Madden’s head jerked toward her, surprise and an odd vulnerability flickering across her face before the mask came down again. She nodded once, the movement short and sharp. “Thank you.”
What was that about?
I didn’t think the two of them had been friends back when. But both of these women knew what it was to lose the same important someone, so maybe that was a bond in and of itself.
Elliott handed me a USB drive. “This has all four angles you asked for,” he said. “If you need more time windows, just let me know. I’ll do what I can.”
“Appreciate it.” I slipped the drive into my pocket. “And if you think of anything else—anything off, any staff who mentioned something weird—call me.” I rattled off my number. He typed it into his phone with care.
We stepped back out into the corridor. The hum of the terminal seeped in around us again, the ordinary chaos of people running for departures or starting a vacation.
Willa walked us as far as the waiting area, Roy trotting obediently at her heel. “You really believe Carson’s just… sweeping this under the rug?”
Madden’s lips pressed together. “I think he’s chosen a narrative that makes his job easier. Whether that’s negligence, incompetence, or something more deliberate remains to be seen.”
Willa’s gaze flicked to me. “And you?”
I considered all the effort he’d put into pinning Gwen’s disappearance on me. How many other leads had he ignored because he’d decided I was the best scapegoat?
“I’m not ruling anything out,” I said.
We stepped through the doors and back into the heat. The noise of the parking lot washed over us—engines, a honking horn, a kid crying because somebody had taken their spot in an imaginary game.
Madden shaded her eyes again, scanning automatically. “So, where does that leave us?”
“With a maybe on the ferry,” I said. “A definitely on the apartment being altered since Maria first saw it. And a Chief who seems awfully eager to accept the simplest explanation.”
“In other words, nowhere good.” She let her hand drop. “We still don’t know where she is or what actually happened to her.”
“No,” I agreed. “But we’ve eliminated one clean story. That’s something.”
She shot me a sideways look. “Are you always this optimistic?”
“Trust me, this is me being optimistic.”
That earned me the barest ghost of a smile. It was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared, but I still caught it. Somehow that felt like my biggest achievement of the day. Which really wasn’t saying much about the state of our case so far.
She tipped her head toward the lot. “Astrid’s going to be waiting to hear what we found. Or didn’t.”
“I’ll touch base with her,” I said. “In the meantime, I keep circling back to what Jimmy at Home Port said—about how Priya liked to work there late.”
“You think someone there might’ve seen her with somebody?” Madden asked.
“Bartenders notice patterns. Who sits where, who they talk to, who they avoid.” I started toward the truck. “If Priya had more of a life here than the research station sees, odds are good it shows up there.”
“Then how do you feel about lunch?”
Twelve
MADDEN
Daylight elevated Home Port from a dive to a joint. The difference? A joint attracted working people who just wanted a break and a drink—a place to blow off steam and get good, cheap food. A dive attracted the kind of people already looking for a fight when they walked in. A place where the floor stuck to your shoes and the wrong kind of attention stuck to your skin. A joint was worn. A dive was dangerous.
I’d learned the difference between the two during my years in California, and I felt that difference now as Rios and I stepped inside. More eighties rock played from the corner speakers, but there was no sense of menace lurking in the shadows. I didn’t think that was just because I had six-foot-plus of man who could handle himself by my side. Because, yeah, it was impossible not to be aware of that in the way he stepped into a space and automatically sized everything and everyone up. That competence was sexy as hell.
Or would have been in someone else less complicated.
Last night, I’d been too focused on the mission, too pissed off at the police, and too worried about Priya to clock the danger that Rios had seen in an instant.
