Page 128
Cebastian Price.
Son of the Stillwater chief of police.
28
DEAD AIR
BARYN
Ineed to tell Serena this right fucking now.
I know this before I've even finished processing what I'm looking at. I grab my phone from the desk and hit her name, putting it on speaker while I stare at Cebastian's family photo like another thirty seconds might somehow make it less insane.
The call rings until her voicemail picks up. I hang up without leaving one, immediately open our messages, and type CALL ME NOW. Then, because that looks way more ominous than intended, I add, We found something. The message delivers. No response.
“She's probably still walking,” my mother offers, watching me from the other side of the laptop.
“I know.” I'm already calling again anyway.
Faun has decided the sudden increase in activity concerns him personally. He scrambles off my lap when I stand, follows me to the door, then plants himself directly between my feet while I shove my phone into my pocket and slide the laptop beneath my arm. My mother scoops him up before I accidentally punt him into the hallway, holding him against her as she follows me out. The phone rings against my ear while I lock the door behind us. Once. Twice. Three times. Voicemail again.
I hang up with more force than necessary. “She went for a walk, not into witness protection.”
My mother gives me a look. “Perhaps she simply doesn't have her phone.”
“Serena?” I start toward the room next door. “The woman who can probably tell you the exact percentage of bacteria currently living on her phone screen? She has her phone.”
“Then perhaps she doesn't want to speak to you.”
I stop long enough to glare at her.
She adjusts Faun against her shoulder. “I'm trying to be reassuring.”
“You're terrible at it.”
“I don't usually have to reassure people. That's what assistants are for.”
Despite myself, I almost laugh. Almost.
Instead, I knock hard on Simon's door and glance at my phone again while we wait. Nothing. No returned call. No text. Serena has been gone less than an hour, and there is absolutely no rational reason for the silence to bother me. She went for a walk because she needed space. She doesn't owe me minute-by-minute updates on her whereabouts, and I am not going to become the kind of man who interprets forty-five minutes without a text as a crisis.
I call her a third time.
This one goes to voicemail faster, although I'm almost positive that's because I'm becoming increasingly impatient with the ringing and not because anything has actually changed. Irritation is reasonable. Irritation is significantly preferable to whatever my mother is trying to put into the atmosphere with the concerned crease between her eyebrows.
Simon finally opens the door wearing headphones around his neck and an expression that suggests I've interrupted something important, which, knowing Simon, could mean work or a twelve-minute video about competitive cheese rolling. “What?”
I hold the laptop out toward him. “We found something.”
His expression changes immediately, and he steps aside to let us in. My mother enters first with Faun, and I follow while checking my phone again.
Still nothing.
It's fine. Serena is an adult. A highly competent one. She does not require supervision simply because she went for a walk alone in the town where she grew up.
I know that.
It does absolutely nothing to stop me from calling her again.
