Page 88 of The Couple's Secret
Josie glanced over to where the garage bay door yawned open. “I’ll be right back.”
Inside the building, she dripped water everywhere, leaving a trail on the concrete and spraying every surface nearby when she twirled, scanning the items packed into the large space. Besides the ones that Jackson had set down at the entrance, each one was labeled with a bright yellow laminated card that listed an inventory number, description, and a client’s name. Some things were in boxes. Others were wrapped in thick layers of plastic but some, thankfully, were draped in moving blankets.
Perfect.
She strode toward the closest thing and tore two dark blue moving blankets from it, uncovering a desk. Then she had another idea. At warp speed, she thrashed through the At Your Disposal client inventory, inadvertently breaking glass, splintering wood, and knocking over furniture that looked a hundred years old. Fleetingly, she wondered if Hollis had insurance because, right now, she was an act of God.
It didn’t take long to find something suitable for what she had in mind. A table big enough to seat six people, made of a type of wood she’d never seen before—almost black with thin yellow-brown stripes throughout and a lustrous sheen that told her it probably cost more than her car. Leaving the moving blankets just inside the bay, she dragged it unceremoniously outside.
The rain came down in torrential sheets now, making her limbs feel heavy and blurring everything in sight. Water splashed with each clomp of her boots. It pooled everywhere. The table bucked and lurched as Josie yanked it toward Gretchen and Zane, just two shadowy figures in the onslaught.
“Help me!” she shouted.
Gretchen took one look at the table and jumped to her feet. They each lifted a side, guiding it up and over the top of Zane, careful to make sure none of the legs touched him. Once he was shielded from the torrent, Josie ran back for the moving blankets. She crawled under the table with him and with the care of a surgeon operating on her own child, covered him from his toes to his chin.
Gretchen appeared on his other side, scuttling close to him and placing a hand on his forehead. Josie didn’t even know if he was still alive. She pressed her index and middle finger against his throat, relief crashing over her when she felt a weak pulse.
“I’m going to go up front so I can tell the ambulance where to find you,” she shouted.
Gretchen gave her a thumbs up.
Then she was going after Jackson Wright.
Forty-Eight
Heat blasted through the vents of Josie’s SUV. Water dripped and sloshed and splashed across the upholstery, the dash, and the console. The rain still came down in sheets. Even on the highest setting, her windshield wipers barely kept up. The chatter of her portable radio filled the vehicle. The hum of the heater and the pounding of the rain nearly drowned it out.
Josie had left At Your Disposal immediately after giving the paramedics directions to the back of the lot. Zane was in good hands and Gretchen could handle the scene there. Since Jackson’s truck was no longer available, he had calmly walked up to Ellyn’s desk and asked to borrow the keys to her car, citing an emergency that had to do with Captain Whiskers.
Josie was about to show him the meaning of emergency. Also, someone needed to take Captain Whiskers into protective custody.
She used the hands-free feature to call dispatch and give them the tag number, make and model of Ellyn Mann’s vehicle as well as Jackson Wright’s name and description. Within moments, every unit in the city would be on the lookout for him although Josie was fairly certain she already knew where he was headed.
In reality there was nowhere for him to hide. Running had been a knee-jerk reaction. He hadn’t been thinking clearly. Sometimes that worked in favor of the police and other times it benefited the suspect. In this case, Josie wasn’t sure what the hell to think. Mentally replaying everything he’d said up until the moment he tipped the Coke machine onto his brother, she realized that he hadn’t actually admitted to any criminal acts.
Not even one.
But she knew now that he was behind it all. Denton PD wouldn’t be able to charge him or even hold him in connection with the murders of Tobias, Cora, and Riley but they could definitely arrest and detain him for what he’d just done to Zane. Then she would hand him his reckoning.
Traffic was backed up as she left South Denton and approached the central part of the city. The other drivers moved sluggishly, probably because they saw what she saw when they looked at the road ahead—distorted whorls of color and light, buildings that looked like melted candles, and bumpers that were nothing more than ink splotches. Pulling to a stop behind a long line of unmoving vehicles at a green light, she threw her SUV into park and got out. It took only seconds to find the emergency beacon she kept in her hatchback. Once it was affixed to her roof and flashing red, the cars in front of her began to part. She zigzagged through them until she found a cross street and turned onto it, weaving through a series of side streets at a speed that bordered on unsafe given the conditions.
Now that she was out of the rain, away from the horrific scene on the At Your Disposal lot, feeling returned to her body. A bone-deep cold from being damp through and through enveloped her. A minor shift in her seat and the chafing of the thick seams of her pants and the straps and underwires of her bra against her skin stung painfully. Her fingers ached. There were cuts and abrasions on her forearms. She had no idea where those came from. Probably from when she tore apart the storage area in her frenzy to find anything she could use to give Zane some cover. The dull throb in her lower back was the worst.
All of it would have to wait.
She powered through a deep puddle that had formed at the base of the hill she was approaching. Water gushed in waves in her wake.
Then her heart did a double-tap because in front of her, on the exact same road that she and Gretchen had been traveling along on the day they got the call for a car in the river, was Jackson Wright. Josie didn’t even need to confirm the license plate number—not that she could in this weather—because she had known before she even fired up her SUV that there was only one place he was going.
Back to the scene of his crimes.
With him in her sights, she contacted dispatch again to let them know she had found him and rattle off the location so that backup units could be sent. Ahead of her, the sedan accelerated. He’d seen the beacon. He knew he was caught.
He kept going, speeding up as much as he dared, as much as Ellyn’s car could handle. Josie wondered if he would still head for the boat ramp or if he’d try to outrun her. There was a sort of fatalism in choosing the boat ramp. A desperate defeat. She got her answer when he took the turn onto the road that led down to the abandoned state mental hospital so hard that he nearly spun out.
Josie’s SUV handled the corner perfectly. Except that once she made the turn, it was clear that Jackson was drawing ahead of her at an alarming rate.
“Shit.”
