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The doctor slipped the surgical thread through a needle. “I’m going to use the finest thread that we’ve got since this is along your scalp line. It will look ugly for a while, but I don’t think this will scar. Get some vitamin E oil and once these come out, that will help you avoid scarring.”
Her heartbeat felt out of rhythm. Unprocessed trauma or not, she was here and she needed stitches. There was no getting out of this. She thought about waiting for Noah. If he was there, she could do it. Or she could stop this and ask Trinity to join them. Before she could decide, she heard a very loud and familiar voice booming from somewhere outside the curtain.
“To hell with your procedures. One of my detectives was almost killed today. I know she’s here and I want to see her immediately. Not in an hour or fifteen minutes or even five seconds. Now. Right now. Stop wasting my time and find her! Detective Josie Quinn.”
The doctor grimaced. “Someone you know?”
Josie tried to smile but the motion made her whole head feel weird now that her hairline was pumped full of numbing medication. “My Chief.”
As if on cue, the curtain was wrenched back. The Chief’s face was as red as Josie had ever seen it. Behind him, a nurse looked on helplessly. She met the doctor’s eyes and threw her hands in the air. The doctor said, “It’s fine.”
The Chief strode over to the bed. “Your sister told me it’s just a flesh wound.”
The doctor said, “Some sutures will take care of it.”
Ignoring him, the Chief said, “Noah and Mett caught a missing kid. Lost in the woods near his house. They’ve got Luke and the dog out there searching for him. I told him to leave them and get his ass down here yesterday.”
“Thank you,” Josie said.
The Chief pulled a chair over beside the bed and plopped into it. He nodded for the doctor to carry on. Josie’s heart fluttered wildly in her chest as the doctor fished the thread through her skin. Again, it was like she was being slammed back in time. All she could hear was Lila’s angry voice, low and dripping with menace.
“I told you to shut up. Not one word. What I say is what happened, you got that? If you tell one person—just one person—what happened, you’re going into the closet. Forever. And Daddy and Gram won’t be able to save you. You understand that?”
Fear set her entire body into a quiver, and she felt a hot wetness spread down her legs and through her nightdress. She whispered, “I promise.”
“Quinn!” The Chief’s shout broke through the memory.
She couldn’t turn her head to look at him with the doctor working on her forehead, but she tried to focus on him and not on what was happening in her own head. “Sorry,” she muttered.
“I wanted you to hear it from me,” he said. “The judge in Alcott County set Vance Hadlee’s bail high—as high as was reasonable for the charges and circumstances—but his dad posted bond early this morning. He’s out.”
“Anya,” Josie said, still trying to ignore the strange pulling sensation of the sutures being sewn into her skin.
“Gretchen went right to her house. Packed her up. She’ll stay with them until things settle, but Quinn, we need to figure out what the hell is going on—hey, Quinn. You okay? You look like you’re going to be sick.”
Josie choked out, “It’s the stitches.”
The doctor said, “I can give you more lidocaine if you’re feeling pain, but I loaded you up.”
“No, it’s not that.”
She felt the Chief’s eyes on her. Slowly, she lifted her hand and pointed to the scar along the right side of her face. By now, everyone on the team knew the origin of the scar.
The Chief’s voice changed, abrasiveness muted. He said, “Hey, Quinn, did I ever tell you about the time Kelsey fell on the playground and hit her lip on the edge of the slide?”
Kelsey had been the Chief’s little sister. The Chief’s father had also been a police officer, though a corrupt, dirty one. He’d made a habit of having inappropriate relationships with much younger informants that resulted in pregnancies. When Kelsey came along, the Chief was already twenty-five. Their father had no interest in raising her, so the Chief had done it.
“No,” Josie said. “You didn’t.”
“Yeah, yeah. Took out a nice chunk of her lip. Doc had to reshape it and all. Only twelve stitches though. She was eight at the time. Scared shitless. Asked me to sing this song she liked. I always sang it to her. I have no idea why she liked it but she did. So I sang it right there in the hospital while the doc put in those stitches. She didn’t even know he was doing it!”
Josie felt a new wave of anxiety. The Chief was not the warm and fuzzy type. Yes, Josie had seen a more tender side of him, but she couldn’t imagine him singing…anything, really. She knew how difficult it was for him to express emotions—they were two peas in a pod in that sense—and she wasn’t sure she could bear him making himself vulnerable before her. She was already teetering on an emotional precipice.
“Please don’t,” she said.
But he took a deep breath anyway, preparing to sing. She expected some kind of lullaby or a children’s song. Something cute, sweet, melodic. Instead, he started belting out the worst, most tone-deaf version of AC/DC’s “Back In Black” that Josie had ever heard. It was so bad and so jarring, that the doctor startled. Josie was grateful for the lidocaine when she felt the harsh jerk of the needle. The doctor paused, watching the Chief with a mixture of shock and horror. When it became clear that he wasn’t going to stop, he resumed, finishing the sutures in record time.
The Chief stopped after the doctor hurried out of the room. Satisfied, he leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach. The curtain pulled back again. Noah stood before them, one brow raised. He looked from Josie to the Chief and back before rushing to her side. He clasped her hand in his and her entire body started to relax. “Are you okay?” he asked. “It sounded like someone was torturing a cat.”
