Vanishing Girls

Chapter Fifty

June sat in the front of Carrieann’s pickup truck, staring out the window as the lit-up buildings of Denton proper gave way to the inky blackness of rural roads. Josie kept glancing over at her. She didn’t know what she expected; the girl had viciously and violently killed a woman with a fork, and yet she was as meek and mute as an abandoned pup. A shiver ran through Josie’s body even though the heat in the old truck was on full blast.

“I’m going to take you somewhere safe,” she told her.

No response, and Josie had a sudden flash of how absurd that must sound to June. She’d been rescued from Donald Drummond by people who were every bit as evil as Drummond. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. No wonder she had snapped.

“I mean it,” Josie told her. “This place is safe. It’s a woman I know. She won’t let anything happen to you. She’ll look after you until…”

Until what? Until Dirk woke up from his coma? Until Lara could come out of hiding? Until they no longer had targets on their backs? When would June be safe? When would any of them be safe?

“Until I get things sorted out,” she finished, limply.

June’s dull eyes never left the window.

They still had an hour in the car before they reached Carrieann. Josie doubted she would get anything out of her, but she had to try. “June, I need to know. Did Donald Drummond take you?”

Silence.

“Or was it Ramona?”

June’s head swiveled slowly in Josie’s direction, her dark eyes flashing in the low lighting from Carrieann’s dashboard. She looked into Josie’s eyes just as she had in the nursing home.

“It was, wasn’t it? A woman named Ramona. She picked you up or offered you a ride. Or maybe you met her before and she led you to believe she could help you get out of town. Maybe back to your mom or your friends in Philadelphia. Except she didn’t take you there, did she?”

June continued to stare at Josie, unblinking, but her eyes were alive again. She was in there, somewhere.

“You saw Isabelle Coleman, didn’t you?”

Nothing, the stare slipping back into a vacant deadness.

“No,” Josie said. Reaching over, she touched June’s forearm. “Don’t go. I know you’re in there. Please talk to me. I need to know what you saw. I need to know what you know.”

But her head was turned back to the window, back to the nothingness flying past outside.

With the miles stretched out before them, Josie kept talking, peppering June with questions and reassurances, desperate for her to understand that she was on her side. Until, at last, exhausted and out of things to say, she fell silent and they drove the rest of the way with only the blast of the heater filling the cold void between them. As she pulled up on a remote mountain road near the hospital where Carrieann was parked in her SUV, Josie shot one last glance at June, but the girl’s eyes were closed.