Chapter 21
Twenty-One
RIOS
Madden unlocked the cabin of the Second Wind and stepped inside without a word, setting the paper bags on the counter like the motion itself was automatic. No commentary. No deflection. No attempt to make it lighter.
That worried me more than if she’d snapped.
I’d only been inside her boat twice before.
Once, briefly. Once longer—after Willie—when everything had gone sideways and we’d ended up here because there was nowhere else quiet enough to sit with the aftermath.
I hadn’t paid much attention then. My focus had been on her breathing, the way she’d gone still when the adrenaline wore off, the careful distance she kept between herself and anything that might tip her into feeling too much.
This time, I absorbed the rest as I did a quick scan. Not because anything had changed. Because I had.
The boat was small and functional in the way borrowed things always were. Nothing extravagant. Nothing precious. But there were choices layered into it—quiet ones, easy to miss if you weren’t looking for them.
A plant near the window, angled deliberately toward the light. Not decorative. Alive. Maintained.
Books stacked beside the berth, not tossed there but arranged so the spines lined up clean. Not legal texts. Not work. I spied a thriller by Cope Shepherd, and some romance names my sisters loved. Things she’d read for herself.
A soft blanket was folded at the foot of the bed. The kind of blanket more about comforting textures than warmth. For some reason, that made me think she’d had little real softness in her life.
She hadn’t been here long enough to redecorate. She hadn’t had time to reinvent the space. And given she was borrowing the boat, she probably didn’t intend to. But still she’d attempted to cozy the place up. To create a buffer. A space where the world couldn’t reach her all at once.
It stood in stark contrast to my own situation—crashing on a boat that wasn’t mine, living out of a duffel like I was still deployed, everything provisional, nothing rooted. I told myself it didn’t matter. That it was temporary. That I didn’t need more than that.
She’d told herself the same thing.
The boat didn’t agree.
I closed the door behind us and stayed where I was for a beat, watching her the way I’d learned to do when someone was holding themselves together by will alone.
Instead of sitting, she leaned back against the counter, arms folded loosely, eyes unfocused—already somewhere else.
I recognized that look. The slow, dangerous inward turn of someone connecting dots they didn’t want to see.
“Madden.”
Nothing.
I unpacked the food without asking. Set the pastries out. Poured coffee into the mugs neatly stored behind a little railed shelf. I nudged a plate toward her. “Sit.”
She gave me a look that might’ve been reflexive irritation if it hadn’t been dulled around the edges. “I’m not—”
“Sit,” I repeated, firmer this time.
She hesitated. Then complied, sliding onto the bench seat and drawing her knees up slightly, like she was trying to make herself smaller without meaning to.
That did something ugly to my chest.
I sat across from her and waited. Let her pick at the pastry. Let her take a sip of coffee. Her shoulders stayed tight, like she was holding herself together by will alone.
“Okay,” I said finally. “Talk to me.”
Her fingers stilled. “I am talking to you.”
“No, you’re spiraling quietly and hoping I don’t notice.” I leaned back just enough to keep from crowding her, even though every instinct I had wanted to close the distance. “Which isn’t going to work.”
She huffed a breath. “You don’t have to babysit me.”
“I know. I want to.” Color me surprised.
That got her attention.
Her gaze lifted, sharp despite the exhaustion. “That’s not—”
“Don’t,” I cut in. “Don’t lawyer me. I’m not making an argument. I’m stating a fact.”
Silence stretched between us, thick but not hostile.
She broke it. “I can’t stop circling around what Rosa said.”
“I figured.”
“She’s not the target,” Madden said quietly. “Not specifically.”
I nodded once. “No.”
“She’s a category.”
That time, I didn’t answer right away.
Instead, I cataloged what I’d missed before—how her stillness wasn’t stiffness, how her reserve wasn’t snobbery, how the control she carried wasn’t distance but containment. She cared. Deeply. Enough that she had to keep a tight lid on it or it would drown her.
Madden winced. “I hate that you already know that, because it means you’re ahead of me.”
“I’m not. I’m just coming at it from a different angle.”
She shook her head. “Priya doesn’t fit the pattern.”
“No.”
“She was noticed,” Madden said. “She had people looking for her immediately. She had resources. Family. A paper trail.”
“And that makes her noisy,” I said.
Her jaw clenched. “Which means if she was taken intentionally, she’d be a terrible choice.”
“But if she was taken by mistake,” I finished, “that changes the math.”
She met my eyes. “It changes everything.”
I leaned forward, forearms braced on the table. Controlled fury buzzed under my skin, waiting. “You believe there are others.” She’d already implied as much when she’d put in the FOIA request.
She didn’t hesitate. “I think there have to be.”
That settled in my bones.
Madden shredded another pastry. “Rosa wouldn’t have been reported missing. Neither would the hotel worker. Or the house cleaner. Or any of the women she mentioned. They disappear, and the story fills itself in. They went home. They left town. They made choices.”
“And nobody looks past that,” I said.
“Because looking costs something,” she replied. “And the people who would have to pay don’t think it’s worth it.”
She took a shaky breath. “If Priya was the oops… then she’s only visible because someone fucked up.”
I nodded slowly. “Which means whoever did this isn’t operating on impulse.”
“No, they’re operating on risk assessment.”
I studied her face—the way her eyes had gone distant, analytical, sharp-edged with fear she wasn’t acknowledging out loud.
“You’re thinking trafficking,” I said.
Her gaze snapped back to mine. “Yeah. I am.”
The word hung between us, ugly and heavy.
She began ticking points off on her fingers. “No body. No evidence of escalation. No ransom. No public spectacle. If they’d needed to get rid of her, she would’ve turned up. Somewhere.”
“That’s what’s bothering you,” I said.
“Yes.”
I leaned back, rubbing a hand over my jaw. “I’m not going to tell you you’re wrong.”
She winced. “That’s not comforting.”
“It’s honest. And honesty’s all I’ve got right now.”
She stared down at her coffee. “I haven’t heard back about those FOIA requests. It didn’t occur to me to ask about unidentified remains. I should follow up with that.”
“You can,” I said. “But you’re probably not going to like what you get.”
She looked up. “Why?”
“Because if you’re right—if the targets are the women least likely to be missed—it’s possible no one ever filed a report. No paper trail. No official disappearance. Just… absence.”
The words landed hard.
Her hands curled around the mug, knuckles whitening. “That means the system didn’t fail. It worked exactly the way it was designed to.”
I didn’t argue. Because she was right.
“And it means that even if I get files back, they’ll be incomplete. Or sanitized. Or empty.”
I reached across the table and covered her hand with mine.
She stilled, but she didn’t pull away.
“You’re not wrong,” I said quietly. “But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to find.”
She swallowed. “It means the people who know things are afraid.”
“Yes.”
“Because they’re undocumented. Or using. Or tied to something they don’t want dragged into the light.”
“Yes.”
“And because talking to police has historically made things worse, not better.”
I held her gaze. “You’re not wrong about that either.”
Her shoulders sagged a fraction, like naming it cost her something. “Willie knew something, and he didn’t feel safe sharing it at the docks. I don’t think his putting off talking to us was entirely about being high. And Rosa—even telling us was a calculated risk on her part.”
I squeezed her hand gently. “You did good back there.”
She scoffed softly. “I asked questions. That’s literally my job.”
“You asked them carefully. That’s not nothing.”
Her eyes flicked up, searching my face.
“I thought you were reckless,” I added. “When we first started this.”
Her brows drew together. “You did?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I thought you were smart and angry and used to bulldozing your way through things.”
She snorted. “That’s… not entirely inaccurate.”
“But I was wrong about the dangerous part,” I said. “You’re not reckless. You’re deliberate.”
She stilled.
“You’re measuring consequences,” I continued. “You’re choosing them. That’s not someone chasing danger. That’s someone deciding what they’re willing to pay.”
Her voice was barely above a whisper. “I don’t know how else to do it.”
“I know.” And I did. Because I’d lived that way too.
Silence settled again, this one heavier but steadier.
Finally, she exhaled. “I don’t know what the next step is.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “We don’t have to know yet.”
She looked at me skeptically.
“We do need to know one thing,” I added.
“What?”
“That you’re not doing this alone.”
Her mouth curved faintly, sad but real. “I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good,” I said. “Because whether you like it or not—”
She raised a brow.
“—you’re one of my people now.”
The words were out before I’d fully examined them.
She blinked.
“That’s not a legal term,” she observed.
“Lucky for you,” I replied. “It’s not a negotiable one either.”
She shook her head, but there was something like relief in her eyes.
I stood and moved around the table, tugging the blanket off the berth and draping it over her shoulders before she could object.
“Eat,” I said. “Then we’ll follow up on the FOIA stuff. And we’ll figure out how to hear from people who don’t feel safe being heard.”
“And if I’m right?” she asked quietly.
“Then we get smarter,” I said. “And quieter.”
She nodded.
And for the first time since we’d left Rosa’s house, it seemed like the ground under our feet had stopped shifting.
We didn’t have answers.
But we had the shape of the problem.
And that was enough to keep going.