Page 59 of The Couple's Secret
Josie felt a prickle along the back of her neck. Riley Stevens had gotten under her skin in a way no one associated with a case had in a long time. “Was she wearing Cora’s sweater?”
Confusion lined Hollis’s flushed face. “What?”
“Cora’s sweater. Was she wearing it when she left the house?”
“I don’t know but probably. She hasn’t taken it off in two days. Listen, I gotta go, okay? I’m sure we’ll find her. If you’ve got more questions, just call me later.”
“Hollis.” Gretchen waved her phone at him. “We can help. We can take a report from Zane and Jackson and start using our resources to locate her. Get us the license plate number of the vehicle Riley is driving. We’ll get all available patrol units to look for it.”
“I thought there was that whole twenty-four-hour waiting period before you could report someone missing to police,” he said.
Josie shook her head. “That’s a myth. Besides, we both know that Riley is distressed right now. If you have a reasonable suspicion that she might be under the influence, it’s extremely important for her safety and the safety of others that we find her as soon as possible.”
He pulled his sleeve down where it had snagged on his glucose monitor. “Oh, wow. Great. That’s great. I don’t want anything to happen to her. I’ll call Jackson, get that tag for you. Then I’ll call Zane back and tell him to stay put until we get there. You’ll come with?”
“Of course,” said Gretchen, jotting down his address as he rattled it off.
Ten minutes later, Hollis pulled out of the parking lot, dodging the reporters surrounding his truck hoping for a quote or an interview. Josie followed in their SUV while Gretchen called dispatch and gave them Riley’s information as well as the license plate number of the car she was driving, asking for a BOLO to be put out immediately.
After ending the call, Gretchen looked over at Josie. “You asked about the sweater.”
“You know why.”
“I do,” Gretchen replied softly. “She’s having a mental health crisis.”
“She could hurt herself or someone else,” Josie agreed. “Whether she means to or not.”
“You think she went back to Brighton Springs?”
“No. I don’t think she’d want to be that far from Jackson.”
Riley had been fragile the day that Josie and Gretchen delivered the news of her mother’s death—her mother’s murder. The confrontation with Dalton at the funerals likely hadn’t helped, not to mention the video going viral. She was hurting on a deep, elemental level that resonated with Josie. Every aspect of her life—of Cora’s life—was under scrutiny now in a way it hadn’t been before, despite the interest in the disappearances over the last seven years. The yellow sweater made her feel closer to her mother. Riley wanted to feel connected to Cora. But all the connections were in Brighton Springs, where they’d lived together—Tobias’s house, the cemetery, the diner where Cora had worked.
There was only one place in Denton that had a connection to her mother.
“I think I know where she is,” Josie said.
Thirty-Two
A hollow feeling settled in Josie’s gut as they drove to the remote area where Tobias’s sedan had been found. Somewhere between finding the car in its watery grave and their visit to Brighton Springs, her professional shield had worn thin. As the streets flashed past, bringing them closer to what she genuinely hoped was not another tragedy, that mental armor felt as if it were made of gossamer. Riley. A fragile young woman, still a teenage girl in so many ways, stunted by her mother’s disappearance. A girl who’d only had one dependable parent all of her life, who’d been left at the mercy of others, veritable strangers, when her mother vanished. She’d been lucky that Tobias’s sons and his best friend were kind, caring men. They’d had no obligation to her at all. Even so, their love hadn’t made up for the loss of her anchor, her North Star.
Her mother.
“Shit,” Josie muttered.
“You okay?” Gretchen angled her cell phone away from her mouth. She was now on the phone with Officer Brennan, giving instructions. They’d decided to bypass Hollis’s home for now. If Riley was by the river, they wanted to get to her as soon as possible. In the meantime, Brennan could get statements from the men in her life.
“I’m fine,” Josie lied.
The realization had hit her while they drove. She’d been equating Riley with Wren for the past week. All things led back to Wren now. Josie had never been in this position before. Having to separate the existence of a child she was responsible for in every way from the things she saw on the job. Sure, she’d been a huge part of Harris’s life for almost a decade but ultimately, she wasn’t his mother or his guardian. It wasn’t her job to make decisions on his behalf and then watch him suffer the consequences should they be catastrophic.
This was never a mental partition she’d needed to construct before. Faced with Wren’s palpable grief each day, it was so much easier for Riley Stevens to climb past her defenses, to cause her to ache in ways she didn’t know were possible.
She swore again, louder this time. Everything in her brain was messy and chaotic. Weird feelings were quaking and bubbling inside her, water about to boil over. She absolutely could not let that happen. Not now. Not ever, if she could help it. Dropping into her 4-7-8 breathing, she visualized turning off the mental burner currently wreaking emotional havoc on her system. Pouring the sizzling water into a titanium thermos. It went right into her mental vault, deep in its recesses, on a shelf somewhere, obscured by a bunch of other artifacts that she didn’t have time to examine. Things that had no place in her field of work.
She had a job to do. Nothing was going to stand in the way of it.
“There’s a unit closer than we are,” Gretchen said. “They can be at the riverbank in two minutes.”
