Chapter 6
Six
MADDEN
The Sutter’s Ferry Police Station looked even smaller at night.
The squat clapboard building couldn’t have been more different from the sprawling precincts I’d grown used to in Los Angeles.
Just a single story, with one halogen bulb buzzing over the door drawing moths into its cone of light.
But inside, it still held the ubiquitous scents I associated with police stations—the faintly musty odor of overworked air conditioning and the sharp bite of burnt coffee.
The wall just inside the door was covered in outdated flyers, including a MISSING poster with a familiar face.
My step faltered as I took in this latest computerized rendering of what they thought my cousin looked like after all these years.
Cheeks still round, hazel eyes still bright.
Dark hair loose around her shoulders. She didn’t look like me here.
Would she have grown out of the resemblance that had made people believe we were sisters when we were young?
Would I even know her if we passed on the street?
Given what everyone now surmised had happened to her, the assumption was that she was dead.
That was horrible enough, but after my years as a prosecutor, seeing the worst humanity had to offer, I knew that there were other options that were incalculably worse.
Tearing my gaze away from the poster, I hurried to catch up with Astrid as she marched toward the front desk, phone clenched in her hand like she’d bludgeon the officer who sat there if he didn’t listen to her this time.
“—been exactly twenty-four hours. I want to file a missing person’s report for my grad student.”
“Of course. I’ll just take down the…” He trailed off as he spotted me. “Madden?”
It took me a second to place him. He was taller and broader than he’d been in high school, his shoulders filling out the crisp uniform shirt in a way that spoke of years in the gym.
The blond hair he’d once let grow shaggy was now shorn short enough to hide the natural curl I remembered threading my fingers through during stolen moments behind the bleachers.
His jaw had squared out too, losing the boyish softness that had made him seem younger than his eighteen years when we’d graduated.
“Grant Willoughby.” The name felt strange on my tongue after all these years. “I had no idea you’d become a cop.”
My high school boyfriend grinned at me, and for a split second, I caught a glimpse of the boy who’d taken me to junior prom in his father’s borrowed pickup truck. “Protect and serve.” He tapped the badge pinned to his chest with obvious pride.
Knowing this was likely to veer toward the kind of small-town catch-up conversation that could eat away precious minutes while Priya remained missing, I tempered my own smile and kept my voice brisk.
“Well, we could certainly use some of that protection and service just now. As Astrid said, she’s here to file a police report for her missing grad student. ”
Grant sobered immediately, the easy grin sliding off his face as he straightened in his chair.
“Of course. I’ve got the form right here.
” He swiveled toward the computer terminal, waking the screen with a sharp tap of the keyboard.
The monitor flickered to life, casting a pale glow across his features.
“Let’s get the basics down first—full name, age, last time you saw her, that sort of thing. ”
Astrid rattled off the answers in a voice stretched tight with barely contained anxiety.
The heel of her free hand pressed against the counter’s edge like she needed the physical support to keep herself upright.
I watched the concern settle over Grant’s face as he entered each new piece of information.
A door down the short hallway creaked open, and Chief Bill Carson stepped out.
I blinked in surprise, not expecting to see him here this late.
As head of the department, there was no question he’d normally be home by now, likely asleep.
But maybe it meant something significant that he’d stuck around.
Surely he would have known Astrid would be back right at the twenty-four-hour mark, determined to make this official.
The smallest whisper of that old faith in the system surfaced as he strode toward us.
“Madden Reilly.” His weathered face, lined and leathery from decades of island sun, registered what looked like mild surprise. The years had carved deeper grooves around his eyes, like driftwood that had been blasted by sand and sea and time. “Didn’t realize you were back on-island.”
“Just for a while.” I kept my tone deliberately neutral. The last thing I wanted was to get into the specifics of why I’d returned.
He nodded, seemingly satisfied with my non-answer, and shifted his attention to Astrid. His posture remained relaxed, hands clasped behind his back in a pose that suggested he had all the time in the world. “Dr. Thompson. Back about your missing student, I assume?”
“Yes, Priya Shah.” Astrid’s voice carried the sharp edge of someone who’d been dismissed once already and refused to let it happen again.
“As I told you earlier, she didn’t show up for work this morning, and no one’s seen her since last night’s hatching observation.
She’s not answering calls or texts, and she wasn’t home when I dropped by to check.
You said you couldn’t do anything for twenty-four hours.
Well, it’s been twenty-four hours and fifteen minutes. ”
A faint smile ghosted across his lips—the kind of patronizing expression that suggested he found her precision both amusing and slightly irritating. “All right, then. I suppose we can make it official.”
He moved to peer over Grant’s shoulder at the partially completed report, scanning the details that had been entered so far.
“We’ll start by asking around the usual places.
The beach accesses, the marina, the bars.
With all the crowds in town for the summer season, it’s easy for someone to lose track of time, get caught up in the festivities.
” Carson’s tone was measured and conciliatory, delivered in the practiced cadence of a man who’d spent decades explaining away concerns with the kind of confidence that was supposed to substitute for actual reassurance.
“My guess is she’s perfectly fine—overslept after a late night, lost her phone somewhere, maybe staying with a friend she met. Young people do impulsive things.”
Astrid’s eyes flashed with barely contained fury. “She’s not that kind of person. Priya is responsible, organized to a fault. She has a detailed schedule for everything, and she wouldn’t just vanish without telling someone. She’s here on a research grant. Her entire future depends on this work.”
“I understand your concern,” Carson said, though his tone suggested he understood nothing of the sort.
My God, had he always been this level of condescending prick, and I’d simply been too young to notice? Or had the years in power crystallized something that had always been lurking beneath the surface?
My prosecutorial instincts kicked in, despite my current circumstances. “What exactly are you going to do other than casually ask around and hope someone volunteers information?”
Carson’s gaze shifted toward me, still outwardly calm but with something sharper edging his voice now. A hint of the authority he was used to wielding without question. “We’ll follow proper procedure, Ms. Reilly. Standard protocol for missing person cases.”
The formal address wasn’t lost on me—a deliberate choice to establish distance, to remind me that whatever standing I might have once had in legal circles, here I was just another concerned citizen.
Or possibly I was projecting.
“Surely we’ve learned something in the wake of my cousin’s disappearance about the importance of fast, decisive action?”
Something flickered across his face—frustration, or perhaps the uncomfortable echo of an old failure that still haunted quiet moments.
“That was a completely different situation. Gwen was a minor, only fifteen years old. Miss Shah is a grown adult with every legal right to go anywhere she pleases without checking in with anyone.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that something genuinely awful could have happened to her,” I shot back.
God knew, after all the years I’d spent prosecuting predators and reading between the lines of case reports, after seeing the worst of humanity in stark detail across crime scene photos and victim statements, I could imagine far too many ways this story might end.
The statistics on missing women, particularly young women traveling alone, weren’t exactly comforting.
The police chief exhaled slowly through his nose, a sound that managed to convey both patience and irritation.
“We’ll give this matter due consideration, I assure you.
I’ll have the whole department looking into it first thing in the morning, but with the sheer number of tourists currently on-island for the season, I can’t risk starting some kind of panic over what will probably turn out to be nothing more than a miscommunication.
If anything about her disappearance starts to seem genuinely suspicious, we’ll escalate our response accordingly. ”
So it was about optics, as always. The careful balance between appearing concerned and avoiding anything that might disrupt the delicate tourism economy that kept this place afloat. I should have expected as much.
Astrid’s fingers tightened around her phone until her knuckles turned white. “She’s not nothing, Chief Carson.”
“I didn’t say she was.” He said it with the kind of calm that was no doubt meant to settle irate business owners and concerned citizens. “Now, I suggest you go home and get some rest. We’ll be in touch if anything significant turns up.”
Outside the station, the night air pressed against us like a damp blanket, heavy and wet with the kind of humidity that made clothes stick to skin within minutes.
The cicadas were loud enough to drown out the rhythmic crash of the surf on the nearby beach.
Overhead, the streetlights created small pools of yellow illumination that did little to push back the darkness stretching beyond.
Astrid stopped halfway across the small parking lot and raked both hands through her hair, the gesture one of pure frustration and helplessness. “He’s not going to do a damn thing, is he?”
“No,” I agreed, my voice flat with certainty born from years of watching the system fail people who needed it most. “He’s going to make it look like he’s busy while convincing himself that minimal effort is somehow enough.”
She let out a shaky breath that might have been the precursor to tears if she’d allowed herself the luxury. “Rios said he’d help look for her. Maybe he’ll actually find something concrete before the police bother to get serious about this.”
I blinked, taken completely off guard. “Rios? Rios Carrera?” As if there was any other Rios on this island?
“Yeah, he’s back on-island right now.”
My brain offered a flash of that bare, muscled torso again. As if I needed that image burned into my brain just now.
Astrid shifted her weight, glancing toward the dark stretch of street beyond the station, where the shops had long since closed for the evening.
“He used to be military police during his time in the Navy. He, Ford, and Sawyer started asking around earlier today when I first mentioned Priya was missing.”
Military police. That wasn’t anywhere close to what I’d imagined he’d end up doing.
Then again, I realized with an uncomfortable twinge of self-awareness, I’d never really taken the time to know him back then, had I?
I’d been too caught up in the community narrative, too willing to believe what everyone else insisted was obvious truth.
Astrid looked toward the car, her expression lost and uncertain in the dim light. “I can’t just go home and sit there waiting for them to get around to taking this seriously. I’ll lose my mind completely.”
“Then don’t wait. If Priya didn’t go back to her place, where else might she have gone after finishing her work?”
Astrid considered this for a moment, chewing on her lower lip. “The grad students often stop in at Home Port after their night shifts. It’s the closest bar to the beach research sites, and they stay open late enough to catch the crew when they’re done with observations.”
“Then let’s go see if anyone there remembers seeing her last night.”