Anya took one last lingering look at Maxine Barnes’s face and then moved toward Haven, who had the same blue tinge around her mouth. Like her mother, the girl wore black sleep pants and a T-shirt that said, “Good Vibes.”
“Jesus,” Turner muttered from behind Josie as Anya began taking up-close photos of Haven’s injuries—and there was no mistaking they were injuries. Her body had been almost entirely covered when Jonathan Alvarado arrived but now that the sheet had been removed, the damage was obvious and gruesome.
Josie watched with increasing unease as Anya documented each injury. A round bruise on her right bicep, then her left. Her forearms. After snapping several photos, Anya handed Turner her camera again and began her inspection of Haven’s body. Beneath the collar of her shirt was another large, circular bruise where her collarbone met her shoulder on the right side. Tugging at the waistband of Haven’s pants, Anya revealed more bruising on her left hip and the top of her right thigh.
“She fought back,” Anya murmured, leaning over Haven’s body to get a better look at her left hand. She took the camera back, snapping several more photos before moving aside so that Josie and Turner could get a better look.
Josie stared in horror at Haven’s index finger. Bone poked through the skin where the finger had been fractured. Dried blood stained the sheet beneath it. Next to her, Turner was stock-still.
Anya sighed, gazing down at Haven with uncharacteristic emotion on her face. Reverence and sadness in equal measure. “I’m so sorry, brave girl,” she whispered.
Wordlessly, Turner spun on his heel and walked out of the tent.
SEVEN
“He didn’t say anything when you caught up with him outside of the tent?” asked Noah.
From over the screen of her laptop, Josie watched her husband make a late dinner. He put melted butter and minced garlic into a skillet along with vegetables he’d chopped up earlier and pushed them around with a wooden spoon. A delicious smell filled the room, making her stomach rumble. She hadn’t seen Noah in over twenty-four hours. With the recent overtime and the shift in their schedules that allowed one of them to be home for Wren as much as possible, time together was harder and harder to come by. For a moment, she just enjoyed the sight of him, freshly showered, his thick dark hair damp and tousled. He looked relaxed in a pair of athletic shorts and an old T-shirt that clung to his muscular torso. The tension that had been ever present in his body since his abduction almost a year ago was gone, at least for tonight. He had started seeing a new therapist for his PTSD. Josie hoped he’d have more days like this.
“Did you hear me?” Noah waved the wooden spoon in her direction.
Josie blinked. “Yeah. No, he didn’t say anything, but he was extra twitchy the rest of the afternoon and he was way less of a douche than normal.”
Noah chuckled before turning back to the stove and dumping some olive oil into a large pan and turning the heat to medium. “You almost sound disappointed.”
“No, it’s not that,” she said. “It’s just I’m not used to seeing him so subdued. I think that girl and her mother really got to him. What if it was the husband? Turner tried repeatedly to help the mother leave him.”
“It’s not his fault,” Noah said.
“Of course it’s not,” Josie agreed. “But you know how that goes. We feel guilty sometimes even when we know we shouldn’t.”
“True. It’s not always the husband, though. There’s not enough evidence to make that determination yet.” Noah used tongs to place chicken cutlets in the pan. “It could have been random, or someone obsessed with the daughter.”
“She was in much worse shape,” Josie conceded. “Whether that’s because she woke up and fought back or the killer was rougher with her because she was the intended target is something we’ll have to figure out.”
As Noah moved toward one of the overhead cabinets to search for something, Josie saw his hazel eyes darken momentarily. They flitted toward the doorway that led out into their foyer. Wren had taken their Boston terrier, Trout, for a walk. Josie knew that Noah was having the same thoughts she’d had earlier. Now, every case involving a teenage girl whose life was cut short by violence was a reminder of what they, too, had to lose. A reminder of the gravity of the task they’d been entrusted with.
“The app on her phone is turned on, right?” Noah said, hand closing around a box of rice.
Josie nodded. “I checked before she left with Trout.”
One of their non-negotiable rules was that Wren install a locator app on her phone. She hadn’t objected but she’d also been shell-shocked after her dad’s death. Recently, she’d started turning it off. Josie suspected this would become an issue as time went on but for now, she just reminded Wren of it whenever they parted.
They’d never had to be so careful about discussing work in their own home. Ensuring that the ugliness that came with their jobs didn’t terrify Wren was just another adjustment in their new reality. While she was well-acquainted with death and loss, they didn’t want her to overhear them talking about the murder of a girl close to her age.
Noah shot another glance at the doorway before filling a pot with water and turning the heat up on that as well.
“She’ll probably be another twenty minutes, at least,” Josie told him.
“It’s different now,” he said quietly. “No one tells you about the fear. All the times I imagined having a kid, I guess I never really thought about how scary it would be.”
Josie stood and walked over to him, wrapping her arms around him from behind and pressing her cheek against his back. “I know. Me either.”
They’d only been Wren’s guardians for seven short months, and most of it had been painful. She’d barely spoken to them for the first six of those months but the commitment they’d made to the girl was not something either of them took lightly. Besides, even at her most grief-stricken, sullen, and shut down, she was easy to like. One of their best friends, Misty Derossi, had an eight-year-old son, Harris, who considered Josie and Noah his aunt and uncle. They were very close to him. From the day Wren met him, she’d treated him like her little brother, doting on him, indulging every request to play endless games—games Wren wastoo old for but played with zeal. She watched his favorite shows and had even gone with Misty to cheer him on at some of his baseball games.
When she accidentally left a lip gloss in the dryer and inadvertently ruined several of Josie’s work shirts, she’d sold drawings to her classmates at school until she had enough to pay for Josie’s shirts. It wasn’t something Josie or Noah had expected or even thought about, especially since the Lip Gloss Massacre had been an accident. That Wren had taken it upon herself anyway spoke to her character. Not surprising, given what Josie knew about Wren’s late father, Dexter McMann.
Noah’s arms moved as he continued cooking. His voice grew quiet. Josie barely heard it over the hiss of the pans. “Dex must have been terrified of what would happen to her when he realized he was going to die.”
