Her Silent Cry by Lisa Regan

Author:Lisa Regan [Regan, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781838880033
Publisher: Bookouture
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The response came back within seconds.

I’m working on it. I’ll let you know as soon as I have something.

Thirty-Three

Amy sat in her backyard on a chair she’d pulled over next to Lucy’s playhouse. In her arms she held a stuffed unicorn that Josie had previously seen in Lucy’s bed. Amy’s face was swollen, blotchy and tear-stained. As Josie approached, she said, “They told me about Wendy.”

“I’m sorry,” Josie said. “Truly sorry.”

“We weren’t even that close,” Amy said, her voice raspy.

“But you had lunch a couple of times a week, didn’t you?”

Amy nodded, squeezing the unicorn more tightly to her chest. “Wendy was a transplant like me. Divorced. She was well past the point of having children and had no desire to date or marry again. She was very insular. Like me, I guess.”

“She didn’t have many friends here?” Josie prompted.

“No. Not many.”

“What did you talk about at lunch?” Josie asked.

“Things we saw on the news, projects she was working on, books. I talked about Lucy a lot. Wendy didn’t seem to mind even though she didn’t have her own children. She was kind to me.”

Amy squeezed her eyes closed against the fresh wave of tears that came. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Where’s Colin?” Josie asked.

“I don’t know,” Amy said. “Upstairs, probably.”

“I need to talk to both of you.”

From the back door, Colin’s voice sounded. “I’m right here. Did you find something? What’s going on?”

As he stepped into the yard, Amy stood up from her chair, squeezing the unicorn more tightly against her chest. “What is it?”

“We believe that Lucy was with the kidnapper at Wendy’s house.”

“What?” Colin said. “You think—you think she saw what happened to Wendy?”

“Does this mean she’s alive?” Amy asked.

Josie held up a hand. “We don’t believe she witnessed Wendy’s murder although she likely heard it. We found a paper chrysalis under Wendy’s desk.”

The lines of Colin’s face deepened in confusion. “What? What are you talking about?”

Amy made a tsk sound at her husband. “You really don’t pay attention at all, do you? You really don’t know what a chrysalis is?”

He glowered at his wife. “Why the hell would I know what that is? What’s this got to do with our daughter?”

Amy’s voice rose to a shout. Her hands squeezed the unicorn’s head. “It’s a cocoon, Colin. You know, the kind that caterpillars make before they turn into butterflies. You remember that your daughter is obsessed with butterflies, don’t you? Or is that too much for you to hold in your head while you’re traipsing all over the globe overcharging sick people for cancer medication?”

Colin stepped back as though he’d been slapped. Even Josie was momentarily stunned. Amy’s comments were spiteful, and delivered with more force than Josie had ever seen from her previously.

Before Colin could snap back at his wife, Josie took out her phone and swiped to the photo one of Oaks’s crime scene techs had forwarded her. “It’s a cocoon. We believe that Lucy tore a piece of paper from a manuscript on Wendy’s desk and used it to make this.

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