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

by Lisa Regan

  But as he moved toward his own driver’s side seat, both cars pitched forward. Afraid that they’d all go over, Josie quickly reached inside, stretching her upper body across the backseat and snatching the waistband of Harris’s pants, pulling him swiftly toward her. He took advantage of the momentum and scrambled into her arms. Josie only had a second to squeeze him before putting him down on solid ground. “Go to the road,” she told him. “But not into it, do you understand? Wait for me there. If you see a police car, wave your arms in the air and try to get them to pull over.”

  He nodded and took off running. Josie looked across the roof of the car to see Noah on the other side. “It didn’t work,” he said. “Her car is going to pull mine right over with it. Her car’s heavier than mine.”

  “Can you reach her?” Josie asked. “Or her door at least?”

  She didn’t need to specify which “her.” They both knew that they were going to try to get Misty out of the car before they tried getting Lyddy out.

  Noah’s head disappeared for what felt like an eternity but was probably only three seconds. “I think I can, but I need you to try to counterbalance.”

  “How?” Josie said.

  He looked behind them where his vehicle’s tires were making incremental marks in the gravel as it was being pulled forward. “Shit. I don’t know,” he said.

  “I’ll get into your car and hit reverse and just gun it.”

  “No,” Noah said. “It’s too precarious. It won’t have enough purchase. I’m too close to the edge. If you try, you’ll end up going off the edge with them. Can you get over to this side?”

  Gingerly, Josie made her way to the trunk of Misty’s car. She stepped over the ratchet strap separating the two vehicles, round to where Noah stood, one hand on Misty’s door handle. “She’s conscious,” he said. “Misty! Misty! I need you to get out of the car.”

  Josie inched closer to Noah and grabbed onto his arm. He looked back at her. “I’m going to open the door just enough for you to pull her out. If I fling it open or it opens any more than that, both cars are going over, okay?”

  “Yes,” Josie said.

  “Ready?”

  Josie nodded.

  As though he were performing a delicate operation, Noah slowly pulled on Misty’s door handle. He slid the door open until the car began to teeter again ever so slightly. “That’s as far as I can get it open,” he said.

  Josie looked up to see sweat pouring from his brow. She stepped past him and touched Misty’s shoulder. “Misty,” she said. “Get out of the car.”

  “Get out of the car,” Misty repeated.

  Josie stuck her hand out and Misty turned toward it, reaching for it. The car pitched forward again. Josie let out a scream. Noah’s forearms were so tensed from holding the door exactly in place that his veins had popped out all over.

  “Slowly,” Josie told Misty. “Slowly get out of the car.”

  With infinite slowness, Misty turned her body until both feet were dangling from the open door. One of them was over open air where the cliff dropped off and the other was over the gravel ledge of the lookout. She stuck her hands out and Josie grabbed onto them. “I’m going to count to three,” Josie said. “Then I’m going to pull you as hard as I can. I need you to throw yourself at me. Fast.”

  Misty nodded. Her pupils were huge, Josie noted, but she appeared to be obeying all of Josie’s commands.

  “Hurry,” Noah grunted. “I can’t hold onto this much longer.”

  Josie counted to three and then pulled as hard as she could, falling backward while Misty jumped from the car. She landed on top of Josie. Josie looked past her to see Noah standing on solid ground, one hand still on the doorframe. Then came a noise from inside the car. A primal scream. An animal raging. Through the windows, Josie could see Mary Lyddy’s head rear up and her body flail as she tried to reach Noah through the open door.

  “Noah, move!” Josie screamed, but it was too late. Noah vanished.

  The sound of metal scraping against stone turned Josie’s blood to ice. Pushing Misty off her, she scrambled to her feet. Misty’s car was completely over the edge, the ratchet strap and Noah’s vehicle the only thing keeping it from dropping. Josie looked behind her to see the back wheels of his car lift slightly from the ground. It was going to topple.

  Josie reached down and pulled Misty to standing. “Run,” she told her friend. “Go to the edge of the road but not into it. Find Harris and wait for the police there.”

  Misty took off in the same direction as Harris had. Josie inched closer to the cliff edge. “Noah?” she called.

  She leaned over, and there he was, hanging by his hands from the open door of Misty’s car. The muscles of his face were so tightly clenched, he looked like he was in great pain.

  Mary hung half out the door, snarling and trying to reach him. Noah told her, “Stop moving or we’re both going to die!”

  “Noah,” Josie screamed. She looked around, trying to figure out a way to get down to him. There was nothing. “Hold on,” she told him. “I’ll get a tree branch and extend it to you. You can grab it and I’ll pull you up.”

  “Wait,” came his strangled cry. “Josie, please.”

  Mary’s feral howls receded. She had moved back to the other side of the vehicle. Josie could see her trying to push the passenger’s side door open.

  Josie kept her focus on Noah. “We don’t have time,” she shouted down to him.

  “Please, Josie. Wait. I have to tell you something.”

  “No!” she screamed at him. “There’s no time. I have to get you back up here.”

  Mary’s frantic movements caused Misty’s car to swing. On the ledge, Noah’s vehicle lost a few inches of traction, slipping quickly, its front wheels sliding nearly over the edge of the cliff. The sudden movement jolted Misty’s vehicle, and the door Noah held onto swung jerkily in the air. Involuntary screams ripped from both their throats. Josie felt hot tears on her cheeks.

  “I was going to ask you to marry me,” Noah yelled.

  Josie thought she had heard him wrong. He was dangling from a car about to topple off a cliff, hundreds of feet above the ground, a serial killer only a few feet away from him. Had he lost his mind?

  “I had a ring. Trinity helped me pick it out! I was going to propose. I want you to be my wife.”

  She could see the muscles in his arms bulging, fighting fatigue. “Ask me when I get you back up here!” she told him.

  She turned to look for the nearest tree branch strong enough and long enough to get to him. His voice came once more. Two words.

  “Would you—”

  Then the back of his car lifted completely off the ground and with a moan, tumbled off the cliff.

  Forty-Seven

  Josie had no idea how much time passed before her sister arrived at the lookout, but it was dark. Someone had put a blanket over Josie’s shoulders and seated her in the rear of an ambulance. She was pretty sure it was Sawyer. Many sets of eyes had stared into her face since Noah went off the cliff, looking at her with both pity and alarm. They asked a lot of questions. She answered none of them. All she could say was, “Noah went over the edge,” again and again, as if saying it would help her mind process the horror of it. The reality of it. No, she thought dimly, she’d never accept it.

  Arms wrapped around her, and she smelled Trinity’s perfume. Trinity started talking. Josie heard some of it. Misty and Harris had been taken to the hospital in another ambulance. Both of them were fine, and it appeared that Misty would recover from her Devil’s Breath experience with no lasting effects. Hudson Tinning had been recovered with serious injuries to his back. He would likely need surgery and a lot of physical therapy if he wanted to walk again. He had taken the news of his mother’s demise with sadness but also some relief, someone related to Josie.

  Josie let the facts wash over her, feeling no solace in the fact that Mary Lyddy had finally been stopped. The cost was too much for Josie to bear.

 
“…Mettner wanted to come in and talk to you but he’s crying, Josie. Gretchen’s here. You want to talk to her? No? Okay. Someone’s going to drive to Rockview and get your grandmother. Mom and Dad and Pat are on their way…”

  “Can I talk to her alone?” said a new voice.

  Josie searched her brain until she realized it was Drake.

  “Alone?” Trinity said. “She just lost the love of her life. She needs me right now.”

  “And she’ll get you right back. I’m asking for five minutes.”

  Trinity bristled but then released Josie and exited the ambulance. Josie blinked the world into focus as Drake folded himself into the small area and sat down across from Josie. Everything was too bright.

  “I can’t leave,” Josie said. “I can’t leave him down there. I can’t go home, but they’re going to need this ambulance back.”

  “I know,” Drake said.

  “They won’t be able to find him tonight. It’s too dark. The drop is too far. But I can’t leave him here.”

  “I know,” Drake said. “I had an idea. Pat talked to a buddy of his on campus. They’ve got a small high-def drone with night vision. We can drop it into the canyon, get a look at the wreckage, locate Noah’s…”

  “Body,” Josie choked.

  Drake cleared his throat. “Yeah. Locate it. Then Mett and Sawyer and I will hike in through the bottom and carry him back out. Tonight. They can get Lyddy and the vehicles some other time. Chitwood already authorized it.”

  Josie closed her eyes. New tears spilled down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she said.

  She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders and walked out to the edge where everyone had gathered around Patrick’s friend. In his hands, he held what looked like a combination tablet and game controller. On the tablet was a screen that glowed green. On either side of the screen, his fingers worked buttons and arrows. Josie didn’t bother watching the screen. She didn’t need to see it. Soon enough she’d be in the funeral home burying another man she loved. Thoughts of Hudson Tinning and his fall tore at her insides. She truly believed Hudson had been a victim and yet, why did he get to live and Noah didn’t? It wasn’t fair. Even as the thought entered her mind, Josie shut it down. Long before she had become a police officer, she had known—viscerally—that life wasn’t fair. The bad ones didn’t die. They lived and thrived, and if they didn’t thrive, they squeaked through while decent people fell. That was how things worked. The job hadn’t taught her that. It had just driven it home. Josie’s entire personal life had been a study in unfairness. Railing at it—out loud or in her own mind—had never made a damn bit of difference.

  She sincerely hoped none of them suggested therapy to her again after this. The first person who said it was getting punched directly in the throat.

  Next to her, someone said, “He’s not down there.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said another voice. “He has to be.”

  “I’m telling you, he’s not in the wreckage. I see a woman. That’s it.”

  Someone whispered, “Could he be underneath?”

  Josie felt sick. For some reason, she thought of their sweet dog, Trout. How long was he going to wait by the door for Noah to come home after this? How many days? Weeks? Would he wait months? He would forever be looking for Noah, and Noah’s scent was in every corner of their home. There was no explaining to Trout that his “dad” was never coming back. For once, Josie felt zero guilt for their decision not to have children together.

  “It’s your drone,” Patrick said. “Something’s wrong with it.”

  “There is nothing wrong with this drone.”

  “Bring it back up,” Drake said. “Check it over, make sure it’s working properly.”

  There was a heavy sigh. “Fine.”

  Just when the whine of the drone came into range, the guy said, “Wait a minute. Hold on. What’s this? Look at this.”

  Josie looked over to see Patrick, her parents, Drake, Trinity, Gretchen, Mettner, Chitwood, and even her grandmother, Lisette, leaning on her walker, crowd over the screen. The kid said, “Hey, give me some space!”

  “What is that?” Mettner asked.

  “Holy shit, it’s an outcropping,” Drake said. “Get closer. Can you tell if he’s still alive or not?”

  Every process in her body seemed to stop suddenly. Her breath. The movement of blood through her veins. The churning in her stomach. The pounding in her head. She dared not hope.

  “No, not from this picture.”

  Patrick said, “Can you maybe land the drone on him? See if he moves?”

  “I guess so.”

  Josie forced air into her lungs. Then she started walking away. She couldn’t bear to lose Noah twice in one night.

  She had taken three steps when a cheer went up from the group. “Holy shit!” her father said. “Josie! Josie! He’s alive!”

  Josie fell to her knees. Soft hands touched her back. Then her mother gathered her into her arms. “He’s alive,” Shannon whispered into Josie’s hair. “He’s alive.”

  Drake said, “Pat, you got any rock-climbing friends up at school?”

  Forty-Eight

  It was daylight by the time a crew made up of first responders, the fire company, and rock-climbing college students managed to get Noah off the rocky outcropping he’d caught himself on as the two vehicles fell. He’d taken a page out of Hudson Tinning’s book and gotten lucky. The way the vehicles had tumbled, they hadn’t crushed him, and he’d been able to grab onto a small ledge just as he started to fall, before his body gained momentum. He was badly scraped up, bruised, concussed, and suffering from a few minor fractures, but he was alive. At the hospital, Josie waited for the doctors to give her the okay to see him.

  She went directly to his bed and climbed in beside him, pressing herself against him. With a sharp intake of breath, he maneuvered one arm around her and tried to pull her closer. She wanted to ask if she was hurting him, but she didn’t care. He was there. He was alive. She found a patch of hospital gown on his chest and wept into it until she fell asleep.

  A woman’s voice woke her a few hours later. “Honey, you can’t be in this bed with this man. He—”

  Chitwood’s voice boomed over the top of hers. “You leave that woman right where she is, you hear me?”

  “Hear you? The whole damn hospital can hear you. Who do you think you are?”

  “I’m the Chief of Police and those are my detectives.”

  “Well, I’m a nurse and that is my patient. Now if you’ll excuse me—”

  “No. I won’t. You let them be. You can come back in… two hours and do all the checking you want. You got that?”

  Josie heard indistinct mumbling and then footsteps receding. She blinked her eyes open to see a hazy Chitwood leaning over Noah’s other side. There was some whispering. Noah saying a quiet thank you. Then Chitwood said, “No time like the present, son,” and disappeared.

  Josie reached up and wiped at her swollen eyes, blinking again until she regained her focus. She looked at Noah’s face, unable to keep the smile from her own. She buried her nose in his chest again and inhaled. Then she said, “What was that about?”

  Noah shifted gingerly, lifting his arm out from behind her back. “There’s something I need to finish,” he said. “I had this whole plan. Everyone was helping. Your sister, Drake, your parents, Pat, the Chief, Gretchen, Mett. They all covered for me while I put this together. I was going to take you out to the park, under the stars…”

  “So that’s what all that was about,” Josie whispered.

  “Plans are stupid,” Noah said. “I should have just asked.”

  He nudged her gently. She lifted her head again and came face to face with a tiny box holding a huge engagement ring.

  “Anyway, you may remember that I was trying to ask you, before I almost died, if you would be my wife. Josie Quinn, will you marry me?”

  Josie grinned. She reached one hand up and touched his cheek, shimmied upwa
rd and kissed him softly on the mouth. Then she looked into his eyes. One word came to mind.

  Home.

  “Yes, Noah Fraley,” she said. “I’ll marry you.”

  Forty-Nine

  Josie woke to the sun streaming through tall, arched windows, their heavy drapes left open. She opened her eyes and searched the ornately decorated room that looked as if it was about a hundred years old, save for modern conveniences like a television and forced air heat. The walls were a pale gold and the molding a dark heavy walnut that matched the huge bed cradling her body. It took a few seconds for her to remember where she was—where they were. Beside her, Noah slept soundly, his face slack, his breathing even. She turned on her side and traced his jaw with one finger. The diamond in her engagement ring sparkled in the sunlight. A prism effect caused dozens of tiny dots of light to twinkle above their heads.

  It had been a month since Noah’s fall. A month since they got engaged. Because Noah’s elaborate plans to propose had been foiled, and because the Mary Lyddy case had traumatized them both in ways that Josie was still trying to process, their friends and family had purchased a weekend getaway for the two of them at a large, stately resort in the mountains of West Denton. It was called Harper’s Peak. It used to be a large estate that had been converted into a resort. The views from just about any place on the property were breathtaking, especially now that the colorful fall foliage was in full effect.

  But Josie and Noah had spent most of their time in their room. In bed. Noah was still nursing several injuries, but it hadn’t stopped them from enjoying one another. For once, Josie didn’t care what was happening at work or anywhere outside their room. All she cared about was being able to touch Noah and listen to him breathe. With a contented sigh, she dropped her head onto his shoulder and rested her hand on his chest. Under her palm, his heart tapped out a steady rhythm. She closed her eyes, wishing they could hold onto this time forever. She hated that the weekend had to end. There would be more cases. More death. More people like Mary Lyddy who would have to be stopped somehow. Thoughts of the path of destruction Mary Lyddy had carved out of her life crowded Josie’s mind, and she pushed them away. She didn’t want to think about Mary Lyddy ever again, and now that the woman was dead, there was no need. There would be no trial, no need to testify against her, although the case would have been solid, especially considering that both blood samples from Dan Lamay and Clay Walsh had come back positive for Doug Merlos’ synthetic Devil’s Breath. The only small bit of good news to come out of all the tragedy that Mary had brought down onto the city was that Clay Walsh had survived. He would be hospitalized for months, Josie had heard, but one day he would return home to his daughter and granddaughters, and his reputation as a city hero would remain intact.