The Girl With No Name

Chapter Thirty-One

WEDNESDAY

Josie woke to the smell of bacon cooking. Sunlight streamed through her bedroom windows and she knew at once she had slept longer than the three hours she had intended. A lot longer. A glance at her digital alarm clock drew a lengthy groan from her body. It was nearly 8 a.m. She had slept a full six hours. She lay for a moment, listening to the sounds coming from her kitchen. The clinking of dishes and silverware, the opening and closing of drawers. The gurgle of the coffeemaker. For just a second or two, in the haze of sleep, she thought it was Luke. He was back and, like he always did whenever they both had a day off, he had gotten up before her to cook breakfast. He was a talented cook, intuitive and creative. He never followed a recipe, but everything he made was delicious. Josie was far from a domestic goddess and he often had little to work with in her kitchen, but somehow, he always managed to whip up a masterpiece.

She missed him.

Her eyes snapped open and she shook off her fatigue. As the fog in her head cleared, she realized there was only one person who would be cooking in her kitchen at that moment—Carrieann. Luke was missing, she reminded herself. It had only been a couple of days, but it felt like months. She had been missing him for months, though, hadn’t she? She had even wondered if she should end things with him as she watched him slip further and further away from her, a cold, distant façade replacing the warm, loving man she had known. Now she would take him and his coldness over not having him back in a second. With a sigh, she hefted herself out of bed. There was work to be done.

In the kitchen, Carrieann stood by the stove, pushing scrambled eggs around in a frying pan with a spatula. Bacon sizzled in a large pan beside it. She didn’t look like she had slept at all; her blond hair hung down her back, lank and oily, and dark circles smudged the skin beneath her eyes. They had stayed up late talking about the leads in the case, polishing off a bottle of wine together while Carrieann did her own internet search on Eric Dunn.

Josie didn’t even notice Noah sitting at the table until she was halfway to the coffee pot. She pressed a hand to her heart. “Jesus,” she said. “You scared me.”

He smiled and raised a steaming mug of coffee in greeting. “We thought we’d let you sleep a little longer.”

Josie pushed her hands through her tangled hair, trying to tame it. Reaching down, she tugged the hem of her nightgown over her exposed thighs, wishing she had thought to throw on some sweatpants. “I wish you hadn’t,” she muttered.

She poured a cup of coffee and joined Noah at the table. “Any news?”

“Gretchen’s got someone examining Twitch’s phone. They think they can get it working again. The sheriff’s dogs were out all night. They tracked Kim Conway to a treehouse in some woman’s yard. There was some dried blood in there, so she definitely hid there at some point. Homeowner claims she didn’t see anything. Let the deputies search her house. They didn’t find anything.”

Josie groaned. “A fucking treehouse. She was right there. Right under our noses.”

“Well, she didn’t stay there. They tracked her scent for about two miles from that house and then it disappeared.”

“Which means what? She got into a car?”

“That’s the most likely explanation.”

“If someone picked her up, she could be anywhere by now,” Josie said. She’d only been up for about ten minutes, and already there wasn’t enough coffee to make this day bearable.

Noah added, “I called Bowersville PD last night. They sent a car over to the Conway house last night and again this morning. There’s no sign of her there.”

Josie took a long swig of coffee, wincing at the burn from the roof of her mouth to the back of her throat. Carrieann set a plate full of breakfast food in front of Josie, then Noah. She sat down with her own plate but made no move to eat. Only Noah dug in, thanking her between bites.

“I want to get into that house,” Josie said, chewing absent-mindedly on a piece of bacon, surprised to find that her body was alarmingly hungry. She scooped up some scrambled eggs with her fork and pushed them down as best she could. Carrieann watched the two of them, her own food untouched in front of her.

“We can take a ride over, but we’ll have to get permission from the family to get in.”

Josie finished off the rest of her coffee. Her head was starting to clear. “Sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission,” she said.