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And the man. As soon as I saw him, I knew. He was the one. The man I loved. And he is on television with his wife while I waste away here in this tiny circle of hell with a man who claims he is my husband but whose hatred for me seems to have no end.
FIFTY-ONE
Inside her vehicle, Josie blasted the heat. The chill that had taken hold of her the moment she saw Sam Toselli’s drawing on the door wouldn’t let go. She fired up the Mobile Data Terminal and took a moment to look up Brooke Sullivan. There wasn’t much information. She’d never been arrested, much less convicted of any crime. Her driver’s license had expired three years ago but the photo showed a young woman with long brown hair and a close-lipped smile. She looked as though she would be quite beautiful if only the weight of the world wasn’t on her shoulders. Josie wondered what she had been dealing with when this photo was taken. If Raffy was a cold-blooded killer, it was doubtful he’d made a pleasant husband. Having heard the way he talked about both Brooke and Margot when he thought he and Noah were speaking privately, Josie wouldn’t have been surprised if there was a history of abuse. She couldn’t find any reports of domestic calls to their residence, but that meant little.
Next, she honed in on the address in Lenore County. Something about it nagged at the back of her brain still. The house was listed in Brooke’s name only. She pulled it up on a map. Zooming out, she saw it was a few miles down the road from Archie Gamble’s ramshackle home. If Raffy was behind all this, it would have been easy for him to drive Eve Bowers’s car to the state gameland adjacent to Gamble’s house, abandon it and then take his own car home. He could easily have passed through Gamble’s property. For all they knew, he could have used one of the many bicycles on Gamble’s property to go back and forth to town, thereby throwing suspicion onto Gamble. Josie doubted that Gamble would notice if something had gone missing from the premises, especially if it was returned. There was also the possibility that the two were working together.
Since Gamble’s house was on the way to the Sullivan home, she would stop there first. As she drove, she used the hands-free feature in her car to call the Lenore County Sheriff’s office and explain the situation. Gretchen had already contacted them regarding the bridge. Their staff was stretched thin due to a bus accident on the interstate near their county seat, but they promised to dispatch a unit to meet Gretchen at the bridge and another to meet Josie at the Sullivan house. Josie’s next call was to Luke. If Archie Gamble had left his home on foot, Blue would be able to follow the scent. Luke and Blue were already on another case in a neighboring county but promised to get to Denton as soon as possible.
A drop of sweat slid down her spine. She toggled the heating switch. She’d been so engrossed in the conversation that she hadn’t noticed the heat becoming so intense. The air blasting through the vents fell to a soft, steady hum. Still, sweat gathered in Josie’s armpits and along her hairline. She rolled down her window, letting in the crisp night air. A moment later, the cruiser assigned to Archie Gamble’s house came into view, its lights flashing. Josie parked behind it and got out, jogging up to the door. The officer rolled his window down. Immediately, she recognized Brennan.
He wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve. His face was flushed. “I called for more units,” he told her. “No one’s come yet.”
“They’re pretty busy,” Josie replied.
Brennan motioned across the street toward Gamble’s house. A single light glowed in the front window. “I went after him, but I got lost and turned around in the woods. Even with my flashlight. I couldn’t find him. Once I found my way out, I figured I’d call in reinforcements, but no one has come.”
“Luke Creighton and his dog are on their way,” Josie said. “They’ll be able to help, although I’m not sure that Archie Gamble is our biggest problem anymore.”
“You sure?” said Brennan. “’Cause when he came out of his house, it looked like he had a weapon.”
The dread in Josie’s stomach expanded. “What kind of a weapon?”
Brennan shrugged. “Don’t know. I was too far away. Something shiny, though. Could have been a knife, could have been a pistol. Hard to tell.”
Josie swore. She had no idea what Gamble was up to or why he had finally chosen to leave the house at this precise time after so many days of inactivity. “Okay,” she said. “You wait here for Luke and Blue. They shouldn’t be much longer. I’ve got to head down the road and check something out. If I’m not back by the time Luke and Blue get here, just go on without me.”
Moments later, she pulled into the driveway of the Sullivan home. It was located on a road similar to Archie Gamble’s—dark, barely used, crowded with trees, with no neighbors nearby. That was where the similarities ended. While there were no adornments outside this house, it was clean and looked well-tended. It was a simple, single-level cottage. Josie saw no vehicles when she pulled into the gravel driveway, nor did she see any Lenore County Sheriff’s cars. She made another call and received another promise that someone would be out to assist her shortly.
Then she weighed her options.
If Raffy was really the killer, would he have brought Sam and Jasmine here?
Josie called Noah. He answered on the second ring. “Hey,” he said. “I was just getting ready to call you. We got something.”
“At the hotel?” she asked.
“And on the street,” he replied. “Mett said that none of the neighbors saw anything but one of their cameras picked up footage of a man forcing Jasmine and Sam into the trunk of a black sedan. It’s grainy, from a bad angle, and far away, but that is what it shows.”
Josie felt a flutter in her chest. “What about the hotel?” she asked.
“It’s him,” Noah said. “Brown has much better footage of Raffy going to Beau’s hotel room door. He disappears inside for a few minutes and then they come out together. Down the back stairwell and out the service entrance. No gun, but Beau looks scared shitless. Beau’s phone was left in the room. We’re pulling the parking lot footage now. Now that we’ve got confirmation on Raffy, we’re putting a BOLO out for the car. Where are you?”
“I’m sitting outside the Sullivan house waiting for a deputy to back me up here. Noah, what’s the timeline?”
“Footage shows him abducting Jasmine and Sam at five fifty-three. Then at six forty-seven, he shows up at the hotel. He left with Beau at seven twenty-eight. Mett and I are going to try to follow the car on surveillance from here as soon as we’ve got it on camera outside.”
It was after nine. If Raffy was bringing Beau and the Tosellis here to this house, he would have been here already. If he’d meant for police to find them all, he wouldn’t have hidden his car. He wasn’t here. Had enough time passed for him to get to the bridge? It appeared that way and yet, there hadn’t been any word from Gretchen yet.
“All right,” Josie said. “Keep me posted.”
She got out and went to the front stoop. Standing under a circle of pale light, she unsnapped her holster. The fluttering in her chest grew more frenzied. Without warning, the front door swung open.
FIFTY-TWO
A woman who only vaguely resembled Brooke Sullivan stood before Josie, staring blankly. Her brown hair was past her waist, but it was matted in several places. Some of the knots had turned into full-blown clumps of hair. The skin of her face was so pale, it was almost translucent. Her eyes were sunken. She wore a T-shirt with a sweater over the top. The sweater’s buttons had been fastened crooked. It didn’t match her sweatpants. One of her socks was a different color than the other.
“Who are you?” she asked Josie.
