Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn #6)- Lisa Regan Page 0,89
easily seen. The wood panel where the door handle was had been pried away. Josie curled her fingers around the edge of the door and pulled. It creaked open and she and Gretchen slipped inside a dimly lit concrete hallway, dropping the bag of equipment inside the door.
They followed the hallway to another door which was unlocked and led them out into some type of boiler room. From there, they found Oaks and his team in a small anteroom that held metal benches and vending machines. It had small windows that allowed them to see out onto the field.
Josie rose up on her tiptoes and peered outside. It was a decent view of the field. Directly across from them was the other set of bleachers. On one end of the field beyond the goalpost, the school building could be seen, and the other goalpost sat in front of a wooded area.
Oaks said, “I’ve got snipers on the roof of the school and on the tops of the bleachers.”
Josie looked to the top of the other set of bleachers, but she didn’t see anyone. “They’re well-hidden,” she said. “Where’s Mrs. Ross?”
Oaks said, “She’s at mobile command. She’s going to arrive in her own vehicle and walk onto the field alone. We’ve equipped her with a vest.”
Beside Josie, Gretchen stared outside. “I don’t see how this is going to work,” she said. “Why does this guy want her to leave the ransom in the middle of the field? If he comes out to get it, he’ll be completely exposed.”
“I don’t think he cares about the ransom,” Josie said.
“He’s just going to leave the money out there? He must know the police will be watching. Surely he doesn’t believe we’d all just back off.” Gretchen remarked. “Then he wants the parents to wait twenty-four hours to get Lucy back?”
“That tells me he’s hidden her somewhere. Let’s say he shows himself to us today. We can’t kill him because then Lucy’s location would go to the grave with him.”
“And if we capture him, he uses her location as leverage. But why this? This big open area where everyone is exposed?” Gretchen said.
“Because he could walk right out into the middle of that field, leave with the money, and we wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing. Not without potentially losing Lucy.” Josie looked up and down the field once more, taking a slow pan. “Oaks,” she said.
He stepped up beside her. “Yes.”
“Did you have any of your people clear that end of the field? Where the woods are?”
He nodded. “Of course. Nothing back there but some rocky outcroppings.”
“The Stacks,” Josie said, referring to the slabs of rocks that had fallen from the side of the mountain behind the high school, forming large stacks of flat rocks.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“The local kids call them the Stacks. It’s where the students go to hang out, drink, and smoke.”
“Yes, our guys saw those,” Oaks said.
“The top of the Stacks is an elevated position. Behind that, a half mile back is the old, abandoned textile mill.”
Oaks said, “You think he’ll come from that direction.”
Josie nodded. “That’s what I would do if I were him.”
“I’ll get someone out in the woods, along that ridge, and call the sheriff—they’ve got units to check out the mill.”
“The units in the woods have to be invisible,” Josie said. “If he’s coming from there and he sees them, it’s game over.”
He nodded. “I’m on it.”
With that, he took out his phone and made two calls. As she listened to him give instructions, a feeling of relief swept over her, but it wasn’t enough to quell the unease building inside her. She knew the Denton woods intimately. She’d spent most of her childhood in them. Having agents patrol the ridge above the Stacks would make the area more secure, but Josie knew there were several crevices and other rock formations in that area that would make a good hiding place for someone who didn’t want to be seen. The kidnapper could be already hiding somewhere and would have the advantage—however hard they tried to be invisible, he would see them coming. If they’d had more time, Josie could have had her own team—who was much more familiar with the area between the Stacks and the mill—clear those woods.
Gretchen handed her an earpiece connected to a small communication device. “Put this on. These are the comms the agents are using. We’ll be able to hear everything that’s going on.”