Chapter 11
Eleven
RIOS
By the time we pulled into the ferry terminal lot, heat bounced off the asphalt in shimmering waves. Out front, a line of cars waited in the staging lanes. The ordinary churn of people leaving the island. On any other day, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought.
Today, every car felt like a potential lead we’d already missed.
The terminal’s air conditioning hit like a slap after the soupy heat outside. The waiting area buzzed with the sounds of travel: rolling luggage wheels, kids whining for snacks, the faint echo of an announcement over the PA.
I scanned the lobby, looking for Willa, and spotted Roy, her big black pit bull, first. Easy to do, given he was the size of a small mountain.
He sat like a particularly well-behaved statue as she spoke to an employee behind the ticket desk.
She glanced up, eyes meeting mine before they slid over to Madden.
The sight of us together made something unreadable flicker across her face before she smoothed it out with a careful, polite smile.
She crossed over. “Rios. Madden.”
Roy lumbered to his feet and trotted over, big tail whipping. I gave him a scratch behind the ears, feeling the rumble of his pleased huff under my fingers.
“Hey, Willa.” Madden’s voice shifted into an odd formality, the syllables clipped. Her shoulders squared in that polished, courtroom way I was starting to recognize as some kind of armor. “It’s a bit late, but congrats on your marriage.”
Willa angled her head in gracious acknowledgement, her own posture taking on a bit of the polished edge she usually didn’t bother with anymore. “Thanks.” Her focus came back to me. “How can I help?”
“We need to see the security tapes for the past two days.”
“I thought that might be it. Sawyer told me last night about Astrid’s student, and the police were here this morning. They took a copy of the footage for themselves, but we still have ours on our server. Do you expect to find something they didn’t?”
“Already have. That’s why we’re following up.”
Willa frowned. “That sounds ominous. Come on. Elliott’s in the security office.” Willa hooked a thumb toward the back hallway. “He’s been with us since before my grandparents retired. Knows the system better than the company that installed it.”
Roy padded ahead like he knew the way, nails clicking on the tile. We followed Willa down the corridor, past a break room and a tiny HR office. The security room was at the end, door propped open with a plastic wedge.
Inside, three monitors glowed above a desk cluttered with coffee cups and a bowl of individually wrapped mints. A man in his fifties with a sunburnt neck and thinning hair swiveled in his chair when we stepped in.
“Boss.” He tipped his chin at Willa. “Twice in one day? To what do I owe the honor?”
“Same reason, I’m afraid. This is Rios Carrera and Madden Reilly. Y’all, this is our head of security, Elliott Carver. They’re helping look into Priya Shah’s disappearance.”
Elliott frowned. “Thought the police handled that.”
“We’re just being extra thorough,” I said, which was far more polite than anything else I could manage.
“You want the footage from yesterday morning?”
“From about four-thirty to six-thirty,” I said. “Ticket line, lobby, boarding ramp. Anything that would show the passengers getting on that first ferry.”
“I already pulled that for the chief.” Elliott spun back toward the monitors and started clicking through folders with practiced efficiency. “You want to go through the same files, or you want a wider window?”
“Let’s start with the same,” Madden said. “See what they saw. Or say they saw.”
Willa glanced at her, the corner of her mouth tightening. It wasn’t disagreement, exactly. More like silent alignment.
Elliott loaded up a four-way split-screen video: top left the parking lot, top right the ticket counter, bottom left the waiting area, bottom right the covered pedestrian walkway leading down to the ferry ramp. Timestamps glowed in the corner of each feed.
He clicked play. The footage rolled forward at normal speed—too slow for what we needed. Lines of people, blurry faces, bags, kids. Life.
“Speed it up until we get closer to boarding,” I said.
He obliged. The movement on screen shifted from casual to jittery, everyone just a little too brisk.
I stepped closer, folding my arms over my chest as the digital world scrolled by.
Madden stood to my right, arms at her sides, knuckles pale where her hands curled into loose fists.
Willa stayed back near the doorway, one shoulder against the frame, Roy sitting pressed to her leg like a black shadow.
Casually, I glanced between the women. Objectively, they came from the same strata of island society—old family names, big expectations.
Willa had cut herself loose from hers years ago, after her parents put her through unfathomable trauma in the wake of Gwen’s disappearance.
She’d made her own quiet path here on the island.
Madden, as far as I knew, had done the opposite. Ivy League law school. DA’s office in LA. Textbook high-achiever track. I hadn’t considered what that had cost her before. Now, watching the stiffness in her shoulders, I wondered.
On-screen, the timestamp ticked past 4:50 a.m.
I forced my attention back where it belonged.
“Elliott, can you flag any passengers traveling alone?” Madden asked.
He snorted softly. “In real time? Not really. But we can watch the line and see who matches your description.”
I pulled my phone from my back pocket and swiped to the photo Astrid had sent me—Priya standing on the beach, hair in a low ponytail, wind tugging strands loose around her face. Brown skin warmed by the setting sun, dark eyes behind glasses. Small, warm smile.
I held the screen out so Elliott could see. “This is who we’re looking for. Name’s Priya Shah. Twenty-three. Five-four, maybe. Glasses most of the time, according to her advisor.”
He studied the image for a long moment, then nodded and leaned in toward the monitors. “Okay. Here comes the line for the five-thirty.”
We watched people filter into frame at the ticket counter—families juggling luggage, construction workers in reflective vests, a couple with matching duffels. Sped up, it all passed in a blur, but I trained my gaze on hair color, height, body type.
A figure with dark hair and a backpack stepped into view. My pulse kicked.
“Slow it to normal,” I said.
The playback resumed at regular speed. A young woman in a tank top and leggings waited her turn, shoulders hunched.
Her hair was pulled up in a messy bun, strands frizzed from the humidity.
Medium brown skin; not as deep as some of the other passengers, but definitely not pale.
She stood at about the height I’d estimate from the photo.
No glasses that I could see, though the image resolution wasn’t great.
“Could be,” I said quietly.
Madden leaned closer, frowning. “We need a better angle on her face.”
On the waiting area feed, the same woman appeared a minute later, now with a paper ticket in her hand. She took a seat near the windows, backpack at her feet. Her profile was turned away from the camera. She pulled out her phone, tapped at the screen, then shoved it back into her pocket.
“Zoom doesn’t do much,” Elliott warned. “These are fixed-angle cameras, not cinema quality.”
“Try anyway,” Willa said.
He enlarged the waiting room feed to fill the main monitor, then digitally zoomed in as far as the grain would allow.
The image pixelated, exactly as he’d warned.
The angle still wasn’t giving us enough of her face.
Chin, cheekbone, part of her nose. No full frontal shot that would let us say, yes, that’s Priya or no, that’s someone else.
“Does she have a rolling suitcase?” Madden asked. “Backpack only, or anything else?”
“Backpack,” I said. “And…” I squinted. “Looks like a small duffel under her feet now.”
“That doesn’t match what Carson said.” Madden’s voice edged sharp. “He described a backpack and a rolling suitcase.”
“People carry more than one bag,” Willa pointed out gently. “She might have set the rolling one somewhere else.”
We watched as the woman adjusted in her seat, pulling the backpack into her lap. At one point, she rubbed at the bridge of her nose like you might if you’d just taken off glasses. That sent a little ping of recognition through me.
“It’s not nothing,” I murmured.
“But it’s not confirmation,” Madden countered. “We can’t say that’s her. We also can’t say it isn’t.”
The boarding call must’ve gone out; on-screen, passengers began to rise.
Our maybe-Priya stood and shouldered her pack.
This angle did show us one more thing—a flash of her profile, lips compressed, chin tucked down.
Too blurred to really read her expression, but something about her posture screamed braced.
The view shifted to the walkway camera as people filed toward the ramp. From behind, all we had to go on were silhouettes and gaits. The young woman’s stride was purposeful, not dragging, not stumbling. She didn’t appear to be escorted or flanked. She didn’t look back.
“She’s alone,” Elliott said. “If that’s her.”
“If,” Madden repeated.
We let the footage play until the last of the line vanished down the ramp, then for a few beats more. No one matching her description came back the other way in that window.
Elliott finally hit pause. “That’s the whole load. After that, the next timestamp jumps to the seven o’clock crowd.”
The room felt smaller suddenly, the humming of the server fans louder.
“Okay.” I rubbed a hand over my jaw. “Let’s sum this up. We have a woman who could be Priya. Right height, right general build, dark hair, traveling alone, gear is consistent with someone leaving the island for more than a day trip.”
“But we can’t see her face clearly enough to confirm,” Madden said. “And the bag details don’t exactly line up with what Carson relayed.”