Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
Josie poured a fifth creamer into her coffee.
She’d only put two in her first cup, and she was pretty sure there was nothing left of the lining of her esophagus.
That was a problem for another day. At present, her exhausted body needed to get through the next few hours, including tracking down Dustin Emmer.
Right after they met with Detective Annette Miller.
All she wanted to do was put her head down on the table and take a good, long nap.
Across from her, Noah sipped from his mug and cringed.
Josie pushed the bowl of creamers toward him.
“Do you think Miller suggested this place because she eats here or because she thinks we’re friends with Turner and she’s trying to kill us?” he asked.
Josie’s stomach growled as a waitress strode past with a tray of breakfast foods. “Killing us would be unwise since we’re searching for her niece and her great-niece. Probably because it’s one of the only places in the city that’s open all night.”
Noah shuddered and pushed the cup toward the edge of the table. “I don’t need caffeine that badly.”
“Don’t waste it,” Josie said. “We can use it to strip the old paint from the walls in the guest room.”
Noah smiled and the sight of it caused warmth to spread through her.
They rarely got to work together anymore since one of them always tried to be home for Wren.
She missed this. Being on the job with him.
It wasn’t the kind of all-nighter she preferred but when it came to high-stakes, high-stress cases, just his presence had the ability to quiet her anxiety. This case was as high-stakes as it got.
“Did you ask Wren about the art show?” Noah asked.
She fidgeted with the edge of her napkin. “No.”
“Want me to?”
Josie sighed. “What are we hoping to get out of this, Noah? We ask her if her art was featured, she says yes, and then what? Are we going to ask her why she didn’t tell us? Why she didn’t want us there?”
He leaned back, stretching an arm across the back of the booth. “Yes.”
“She’ll be uncomfortable.”
“Probably.”
Josie took another slug of her now-passable coffee. “We have no idea what we’re doing.”
“Don’t we?” he argued. “Wren is human. She’s a young adult and she’s been through more trauma than a whole lot of people out there. It’s a mistake to think we can’t be direct with her.”
When Josie didn’t comment, he leaned forward and slid his hand across the table to cover hers. His skin was warm and dry and, as always, his touch soothed the tired and jagged things inside her. “This isn’t about Wren, is it?”
“Of course it is.”
“Josie.”
“Fine. I’m afraid of…” She drifted off, trying to figure out how best to verbalize her muddled thoughts. There were too many things in her head at the moment, and her brain didn’t have the bandwidth to sift through them all.
“You’re afraid of her answer,” Noah said.
“Well, not her answer, per se, because obviously it’s going to be that she didn’t want us there, and my guess is that she didn’t want us there because she doesn’t trust us and she’s still wary of getting too close to us because the people who are supposed to take care of her always die.”
It had been Turner who had suggested that that was one of the reasons Wren had been keeping them at arm’s length for so long.
Noah’s thumb rubbed absently across her wedding band. “You’re afraid she’ll admit that and then neither of us will know how to respond.”
“Do you know what to say to that?”
“I’m not sure she’ll be able to articulate those things the way we’re talking about them right now. She may just shut down completely or say she forgot. Something like that. But, if I had to respond to her telling us that she didn’t want to get close to us, I’d say I don’t blame her.”
“Validating but not exactly reassuring,” she told him.
His voice dropped. “We both know there are some things you can’t guarantee. Living with uncertainty is part of life. A really terrible part of life.”
He was right, of course. Noah had never been one for empty assurances. He believed that part of life was learning to be honest about things that were devastatingly but unequivocally true. As he always said, pretending they weren’t didn’t make them go away or make them any less frightening.
Josie turned her palm up and gathered his fingers in hers.
“If Wren admitted she doesn’t trust us, I’d ask her what else we can do to earn her trust,” he went on. “Although I’m not sure there is anything we can do but be consistent and show up for as long as she lets us.”
She felt a small pinch in her chest because he was right about this, too. In a lot of ways, Wren was out on a choppy sea, alone in a weathered boat while Josie and Noah were on shore, helpless to bring her in. She had to get there herself.
A shadow fell over the table. With a little squeeze, Josie let go of Noah’s hand and looked up to find a woman in a sharp black pantsuit and perfectly coiffed sandy-colored hair staring down at them, hands on her hips.
Despite the fact that it was the middle of the night, her makeup was flawless, even her vibrant red lipstick.
It was bold and unexpected, lending her a decidedly don’t-fuck-with-me vibe while also giving her an air of intrigue.
Josie was mesmerized.
“You must be Fraley and Quinn. I’m Detective Annette Miller.” She lifted her chin in Josie’s direction. “Scoot over.”
Annette slid into the booth beside Josie and lifted a manicured hand to flag down one of the waitresses. “Karen, honey, I’m gonna need some of that rocket fuel, please.”
Noah waggled an eyebrow at Josie. She knew what he was thinking. Annette Miller hadn’t been trying to kill them by suggesting they meet here. This was her usual haunt.
“Oh my,” said Annette, eyeing the cup of coffee Noah had abandoned. “You’re not wasting this, are you? Something wrong with it?”
“Yeah,” Noah said. “It’s rocket fuel.”
She tipped her head back and laughed, her smile transforming her entire demeanor from commanding to warm in an instant. The waitress came by and set a steaming mug before her.
“I have to say,” Annette said as she stirred sugar into her coffee, “I wish we weren’t meeting under these circumstances. Tell me. What’ve you got? Where are my girls?”
Josie and Noah ran down the leads they already had as well as all the dead ends. Annette nodded slowly as they spoke, lips firming into a straight line. The skin at the corners of her eyes tightened. With one long red nail, she scooped a glob of mascara from under one eye.
“When I talked to Shitbird, he could barely form coherent sentences.”
“Shitbird?” Noah said.
Annette raised a brow. “The jerk who married my beautiful niece and then broke her heart.”
Did Turner just collect demeaning nicknames from every woman whose path he crossed?
“He said you worked together,” Josie prompted.
“Yeah, we did. For a lot of years. I got him the job here because Dani asked me to. They were in some place south of Philly and she wanted to come home.”
“Your family is from here?” Noah asked.
Annette nodded. “Not too many of us left in the area. My sister and her husband—Dani’s parents—moved away. It was a shame, really. As soon as Dani came back, everyone else left. I called them an hour ago to let them know what was happening. I didn’t think Shitbird was in any condition to do it.”
“You were willing to get Turner a job despite the fact that he’s a shitbird?” Noah asked.
“He wasn’t always a shitbird.” Annette sipped her coffee, frowned, and stirred more sugar into it. “We got along great. I always liked him. Loved him, even. He was a great dad, good husband. Easily distracted by work, but aren’t we all?”
Noah gave Josie a pointed look, but she could see the humor in his eyes.
She’d been obsessive about the job for as long as he’d known her.
While he often teased her about it, he’d never held it against her.
He had always taken her just as she was, flaws, idiosyncrasies and all.
He was the perfect calm sea to her cyclone.
The trauma of his abduction hadn’t robbed him entirely of his easygoing nature and for that, she was incredibly grateful.
Each time life knocked them down, they staggered back to their feet—together—and Josie thought they were stronger for it.
She understood that every marriage was different, and she knew that Turner’s marriage was immaterial for the purposes of finding Dani and Cassidy, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking.
“What happened?”
Annette tried her coffee again, giving a curt nod of approval as she set it back down.
“What happened to Shitbird? He turned into a shitbird. The escort case messed up his moral compass, screwed with his head. We got the conviction but after that, he just changed. I don’t suppose he mentioned his girlfriend, did he? ”
“You mean Zara?”
Had Turner lied to her about his relationship with the former escort? Why? He knew she already had a low opinion of him, that she knew he was separated from his wife and had been on the outs with her and Cassidy for a long time. What difference did it make if Josie knew he’d had an affair?
The waitress returned to the table to take their orders, interrupting the conversation.
“If you’re ordering breakfast, get the crepes,” Annette told Josie and Noah.
“Or bacon and eggs. Pretty hard to screw those up. You don’t want the home fries.
They’re like crud someone dug out of the treads of their boots, except boot-tread crud would probably taste better.
Oh, and the pancakes are runny in the middle, especially this time of night. ”
“Good lord, Annette,” muttered the waitress. “Why do you keep coming in if you hate the food so much?”
“It’s for the sparkling company, you know that. I’ll have a cheeseburger with everything on it.”
Josie ordered the crepes, Noah the bacon and eggs. Once the waitress left the table, Annette said, “So he did tell you about Zara.”