“We gotta run,” Josie said, ending the call.
TWENTY-FOUR
Josie poured a fifth creamer into her coffee. She’d only put two in her first cup, and she was pretty sure there was nothing left of the lining of her esophagus. That was a problem for another day. At present, her exhausted body needed to get through the next few hours, including tracking down Dustin Emmer. Right after they met with Detective Annette Miller. All she wanted to do was put her head down on the table and take a good, long nap. Across from her, Noah sipped from his mug and cringed. Josie pushed the bowl of creamers toward him.
“Do you think Miller suggested this place because she eats here or because she thinks we’re friends with Turner and she’s trying to kill us?” he asked.
Josie’s stomach growled as a waitress strode past with a tray of breakfast foods. “Killing us would be unwise since we’re searching for her niece and her great-niece. Probably because it’s one of the only places in the city that’s open all night.”
Noah shuddered and pushed the cup toward the edge of the table. “I don’t need caffeine that badly.”
“Don’t waste it,” Josie said. “We can use it to strip the old paint from the walls in the guest room.”
Noah smiled and the sight of it caused warmth to spread through her. They rarely got to work together anymore since one of them always tried to be home for Wren. She missed this. Being on the job with him. It wasn’t the kind of all-nighter she preferred but when it came to high-stakes, high-stress cases, just his presence had the ability to quiet her anxiety. This case was as high-stakes as it got.
“Did you ask Wren about the art show?” Noah asked.
She fidgeted with the edge of her napkin. “No.”
“Want me to?”
Josie sighed. “What are we hoping to get out of this, Noah? We ask her if her art was featured, she says yes, and then what? Are we going to ask her why she didn’t tell us? Why she didn’t want us there?”
He leaned back, stretching an arm across the back of the booth. “Yes.”
“She’ll be uncomfortable.”
“Probably.”
Josie took another slug of her now-passable coffee. “We have no idea what we’re doing.”
“Don’t we?” he argued. “Wren is human. She’s a young adult and she’s been through more trauma than a whole lot of people out there. It’s a mistake to think we can’t be direct with her.”
When Josie didn’t comment, he leaned forward and slid his hand across the table to cover hers. His skin was warm and dry and, as always, his touch soothed the tired and jagged things inside her. “This isn’t about Wren, is it?”
“Of course it is.”
“Josie.”
“Fine. I’m afraid of…” She drifted off, trying to figure out how best to verbalize her muddled thoughts. There were too many things in her head at the moment, and her brain didn’t have the bandwidth to sift through them all.
“You’re afraid of her answer,” Noah said.
“Well, not her answer, per se, because obviously it’s going to be that she didn’t want us there, and my guess is that she didn’t want us there because she doesn’t trust us and she’s still wary of getting too close to us because the people who are supposed to take care of her always die.”
It had been Turner who had suggested that that was one of the reasons Wren had been keeping them at arm’s length for so long.
Noah’s thumb rubbed absently across her wedding band. “You’re afraid she’ll admit that and then neither of us will know how to respond.”
“Do you know what to say to that?”
“I’m not sure she’ll be able to articulate those things the way we’re talking about them right now. She may just shut down completely or say she forgot. Something like that. But, if I had to respond to her telling us that she didn’t want to get close to us, I’d say I don’t blame her.”
“Validating but not exactly reassuring,” she told him.
His voice dropped. “We both know there are some things you can’t guarantee. Living with uncertainty is part of life. A really terrible part of life.”
He was right, of course. Noah had never been one for empty assurances. He believed that part of life was learning to be honest about things that were devastatingly but unequivocally true. As he always said, pretending they weren’t didn’t make them go away or make them any less frightening.
