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Alice was beside Josie then, patting her shoulder. Together, they stood over Brian. Josie kept her weapon at the ready. Alice rubbed her throat. “Nicely done, Detective. Nicely done.”
FIFTY-FOUR
It was still hours before help arrived. Josie started to worry when the sun sank lower and lower in the sky. She and Alice stood watch over Brian, who had the good sense not to try anything with the two of them looming over him and his injured knee—one with a makeshift knife and the other with a length of pipe that Sandrine had retrieved from the rage room. They had also torn the shower curtain down and managed to rip it into enough pieces to bind his hands and feet. Sandrine kept her distance across the room, sitting next to Nicola. She had not regained consciousness but still had a weak pulse. Alice had assessed her but concluded there was little they could do for her. After some time, Sandrine had braved the snow behind the cabins to find enough low-hanging branches she could break off to feed the wood-burning stove. It gave them a little heat. It didn’t last long but it felt glorious.
Josie was trying to figure out how they could manage to watch over Brian in the dark when they heard the squeal of some sort of engine. At first, Josie thought she was hallucinating. With everything that had happened in such a short amount of time, rescue had felt impossible.
Alice motioned toward the door with the pipe. “Go,” she said. “Look. I’ve got him.”
Josie took the toilet lid with her. If Brian tried anything with Alice, she didn’t want to leave a weapon lying around for him, though the last time she’d glanced at him, he was asleep, his mouth hanging open, drool pooling on the floor under his face.
Outside, Josie bounded down the steps of the cabin and stood on the path, trying to find the source of the noise. The fire at the main house was only a smolder now, the smoke down to wisps of black. With the building now only a pile of rubble, the red outbuilding that housed the rage room was visible.
The noise got louder, seeming to multiply.
Then something appeared at the mouth of the trail, passing the rage room, and making its way higher.
“Oh my God!” Sandrine had come onto the cabin porch. She dropped to her knees and put her face into her hands. “Thank God!”
Josie blinked, her brain trying to process what she was seeing. She didn’t want to be wrong. She hoped she wasn’t hallucinating. Noah glided toward her, over the snow, alongside the shoveled path, on top of a snowmobile. Behind him, two other crafts appeared. He skittered to a stop when he saw her, the snowmobile bucking. She was running toward him before he had one leg on the ground.
“Noah!”
He got his footing, sinking into the snow, and started to come toward her, doing his best to rush, pushing through the deep drifts.
Josie crashed into him so hard, he fell onto his back. She went with him, feeling the solid wall of him beneath her. Her face was in his neck. He smelled like day-old sweat, WD-40, and home. His hands were on her face, then her shoulders and hands, feeling every inch of her. “You’re okay?” he said. “You’re okay?”
“Yes,” she said, breathless. “I’m fine. I’m just glad you’re here. What took you so long?”
Into her hair, he said, “I had some trouble. You ever hear of a guy named Austin Cawley?”
The name sent a shiver through her body. She held more tightly to him. “He was stalking one of the women here.”
“I went to Cooper Riggs’s house to see if he could get me up the mountain and ran into Cawley.”
The skin of his neck was warm against her cheek. “Where’s Cooper? Is he okay?”
Noah’s hands kept roaming her body, his touch sending a powerful surge of relief through her. It was like a sedative. “He’s fine now. He got into a car accident right after he left the camp the other night. The truck got stuck on the bank of the creek. The SAT phone was destroyed in the crash. He couldn’t make it up to the road at first so he stayed in his truck. Today he was able to get up the incline. When he finally did, he came to his house since it was the closest place. Lucky for me, he brought the rifle he always keeps in his truck. We got Cawley into custody. Cooper went to the hospital to get checked out and the sheriff and state police let me come up here with them. Everything’s okay now, Josie.”
She couldn’t stop herself from crying as she lifted her upper body to look into his hazel eyes. His thumbs found her cheeks and brushed away the tears. He looked at her with a half-smile, half-grimace. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get to you,” he said.
Then he kissed her.
FIFTY-FIVE
DENTON
One Week Later
Josie used her hip to push open the door to the great room at Denton police headquarters. In her hands was a flimsy cupholder from Kommorah’s Koffee, all four of its compartments filled and a fifth cup nestled precariously among them in the center. She held it with two hands as she made her way over to the desks. Noah grinned when he saw her and jumped up to help, pulling two cups out of the carrier. He handed one to Gretchen, who was typing away at her computer, and put the other on his own desk.
“Quinn!” the Chief hollered, emerging from his office. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Josie set the cupholder on her desk and took out the cup marked Red Eye. “This is for you,” she said.
One of the Chief’s brows kinked as he looked down his nose at her. She braced herself for one of his signature tirades but all he said was, “You’re not supposed to be here.” Then he took the drink from her.
She looked over at what used to be Mettner’s desk, noticing with some dismay how different it looked. Files were tossed haphazardly across it. The pen holder was gone. A tiny desk-sized basketball net was affixed to its side. Noah had warned her, but it still felt like a bucket of cold water over her head. No matter how many times she was reminded of the reality, she would never be inured to it.
