Chapter 15
Fifteen
RIOS
After I dropped Madden back at the research center so she could pick up her car, I pointed my truck north and let the road unwind.
The two-lane strip that ran the length of Hatterwick on the west side of the island wasn’t long enough to get lost on, but it gave me ten decent minutes of quiet where I wasn’t focused on the case.
Instead, I thought about Madden.
The woman who’d sat across from me at Home Port, onion ring grease on her fingers, talking about transference and monsters and losing her faith in the system wasn’t the privileged island princess I remembered.
She’d walked into this thing clearly expecting me to tell her to go to hell and asked for my help anyway.
Apologized without being pushed. Looked me in the eye and called bullshit on the idea that becoming “used to be” with your life’s work was always a choice.
There’d been no way she could know how close to home that hit. Maybe that’s what bothered me most: she saw more than I’d expected. Certainly more than I wanted her to.
I wasn’t sure what to do with that.
I’d once lambasted her for making assumptions about me, and hadn’t I done the same to her? The idea didn’t sit well with me.
Madden was… fierce in a way I hadn’t expected. In the middle of day trippers and vacationers and islanders going about their ordinary summer routines, a grad student had vanished—and Carson had decided it was easier to pretend she’d just gone home.
Instead of trusting the system with the blind faith she’d had at seventeen, Madden had refused to accept his edict.
She’d thrown herself into an investigation she really had no personal stake in, and she’d asked me, of all people, for help.
And it didn’t seem to be because I was the only available option.
She seemed to legitimately trust my capabilities as a cop.
Or, at the very least, my motivations for being willing to keep pushing.
I’d seen the sharp-edged prosecutor as we watched that maybe-Priya on the ferry footage.
When we’d walked the alley where someone had been pinned and nearly brutalized, I’d seen the way she paled, the way her throat worked.
Saw her blink hard, like she was holding back something that would knock her off her feet if she let it out.
Real-life investigations didn’t have the distance she’d been accustomed to from police reports and crime scene photos. But it was more than that.
The memory of Gwen was still right there under her skin.
As it lived beneath mine.
Madden had taken her trauma and turned it into a career, putting bad people in cages. I’d taken mine and gone into the part of the process where you found enough truth for someone like her to lock those doors. Different paths, same target.
I hadn’t expected to have anything in common with her. Least of all, the same fundamental driving force.
Life didn’t offer up many chances to revise old judgments, and I had no idea what to do with the fact that she’d handed me one. Or with the simmer of entirely inappropriate awareness I’d felt as we’d blocked out the attack in the alley.
Sutter House came into view at the crest of the dunes, saving me from going further down that mental rabbit hole.
The big bastard of a house that had been in Willa’s family since the island had been settled some century and a half before.
She’d inherited it upon the death of her grandparents, along with the ferry company and pretty much everything else, save for some provisions for her elder brother, Jace.
A great big middle finger to her parents.
Sawyer had done some polishing and upkeep since he’d moved in, and everything about the place screamed history with comfort.
I spotted his truck and Willa’s Jeep in the free-standing garage. Awesome. I’d get tag teamed.
That was a price I’d willingly pay for what I needed to do. I’d told Madden there were other ways to get to the email data we needed. Now came the part where I made good on that promise.
I parked in front of the house and slid out of the truck.
Roy’s booming bark pulled my attention to the deck around the side.
His whole body vibrated with the force of his wags, but he didn’t leave his post. I circled around to find Willa and Sawyer lounging in a pair of Adirondack chairs with drinks and a tray loaded with meats, cheeses, and crackers.
I gave Roy’s head a scruff and moved up to join them.
“Wondered if we’d end up seeing you today.” Sawyer lifted the bottle in his hand. “Beer?”
“Sure.”
He shoved out of his chair and went inside, leaving me with his bride, who eyed me with a mix of interest, speculation, and worry as she tapped one finger against the bowl of her wineglass.
I dropped into another chair. “What?” I knew what was coming, but I wouldn’t make it any easier on Willa than I would on one of my sisters.
“Sawyer had already told me you were looking into things with the missing grad student even before you showed up at the ferry company this morning, but how exactly did you end up working with Madden Reilly of all people?”
Lifting one shoulder in a shrug, I reached for a cracker and some cheese. “She asked for my help.”
Sawyer came out the door with a long-neck bottle, top already popped. “What interest has she got in all this?”
Reasonable question. One I’d prepared for.
“Apart from being friends with Astrid, this whole thing is triggering her about Gwen. She wants to make sure the case gets the attention it actually merits, rather than Carson’s bullshit acceptance of the too-convenient answer.”
“What answer is that?” Willa asked.
I explained Carson’s declaration this morning that the case was closed.
“Huh. Thought Madden was one of his biggest fans,” Sawyer observed.
I took a pull of the beer. “Apparently, the scales have fallen from her eyes. Now she’s starting to question everything about how he handled Gwen’s case.”
“Including you?” Willa raised a meaningful brow. “Sawyer mentioned she’d apologized.”
I inclined my head in acknowledgement. “To be fair, she did that before all this happened. It was awkward as hell, but after spending today with her… I think she really means it. Not saying we’re gonna end up besties or some shit, but we can both admit we’re different people now and put aside any differences in the name of finding Priya Shah. ”
Sawyer narrowed his eyes. “And I’m guessing that brings us to why you’re actually here.”
Thank God. I wasn’t gonna get roasted over the coals further about this weird partnership with Madden. We could get down to business.
Over a half dozen more crackers and cheese, I explained everything we’d uncovered so far in our investigation.
“We’re at a dead end until we manage to talk to Sanders sober, and even then, I’m not sure how much help he’ll be. The next logical step is to verify whether the email actually came from Priya’s account. Neither Madden nor I have the channels we’d usually use for that.”
“Ah,” Sawyer nodded in understanding. “You need to get up with Dax.”
Dax Gregory was a friend of Sawyer’s. Former naval intelligence, before he retired, he’d run in a lot of the same circles Jace did now.
These days, he was making bank doing God knew what in the private sector.
Dax had been the one to uncover the link to who was after Willa after her grandparents died.
He trafficked in information and wasn’t usually precious about how he got it, so long as it was being put to good use in helping people.
I couldn’t think of anyone better for this.
“If we can. I know he’s sometimes taking jobs that pull him as off the map as Jace is these days, but if he’s around and can work whatever magic he usually pulls off, it could save a lot of time. And we’re all aware time is of the essence with a missing person’s case.”
“Then let’s see if we can get ahold of him.” Sawyer immediately fished out his phone and began tapping at the screen. “I’ll text him. If he’s available, he’ll call. I gave him your number.”
By the time we’d decimated the rest of the charcuterie board, and I’d polished off my beer, my phone vibrated. Unknown caller flashed on the screen.
“Hello?”
“Carrera. Didn’t expect to be hearing from you. You looking for more dirt on the brass you tried to take down?”
For a moment, I only sat there with my mouth hanging open. Who was I kidding? This was Dax. Of course he was well informed about shit that even half the upper brass didn’t know about.
“Uh, no, actually. I’m on Hatterwick. Involved in a missing person’s case of a young woman the chief of police believes has just gone off on her own.”
I all but heard his interest sharpen. “You don’t think so?”
“Evidence doesn’t line up.”
“Lay it on me.”
Dax listened as I took him through it. When I’d finished, he whistled. “One of these days, Carson’s gonna piss off the wrong person with his lackadaisical approach to law enforcement.”
“May I be around to see it when it happens.”
“You need me to see what I can dig up in terms of an electronic trail for this girl? Figure out if the email could’ve been spoofed or whatever?”
“Yeah. It won’t be admissible, but we’re not trying to get a conviction. We’re trying to find a missing girl before something awful happens to her.”
“I’m in. Give me everything you’ve got on her.”
I reeled off Priya’s name, her previous address, phone number, email address, and everything else Astrid had given me.
“All right,” Dax said. “Give me a second.”
There was a pause. Keys clicked faintly on the line. I stayed quiet, waiting, phone pressed to my ear, eyes tracking the waves down on the beach where they rolled in with steady inevitability.
“Okay,” he said at last. “Phone’s not active. Battery’s either dead or it’s been powered off.”
I hadn’t really expected anything else, but the confirmation hit harder than I expected. “Last location?”
More clicking. A longer pause this time.
“Last ping hit a tower servicing the ferry terminal.”
“When?”
“Little after six in the morning yesterday.”
I closed my eyes. Busy. Public. And the last place Priya had allegedly been seen. What did it mean that it was the last place her phone had pinged?
“And the email?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m checking that now.” Another beat. “It wasn’t spoofed. Header matches the device. Whoever sent it had her phone in their hand.”
I dragged a hand over my face. “So either she sent it herself—”
“—or someone had possession of the phone,” Dax finished. “Yeah.”
The implication sat between us, heavy and ugly.
“That’s the quick triage. Anything deeper than this—texts, email content, whether someone was leaning on her—that’s going to take real time. I’ve got something sensitive I need to wrap tonight, but I’ll dig in properly tomorrow.”
That was far more than I’d been hoping for. “Any light you can shed will help. I appreciate this, man.”
“No problem. Anything I can do to take down the fuckers of the world. Best to Sawyer and Willa. I’ll be in touch ASAP.”
He’d clicked off before I could say another word.
“He says hi to both of you. And we’ll see what he comes up with on the rest.”
“Does that mean dead end until you hear back?” Sawyer asked.
“Maybe. Maybe not. Her phone last pinged near the ferry terminal.”
Willa straightened. “Do you want to organize a search of the building? The surrounding area?”
I considered. “There’s no way to know if the phone was powered down or destroyed.
For all we know, it got hurled overboard, in which case it would be a waste of manpower.
Let’s hold off on that for a bit, until or unless Dax comes back with more.
In the meantime, I want to circle back to her coworkers and friends.
See if any of them recall any point this summer where she was acting strange or upset or nervy.
There’s no specific indication that the woman Sanders saw attacked behind Home Port was Priya, but if it was, seems like they’d have noticed her behavior changing in the days after.
They probably would’ve mentioned it before if there were, but you never know.
And Madden’s chasing down another angle.
” My focus shifted to Willa. “Maybe one you can help with.”
“How’s that?”
“You’ve been back for more than ten years now. Do you remember hearing about any other missing women in that time?”
“Certainly nobody local. The island gossip tree would’ve been lit up with that.
I can’t say that I’d have remembered anyone else.
I spent so much time keeping to myself. Bree or Caroline are probably a lot more likely to have come across rumors like that, since they both work more with the public directly. ”
“Fair point. I’ll touch base with them.”
Willa reached for Sawyer’s hand. “Do you think there’s some connection between Gwen and Priya?”
“Directly, no. No reason to believe there would be. I think Madden’s looking at establishing Carson’s pattern for handling that type of case since Gwen. Not sure exactly what she hopes to get out of it, but it’s another line to pull.”
Having gotten what I came for, I pushed to my feet. “Thanks for your help. And the snacks. I’m gonna head on. See if I can talk to the other grad students again before they head out for their evening observations. Maybe swing by the Brewhouse if I can catch Bree.”
Sawyer pulled me in for a back-thumping hug. “Don’t be a stranger, brother. And let us know if we can help in any way.”
“Will do.”
Feeling lighter than I had on my arrival, I loaded back into my truck and headed back toward the village. There were more questions to ask before the day was through.