Chapter 39
Nathan
I’ve been staring at the screen for so long, it’s lost any meaning. Ten minutes. An hour. The numbers don’t feel real anymore.
The knock comes once. Then the door opens anyway.
Bishop steps in with two coffees and that look he gets when he’s already preparing for bad news.
“You look…” he stops himself.
“I know,” I whisper.
He sets one cup down in front of me, glances at the wall, the papers, the quiet. “So. Walmart.”
I don’t answer.
“They really had nothing?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“Not even surveillance?”
“Nothing usable,” I say. “Wrong angle. Wrong day. Wrong everything.”
He exhales and sits. “Okay. Then we pivot. We find another angle.”
“There isn’t one.”
“There’s always one,” he says. “We just haven’t found it yet.”
I don’t argue. I don’t have the energy.
“We’ll call Pierce again,” he continues. “Push the timeline. Re-check the transit cams. If she moved through there once, she can—”
“She didn’t,” I say quietly.
He stops.
“They checked everything. We chased a ghost.”
The silence sits heavy.
Bishop rubs his hands together. “Okay. Then we regroup. We don’t stop.”
I stare at the floor. “I’m sick of being alone.”
“You’ve got me,” he says. “You’ve got your mom. You’ve got people who aren’t going anywhere.” He hesitates, then adds, “You’ve got Ella.”
Something in my chest finally gives.
“I’m done with Ella.”
He blinks. “What?”
“She came by.”
His brow furrows. “Okay…”
“And she said she knows where Ivy is.”
The air changes. “What?” he says quietly.
“Yeah,” I say. “Just walked in and said it. Like it was a normal thing to say.”
He studies me. “What did she mean?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Didn’t let her explain.”
“Nathan—”
“No.” My voice is brittle. “I’ve had cops. Detectives. Private investigators. Three years of professionals and nothing. And suddenly my neighbor has answers?”
“Ella doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would lie about something like that,” he says carefully.
“I thought that too,” I say. “For about five seconds.”
I look at him.
“If someone actually knew where my daughter was, Bishop, they’d go to the police. Not me.”
He goes quiet.
“They wouldn’t use it like… like a lifeline they could throw when things are falling apart.”
He nods slowly. “Yeah. You’re right. They would.”
“I blocked her,” I say. “Her number. Her email. Everything.”
He doesn’t argue. Instead, he leans forward. “This isn’t the end. We’ve had dead ends before. We always find another way. We don’t stop.”
I swallow. “And I think,” I add, “I need to move out of this building.”
He looks up. “Move?”
“I came here to be close,” I say. “To where she disappeared. I thought proximity meant something.” My throat catches. “All it’s doing is killing me.”
He watches me for a long moment. Then he nods. “Okay,” he says. “If that’s what you need, we’ll do it.”
I finally meet his eyes.
“But we’re not stopping,” he says. “Not now. Not ever.”
The words don’t fix anything.
But they keep the ground from completely disappearing.