torso felt like a bruise. But she was alive. Nothing appeared to be broken or missing, but her adrenaline pumped too hard to register the relief.

Looking back toward the Escalade, she saw a smattering of people gathered around the back end of it, keeping a careful distance. As she staggered to her feet, Josie noticed a man, bent at the waist, hanging face down from the rear driver’s side window of the vehicle. Blood fanned across the back of his white T-shirt. What looked like a TEC-9 had landed in the parking lot about ten feet away from the car. Again, she reached for her service weapon and felt a sense of panic at its absence. She stumbled toward the vehicle, trying to right her posture. Pain prickled across her lower back.