“But sir, June Spencer would not have a barbell that said Princess,” Josie said. “Hers would say Bitch or it would have a skull on it, or something. Listen to me, I don’t think that June was with Drummond for the last year. I think she was being held by the same person who took Isabelle Coleman. I think she saw Coleman sometime in the last week, and they swapped. It’s a message, don’t you see?”
The wiry hairs of the chief’s left eyebrow lifted skeptically. “Quinn, do you hear yourself? Sending messages with tongue piercings?”
“It’s too big a coincidence. Please, look at Coleman’s Facebook page. You’ll see.” Josie kept going. “What if Isabelle Coleman and June Spencer saw one another? Did you finish the search of Drummond’s property?”
“There’s nothing there. We took the whole place apart and dug up his entire yard—four feet down. You could drop a pool in there now. There’s nothing. No sign of Coleman.”
“So, she wasn’t with Drummond. They were both being held somewhere else and then they got separated. What if June saw Coleman after she was abducted, but before she ended up with Drummond? Have you checked Drummond’s known associates?”
“Drummond didn’t have any known associates. He doesn’t even have any friends. I tried calling his only known relative, an uncle in Colorado. The guy told me Drummond doesn’t deserve a funeral. City’s paying for it.”
“What about from prison?”
The chief pointed a finger at her. “Quinn. I mean it, now. Stop. I appreciate your telling me what happened with that girl, but you need to go home. We will follow up every lead. You know that. But you’re out. Leave the police work to us.”
Josie sensed this might be her only chance to plead her case for getting back on the force. When would she next be in front of him? When he called her back, whenever the hell that would be. She wasn’t about to hold her breath. “I’m sorry, but listen to me. Things are moving quickly. You’re short-staffed. You’re working a high-profile abduction where there might be more than one person involved, a shootout, a kidnapping—again, where multiple possible suspects are involved—and now a murder.”
“You think I don’t know what we’re dealing with right now, Quinn?”
“That’s not what I said. You need help. Let me come back. Two weeks. You can put me back out on suspension after things settle down.”
“That’s not how it works, and you know it. As always, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but you’re on thin ice here. The DA is all over my ass to conduct a proper investigation. You have a better chance of winning the lottery than that woman deciding not to press charges. I’m trying to figure out a way to get you out of the mess you made before all this shit started. You being in the middle of every other damn mess isn’t helping.”
“She won’t press charges,” Josie said.
His voice rose to a near shout. “Quinn, you knocked out two of her teeth! How in the hell do you know she won’t press charges?”
Because what she did was far worse than me elbowing her in the face, Josie thought. She kept her mouth shut this time; the last time they’d had this conversation it had sounded like a justification. Instead, she tried, “I’m sorry. I’ll try to… fly under the radar from now on. But please, just think about it. We can do it quietly. Put me on the tip line or let me guard June Spencer while she’s in holding. I’ll keep my head down, I promise.”
He sighed. “I said no, Quinn. I brought you in here to put you on notice. Stay out of the shit, will you?”
She wanted to scream. Instead, she asked, as calmly as possible, “What about the Ramona thing?”
Slowly, his eyelids dropped. He raised his head to the ceiling and inhaled deeply, his way of counting to ten. She’d pushed him too far. His blue eyes locked on her again. “Did you not hear a goddamn thing I said?”
“I did. I was just wondering. Now more than ever, we need to find her, don’t you think? What if she’s connected to Isabelle Coleman somehow? What if she knows where Coleman is?”
The chief rubbed a hand over his eyes. “There’s no Ramona. I got the report after the shootout, and we checked every possibility. There are six Ramonas in the NAMUS database listed as missing, and none of them are from Pennsylvania. Not even close. We checked out Spencer’s house. Talked to coworkers, friends, his ex-girlfriend. No one knows anyone with that name. We don’t even have anyone named Ramona in the city—accounted for or unaccounted for. It’s a dead end, Quinn.”
“But don’t you think it’s weird that both Spencers brought the name up? It must mean something. Whoever Ramona is, she must be important.”
“What’s weird is you pushing all this when you’re suspended. I don’t appreciate you second-guessing the quality of work that this department is putting out. Now unless you want to be on unpaid suspension, you better get out of my office right now.”
“Chief.”
“Now,” he hollered.
His words hit her like a physical slap. She gripped the armrests of her chair and pushed herself to standing. It wasn’t that he had yelled at her. The chief was well known for his big, booming voice. It was the way he looked at her. For the second time in the last five minutes, she felt like a stranger in her own world.
She kept her eyes on him and backed out of the room.
Chapter Twenty-Three
She had no idea how long she’d been sleeping, but she was startled awake when the door swung open, pushing against her prone form. As she opened her eyes, daylight slashed into the room, blinding her. The pain in her head was instant and excruciating. The girl clenched her eyes closed as tightly as she could, threw her forearm over her face and scrambled backward until her body slammed hard into the stone wall. Before she could catch her breath, a rough hand dragged her up from the ground.
“Stand up,” a man’s voice commanded.
She followed the pain in her scalp more than his command. Her legs wobbled and shook as she stood upright. She tried opening her eyes again but the light was too harsh.
“Please,” she croaked. “I want to go home.”
He laughed, his breath hot in her ear. “You can’t go home, girlie,” he said. “You’re mine now.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was nearing ten o’clock and Josie was three shots of Wild Turkey deep by the time Luke arrived at her house. She met him at the door, flinging her arms around his neck and kissing him deeply. She felt the stir of her lust for him, intensified by booze. Before he could catch his breath, she was undoing his belt.
Laughing softly, he grasped her hands and held them between his large palms, like he was warming them on a cold day. “Not so fast,” he murmured. “I heard about what happened at Rockview. Is your grandmother okay?”
“She’s fine,” Josie replied. The last thing she wanted to do was talk about what happened at Rockview. She could still see her grandmother standing in the doorway of June’s empty room, open-mouthed and white with shock like the rest of them. Josie had felt terrible leaving her there, and felt even worse now, remembering.
Pulling her hands from his grip, Josie pushed Luke until his back was against her foyer wall. Her hands returned frantically to his belt.
“Josie,” he said, and she felt a stab of annoyance at the tone of his voice. Was that pity?
“Shut up,” she said as she finally released his belt and snaked a hand up, behind his head, grabbing a fistful of his hair and pulling him down to her hungry mouth. He didn’t fight her.
He broke the kiss and looked at the steps. “Should we go upstairs?”
She pulled her shirt off. “No,” she said. “I want you now.”
He brushed her cheek gently with the back of his hand. “We can slow down, you know.”
But she didn’t want to slow down. She didn’t want tenderness, or a slow burn. She needed a raging inferno that would burn up every anxiety twisting and turning inside her head. She needed the heat, that fire they’d achieved in the woods.
She dropped to her knees before him. “No,” she said. “We can’t.”