Breathe Your Last (Detective Josie Quinn #10) - Lisa Regan Page 0,1
her, causing a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach.
“I don’t like this,” she told Misty, changing the subject. “This place is too far out of town. What if there’s an emergency? It would take first responders at least ten minutes to get out here, probably longer.”
Misty rolled her eyes. “Josie, this school has the best Pre-K program in the entire city. I researched this.”
“What kind of ’mergency?” Harris asked from his booster seat in the back. Josie glanced in the rearview mirror and smiled at him. He grinned right back at her and she was struck dumb by his resemblance to her late husband, Ray Quinn, with his dimples and his spiked blond hair. After Josie and Ray had separated, Ray started dating Misty. Harris had been born after Ray’s death and, in spite of the initial tension between the two women, their love of Ray’s only son had united them in a friendship that Josie now treasured.
“Like the kinds we talked about, remember?” she told Harris.
Misty blew out a breath, her blonde bangs flying up and then landing neatly on her forehead. “Please don’t start with this again.”
Harris said, “Like what to do in a fire?”
“Yes,” Josie said. “Exactly. What do you do in a fire?”
“If I catch on fire, I stop, drop, and roll like a roly-poly bug, only a crazy one cause I want the fire to go out,” Harris said.
“Right! What else? What if you’re in the classroom and there’s a fire?”
Misty said, “Josie, seriously. I want him to have a normal Pre-K experience.”
Josie frowned at her. “And I want him to be prepared for anything that might happen.”
“Did you go to Pre-K?”
“No. Did you?”
“Well, no, but how many fires are there at Pre-K facilities in this city each year?”
Josie stayed quiet, chewing the inside of her lip. None, that was how many. She knew because she’d looked it up. She’d also talked to the city’s fire chief. As a detective with the city’s police department she had access to more information than the average citizen.
Harris said, “First thing is, I have to find all the exits when we get there.”
“That’s right,” Josie encouraged. “Now what if you’re in the classroom and a stranger comes in and you think that stranger might hurt someone? What do you do?”
“Josie!”
“I go to the closest door and get out and I press my alarm and then you come with Uncle Noah and make the bad stranger go to jail.”
Noah Fraley was Josie’s live-in boyfriend and a lieutenant with the Denton PD. His polo shirts had escaped the pink massacre.
Harris held up one of his feet and shook it, the shoelaces on his sneaker wiggling. A small, gray device about the size of a quarter but in the shape of a guitar pick had been clipped to one of the grommets. Josie couldn’t see it from her quick glance in the rearview mirror, but she knew the tiny orange button was tucked away along one side of the device. It was called a Geobit. It was a GPS tracker for children. Josie had researched about a half dozen of them when Misty told her she was enrolling Harris in school, but Geobit was the only one with an alarm that alerted Josie’s phone directly should Harris need to use it.
“Not all strangers are bad, you know,” Misty said.
“He knows that,” Josie scoffed. “I talked to him about strangers.”
“I know. I know you also talked to him about sex offenders and bad secrets and bad touch/good touch. I know you talked to him about abductions, and I also know that you showed him how to get into the trunk of a car to disable and knock out a taillight so he can slip his hand out and signal someone.”
“That was cool!” Harris exclaimed. “Can we do that again?”
“No,” Misty said.
“It’s always good to practice,” Josie said at the same time.
“Josie,” Misty scolded again.
Josie opened her mouth to apologize but then clamped it shut. She wouldn’t apologize for overreacting because she wasn’t sorry. When Harris was a baby, he’d been abducted. They’d been lucky to get him back alive. He had nearly died. Between that and all the terrible things that Josie saw in her work as a detective, it was hard not to be paranoid.
Two
I was exhausted, even by Monday-morning standards. It had been a long night waiting for her, putting my plan in place, and making sure to leave no trace of myself. I considered staying home and