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

by Lisa Regan

  Josie’s stomach dropped.

  Noah said, “Mary Lyddy.”

  Mrs. D laughed. “Oh, Mary’s not a teacher. You talked to her. We call her Miss K. Her full name is Mary Kate Lyddy. When she started working here, we had two Marys on staff so she said to just use her middle name, Kate. Over time it got shortened from Kate to Miss K. But I don’t know why she would tell you that she wasn’t here. She said that to you? The police? Did she know you were the police?”

  Josie looked at Noah. A muscle in his jaw rippled. “Yes, we told her,” he said.

  Mrs. D wiped a thin sheen of sweat from her forehead. “Oh dear. This is very unusual. I don’t know why she would have lied to the police. How strange. Do you mind if I ask why you were looking for her? Has she done something? You know what… maybe we should go into my office.”

  Noah said something in response, but Josie wasn’t listening. She was replaying the incident on the first day of school in which she had snapped at Miss K for suggesting that they sneak out while Harris wasn’t paying attention.

  Drake’s words drifted through her brain. The infraction doesn’t match the response.

  “Shit,” Josie said.

  Hudson had called his mother, clearly upset, immediately after leaving the interview with Josie and Gretchen. Had he mentioned Josie by name? Or had she asked? Had she put it together that the detective accusing her son of poisoning people was Harris’s other caretaker? Miss K had recognized Josie the first day of school. She had known the police were on to her because Noah and Mettner had just been there looking for her. She had lied right to their faces.

  “Noah,” Josie said. “We have to leave right now.”

  Noah and Mrs. D stared at her, open-mouthed. Clearly, she had interrupted some conversation between them.

  “Noah!” she said, her voice high-pitched. “Now. Now. We have to go now!”

  Without waiting for a response, she took his hand and dragged him out to the car. He stopped by the driver’s door. “Josie,” he said. “Calm down. What the hell is going on?”

  “Drive to Misty’s house. Now. Please. As fast as you can.”

  He didn’t argue. Instead he went to the trunk and got out his blue emergency beacon light. He threw it onto the roof of his car, the magnet catching instantly, and turned it on. Blue light strobed in every direction. “Let’s go,” he said.

  Josie used one hand to dial Misty on her cell phone and the other to clutch the interior door handle as Noah tore into the central part of the city, weaving in and out of traffic. The call went to voicemail. She tried again. Voicemail. Noah’s car screeched to a halt in front of Misty’s large Victorian home. Josie jumped out and ran up the driveway. Noah jogged behind her. A peek inside the garage door windows showed nothing but empty space.

  “Her car’s not here,” she yelled to Noah as she raced to the porch. The front door was closed and locked. “They’re not here,” she said. “Jesus, Noah. They’re not here. I don’t think they even came home. You heard what Mrs. D said. Lyddy left right around the time that Misty picked Harris up. What if Lyddy asked Misty for a ride? Misty would have no reason to be suspicious of her. What if Lyddy is with them? Oh my God. Harris. I promised him nothing bad would happen to him.”

  Some rational part of her mind recognized that she was falling fast over the brink of hysteria and yet, she was powerless to stop it. Everything began to spin, only stopping when Noah’s hands squeezed her upper arms. “Josie. You need to calm down. Take a breath.”

  “I can’t,” she squealed. “I can’t. Harris. What did she do with him? Noah, we have to find him.”

  She wasn’t sure if he did it on purpose or not, but his hands gave three gentle squeezes. Just like Harris. Josie looked up into Noah’s face.

  “You have the Geobit you gave him, remember?” he said.

  “Oh my God,” she breathed. “Yes, yes. My phone is in the car. Let’s go.”

  As they climbed back into their seats, Noah said, “What is that?”

  “What?” Josie said, searching the seat and then the floor for her phone.

  “That sound,” Noah said. “What is that sound?”

  Her hand closed around her phone, which had fallen between her seat and the center console. As she pulled it out, the sound grew louder. Like a tiny car alarm sounding from her phone. “Oh my God,” she gasped. Her hands shook so badly she dropped the phone. Noah snatched it from the seat and handed it back to her. “Calm down, Josie,” he said. “You need to stay calm.”

  “Come on,” she muttered, swiping at the screen. Finally, the keypad came up. She punched in her passcode, and the screen filled with the notification from Geobit. Harris had pressed the alarm button.

  Noah put the car in drive. “Where are they?”

  Josie punched the locate icon. Immediately, a map appeared with a small blue figure representing Harris, which moved steadily across the lines of the map.

  Noah pulled away from Misty’s house, the blue light on his roof still flashing. “I’ll drive. You tell me where to go.”

  “Go straight,” Josie instructed as they pulled away from the curb. She studied the map and then used two fingers to pinch the map tighter onscreen to zoom out so she could figure out where they were in relation to Harris.

  “Left here,” she told Noah. “Then right.”

  She watched the blue figure cruising through the map.

  “Can you tell where they’re headed?” Noah asked.

  “Right. Right, another right.”

  Her body bumped against the door as Noah made a sharp turn. She zoomed out again. “It looks like they’re turning onto that road that leads to Bellewood.”

  “The rural route?” Noah asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Noah’s hand disappeared into his jacket pocket and came up with his own cell phone. He tried looking at his phone and the road—back and forth—while he attempted to punch something into the screen, but the car kept swerving.

  “What are you doing?” Josie shouted.

  He handed her his phone. “Lyddy’s cell phone number is on there. I tried calling her earlier when she wasn’t home. Call her.” He rattled off the last four digits of the number, and Josie found it in his call log. She punched the call icon and set it to speaker so they could both hear, and so she could keep monitoring Harris’s location on her own phone.

  After three rings, a female voice said, “Hello?” So bright and cheery. Not at all like the kind of person who would try murdering a half dozen people and who would put a four-year-old at risk.

  “Miss K,” said Josie. “It’s Josie Quinn.”

  “Detective Quinn,” she said smoothly. “I’m glad you called. I wanted to talk to you about my son.”

  Ahead of them, Misty’s black Chrysler 300 came into view, still traveling through the residential area at the bottom of the rural route. There were two cars between their vehicle and Misty’s. Josie couldn’t tell if there was someone in the passenger’s seat.

  “Your son tried to jump off a bridge today,” Josie told her bluntly. “He fell. The last time I saw him, he was still alive but badly injured. Because of you.”

  Silence.

  Josie said, “Did you hear me? He told me everything. It’s over, Mary.”

  “Is it over? My son wasn’t upset because of me. He was upset because of you. He called me, nearly crying, and said two female detectives had badgered him and accused him of awful things. I asked him for their names and when he said yours, I instantly recognized it. Surely you don’t think I would let what you did to my son go unpunished.”

  Josie signaled for Noah to try to get closer. He craned his neck to see if there was any way to get safely around the other vehicles. Even with his blue beacon flashing, the other vehicles made no move to pull over.

  “I think you’ve doled out enough punishment. This game you’re playing is over.” She took a chance that Mary was in the car with Misty and Harris. “Tell Misty to pull over.”

  More silenc
e. The car directly in front of them slowed to make a right turn. It seemed to move so slowly that for a split second, Josie wondered if the driver had suddenly passed out at the wheel. The tires of Noah’s vehicle screeched as he tore around it halfway through the turn.

  Mary’s voice came over the line, less sunny now. “I most certainly will not tell her to pull over.”

  Hearing confirmation that Mary was in the car made Josie’s stomach churn.

  Mary continued, “You don’t get to say when the game is over. I do. I say. Misty, see that row of mailboxes ahead?”

  “I see them, Miss K,” came Misty’s voice, sounding much farther away.

  “Plow right into them.”

  “No!” shouted Josie.

  But it was too late. Misty’s boxy Chrysler swerved violently to the left, crossing the oncoming lane of traffic and crashing directly into a row of mailboxes standing along the shoulder of the road.

  Josie’s heart stopped briefly and then skittered back into overdrive when they heard Harris’s tiny voice. “Mommy, no!”

  The car behind Misty stopped.

  “Keep right on going, Misty,” said Mary.

  Misty didn’t stop the vehicle. Wooden stakes and dented metal mailboxes crumpled beneath the tires of her car as she pulled back onto the road and continued. Clearly, despite Josie’s warnings about not eating food unless she prepared it herself, Misty had taken a brownie from Mary. Either that, or Mary had slipped it to her some other way—perhaps in the bottle of water that Misty always kept in the center console.

  Noah leaned on the horn as the driver who had stopped got out of his car. Jerking the wheel, Noah nearly hit him as he went around the parked vehicle in the middle of the road. He sped up, gaining on Misty’s car.

  “I think you should stop following us now,” Mary said. “If you stop now, I won’t hurt the boy. I know what it means to have a son.”

  “Then you shouldn’t be asking me to stop,” Josie told her. “Tell Misty to pull over immediately.”

  This time, Mary’s voice had a sharp edge. “You’re not listening to me, Detective. I don’t like it when people don’t listen to me. It’s rude. You’re rude. You need to be taught a lesson. Just like that swimmer who rejected my son, took his scholarship, and slept with the coach. People need to be held accountable for their poor choices.”

  “Their poor choices as they pertain to you,” Josie accused. “You hurt people because you don’t like their choices, not because they make poor ones. Nysa Somers did nothing wrong.”

  Mary laughed. “Nothing wrong? She was a liar. Everyone thought she was so pure and perfect, but she was just a slut who slept her way to a scholarship and a news story. She was not a good person. She was stupid, too. I waited for her near the front of Hollister, and the coach dropped her off in the middle of the night. She was so upset about something he’d said, it was easy to get her into my car. I made sure she got what she deserved.”

  Josie felt nauseated. “What about Clay Walsh? What did he ever do to you?”

  “He wasn’t on the pickup list,” Mary said. “Just like Harris’s grandmother, Cindy, he had a fit over it. Came right around the desk and pushed me out of the way! He put his hands on me. I should have called the police, but Mrs. D didn’t want a scene. He should have thought about how he acted before he had his little outburst.”

  Josie said, “Misty hasn’t done anything to you. Tell her to pull over. Stop this now.”

  “No, she hasn’t done anything to me. But you have.”

  “Harris,” Josie tried. “He’s only four. He’s innocent. You have a son. Tell Misty to pull over and let Harris go at least.”

  “Do I have a son?” she said. “Is my son still alive? Or did you take him from me when you got him so upset that he thought jumping from a bridge was the only answer?”

  “I didn’t make him—”

  “Misty,” said Mary. “Remember what we talked about earlier when you were eating your brownies?”

  Misty said, “Sure, Miss K.”

  “Good. Then it’s time to be a bird.”

  The line went dead.

  “Time to be a bird,” Noah mumbled to himself. Then, “Good God, Josie. She’s going to Red Hawk Lookout.”

  Forty-Six

  Josie’s heart did a double tap. “Drive faster,” she said.

  “Call for backup,” he told her.

  Josie called dispatch while Noah drove. He didn’t need any more directions to get to Red Hawk Lookout. All they had to do was follow Misty out of the residential area until it gave way to the single-lane, winding mountain road that led from Denton to the Alcott County seat of Bellewood. Roughly halfway between the two cities was an overlook, not much more than an extra-wide gravel shoulder on the side of the road at the apex of the mountain. It featured a small ledge that looked out onto a massive valley hundreds of feet below. Only a thigh-high metal barrier stood between visitors and the steep drop-off. A car could drive right through it if it was going fast enough, if it took the curve in the road just right without losing momentum.

  Noah finally caught up to Misty’s car and immediately started beeping the horn to get her attention. She sped up. Noah tried to pass her on the left, but Mary must have figured out what he was trying to do because a second later, Misty’s car swerved into theirs. Metal crunched against metal. Noah pumped his brakes and jerked the wheel to disconnect. Misty drove on. It would be impossible to pass her, get in front of her, and slow or stop her, and Josie knew neither of them wanted to put Harris at risk. Although, she thought with a sinking heart, what Mary had in mind would kill him.

  “Do you think she’ll go through with it?” Noah asked, practically reading her mind. “Take herself out with those two? Go over a cliff?”

  “I don’t know,” Josie said over a lump in her throat.

  “Look!” Noah said. He pointed to the back of Misty’s Chrysler, where one of the brake lights had dislodged. A tiny hand punched through the hole and started to wave. “What’s he doing?”

  “Exactly what I taught him,” Josie said. He was so smart. Tears pricked her eyes. “I talked to him about how if a bad person ever tries to take him away in a car, he should try to signal someone from the road by dismantling the taillight and waving to get attention.”

  “Jesus, did that bitch put him in the trunk?” Noah said, pushing his car to get closer to Misty’s.

  “I don’t think so,” Josie said. “He cried out when they hit the mailboxes. I also taught him how to get out of his booster seat and pull down the backseats to get to the trunk. You know, in case of an emergency.”

  “Well, this is an emergency,” Noah agreed. “I can’t get around her. I’m not going to be able to stop her.”

  The road climbed and twisted. Noah kept gaining on Misty and continued to beep frantically. Little Harris pulled his hand inside the car. The lookout came into view.

  “Noah!” Josie screamed.

  Just as Misty’s Chrysler hit the gravel of the overlook, her one remaining brake light blinked on. Still, she was going too fast. The car plunged through the aluminum barrier at the edge of the lookout. Josie braced herself to watch it go over the edge, but instead it teetered there.

  Noah pulled up behind it, put his Corolla in park, and got out. Josie followed. The hood of Misty’s car tipped precariously downward. They heard Harris scream from inside. Josie ran up to the side of it and put her hands on the trunk, trying to use her weight to counterbalance the car. “Harris!” she hollered. “We’re here!”

  She looked behind her but didn’t see Noah. A few seconds later, he appeared from behind his car carrying a pair of bright orange ratchet straps. “What are you doing?” Josie said. “Help me get him out.”

  “The car will never stay on balance,” Noah said. “We have to try to secure it somehow.” His hands worked to unravel and unhook the straps and then connect them into one long strap. He looked around. “We can use my car,” he said. “I have to move it closer.”


  Sweat poured down Josie’s face as she held the back of the car in place. She realized they wouldn’t be able to get the trunk open to retrieve Harris—not without the keys or Misty or Mary using the trunk release from the front seat. Banging against the trunk lid, Josie hollered, “Harris! Go to the backseat!” He must have heard her because a second later, the car wobbled beneath her hands. She looked up through the back window but didn’t see any movement from the front seat. The wheels lifted from the ground as the vehicle continued to see-saw. Josie tried to apply enough pressure to keep it from heading nose-first into the canyon. Noah pulled his car nearly to Josie’s back and got out again. Sliding beneath his Corolla, he slipped one end of the ratchet strap over one of his front tie rods. Then he shimmied over beneath the rear of Misty’s Chrysler and did the same. Josie felt the strap take on some of the strain of keeping the Chrysler on the cliff.

  Jumping up, Noah said, “Let’s get Harris first.”

  Josie went to the back door and swung it open. The car wobbled, but held. Inside, curled into a fetal position in one corner of the backseat was Harris. Josie held out a hand to him. “Come on Harris. Take my hand. I’ll get you out.”

  “What about Mommy?” he asked. “She’s being bad. And Miss K. She’s being really bad.”

  Josie looked to the front seat. Miss K’s head slumped against the dash. Blood trickled from her hairline down the side of her face. Across from her, Misty sat stock still, hands still on the wheel. Waiting for instructions, Josie thought with a chill.

  “Harris,” Josie said. “Miss K is a bad person. She gave Mommy a medicine that made her sick and made her do bad things, that’s all. I promise.”

  His lower lip quivered. “Can you make Mommy better?”

  “Yes, just take my hand. We have to get you out first.”

  Tentatively, he scooted across the seat. When he got to the center, the car tipped abruptly toward the front again, throwing him up against the back of Misty’s seat. All Josie could see of her friend was the back of her blonde head. Josie looked back toward Noah. His face was red with panic. “It’s not going to hold,” he said. “I have to try to get in and reverse it, see if that works.”