Chapter 8
Eight
MADDEN
Astrid’s office looked like someone had tried to cram an entire ocean into a twelve-by-twelve room and given up halfway.
Maya and Tyler stood in front of Astrid’s desk like they were waiting for a verdict as she scanned something on a tablet. The pair of them looked like they’d been dragged down the beach backward.
“Go home,” Astrid ordered. “Eat something that isn’t out of a cooler. Sleep. And do not come back on site until check-in tonight.”
Tyler’s throat worked. “If you hear anything—”
“You’ll be the first to know,” she promised. “Text me when you’re home, so I know you made it.”
They nodded in unison, relief and helplessness wrapped up together, and shuffled out past me. The door clicked shut behind them, and the room seemed to exhale.
Astrid slumped back in her chair as if someone had cut her strings. She tipped her head back, eyes closing briefly as the worn mesh creaked in protest.
I noticed the tremor in her hands. “Did you sleep at all?”
“Fits and starts.” She rubbed the heel of her hand over her sternum like she could physically dislodge the worry lodged there. “Every time I closed my eyes, I started thinking about everything that could have happened to her. Every scenario was worse than the last.”
Yeah. I knew that particular spiral far too well, both from Gwen and from the cases that had crossed my desk.
To keep myself from pacing, I dropped into one of the chairs opposite her. “Did you hear from her parents? Or whoever’s listed as her emergency contact?”
“I called both numbers on her forms.” Astrid’s voice was flat.
“No answer. Left messages. I didn’t spell it out in those, just asked them to call me and told them it was urgent.
I couldn’t just say, ‘Oh, hey, your daughter is missing,’ in a voicemail.
Especially not as her family is in India this summer visiting relatives. ”
“Good call.”
“But I don’t know what I’m going to say when they call back.”
The computer on her desk chimed. A single bright ding that cut through the low mechanical hum of the building.
Astrid glanced at the screen and jiggled the mouse, presumably opening her inbox. Then her jaw dropped open. “It’s from Priya.”
I hurried around the desk and read over her shoulder as she opened the message.
From: Priya Shah
Subject: Departure
Dear Dr. Thompson,
I’m sorry for the short notice, but I’ve had a family emergency come up, and I need to leave the island immediately. I won’t be able to return for the rest of the season. I appreciate the opportunity you gave me to work on the project, and I’m grateful for everything I’ve learned.
Sincerely,
Priya
We read it twice in silence.
“That’s it?” I said finally. “No details. No ‘I’m okay, don’t worry’? Just… ‘family emergency, I’m gone, thanks for everything’?”
Astrid’s eyes raced over the lines again, as if more information might materialize if she looked hard enough. “This… this doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s conveniently vague.” My prosecutor's brain ticked through the phrasing on autopilot. “And stiff as hell. Does she normally write to you like she’s drafting a form letter?”
“No.” Astrid’s voice sharpened. “She calls me Astrid in emails. We joke about sea turtles and coffee. If something had happened back home, she would’ve called. Or at least texted. She knows I’d move heaven and earth to accommodate her if she needed to leave.”
“Yesterday, when you were blowing up her phone, there was nothing.” I tapped the monitor frame lightly. “Now, suddenly, she has time and bandwidth to send this one paragraph of corporate goodbye?”
Astrid’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, then dropped to the desk with a soft thunk. “I hate this. I hate that part of me is relieved to see her name at all, and the rest of me is screaming that this is wrong.”
“It feels manufactured,” I said. “Like whoever wrote it pulled ‘polite exit email’ from a template.”
“Whoever?” Her gaze snapped to mine. “You think somebody else wrote this?”
“I think it doesn’t sound like someone reaching out to the advisor they’ve spent months working under,” I said carefully. “But I also don’t know her. You do. What’s your gut say?”
“My gut says I’m going to call her again.” Astrid snatched up her phone and stabbed at the screen. She put it to her ear, pacing the small office in tight, agitated loops as it rang, then went to voicemail. Again.
“Priya, it’s Astrid.” Her voice wobbled. “I got your email. I’m… I’m sorry about whatever’s going on with your family, but please call me back. I want to make sure you’re okay. Just call. Or text. Anything.”
She dropped the phone onto the desk hard enough that a pen skittered off the desk, rolling toward the edge before I snagged it and set it upright in the mug with the others.
Astrid blew out a shaky breath. “I’m calling Carson.”
“Good.” I hadn’t liked the way he’d talked to us last night, but I’d still let that old reflexive trust in authority smooth some of the edges. “Make him earn his paycheck.”
The chief himself showed up ten minutes later.
Astrid startled when his shadow crossed the frosted glass, but I just sat back, unexpectedly hit by a ripple of déjà vu.
That same steady gait. That same measured pause before entering a room, like he needed to school his features into professional calm.
It tugged at something deep in my memory.
Being seventeen, brittle with terror, watching this man set down his coffee and promise my aunt he would leave no stone unturned.
That calm certainty and insistence they were doing everything humanly possible had been the one thing keeping us upright in those early hours. Despite how he’d treated us last night, that’s who I expected this morning.
But the man who stepped into Astrid’s cramped office now… felt different. Or maybe I was. Maybe the years had made me harder, less willing to assume the best.
“Dr. Thompson.” Carson gave her a courteous nod before his gaze moved to me. “Ms. Reilly.”
Not Madden. And certainly not the softer, paternal “kiddo” he’d used when Gwen vanished. Apparently, adulthood had earned me a formal demotion.
Astrid gestured toward the computer. “We just received an email from Priya. It came through just before I called.”
“So I understand.” Carson stepped closer. “May I?”
She pulled up the message again and angled the screen toward him. I watched his eyes as he read it—once, without expression, then again, a tiny furrow appearing between his brows. Not confusion, exactly. Something closer to reassessment.
But he didn’t ask the questions I expected.
No: Have you spoken with her emergency contact yet?
No: Is this in character for her?
No: Do you suspect someone else might’ve typed this?
Instead, he straightened, folding his hands behind his back in that same composed, reassuring posture he’d used in every press conference about Gwen.
Only this time, the tone didn’t land the same way.
“You said last night she hadn’t made contact at all,” he said.
“She still hasn’t.” Astrid’s voice broke over the words. “I called her twice after this came in. Straight to voicemail. She didn’t text. She didn’t call before she supposedly left. This isn’t like her.”
Carson nodded like he’d heard the same from countless worried parents, a small wrinkle of genuine sympathy appearing. “I can understand why this feels abrupt. But it does give us something to work with.”
I waited for the next part. Now we dig deeper. Now we widen the search. Now we take this seriously.
But instead, he said, “This may actually fit with what my officers found this morning.”
A faint chill slid down my spine.
Fit with. Like he’d already built a framework and now the pieces were clicking neatly into place.
“How do you mean?” Astrid asked.
“They conducted a welfare check at her apartment earlier,” he said. “From what they observed, it appears many of her personal belongings have been removed. Clothing, toiletries, electronics.”
Astrid’s eyebrows pulled together, unsure. “This morning? Before she emailed?”
He didn’t blink. “Correct.”
I tried to process that.
It wasn’t damning on its face—people did pack in the middle of the night. But something about the timing scratched against instinct.
Carson continued. “There was no sign of disturbance of any kind.”
I waited again for the next logical step.
But we’ll confirm that timeline.
We’ll double-check with the landlord.
We’ll pull camera footage from nearby structures.
Nothing.
He seemed almost… relieved. Like the existence of the email had smoothed over all the rough edges for him.
And that’s where something inside me wavered. Not anger. Not yet. Not even mistrust. Just a creeping dissonance. This wasn’t how I remembered him responding to uncertainty.
Astrid hugged her elbows, shoulders collapsing inward. “I don’t understand. This still doesn’t sound like her.”
Carson’s tone softened infinitesimally. “I know it’s unsettling, Dr. Thompson. But it’s not uncommon for young adults to make impulsive decisions in moments of stress.”
Something in me twitched at that—old muscle memory from a very different case. He’d used a different vocabulary then. More urgency. More gravity. But maybe that was because Gwen was only fifteen. He’d said that himself the night before.
Still.
The ease with which he placed this email into the “voluntary departure” column… it didn’t match the man I’d built my childhood faith around.
Astrid’s breath hitched. “It still feels wrong.”
He nodded, but it was the kind of nod that acknowledged emotion, not evidence. “It often does.”
His eyes flicked to mine—measuring, almost cautious.
Did he expect me to agree with him? Or did he remember the girl who’d shown up at the station every day for weeks demanding updates?
Either way, the distance in that look told me something important: He didn’t want me questioning this too hard.