“I’m sure you can. But that’s not what was about to happen, and we both know it.” I gestured toward the retreating figures. “Three drunk fishermen who’ve been at sea for God knows how long, and you standing here looking like some pretty little citified thing without a lick of sense to know where you actually are and the kind of men who frequent this place. The math doesn’t work in your favor.”
Her expression hardened. “Are you always this patronizing, or is that a new skill you picked up?”
“I’m not patronizing. I’m observant. And I’m not about to watch a woman get cornered and pretend it’s none of my business. Not even you.”
Something flickered in her expression—hurt, maybe, or just surprise at the venom I’d managed to pack into those last three words. “Not even me,” she repeated quietly, and I heard the way her voice caught just slightly on the words.
Fuck, I was a dick. I hadn’t needed to say that. The words had just slipped out, carrying more baggage than this moment deserved.
Before either of us could unpack that, Astrid appeared. “Jimmy said Priya was here last night. He said she came in after midnight, sat over there by the wall with her laptop. Never saw anyone with her.”
I followed the direction of her gesture to a small table by the window. Clean now, wiped down, nothing left but a faint ring where a coffee cup had sat. My brain started rearranging the timeline, narrowing down the window when the girl could have disappeared.
“We’ve been asking everyone else if they were here last night and if they saw her.” Madden’s words clipped with barely contained frustration.
“Obviously, you need to work on learning how to ask questions of people in a way that doesn’t put them on the stand.” Damn it, there went my mouth again.
She flushed, pink creeping up her throat in a way that should not be appealing. Her jaw worked like she wanted to fire back, but she didn’t argue the point. Because she knew I was right, or because she was too tired to fight anymore?
If Astrid noticed the tension crackling between us, she decided not to comment on it. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, exhaustion written in every line of her body. “Did you find anything else?”
Astrid deserved better than watching me and Madden tear strips off each other. I turned my attention back to her. “Not much. I spoke to her landlord earlier. She wouldn’t let me inside without a warrant, but said everything looked normal when I pressed her to go check herself. The bed was rumpled, and her stuff was still there. No way to know if she’s a bedmaker or not. Plenty of people aren’t.”
“Hopefully Carson’s people will handle that now.” Astrid’s tone suggested she wasn’t holding her breath.
“He took the report?” I asked.
She nodded.
I grunted, the sound carrying more disgust than I’d meant to let slip. “Then we’re probably on our own.”
Astrid’s head jerked up, her eyes widening. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that he’s predictable.” I chose my words carefully. No point in destroying her faith in the system tonight. “He’ll make a show of looking, fill out the paperwork, maybe even put a patrol car around her building once or twice. But unless there’s a clear sign of trouble—blood, signs of struggle, something that screams foul play—he won’t rattle cages. Not with the summer crowd on-island and the tourism season in full swing.”
Madden folded her arms across her chest, her expression grim. “That’s pretty much my read on it, too. Politics over people. It’s why we’re here doing his job for him.”
“It’s unacceptable. I’m responsible for these kids!” Astrid scrubbed both hands over her face. “I’m going to have to contact her parents tomorrow if she doesn’t show up. What the hell am I going to say? That I lost one of my research assistants, and the police think it’s not worth their time?”
Face softening in an instant, Madden wrapped an arm around Astrid’s shoulders and pulled her close. “That you’re doing everything you can. That you care enough to be out here at midnight asking questions when everyone else has given up. She could turn up tomorrow morning with some perfectly reasonable explanation, and this will all be some huge misunderstanding.”
She didn’t believe that. The words lacked conviction. I didn’t believe it either. Not after Carson’s failure with Gwen. But neither of us was going to destroy whatever lingering hope Astrid had left. Sometimes, hope was all that kept you moving forward.
“Look, there’s nothing else to be done tonight. You should both go home. Get some rest.”
Madden’s hazel eyes flashed gray in the low light of the bar, anger sparking there like flint against steel. “You think we’re supposed to just stop? Go home and pretend a girl isn’t missing?”
“I think fatigue makes mistakes.” I kept my voice level despite the challenge in hers. “You’ll help her more if you come at this fresh in the morning, with clear heads and steady hands.”
She huffed a humorless little laugh, the sound bitter. “Some of us don’t have the luxury of switching off. Some of us can’t just compartmentalize everything into neat little boxes and file it away.”
The words hit closer to home than she probably realized. “Trust me,” I met her gaze, “you don’t want to learn how.”
That earned me another look I couldn’t quite read—half anger, half curiosity, like she was trying to figure out what exactly I meant by that. Astrid tugged at her sleeve, breaking the moment. “Come on, Mads. He’s right. For tonight, anyway. We’re not going to find her stumbling around in the dark.”
I followed them out into the parking lot, crushed shells crunching under our feet. The night air was cooler now, carrying the scent of low tide and rain building offshore. I watched them cross the dock, shadows moving through the pool of yellow light cast by the bulb over the entrance. Madden glanced back once, her expression unreadable in the darkness, then disappeared into a car with her friend.
They hadn’t been wrong to ask the questions, but I didn’t think either of them was the type to actually get the answers we needed. Could be I’d pick up a lot more by being a fly on the wall. So when their taillights faded, I went back inside.
