Page 44 of Carry on Wayward Son

“It’s moving. Slowly, but it’s moving.” I settled back against the sofa cushions and pulled my knees up. Koa rearranged himself against my side in perfect position for me to scratch his chest. I understood my role here and began lightly scraping my nails through his fur, eliciting a sigh of profound canine contentment. “Tell me about the new files first. What came in?”

“Oh, the usual assortment of heartbreak and bureaucratic failure.” The sardonic edge in her voice was the armor we both wore. Not indifference, the opposite of indifference, but you developed a language for it after a while, or you couldn’t keep going. “There’s a woman in Oregon whose husband walked out three years ago, and the police told her he had the legal right to do that and stopped looking. Another case in Georgia that’s been cold for twenty years that the family has been trying to get anyone to look at since the first Clinton administration. And then—” she paused, and I caught the shift in her voice, the one that meant something had gotten under her skin, “there’s a kid in Texas. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. Her mom disappeared a few years back. Single mom working two jobs. She was a bit of a wild child as a teen, which is how she ended up a young single mom to start, but according to reports, parenthood straightened her out. Local PD closed the case as voluntary departure inside a month.”

“How old was the mom when she went missing?”

“Thirty-four.”

I was quiet for a moment. “History of drug use?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“That’s not a voluntary departure profile.”

“No, it absolutely is not. The kid has been trying to get someone to listen for two years. She found us through the podcast website.” Another pause. “I can’t stop thinking about her.”

“Put it in the maybe pile.”

“Already done. I’m going to build out the file this week and send it to you when it’s ready.” She settled, having done what she needed to do. “Okay. Your turn. Walk me through your progress.”

So I did. I started at the beginning, giving the outline of what I’d been told about the bonfire, the storm, fifteen-year-old Gwen Busby going into the woods and not coming out. Willa’s account, the boat, the men who’d thrown a drowning girl into the ocean and assumed that was the end of it. Fourteen years of nothing, and then the slow unraveling of everything Carson had been doing in the space where an investigation should have been. The SBI audit. Rios newly sworn in, trying to build something out of the wreckage. Madden’s years of not letting it go, surfacing into something real. Something much bigger than the disappearance of one girl.

“God,” Henley said softly when I paused. “This poor family.”

“All of them. The whole island, really. These people have been living with this for all this time, and they haven’t lost the thread once.” I looked out the window at the gray December afternoon. Seriously, how was it already December? “That’s more than I usually see.”

“What does the financial trail look like so far?”

I walked her through what we’d uncovered so far.

When I got to Diane, Henley whistled. “That timing is bad.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Layla.”

“I know. I’m working through it.” I scratched Koa’s chest, and he groaned appreciatively. “It’s the job. You know how it is.”

“I do know how it is. That’s why I’m asking.” She hesitated a beat. “Is there someone there you can talk to when things get heavy? Or are you doing the solo-marathon-run thing again?”

I hesitated a half second too long.

“Oh,” Henley said. That single syllable was loaded. She’d clocked the hesitation and was filing it. “Tell me.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“There is absolutely something to tell. You just did the thing where you pause before you answer a simple question.”

“It’s not simple.”

“Then tell me the complicated version.”

I looked at the ceiling. Koa pushed his nose against my hand, and I let him. “There’s someone on the team I’ve been working with. He’s—he knows the island, he knows the people, he’s been useful on the sourcing side.” I stopped. “He’s also involved with the case. His sister was nearly killed the same night Gwen disappeared. He’s been trying to find answers since then.”

“Okay,” Henley said carefully.