Find Her Alive (Detective Josie Quinn #8) - Lisa Regan Page 0,103

got lost and froze to death. Anyway, I asked Max why in the hell he would touch a dead person’s skull?!?! He looked at me and said something like, “Haven’t you ever wanted to see a person without their skin?” I was so skeeved out. I told him I was going to get the director so she could call the police. When I got back out there with her and the police, Max was gone. I never saw him after that. Mom and Dad didn’t let me go back after that although they did let me do some TV interviews about finding the guy.

“Here it is,” Shannon said. “Quail Ridge Nature Preserve. Looks like it’s still in operation. A little over an hour from here.”

Noah took his phone out again. He looked at Josie. “I’m calling Mettner. Let’s go.”

Fifty-Four

Cheyenne Thomas was the current director of the Quail Ridge Nature Preserve. Josie estimated her to be in her mid-twenties. She’d only held her current post for two years so she didn’t remember Trinity or Max or the dead hunter who had been found there nearly twenty years earlier. She was, however, extremely helpful and allowed Josie’s team, as well as several FBI agents, to search the preserve without a warrant while she checked their employment records. Unfortunately, they didn’t go back that far. There were also no employees currently on staff who would have been there when Trinity and Max were there.

Mettner drove their team back in a department issue SUV while Drake followed behind with several of his agents. Josie sat in the front seat, her mind fighting fatigue and fogginess. “High schools,” she said. “He was sixteen. He would have been a junior at one of the local high schools within an hour from the preserve.”

From the backseat, Gretchen said, “I’ll get on that.”

Noah said, “How many guys named Max are there in the state, anyway? We know his age. We should try searching that way, too.”

Mettner said, “As soon as we get back, someone needs to start contacting colleges within an hour or two of the preserve and see if we can track down an ornithology or biology professor with a son named Max.”

Josie leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. They were getting close. Noah, Gretchen, and Mettner kept talking. Gretchen called Drake on his cell phone and put him on speakerphone so they could coordinate with him. They’d hit the ground running as soon as they got back to Denton. As the car sped down the highway, Josie couldn’t fight her exhaustion any longer. She drifted off to sleep, sending a psychic message to Trinity. We’re getting close. Just hold on a little longer.

When she woke, the sky was dark. The dashboard clock read seven thirty in the evening. They were outside her house. Noah shook her shoulder lightly and she looked around bleary-eyed. “No,” she said. “This isn’t right. I’m going to the station house with you guys. I have to help.”

From the back seat, Gretchen said, “You have to sleep, boss. You’re concussed and sleep-deprived.”

“When’s the last time you ate?” Noah asked pointedly.

Mettner added, “None of us will go home yet, okay, boss? We’re going to work on this until we find Trinity. You get some sleep. When you come back in, one of us will rotate out. It will be all hands on deck, I promise.”

Josie looked at them one by one. She knew she was truly at a new level of tired when tears leaked from her eyes. She couldn’t remember ever crying in front of her team. “Thank you,” she told them and let Noah walk her into the house.

* * *

She slept for twelve hours and woke in a full-blown panic. She’d only meant to sleep for two or three hours at most. She checked her phone but no one on the team had called her. Downstairs, her family wandered around the house at loose ends, passing the time by playing and cuddling with Trout. None of them had heard from Noah or anyone else either. Josie was ready in fifteen minutes. Christian dropped her off at the station house. In the great room, Mettner was slumped over his desk, drooling on a pile of what looked like background checks. Across from him, Gretchen was obscured by a stack of what appeared to be high school yearbooks. She leafed through one, turning the pages slowly. At his desk, Noah spoke on the phone. “He would have