Chapter 49
FORTY-NINE
Josie ducked as a stapler flew past her head.
It smacked into the stairwell doorframe and clattered to the ground.
Noah pushed through after her just in time to throw his body over Josie’s, crushing her against the wall as a cup of pens sailed through the air.
The pens came loose halfway across the room, hitting Noah’s back like arrows, from what Josie could tell.
Once they all landed at his feet, he turned around but kept Josie tucked behind him.
She was pretty confident that she could defend herself against office supplies, but it was a lovely gesture.
Peeking around his arm, she surveyed the scene.
The great room was in chaos. Several of the desks were overturned, their contents strewn everywhere.
It looked like a tornado had passed through.
And that tornado’s name was Turner. He trembled in the middle of the maelstrom, his rage making him loom over everything like he’d grown ten feet in the last hour.
A riot of curls reached out in every direction, as though his fury was so great, it was exploding from the locks of his hair.
The look in his eyes was downright feral.
Josie hadn’t noticed Gretchen or the Chief on the other side of the room until the inhuman roar that ripped from Turner’s throat caused both of them to flinch. He flipped another desk, kicking its drawers as they came loose.
“He doesn’t know if they’re alive?” Turner hollered. “That’s the bullshit line he’s going with?”
Either he’d been observing in the CCTV room and left right after Griffin uttered that sentence, or the Chief, possibly even Gretchen, had come down to meet him and missed the rest of the interview, filling Turner in on only what they’d heard.
Noah stepped forward. “That’s what he’s giving us. He insists he didn’t kill them. That Charles Barnes must have come for them and they fought back. That’s why there’s blood.”
“Bullshit!” Turner shouted. “You really believe that crock, LT? You weren’t born yesterday.”
The truth was that none of them believed that, but they weren’t able to get anything more out of Griffin Holt.
Instead, they’d sent some units to find Charles Barnes and bring him in for questioning.
At the moment, patrol officers were searching the banks of the moat around Quail Hollow Estates, which were technically public land, to see if there were any places where the ground had been disturbed.
A state police marine unit would be diving in the moat to search for their bodies there.
“My kid. Jesus, my kid. My wife. He took them. He’s gonna sit in there and say he doesn’t know if they’re alive?
You know what this means, right?” His head swiveled around the room, stopping briefly on each of them.
“They’re dead. He killed my family. My kid.
My Cassidy. And he’s not even going to give me the fucking courtesy of telling me where he put their bodies. ”
Every one of his words felt like an uppercut punch to Josie’s solar plexus.
It felt hard to breathe. Pain so raw and palpable was always hard to witness but Turner, his grief like a serrated knife that sawed endlessly at his insides, stripped of everything that made him Turner—good or bad—was soul-crushing.
“Son,” the Chief said. “They’re alive until we know they’re not.”
“Fuck you,” Turner spat. “What is it you always say? You’ve been doing this since we were all in diapers?
You know better than all of us how these cases go.
They’re dead. That goddamn bastard killed them and now he’s playing games.
It wasn’t enough for him to take them from me.
Now he’s going to torture me with this. We may never find them. ”
Gretchen inched forward, picking her way through the detritus until she was an arm’s length away from him. She hesitated for a second before reaching out to touch the sleeve of his suit jacket. He jerked away from her, but she didn’t let it affect her. “Turner.”
“Leave me alone,” he snarled. “All of you, leave me alone. You botched this. This whole investigation. You fucked it up and now my wife and kid are dead. Probably cut up somewhere being used as fertilizer so this sick fuck could grow more death flowers to give innocent women.”
Josie knew he was lashing out. Knew that he wasn’t in control. She also knew that she shouldn’t feel guilty—no matter what the outcome. She’d done everything she could. They all had. But his words sliced through her like a sword, splitting her in half. She stepped forward. “Turner—”
“No.” He stomped over strewn files, phones, keyboards until he was only a foot from her. “You have my family’s blood on your hands, Quinn.”
“Hey,” Noah said, pushing himself between Turner and Josie. “That’s enough.”
Turner laughed, the sound so bitter and hollow it opened up a pit in Josie’s stomach. “Enough? I don’t think it is enough ’cause my family is still dead. Now get out of my way.”
He stalked past them, disappearing into the stairwell, leaving the room in shambles and Josie’s racing heart in agony.