Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
MADDEN
The email arrived before my second cup of coffee.
From: Barbara Channing
Subject: Response to Public Records Request
My stomach dropped.
Barbara Channing had been the town clerk since I was in middle school. She’d been at every council meeting, every town hall, every “we care” press conference after Gwen disappeared. Always composed, always efficient, always the gatekeeper of paper and permission.
The email was politely cold.
Thank you for your request.
Pursuant to applicable public records statutes…
Certain materials have been withheld or redacted…
Four attachments. Only four.
I clicked the first PDF, heart thudding like I could will it into being useful.
Black bars. So many of them it looked like someone had taken a Sharpie to my hope.
Names removed. Addresses removed. Dates blurred into vague ranges. “Ongoing investigation.” “Pending review.” “Referred to appropriate agency.”
I scrolled faster, desperate for any scrap that wasn’t sanitized.
There were references to “an incident,” “a complainant,” “a witness statement.” Whole paragraphs where the only readable words were “the” and “and.”
The second PDF was worse. A single-page memo explaining why additional records were exempt.
The third looked promising until I realized it wasn’t even for the case I’d requested—an unrelated call log that technically fell under the same umbrella of “public safety documentation.” A compliance trick. Give me something so they could say they’d responded.
The fourth was an itemized list of withheld documents, like a menu of everything I wasn’t allowed to see.
Interview notes. Supplemental reports. Evidence logs.
All marked WITHHELD.
I sat very still.
The boat shifted gently under me, as if nothing in the world had changed. As if the air didn’t suddenly feel thinner. As if a person could read “WITHHELD” a dozen times and not want to tear something apart with her teeth.
Rios had warned me yesterday. He’d said it with that maddening calm, like he’d seen this movie before and already knew the ending.
Don’t get your hopes up.
I’d nodded like I was reasonable and experienced and not still—still—hoping with some part of me that the system would accidentally tell the truth if I asked the right way.
I stared at the screen until my eyes burned. Then I slammed the laptop shut hard enough that the whole boat seemed to flinch.
“Fuck you,” I whispered to no one.
Not Barbara. Not even Carson.
The machine. The whole gleaming apparatus of procedure and policy and we can’t comment at this time that existed to protect itself first, always.
Because this wasn’t a delay. This wasn’t bureaucracy.
This was a deliberate chokehold.
I could practically see the fingerprints on it.
Carson had been furious at the scene of Willie’s death. Furious I’d challenged him. Furious Rios had challenged him. Furious we’d stood there like we had the right to ask questions.
And now he’d reminded me what power looked like on a small island.
It looked like four PDFs and a condescending smile.
My phone buzzed again—an incoming text—and for one absurd second, I thought it might be Rios. Checking in. Making sure I was eating. Making sure I wasn’t spiraling quietly like he’d accused me of.
But it was just a bank notification.
The man himself was off to his sister’s for family breakfast this morning, which he’d notified me of, even though he had no reason to. I wasn’t his keeper. I didn’t know exactly what I was.
My brain turned over what he’d said yesterday. You’re one of my people.
What the hell did that make us? Friends? Partners? I sure as hell didn’t know, and I didn’t have any means of clarifying that mystery right now.
I set my phone down and pressed my palms to my eyes.
Okay. Fine. If the official channel was blocked, I needed an unofficial one.
A quiet one.
A human one.
I opened the laptop again—more carefully this time, like it might bite—and forwarded the email to a folder labeled FOIA / Hatterwick. Then I copied Barbara Channing’s exact wording into a note, because I was not going to trust my memory when I inevitably decided to fight this later.
And I would fight it.
Just… not by charging headfirst into the island’s one police department and handing Carson a target he could use against people like Rosa.
My fingers hovered over my contacts list.
Devon Washington.
If anyone understood what it looked like when people vanished without paperwork—when “missing” was a privilege granted by whether anyone considered you worth searching for—it was Devon.
He’d built his podcast, Unaccounted, around that exact premise. Shining a light on the cases of the marginalized. Proving they were not forgotten.
He was also three time zones away. Which meant it was early as hell in California.
Devon was an early riser, though. Had been since we met in college. The kind of person who did morning runs and made real breakfasts and somehow still answered crisis calls with his whole heart intact.
I hit call before I could chicken out.
He picked up on the second ring.
“Madden,” he said, voice warm and alert. No grogginess. No irritation. “Okay, baby. You don’t call me at ass o’clock unless something’s wrong.”
I exhaled, a tight laugh scraping out of my throat. “Hi.”
“Nope,” he said gently. “Not ‘hi.’ Talk.”
I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against the cool edge of the table. The boat rocked faintly beneath me, a reminder that the world kept moving whether systems worked or not.
“I hit a wall,” I said. “A hard one.”
Devon’s modulated voice was steady. “Start at the beginning. What kind of wall?”
“FOIA. Local request around a missing person’s case. Small jurisdiction. Everything that matters is redacted or withheld.”
There was a beat of silence I knew for what it was—recognition.
“All right. And you’re calling me because this isn’t just one missing person, is it.” He didn’t pose it as a question.
“No,” I admitted. “It’s not.”
“Okay,” Devon repeated. “Slow down. Give me the outline. Not the names yet. The shape.”
I drew a breath, organizing it the way I would’ve before a jury. Clean. Linear. No emotion unless it served the point.
“Small island,” I began. “One town. One police department. A lot of people who pass through seasonally. Workers, tourists, students. One woman recently disappeared—she doesn’t fit the profile of someone who just… leaves. And in the course of looking for her, I’ve stumbled onto something else.”
“Something that doesn’t live on paper,” Devon concluded.
“Yes. And I’m worried that if I handle this wrong, someone’s going to get hurt.”
Because he knew me, Devon’s tone shifted—still gentle, but sharper at the edges. Protective. “We are not getting the people who already have the least protection hurt because the system refuses to do its job.”
“I know.” Relief and frustration collided inside me. “That’s why I’m calling you.”
“All right,” Devon said. “Tell me.”
So I did, breaking it down with precision from beginning to end. “I think whoever took Priya meant to take someone else,” I continued. “Someone like Rosa. Someone who wouldn’t be reported missing, because the story would fill itself in. She left. She went home. She didn’t want to be found.”
“And you think that’s the point,” Devon said.
“Yes.”
“And now you’re asking yourself how many times that story has been used,” he finished.
A chill ran through me. “Yes.”
Devon exhaled slowly. “Okay. Then FOIA was never going to hand you the answer.”
“I know,” I said. “But it should have given me something. Now I need options that don’t rely on Carson. Or local resources. Because there aren’t any.”
“Right,” Devon said. “Tiny island. One town. Everybody knows everybody.”
“Exactly.”
“All right.” He shifted into Unaccounted mode—the voice he used when he was telling a story that deserved respect. “Then you build your own map. Not from what the system recorded. From what the system ignored.”
I gripped the edge of the bench. “How?”
“First,” Devon said, “you widen your sources. Missing persons databases.”
“NamUs,” I said automatically.
“NamUs, yes,” he confirmed. “But also state-level databases. Some states have separate missing persons bulletins. And don’t just search by name. Search by region, date ranges, age ranges. Look for ‘last seen’ near ferry terminals, marinas, tourist areas.”
I scribbled notes fast, my pen scratching over paper.
“And don’t assume people were ever entered,” Devon added. “But you’ll find some—the ones whose families had enough stability to report. Those become your anchor points.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Second,” he continued, “archived news. Not big outlets. Local papers. Community newsletters. That kind of ‘so-and-so hasn’t been seen’ blurb.”
I frowned. “On an island like this, that’s…”
“Exactly,” Devon said. “It’ll be small. But that’s good. Because small data sets show patterns if you’re patient. And you, my darling, are fabulous with patterns.”
I swallowed. “What else?”
“Third,” Devon said, “community networks. The underground ones. You already found one—Rosa.”
My chest tightened. “I can’t put those people at risk.”
“You don’t have to,” Devon said. “You don’t ask them for names on a recorded line. You ask for structure. Where do they share warnings? Who do they trust? What places do they avoid? What prompts them to change their routines?”
I stared at the plant by the window, leaves pointed like little spears. “Structure.”
“Yes,” Devon said. “Because structure tells you the predator’s hunting ground without anyone having to expose themselves.”
I wrote it down.
“And fourth,” Devon added, “transportation and lodging.”
My brow furrowed. “Lodging?”
“Hotels. Vacation rentals. Seasonal housing,” Devon said. “People who come and go. Employees who rotate. Places where someone can disappear and the story becomes ‘she went home.’”
I felt my pulse pick up. “And transportation.”
“Yes,” Devon said. “Your instinct is the ferry.”
“I have a friend who can access ferry records quietly,” I said. Willa would help if Rios asked. She’d probably help even if I did.
“Good,” Devon said. “Now they don’t conveniently keep some tab of women traveling alone.
What they do keep is transaction logs. Ticket sales.
Vehicle manifests if vehicles are involved.
Time stamps. Payment methods. Sometimes plate numbers—depending on their security and whether they track for billing or capacity.
And if they don’t track plates, they still track cars as units.
And units leaving should roughly match units arriving. ”
I sat up straighter. “So you look for anomalies.”
“Exactly,” Devon said. “One-way patterns. Cars arriving and never leaving. Return tickets purchased and never used. Clusters of one-way foot passengers on certain days. Cash purchases at weird hours. And—this matters—repeat vehicles. The same unit showing up in patterns that don’t make sense for a local. ”
The moisture in my mouth evaporated. “That’s…”
“That’s how you build a map without asking people to bleed,” Devon said quietly.
I swallowed hard. “And if I can get those logs…”
“Pull once,” Devon warned. “Don’t poke it repeatedly. One quiet request. One clean pull. Then you analyze offline. Somewhere no one’s watching.”
My hand shook slightly as I underlined it.
“Okay,” I whispered.
“Fifth,” Devon said, “digital footprints. Not fancy. Not hacking. The stuff people leave behind without realizing it.”
“Like what?”
“Social media. Public posts. Tagged locations. ‘Girls trip to Hatterwick!’ Photos at the boardwalk. Then silence. And message boards—travel forums, seasonal worker groups, migrant community networks. Places where people warn each other.”
My stomach twisted. “So… I post?”
“Carefully, as a person looking for information about missing loved ones,” Devon said. “Or you post through a third party. Or you use Unaccounted as a signal boost later once you have enough to protect your sources.”
Later.
When this was safer.
If it ever got safer.
I closed my eyes. “This is going to get ugly.”
Devon’s voice softened. “It already is, sweetheart. You’re just looking at it directly now.”
I swallowed past the pressure in my throat. “Rios says the same thing, just with more… growling.”
Devon chuckled, warm and real. “I like him.”
“You would,” I muttered.
“I would,” Devon agreed. “Because he’s protective and angry and he’s trying to do right by people a system chewed up. That’s my favorite genre of man.”
Despite myself, I laughed, and it cut through the fog.
Devon turned serious again. “Madden. You said the town clerk responded.”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” Devon said. “Then you assume the police are watching your moves now. Which means you don’t go knocking on doors. You don’t message the clerk again. You don’t create noise.”
“I know.”
“You do the quiet pulls,” Devon said. “Ferry logs through your friend. NamUs and state databases from your laptop. Use a VPN. Archived local news. Public social posts. Then you connect dots.”
“And I need to update Astrid.” The words tasted bitter because it meant telling her we still didn’t have her student.
“Yes,” Devon said gently. “But you don’t go to her with panic. You go with structure. With the shape. With what you can promise: that you’re looking for the people no one looked for.”
I wasn’t sure I could wait that long to give her something. But still, I said, “Thank you,” and meant it.
Devon’s voice softened again, the friend behind the podcaster. “Anytime. And Maddie?”
He was the only one who’d ever used the diminutive.
“Yeah?”
“You’re not crazy,” he said. “You’re not overreacting. This is what it looks like when people disappear in the gaps. The fact that you’re seeing the gaps means your eyes are working.”
I pressed my knuckles to my mouth, grounding myself in the pressure. “Okay.”
“And,” Devon added, a little lighter, “if you want, when this is over and you’re not actively living inside a nightmare, I’m going to drag you on Unaccounted and let you talk about why systems fail. Because the world needs to hear it from someone who’s been inside them.”
I made a sound that was half laugh, half something sharper. “I’ll think about it.”
“That’s my girl,” Devon said.
We hung up, and the boat was quiet again—except now my silence had edges.
Tools.
Paths.
A way to move forward that didn’t rely on Carson’s permission.
I opened my laptop and started building my own map.