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Josie took one hand off the ceiling so she could search for the seatbelt release. It took several seconds. Each one felt like an hour. Trinity’s breath was labored. Whether from panic or some sort of injury, Josie couldn’t tell. “Calm down,” she told her sister. “I’m almost out.”
The release button clicked beneath her fingers. The seatbelt snapped back. Josie’s body fell, crumpling in a confused heap of limbs. Her head pressed awkwardly against where the ceiling met the windshield. She maneuvered herself so that she was at least, mercifully, no longer upside down. Dizziness took over as the blood that had rushed to her head drained into her lower body. Searching overhead, her fingers fumbled for the door handle, finding it and tugging at it. It took a few pushes and kicks to get the door open.
Trinity’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Josie. Josie! Someone’s coming. He’s coming.”
Josie was half out of the car, the lake water lapping at her feet. She stopped and listened. It was hard to hear over the pounding of her own heart, but there was definitely something or someone moving toward them on the bank.
Trinity’s voice was high and squeaky. “Boots, Josie. I see boots.”
“Hang on.”
She stumbled out of the car, falling forward into the freezing lake. Water sloshed up and down her front, splashing into her face. Luckily it wasn’t deep where she’d landed so she was able to brace herself against some rocks under the water. Quickly, she staggered to her feet and whipped around. One hand reached for her pistol, relieved when her fingers found its grip. She unsnapped the holster and drew it, moving around the vehicle to where Trinity was suspended. A sitting duck. A curtain of red fell over her vision. Hot fluid spilled from her scalp down her face. Her eyes burned. Blinking didn’t help. As she rounded the front tires of the SUV, she saw, through the bloody haze, a large figure leaning down, extending a hand through Trinity’s window.
Josie pointed her pistol at it. “Stop!” she commanded. “Get the hell away from my sister. Now.”
The figure straightened and turned toward her, both hands held aloft, palms empty and facing her. “Just relax,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Josie blinked again but more hot red moisture poured into her eyes.
The man said, “You’re bleeding. A lot. Put that down and let me help you. That’s why I’m here.”
He came closer until she could finally make out his face. Cyrus Grey.
“Don’t come any closer,” she told him, trying to hold the pistol steady.
“I have to come closer, Detective. I’m afraid if you lose any more blood, you’ll pass out.”
She was chagrined to find out that he was right. Her entire body felt weak and unsteady, although it was more likely from the shock of being in a car wreck than blood loss. She couldn’t give in just yet. “How did you know we were here?” Josie demanded.
He sighed in exactly the same way he’d sighed when Mettner had insisted on pressing charges against Vance Hadlee for possessing firearms. “One of you made a 911 call. I’ve got more officers en route plus a couple of ambulances. I was the closest. That’s why I’m here now.”
Trying to fight her overwhelming dizziness and fatigue, Josie hesitated until she heard Trinity cry out for help. When she heard a siren on the road above, she lowered her pistol and collapsed, sliding down into the bed of stones.
TWENTY-NINE
The emergency department of the small community hospital looked like every other emergency department Josie had ever been in: a waiting room that smelled like vomit and chemicals with cracked vinyl chairs and half-filled vending machines; curtained-off treatment areas; nurses striding from place to place with purpose; and patients in various states of agony, one of whom groaned loudly and continuously no matter what the medical staff offered. Behind a faded pink curtain, Josie lay on a gurney beneath five hospital blankets, holding gauze over the slice in her forehead. She had no idea how much time had passed. Her phone was lost. A nurse had come in and gotten her out of her freezing wet clothes, helping her change into hospital gowns—one opening in the front with the second one over the top of it opening in the back—and covering her up with as many blankets as she could find. After that, she asked Josie a number of questions while cleaning her face with saline and gauze pads. Many, many gauze pads. A doctor had come after, probing at the wound and flushing it out until it burned. Eyes watering, Josie resisted the urge to shove him away. He promised to return in order to give her stitches.
Her heart thudded in her chest. She hated hospitals. In her experience, nothing good had ever happened in a hospital. But this—laying beneath the glare of fluorescent lights, waiting for a doctor to put stitches into her face—brought her back to when she was six years old. The woman who had taken her from her real family and posed as her mother had tried to slice Josie’s face off. Needle, or as she tried to remember to call him, Zeke, had walked in as the knife blade reached Josie’s chin. In a rare moment of concern, he’d insisted Lila take Josie to the emergency room. Lila had, of course, lied about how the injury had happened, scaring Josie into keeping the secret. It had taken twenty-seven stitches to close the physical wound.
The emotional wound still festered.
Josie tried to do her four-seven-eight breathing exercise, but her body wouldn’t calm down long enough to keep the breath in her lungs for a whole seven seconds. She tried to shift focus, tuning into the din outside her treatment area, her ears listening for Trinity’s voice. She knew Trinity wasn’t seriously injured because she hadn’t stopped talking the entire ambulance ride, but she didn’t know where the staff had taken her once they arrived. Her heartbeat sped up when she couldn’t find Trinity’s voice right away. Then came the ding of an elevator, the whoosh of doors, and finally, “…yes, yes. I called everyone. No. I haven’t seen her yet. I’ll find her after I hang up. I’m fine. Just a sprain, thank God. Right. I’ll see you soon. Drake? Gotta go.”
Some shouting erupted between a patient and a nurse, drowning Trinity out momentarily. Then Josie heard her voice once more. “Hey! Hey. Sergeant Grey.”
Josie kicked off the blankets and threw her legs over the edge of the gurney. She counted to three before standing. Thankfully, the dizziness she’d felt earlier had passed. The achiness in her neck, shoulders, elbows, and knees had not. The nurse had put a scratchy gray pair of non-skid socks onto her feet to keep her from sliding on the tile when she walked. Holding a piece of gauze to her head, she slowly made her way to the hall and turned left, following the sound of her sister’s voice.
“Sergeant Grey,” Trinity called again. “We need to talk.”
At the end of the row of curtains, Josie turned right. Cold air whooshed up past the hospital-issue socks and over her bare legs. The hospital gowns didn’t offer much in the way of warmth. Several feet away, Trinity sat in a wheelchair next to the nurses’ station. Her right foot was elevated on the footrest. Cyrus Grey’s back was to Josie. His head bent to gaze at Trinity. From the set of her jaw, she managed to look intimidating even seated with her hair in disarray and drops of Josie’s blood splattered across her shirt.
“Miss Payne,” said Cyrus. “How’s the foot?”
Trinity glared at him. “Don’t waste my time. You heard what my sister told you on the way over here. A man named Dermot Hadlee ran us off the road. He is the owner of Hadlee Family Farm, which is in your jurisdiction. Is he in custody?”
There was a beat of silence. Josie shuffled closer.
Trinity waved her phone in the air. “It’s been hours. This man is clearly a danger. Why hasn’t he been arrested?”
