Find Her Alive (Detective Josie Quinn #8) - Lisa Regan Page 0,101
one who elbowed her in the nose. I promised I wouldn’t tell on you—okay, well on the girl who actually hit her—so I’m taking the blame. Her mom pressed criminal charges against me. Can you believe that? I wonder if she knows what a mean, lying, manipulative cow Melanie really is. Mom and Dad got me a lawyer though and he made some kind of deal with the judge or the DA, or whoever, so I only have to do community service. I thought they’d make me pick up trash on the highway or something but instead, I have to go to this nature preserve and help out there. It’s mostly picking up litter and helping to clean out the animal enclosures. That might sound great—Mom said, “Oh, how fascinating”—but it’s disgusting. I never knew there were so many different kinds of poop. (Gag.)
The good news is, there are a couple of other kids volunteering there who are around my age and they’re all pretty nice. Other teenagers who don’t treat me like garbage. Imagine that! I don’t think any of them are there because they have to be, though. They all seem pretty into nature and stuff. They get to do cool stuff, like give tours to people and do crafts with groups of kids who come to visit, like from daycares and schools and stuff. There’s this one kid, Max, who might be there on probation like me. He’s a little creepy but I think it might just be the way he looks. He’s got some big red scar running down the middle of his face. He must get crucified at whatever school he goes to, if the kids there are anything like the kids at my school.
“Oh my God,” Josie said.
“Do we know the name and location of this nature preserve?” Noah asked.
“Go get Christian and see if he remembers. If not, wake Shannon and find out.”
Noah raced into the other room.
“Keep going,” Josie told Lisette.
Lisette said, “Many of these entries are just about the disgusting work she had to do at the preserve. She talks about Max but mostly just about how mysterious he is and how he never talks to anyone. But this one… here, listen to this one.”
Vanessa:
I finally got Max to talk to me today. Turns out he’s sixteen. He claims he’s not there for community service. He laughed when he found out that I was. I was a little offended at first but then he said it was hard to imagine someone like me getting into enough trouble that I’d have to do community service. I wanted to ask him what he meant by ‘someone like me’ but I didn’t have a chance because then we got sent over to clean out the cages where they keep the raptors who are recovering from injuries. There’s a red-tailed hawk and two owls in there right now. They’re kind of cool. Max didn’t like them much but he knew a lot about them. Turns out his dad is some kind of professional bird watcher or something. Works at a college. Or he did, I guess. The way Max talked, I wasn’t sure if his dad was still alive or not. He got real weird when I started asking him about his family so I stopped.
“An ornithologist,” Josie muttered. “Or a biologist. Hang on, I’ll ask the others to run this down.” She fired off a text to the rest of the team.
Shannon, Christian, and Noah came into the kitchen. Shannon rubbed sleep from her eyes. “Noah told me what’s going on. We don’t remember the name of that place, but it was an hour from Callowhill.”
“Is it still there?” Josie asked.
“I don’t know,” Christian answered.
Josie opened her laptop and spun it around to face them. “Do you think you could find it on Google Maps?”
“We can try,” Shannon said. They sat side by side in front of the computer while Lisette kept reading.
Vanessa:
My time at the nature preserve is almost up. I’m kind of bummed, which is weird, right? I hate the work but everyone is nice to me and leaves me alone. Even creepy Max. He kind of stopped talking to me after I asked about his dad. I’m dying to know about his scar. I heard one girl ask him last week—she just came right out and asked. Just like that. He looked kind of annoyed and mumbled something about cooking and hot oil or something. I couldn’t quite make it out