With a shrug that was probably meant to be casual, she continued. “I get free. I run.”
“Before you ran, did you notice any other places you might have hurt him? Y’all were fighting in tight corners. Near the back wall of the building?”
“He crash into wall when he let me go. I didn’t stay to see how.”
Fair enough. Either way, this more or less matched what Willie had reported. “Where did you run when you got free?”
“Away. I get away, and I call back saying I was sick.”
“You didn’t feel comfortable reporting to the police?” Madden asked.
“They make trouble. A report mean questions. Maybe they look in the kitchen at the workers. Ask about papers.” Her gaze cooled. “I do not have the papers they like.”
Undocumented. Which added a whole other layer to this mess.
“So you came home,” I confirmed.
“Yes.” Rosa’s mouth flattened. “I had bruises. I do not go back for a few days. I tell them I am hurt. Which is also true. Miguel, he come to check on me. Saw the bruises and got angry. He wanted to go fight someone. But who? A shadow? A voice?”
“And you decided to talk to us,” I said. “Why?”
“Because the girl is missing,” she said simply. “And Miguel says you care. The police do not. They say she go home. I do not think that is true. I know what it is when someone wants to disappear on purpose. I have seen women run.” Her fingers worried at the hem of her shirt. “She did not run. She was taken. Like someone tried to take me.”
Silence fell for a beat, heavy and thick.
Madden pulled up a photo on her phone—the one Astrid had given us of Priya, laughing near a marsh platform. She pushed it gently across the table.
“Have you seen her?” she asked. “Anywhere? At Home Port? On the street?”
Rosa studied the picture. “Not in Home Port. I keep to the kitchen. But…” Her eyes narrowed. “Maybe near here. Once or twice. Walking this way. I do not know her, but she looks… familiar. Where does she live?”
“A couple blocks over,” I said. “On Marshview.”
“Then yes. I have seen her,” Rosa said. “From behind. Ponytail. Backpack. We do not… talk. I see her and think she is just another student. There are many.”
Madden’s gaze met mine over the table.
Ponytail. Backpack. Long, dark hair. Brown skin. About the same height. About the same build.
The image of the ferry security footage flashed in my mind—grainy, distant, a girl with dark hair and a backpack boarding. The authorities had taken it as gospel that it was Priya.
But from behind…
Madden sat back, fingers going still against the photo. I could see it hitting her, too. The new angle. The new, awful possibility.
“What if he had the wrong woman?”
Twenty
MADDEN
“What if he had the wrong woman?”
The question landed in the cramped kitchen like a door slamming. For a beat, even the coffee pot seemed to hush, the soft burble of it suddenly too loud and too intimate, the sound of normal life intruding on a conversation about dark things that shouldn’t exist in a place with fresh flowers outside the window.
Rosa’s face stilled. Guarded.
Rios didn’t move at all, but tension came off him in a wave—a sort of heat that lived in the jaw and the hands.
