Her Final Confession

Chapter Sixteen

Three hours later, Josie had a reservation at the Hilton a few blocks away from Philadelphia’s police headquarters. She’d made appointments to meet with both Lieutenant Steve Boyd and Professor Perry Larson the next day. She had tried contacting James Omar’s roommate, Ethan, but his phone went straight to voicemail. She stopped at home to have a quick dinner with the Paynes before they all returned to their homes. She drove to Philadelphia in the dark, grateful that it was late enough that she didn’t have to deal with city traffic.

Her hotel room was on one of the higher floors, with an expansive view of the twinkling lights of the surrounding city. She sat on the bed, bag still packed next to her, and stared out into the night. She was truly alone for the first time in months. Not just for a few minutes or a couple of hours, but for an entire night. As the night sky grew darker, her reflection in the window became sharper. Now every time she looked at herself, she couldn’t help but see the face of her sister, Trinity. Her thoughts drifted from the family she had gained to all that had been taken from her. In these rare moments alone, she couldn’t help but feel bitterness and anger for the turn her life had taken. She supposed all had turned out well. She had survived, hadn’t she? She was alive while many others she had crossed paths with were not. Her family had been reunified. Still, the demons swirled at the corners of her mind.

The soft hum of the minibar’s motor seemed to call to her. She stood and walked over to it, resting one palm on its handle. It would be so easy. Just a little something to take the edge off. To see her through the night.

“No,” she whispered to herself. This kind of coping was not sustainable. She had watched Lila Jensen drown her pain and rage in every substance imaginable. It hadn’t helped anyone. Empty-handed, she returned to the window, taking in the city Gretchen had called home for fifteen years. Josie wondered if the home Gretchen had lived in here had been booby-trapped like her house in Denton. Just what kinds of demons was Gretchen battling? What had she kept hidden? Josie had always known there were things in Gretchen’s memory that she told no one. She recognized the walls Gretchen erected around herself, because she had hidden behind the very same ones.

The ring of her cell phone interrupted her thoughts. Noah. A smile slid across her face as she answered. “What’s up?”

“You get in okay? How’s the room?”

Again, Josie’s gaze was drawn to the minibar. Quickly, she looked away. With one hand, she started unpacking items from her overnight bag. “It’s fine,” she said. “What do you have?”

“First, Gretchen’s mother doesn’t recognize the boy in the photo.”

“No surprise there,” Josie said. “What else?”

“No activity on Gretchen’s credit cards or bank account in the last twenty-four hours. The bank and credit card companies will let us know if they see anything. Also, we got the triangulation from both Gretchen’s and Omar’s phones,” Noah said.

Excitement prickled at Josie’s scalp. “Tell me.”

“Well, Omar still had the GPS on his turned on. Looks like it’s somewhere in the Susquehanna River.”

Josie sighed. “Let me guess, near the bridge where the MDT signal was lost.”

“About a half mile downriver. The GPS puts it in the river at its last location, but I’ve got a team headed there first thing in the morning to search the banks.”

“Gretchen’s?”

“Her GPS was turned off. We had to triangulate. We got it down to an area of about two miles, but it’s the same basic location.”

“So the phones and the MDT are in the river.” She tried to imagine Gretchen throwing everything that could track her into the river and then leaving Denton behind. She couldn’t. “There’s someone else involved, Noah. I know it.”

His long sigh told her he wasn’t sold on her theory, but that he didn’t want to argue with her again. “Well,” he said, “you’ve got less than forty-eight hours to prove it.”