Breathe Your Last: An addictive and nail-biting crime thriller (Detective Josie Quinn Book 10)

by Lisa Regan

  He looked momentarily confused. “Yeah,” he said.

  Josie took another step closer to him.

  “Stop,” he said.

  “Hudson,” Josie said. “You’ve done a good thing today by talking to us. I know you don’t believe it, but I can tell you that everything really is going to be okay—for you. Not your mother, but for you. It’s safe for you to come back onto this side of the bridge. We don’t need to take you to the station. We don’t need to put you in jail. Give us that bag. You got that from your mother’s house, didn’t you? It’s got the Devil’s Breath in it, right?”

  “I called her after I left the police station. She wouldn’t admit it at first but then she told me that she still had it, and that she’d used it recently. I went to her house and found it in the closet in her bedroom.” He made no move to come back over the parapet. “I want her to stop, but she’s my mom. She’s all I’ve got.”

  “I understand,” Josie told him. “When I was your age, all I had in the entire world was my grandmother. It’s an impossible situation that your mother has put you in, but you did the right thing. So why don’t you come back over to this side now? You can go home, to your campus apartment. We’re going to investigate all of these allegations, but more importantly, we’re going to put together an arrest warrant for your mom. We can stop her.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  Josie beckoned him toward her. “Yes, Hudson. We can stop her, but first I need you to be safe. Just step back over. Here, I’ll help you.”

  She got closer and extended a hand, only a few inches from his wrist.

  He said, “She’ll find a way to hurt you, though. Don’t you get that? She always does. You won’t be safe. You’ll think you are, but you won’t be. She’s sneaky, and she can wait. I told her Nysa shot me down last year, and she waited until now to hurt her. You’ll never know when it’s coming.”

  Gretchen said, “Hudson, really, there’s not much she can do in prison. I know she seems almost God-like to you because she’s your parent, but she’s just a woman who’s made some very poor choices and hurt a lot of people, and she needs to be held accountable. Help us do that, Hudson. Don’t you think that’s what Nysa would want? For you to keep doing the right thing by helping us?”

  Josie inched closer, hand out, ready to grab, while his eyes stayed on Gretchen.

  “If I had done the right thing the first time I thought she hurt someone, like when my dad died, maybe Nysa would still be alive. I’ll never forgive myself for that. I can never—” The rest of his words choked off in his throat. His mouth worked to form more words. Finally, he said, “I’m sorry.”

  Then he let go of the railing.

  Forty-Three

  Josie lunged forward, her hand seizing his wrist, but his momentum yanked her upper body over the parapet railing. Her other hand shot out, scrabbling for a grip on the railing as her legs whipped up and over the barrier. The railing slipped from her grasp. A blurred collage of foliage, Hudson, and the tote bag whipped past her vision. For one lightning-fast second of complete lucidity, she thought, “This is how I die.” Then her body halted abruptly. Gretchen’s hands clutched Josie’s calf, digging in so hard, Josie felt the muscles spasm. Josie looked up to see Gretchen’s face, red with the effort of holding Josie upside down by one leg. Below her, Hudson dangled. Josie’s right hand held onto his wrist. It wouldn’t have been enough to keep him aloft given the size and weight difference between them but sometime after she grabbed him, his survival instinct kicked in and his free hand came up and clamped over her forearm. They were locked together, dangling over the narrow fissure, and Josie felt like her limbs were being torn from her body.

  Through gritted teeth, Gretchen said, “I can’t hold on much longer, boss.”

  Josie had to conserve her energy and every tiny movement for survival. Slowly extending her other hand toward Hudson, she said, “Grab on. You’re going to have to climb my body, and fast. It’s the only way.”

  Gretchen said, “No, boss. It won’t work! I can’t hold onto you.”

  Hudson released one hand and quickly grabbed Josie’s other arm. Above them, Gretchen let out a yelp, and Josie felt Gretchen’s grip on her leg slip a little.

  Hudson said, “I think I can swing onto the top of the arch. There’s room.”

  “No, Hudson,” Josie said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Boss,” Gretchen said, a sound in her voice that Josie had only heard once or twice before: hysteria. “I can’t. I can’t hold on.”

  Josie could feel Gretchen’s hands sliding down her calf to her ankle. She leaned over the railing and slipped an arm across Josie’s boot where it bent at the ankle, pinning Josie’s heel against the parapet railing. She used her other arm to effectively put a chokehold on Josie’s leg with the railing as an anchor.

  “That’s better,” Josie told her.

  Hudson said, “I promise, I’ll try to make it to the arch. It’s either that or both of us die. Or maybe if I fall, I’ll land in the water.”

  “You don’t know how deep that water is, Hudson. You could still die. I don’t know if Gretchen can withstand the motion if you start swinging around. You’re an athlete. Can’t you just climb up my body?”

  Josie lifted her other leg, lining it up with the one Gretchen clung to. Gretchen lifted one elbow in a flapping wing movement and pulled Josie’s other foot under her armpit, pinning that one to the parapet railing as well.

  Hudson said, “I am an athlete, and I think I can make it. I need one good swing toward the bridge, and I can grab onto one of the columns. I know I can do it.”

  “You could die,” Josie told Hudson.

  But they both knew there was no time left. Hudson was the tallest and heaviest of all of them, and he was the one dangling. Josie’s arms were going numb, and she could feel tremors beginning in Gretchen’s upper body as she tried to hold on. They had seconds.

  “Go,” she told him. Then she closed her eyes, trying not to focus on his movements, on the merciless tugging on her limbs, on the pain that coursed through her body, on the cool fall breeze caressing her cheek as she swung back and forth through empty air, completely at the mercy of gravity. Strangely, all she could think about was Trinity’s stupid picnic idea. In the seconds before Hudson let go, images of herself and Noah at a picnic table in the park, snuggled side by side watching the stars appear in the night sky, flooded her mind. Then the weight pulling her downward was gone, she heard Gretchen cry out, and she thought, I should have taken more time with Noah.

  Just as her mind accepted the freefall, Gretchen’s voice broke through the protective bubble her brain had erected. “Boss, use your abs!”

  Her eyes snapped open to see that Gretchen was still holding onto her feet but now one of her hands extended toward Josie’s upper body. “Use your abs!” Gretchen repeated. “Can you reach my hand?”

  A sit-up was going to save her life, Josie thought. She tightened her abdominal muscles and focused all of her energy on levering her upper body toward Gretchen. Their hands locked, palm to palm, like they were about to have an arm-wrestling match, and then Gretchen pulled. Josie was able to grip the railing with her other hand. With Gretchen’s help, she made it back over the railing. The two of them collapsed onto the ground, gasping for breath. Black spots invaded Josie’s vision. Her arms and legs felt loose and floppy. As she tried to even out her breathing, all she could concentrate on was the glorious solid feeling of the deck beneath her. Every muscle in her body screamed when she stood, dragging herself back up, both hands on the railing. Leaning her head over, she saw only the unbroken surface of the creek below. She screamed, “Hudson! Hudson!”

  No response.

  Josie looked down at Gretchen, whose face was crimson and covered in sweat. “Did he fall? Did you see if he fell?”

  Gretchen held one of her arms against her chest like a broken thing. “I don’t know. I lost sight of him once he let go of you.”

  “Jesus,”
Josie said. She leaned over further but saw no sign of him. “Hudson! Hudson!”

  She went completely still, and they listened. Nothing.

  Josie started to limp away, back toward the service road. “Come on,” she said. “We’ll be able to see the arch from the wall next to the abutment.”

  “I think I injured my shoulder,” Gretchen said, grimacing.

  Josie went to her good side and put a hand under her armpit, helping to lift her. They leaned on one another and lurched up to the rail ties, walking inside the rails again until they were clear of the bridge and could climb down to the access road.

  “I’m getting too old for this shit,” Gretchen told her.

  “Nah,” Josie huffed as they made their way down a small embankment of ballast stones. “You saved my life. That means you’ve still got it.”

  Gretchen laughed. Once they reached the service road, Josie let go of her and ran to the stone wall. She put her palms on the edge of it and leaned out as far as her upper body would reach without giving herself vertigo. Her eyes searched the creek below and its banks, but found nothing that looked like a body. Then again, if he had fallen all the way to the creek, he might have washed downstream already—too far for her to see. She counted the spandrel columns between the arch and the bridge deck, trying to figure out which one Hudson might have been able to reach.

  “Hudson!” she shouted one more time.

  “Someone’s here,” Gretchen said as the sound of wheels over the asphalt reached Josie’s ears. “Backup,” Gretchen huffed. “Of course they show up now.”

  Josie panned the creek again when a flash of color caught her eye. Downstream, next to a large boulder, something flapped. Pink and purple. Josie pointed. “It’s the bag! The tote bag!”

  Gretchen ran over, still holding her arm, and looked. “I see it! Is that him?”

  The bag stopped moving, and Josie saw Hudson using his forearms to drag himself onto the bank of the creek. After going only a few feet, his upper body collapsed. His head turned to the side, resting on stones. From where she stood, Josie couldn’t see any more movement.

  “He survived,” Josie said. “But I don’t know whether he’s going to make it or not. He must be badly injured. We need to get someone down there immediately. We might need the state police—a helicopter, something.”

  She turned to see two state police officers, Mettner, and Noah, jogging toward them. Josie pushed off the wall and staggered toward Noah, wrapping her arms around his waist the moment she reached him. He gathered her into him. Into her hair, he said, “What the hell is going on?”

  Josie looked up into his hazel eyes, dark with concern at the moment. “I’ll tell you in the car. Right now, I need to call Misty and then we have to drive over to Tiny Tykes.”

  Forty-Four

  I knew it was over when my son called from the police station, angry and upset, accusing me of so many things. All of them were true, I told him proudly, unapologetically. But he was always a soft-hearted thing. I should have known he wouldn’t appreciate the genius of what I had done. He never knew the feeling of absolute power over someone’s life the way I did. He never knew what it felt like to right the wrongs people perpetrated against you. Making people pay was like heroin for my soul.

  Hudson had too much of his father in him. I loved him and had done everything in my power to both shield him from the bad things in life and ensure that he had every good thing, but he would never understand me. He would never see me. Not really. Just like my father, who had never really seen me. To him, I was just a body to abuse. Just like my mother, who had taught me to be clever and cunning and to kill with impunity, but who had never really seen me. If she had, she wouldn’t have let my father do the things he did. She wouldn’t have killed him after the fact, when the damage was already done. She would have apologized to me, at the very least. I had hopes early on in my marriage that my husband would be different, but he was a disappointment as well, taking up with his secretary the moment I put a little weight on, got a few wrinkles around my eyes.

  Maybe I would never have been properly seen, but at least now, thanks to my sweet, stupid, spineless boy, everyone would know my power. They were already on to me.

  I just wasn’t going with them. If life as I knew it was going to end, then it was going to be on my terms. Even if I was on the run, I was still the one with power over life and death—and not just my own.

  Forty-Five

  Leaving Hudson’s rescue in the capable hands of Gretchen, Mettner, and the state police, Josie climbed into the passenger’s seat of Noah’s Toyota Corolla. As he fired up the engine, she got out her cell phone to dial Misty. Her fingers shook as she stabbed at the green call button. After three rings, Misty answered. Josie let out a strangled cry.

  Misty said, “You okay?”

  “Misty,” Josie said. “I don’t have time to explain anything. I just need you to go to Tiny Tykes right now. Right this very second and get Harris. Do you understand?”

  Misty’s voice became high and reedy. “Josie, I don’t like this. Is everything okay? Is Harris in danger?”

  “I don’t think so,” Josie said. She hadn’t met Mary Lyddy either of the two times she’d been at Tiny Tykes. There was really no reason to think that Lyddy would target Harris. But Josie was about to detain her at the school, and it would be better if Harris wasn’t there. That, and Josie had learned the hard way throughout her life and career to always follow her instincts, no matter how crazy they seemed at the time. “Just please go get him, Misty, okay? I’ll explain later.”

  “Okay,” Misty said in a small voice. “I’m leaving work now.”

  Josie hung up. Noah made a left onto the main road and headed back toward Denton. “She’s not there,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Josie asked.

  “Mary Lyddy. Mett and I were tracking down everyone on the baking list, including a Mary Lyddy. We figured out that she was Hudson’s mother because her home is still listed under the names Bradley and Mary Kate Tinning. Mett did some digging in the TLO database and found out her maiden name is Lyddy. I tried calling you, but you didn’t answer. I texted you. We figured you were out running down leads, so we went to Lyddy’s house first but no one was there. One of her neighbors said she worked at Tiny Tykes. We drove up there but the receptionist said she wasn’t there. Left early because she wasn’t feeling well.”

  “Shit,” Josie said. “Where would she go?”

  “No idea,” Noah said. “We were going to start running down people who knew her when the call from dispatch came in from you and Gretchen. What the hell happened out there?”

  Josie told him.

  His hands twisted on the steering wheel. “Josie,” he said.

  She had been in a lot of dicey situations. She’d almost died more times than she could count, but today had been the first time she ever truly believed she was going to die. Today was the first time that she had let go and accepted it, waiting to fall. For that, she felt guilty. “You said one of the reasons you loved me was because I always run toward the danger,” she blurted out.

  Josie’s cell phone chirped. A text from Misty. I’ve got him. We’re going home. Call me ASAP. I’m totally freaked out.

  He was silent for several seconds. Outside the vehicle, tall trees flashed by on either side of them. “I did say that,” he muttered. “And it’s true, but for the love of God, Josie, I don’t want you to die.”

  “There,” Josie said, pointing ahead and to the left. “Tiny Tykes is coming up. See the sign?”

  “We’re still going there?”

  She was glad he didn’t try to keep her on the subject of her almost falling to her death.

  “Who better to tell us where Mary Lyddy might be than her coworkers?”

  He nodded his agreement. Just as he slowed and put his turn signal on, Misty’s vehicle pulled out in front of them, turning left and away from them.

  Noah parked in a visitor’s spot, and they got out
and headed for the main building. It was still an hour before dismissal time, so the lobby was empty and silent. From the halls leading to the classrooms, the sounds of children laughing, clapping, singing, and squealing with delight could be faintly heard. Mrs. D sat at the reception desk, typing on the computer. She smiled at them, but as they got closer, her smile faltered. She made a gallant effort to keep it in place. “Can I help you, Ms. Quinn? Misty just left with Harris. She seemed a little distraught, if I’m honest. I hope there’s no problem. Is this Harris’s father? We don’t have him on the list.” She stood up, folding her hands over her bosom. Even though they were alone in the lobby, she lowered her voice. “I don’t know what kind of custody issues or arrangements you all have, but if there is a dispute, school isn’t the place to address it.”

  Josie glanced at Noah, clocking his look of confusion, then looked back at Mrs. D, trying to muster a smile. “No, no, Mrs. D. We’re not here about Harris. Actually, as you may remember, I’m a detective with the city. This is my colleague, Lieutenant Noah Fraley. Lieutenant Fraley and one of our other colleagues were here earlier to talk to one of your teachers, but were told she had left early, sick. However, she didn’t make it home. We were wondering if you or anyone else on your staff might know where she might be?”

  Mrs. D’s eyebrows kinked. “None of our teachers went home sick today. Are you sure?” she looked at Noah. “You came here? Today? Who did you speak with?”

  “Your receptionist,” he said. “Miss K.”

  “Oh, well, she was the one who left early,” Mrs. D told them. “Right around the time Harris’s mom came to get him. Who is the teacher you’re looking for?”