Find Her Alive (Detective Josie Quinn #8) - Lisa Regan Page 0,3

end of a segment that the network had run on a young woman in Arkansas who had made the news for getting twenty-two scholarships to the best schools in the country. As the piece wrapped up, the screen cut back to Trinity and her co-anchor, Hayden Keating. They sat side by side at a round table, smiles plastered across their faces. “What a remarkable young lady,” Hayden commented. “With a very bright future ahead of her.”

“The sky is the limit for her,” Trinity agreed. “She obviously has her pick of any school in the country. It’s kind of ridiculous that she applied to twenty-two schools, don’t you think?”

The first time Josie had seen the clip she hadn’t noticed the tension that froze Hayden’s face, but now she’d seen it so many times that the slight stiffening of Hayden’s jaw, his gritted teeth and forced smile were painfully obvious. “Ridiculous?” he scoffed. “I think it’s wonderful.”

Trinity smiled and waved a hand as if in dismissal. “Oh, it is wonderful. I’m just saying, a young woman that smart and talented could have just chosen her top pick and applied there, rather than spending all that money on application fees for twenty-one schools she’s not going to attend. How much are application fees these days? They were very expensive when I went to college. I can only imagine how much they’ve increased.”

A few painful seconds of dead air followed. Then Hayden cleared his throat and began to read from the teleprompter. “Up next, we’ll check in with our meteorologist for an update on the weather.”

Josie reached across Trinity and moved the cursor to pause the clip. “You need to let this go,” she said.

“Let it go?” Trinity said. “That comment is going to cost me my career.” She stood, her chair scraping across the tiles of the kitchen. Pacing, she went on. “I can’t believe it. One stupid comment and my life is over.”

“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” Josie said. “What you said—it wasn’t even that terrible. I’ve heard news anchors say some pretty inappropriate things. Comments that were racist or mean-spirited. What you said wasn’t even offensive.”

Trinity stopped and stared at Josie. “Not offensive? Do you have any idea the backlash that the network got for what I said? I even apologized on air and issued a statement, and people are still enraged.”

“It will blow over,” Josie said. “It was two weeks ago.”

“Two weeks is the longest I’ve been off the air since I became co-anchor, Josie. I’m out. Hayden told me. Barring a miracle, the network is going to replace me. They’re already trying to woo Mila Kates. They’ve been after her for months. Now they have an excuse to get rid of me and offer her some ridiculous amount of money to take my place.” She groaned and stared at the ceiling. “I can’t believe I said that. I can never use the word ridiculous again.”

Josie sat at the table and sipped her own coffee. “Mila Kates?” she said. “I thought she was on a cable network.”

“She is,” Trinity answered. “But she had that stalker, don’t you remember? He showed up armed while she was doing a story at a charity benefit for sick kids and threatened to kill everyone if she didn’t leave with him. She defused the situation and calmed him long enough for the police to come and take him down.”

“Oh yeah,” Josie said. “I remember seeing it on the news. That was months ago.”

“But it changed everything,” Trinity said. “It was a huge story, and it was her story. That stalker story was for her what the Denton vanishing girls case was to me five years ago. It put me on the map. I got my job because of that story.”

“And your network sent you here to do a story on the five-year anniversary of when that case broke,” Josie pointed out. “They didn’t fire you.”

Trinity arched a brow. She waved an arm around the kitchen. “Do you see any producers or camera people here? Yeah, they sent me to do the story. I did the piece and sent it in a week ago. My crew went back to New York City but here I am. They haven’t called me back, and they’re not going to.”

Josie stopped herself from trying again to convince Trinity that the network would call her back. Her sister was most likely right, and Josie didn’t think that baseless reassurance was going to help. Instead, she said, “Trinity, you can get