Her Final Confession

Chapter Sixty-Six

Josie woke to the sound of her cell phone beeping. She reached across Noah’s sleeping form to snag it from his bedside table. The screen cast a blue glow across the entire room. The time read midnight. It was Trinity.

I think we should do the twin study with Larson. It might give us access to whatever programs and techniques these kids used to track down a serial killer. Btw, good job on solving the case.

Josie sighed. She typed back,

It’s late. I’m not doing the twin study. And thanks.

A minute later, a reply came back.

I’ve never known you to sleep.

Josie glanced at Noah.

I’m going to start trying.

Think about the twin study. Larson says it’s extremely hard to find twins separated at birth. We can really help and all it requires is doing some interviews.

Josie tapped back:

You’re just looking for a story on using DNA to find killers.

Trinity: I’m always looking for a story. Followed with a smiley face emoji with its tongue sticking out. Let’s just do the study.

Josie typed: NO!!!

Trinity: Ok, we’ll talk later.

“Oh for God’s sake,” Josie muttered.

She read back over the exchange, smiling in spite of herself, and the piece of the puzzle lodged in the back of her mind loosened and fell into place. Epigenetics. The twin study. Twins separated at birth. “Holy shit,” she said aloud. How had she missed it? It had been there the entire time, right in front of her face.

“Noah,” she said, shaking his shoulder.

He moaned in his sleep.

“Noah, I figured it out. I know what Gretchen was hiding.”

He mumbled a few sleepy words and turned over onto his stomach. She thought about waking him so she could tell him, so they could discuss it, but decided against it. As shocking as the revelation was, there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it until the morning anyway. But now her adrenaline coursed through her veins, setting her whole body on fire. She tried to go back to sleep, listening to Noah’s even breaths, feeling the warmth of his body radiate toward her. After twenty minutes, she gave up and padded downstairs. She’d stayed at his house during the Belinda Rose case enough times that she didn’t need to flip on the lights. The overhead light outside on the front stoop illuminated the foyer just enough, and the clock on the cable box in the living room gave off enough glow for her to make her way through the rooms and into the kitchen.

She had just stepped into the doorway of Noah’s kitchen, her fingers on the light switch, when alarm bells sounded in her head. In her mind, she traced her steps back past the living room, then the foyer. The foyer. In the dull lamplight from outside, she had seen the table where they normally deposited their keys. Tonight, they had been so exhausted they’d discarded their holsters with their service weapons there as well. Noah had also left his phone. But when she had passed by it in the dark, the only thing that lay there was an old leather jacket.

Her breath froze in her body. Her throat constricted. Her fingertips trembled against the light switch.

A leather jacket. Gretchen’s jacket.

Which meant that Ed O’Hara, the Seattle Soul Mate Strangler, was inside Noah’s house.