Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn #6)- Lisa Regan Page 0,2

as an infant. Her real family believed she died in a fire. She had only been recently reunited with them. It was still hard to get used to having an entirely new family. “You know him?” Josie asked.

Colin smiled. “We both work for Quarmark.”

“Right,” Josie said. “Big pharma. Do you work in marketing as well?”

“No, I’m on the team that develops the pricing structures for new drugs Quarmark rolls out onto the market.”

“Fun stuff,” Amy remarked.

“Daddy,” Lucy whined. “I want to go on the carousel.”

“JoJo,” Harris said, pointing over Josie’s shoulder. “Swings!”

Josie was relieved he had changed his mind. “Just a minute, buddy.”

Amy placed a hand on her husband’s back. “Honey, Lucy wants to go on the carousel. Do you want to go on with her or should I?”

Colin smiled down at his daughter. “Maybe all three of us could go on.”

“Which horse will you go on, Daddy?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I have to have a good look at them before I choose.” He shot Josie another smile. “It was great to meet you.”

“You too,” Josie said. As the Ross family drifted off toward the carousel, Josie set Harris down on the grass and he raced off to the swings. As she helped him into one of the empty swings and began pushing him lightly, she saw that Amy and Lucy Ross had gotten on the carousel. Colin stood just outside the fence, talking on his cell phone again. So much for a family carousel ride.

“Higher!” Harris cried. “Please, JoJo?”

Josie smiled down at his crown of golden blond hair and pushed a little more forcefully, even though sending him a fraction higher caused a small uptick in her anxiety. She didn’t know how his mother, Misty, brought him here all the time. It seemed so fraught with danger. To Josie, Harris still seemed so small and fragile. She couldn’t help but fear that he’d break a bone or crack his skull with one bad fall. In her mind she heard Misty, her own mother Shannon, and her grandmother, Lisette all laughing at her—which they frequently did when she fussed too much over Harris’s safety. They all said the same thing: “Kids are more resilient than they look.”

As another wave of nausea rocked Josie’s stomach, she wondered how mothers handled the whole parenting thing. The more independent Harris became, the scarier everything seemed. She was watching his grip on the chains on either side of the swing when she first became aware of Amy Ross’s voice in the distance. She was calling out for her daughter.

“Lucy? Lucy!”

Josie looked over at the carousel and saw Amy still on the ride as people were slowly making their way off the platform and out of the metal fence that surrounded it.

Her tone became louder and higher-pitched. “Lucy! Lucy!”

Colin stopped pacing and pulled his cell phone slightly away from his ear, as though tuning in to the panic in his wife’s voice.

“Lucy!”

Amy raced round and round the platform, weaving in and out of the horses, more frantic with each passing second.

Without realizing it, Josie had stopped Harris’s swing. “JoJo?” he asked, looking up at her.

“It’s okay, buddy,” she mumbled, scooping him out of the seat and walking toward the carousel.

People continued to spill out of the perimeter as Colin tried to walk in through the exit. The teenager who had been monitoring the ride stood by the entrance gate, gawking at Amy. The line of people behind him waiting to get on stared as well. As if sensing so many eyes on her, Amy stopped moving and looked at them. “Did anyone see my daughter? She was just here. She was on the blue horse. I was on the purple one. She got down before the ride stopped. Did anyone see her get off? Lucy?”

No one answered. Colin, phone still in hand, was now on the platform, working his way through the horses and stopping to look inside two chariots with red velvet seats facing one another. “Where the hell did she go?” he asked.

Amy said, “Did you see her come out?”

“No, I didn’t see anything,” Colin said. “I was on the phone.”

Amy again appealed to the people waiting in line. “Did anyone see a little girl get off the carousel alone? She’s seven. She has blonde hair. She was wearing a bright pink unicorn shirt and a butterfly backpack.”

A few people shook their heads, but no one volunteered any information. Josie was at the fence now, studying the carousel. There really