this woman. You’ve talked to her therapist. Do you think she was on some kind of crime spree at eighteen?”
“No, I don’t.” Josie said. “Maybe running her prints is futile, but I still think it’s an avenue we should exhaust.”
Mettner cleared his throat. “Or we could confront her. Arrest her, even.”
“On what charges?” Noah asked.
Mettner shrugged. “Obstruction of justice. Interfering with an investigation. Identity theft. Fraud.”
Gretchen said, “Then she gets a lawyer. An expensive lawyer. She stops cooperating and maybe her husband does as well.”
“We’re less than twenty-four hours away from the ransom drop,” Josie said. “Which may be our one and only chance to catch this guy. We need the parents’ cooperation. Arresting Amy now would be a serious problem.”
“She broke the law,” Mettner argued.
“Yes,” Josie agreed. “And when this is over, we can address her identity theft, but right now, Lucy might still be alive and the only person the kidnapper will speak with is Amy. We need her.”
Oaks said, “Colin and Amy are at the bank now liquidating assets and trying to gather the cash they need. After that, my agents will take them to Walmart for their waterproof duffel bags.”
“Waterproof,” Noah said. “What’s this guy planning?”
“We don’t know,” Josie said. “Which means he’s going to call back.”
“Which is a problem for someone in this town,” Gretchen said. “Bryce Graham got lucky. The next person whose phone this guy tries to use may not be so lucky.”
Oaks said, “Which means we need Quinn to talk to Amy again and try to get more out of her. No more secrets. Her secret could have gotten Bryce Graham killed today.”
Josie rubbed a hand over her eyes, feeling days’ worth of fatigue in every cell of her body. “I can try again, but I’m not sure I’ll get anything useful in time.”
“And we can’t threaten to arrest her if we want to keep her in play,” Noah said. “So you’ve got no leverage.”
“Besides guilt,” Gretchen said.
“I already tried that,” Josie said. “She didn’t give Bryce Graham up then. I doubt she’ll be forthcoming this time.”
“Do we tell her husband?” Noah asked.
Josie and Oaks looked at one another. Oaks nodded at Josie to make the call. She straightened her spine and looked around at the group. “No.”
Mettner opened his mouth to speak but Josie held a hand up. “They’re already at each other’s throats. We don’t have time for Colin to process the fact that his wife isn’t who she says she is, and that she’s been lying to him their entire relationship. I don’t think she will be more inclined to come clean with him. He’s going to be angry. I think she will shut down in the face of his anger and only clam up more. Besides, the focus needs to stay on Lucy—especially this close to the drop. We need them to be a united front with their sole purpose to get their daughter back.”
Chitwood said, “Seems to me we need to be focusing more on the drop right now. You don’t even know where it is, and what if this guy calls at six and wants the parents out to make the drop by six-thirty. Then what?”
“We’ll need to mobilize quickly,” Oaks agreed. “Like a rapid deployment team. The parents will need to be ready to move with us at a moment’s notice. We’ll need to prepare the money by recording the serial numbers and fitting the bags with trackers. I can get my team to work on that.”
“What if the kidnapper calls and says no police, no FBI, and no trackers?” Mettner asked.
“I’m not giving this guy a chance to get away,” Oaks said. “Not with Lucy Ross’s life in the balance. We can hide our presence, but the trackers stay with the money.”
“I agree,” Josie said. “Let’s get everything in place for when the kidnapper calls again. I’ll go back to the Ross home and try to talk with Amy tonight.”
Chitwood clapped his hands. “Looks like no one is sleeping tonight.”
Forty-Five
At the Ross home, the FBI commandeered Colin’s home office to prepare the money. In the dining room, Amy sat on a chair, her legs pulled up beneath her and her arms wrapped around her chest. She stared at the cell phones on the table. Colin paced behind her. Josie was about to ask Amy for a moment when her own phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and saw Trinity’s number flash across the screen. She quickly slipped out of the room,