“I assume this is pro bono?” he asked.
“You assume right,” Dev replied.
Leland didn’t disagree. They had expanded rapidly, with a second office opened last year. Their reputation spoke for itself, and their backlog of wealthy clients and government contracts made it possible for them to help the people who really needed their skills but could never afford D&A’s hourly rate plus expenses.
“Last seen?” Alec asked.
“Leaving work,” Dev said. “Didn’t make it home.”
“No witnesses?”
“None that held up.”
“How cold are we talking?” Leland asked.
“Six months.”
Rhys set the tablet down. “How does something like this just stop?”
Alec gave a humorless huff. “Overworked detectives, too many cases, not enough pressure from above. You know how it goes.”
Gaby stared at Anna’s photo a moment longer. “Long enough for the case to stop mattering to everyone except the people who loved her,” she said quietly.
The room went still.
“You know what the worst part is?” Gaby continued. “By now, her parents have probably memorized every excuse they gave her. Detective reassigned. Waiting on leads. We’re doing everything we can.” Her laugh held no humor. “After a while, they all start sounding the same.”
Beside her, Rhys’s expression hardened.
Unsurprising. They had all watched Gaby go through it with her sister. The desperation. The exhaustion. The fear she tried to hide when the leads dried up and the waiting became its own kind of torture. They’d found Natalie alive. But not everyone got that ending.
Dev quietly cleared his throat. “We’re not letting that happen.”
They were good. Some said the best in the state. But cases where leads had grown cold or were buried in the passage of time could be a bitch. Still, no one questioned his resolve.
“Callan’s been pulling what he can,” he continued. “Public records, traffic cams, anything not locked behind a badge. He flagged it this morning.”
Alec reached for the file. “I’ll request everything MPD has,” he said. “Full case file, notes, interviews. If there’s anything they missed—”
“They did,” Gaby said flatly.
Nobody argued.
“You’re primary,” Dev told Alec. “Stay on MPD. Push if you have to.”
“I still have a few contacts there,” Alec said. “Hopefully, it won’t come to that.”
Gaby picked up Anna’s photo, studying it more closely. “She doesn’t scream high risk,” she said. “No obvious flags.”
“Doesn’t mean she wasn’t vulnerable,” Dev replied.
“No,” Gaby said quietly. “It doesn’t.”
Leland tracked the details the way he always did, looking for threads, for angles, and gaps. Nothing obvious jumped out yet. Just another woman who’d slipped through cracks that should never have existed in the first place.
“Any indication she might’ve crossed paths with Álvarez?” Gaby asked, glancing up.
The mention of his name drained any sense of ease from the room. Recent memory. Ugly and still unfinished.
