“What did you see?” Nick asked.
It went on. Asking, answering, repeating. He was doing his best to keep his cool, drawing on his professional habits, but she knew he was dying inside. They’d both known immediately this was bad, neither needing to wait the full twenty-four hours to cross over from simple worry to soul-gripping fear.
As they worked through the series of questions, his voice rose, his body loomed over her almost like he’d forgotten who he was talking to. Maybe he was trying to distance himself from the missing person being someone he loved.
Minutes turned into hours, and he questioned her, alternately soft, then hard, and harder still when he couldn’t distance himself. He ran his hand through his hair, paced the room like a caged animal. Poured cups of coffee he never drank.
Carl straightened from the wall he’d been holding up. He laid a hand on Nick’s back. “Come on, Walker. Let’s take a break.”
“No.” Nick jerked away. “We’re missing something. Go over it again.”
She wanted to leave this place, but where could she go? If she left the building, Hannah would still be missing, and she wouldn’t know where to go. Her eyes burned and filled with tears. Someone pushed a cup of water toward her, not Nick.
She sipped. “I got there at four,” she repeated and laid her heavy head in her palm. “Maybe two or three minutes after and—”
“You said you got there at four,” Nick said, changing his stance. “Not after.”
“I… it was four when I pulled onto campus. I pulled up to the spot where I always picked her up. I waited a couple of minutes.” Just a couple of minutes. She hadn’t thought anything of Hannah not being right there waiting. She’d checked her phone, removed accumulated trash in her purse. “I wasn’t looking at the time. Then I did look. When I looked, it was fifteen minutes after. But I was there. I’d been there.”
“But you were late. Why didn’t you say this before? Why didn’t you tell me this hours ago?”
“I was there. I was there at four or right after. I know I was.”
“Goddamn it.” He strode around the room, his fingers pulling at his hair like he’d just been given the key piece of information. “The camera footage, the people we’re interviewing, the… what the hell!” His fist pounded the desk, making the cup of water jump.
She tried to swallow and couldn’t. “It was two minutes. It was…”
“A minute, two minutes, that’s nothing, man,” a detective said softly. “The difference in people’s clocks.”
Nick blew out a rough breath and scrubbed his hands roughly over his face. He stood like that for several seconds before his hand came down on her shoulder. She almost cried at the contact. She needed to touch him. But it wasn’t a squeeze or caress of comfort. He gave her an awkward and unfamiliar pat then moved away. “You should go home.”
A fresh wave of tears fell as Nick turned and left the room.
“He’s just upset,” Carl said.
She nodded, but more tears fell. It was more than that. She already knew it was much more.
AFTER A MONTH, SHE went back to the hospital and her work as a trauma surgeon. Nick was consumed with finding Hannah. The helplessness on both their parts was almost unbearable. On the rare nights they found themselves in bed together, they turned to each other. They tried to fill each other up with something, hope or strength, but they were both nearly empty of both. They didn’t have enough for themselves, let alone for each other.
So they did what they could—came together in the night, in the dark. But whatever sliver of peace was wrenched out never lasted.
One night, they lay beside each other in the silence, an inch of space separating their bodies like a line of police tape.
“I never should have let her take those classes,” Nick said.
“Don’t do that,” she whispered softly, reaching for him.
“Don’t do what?” he shot back, not a whisper, not soft. “Don’t say the truth? The truth hurts.” Then he was up and dressed, poring over a witness report or a map or just standing outside, staring at the sky.
Either way, whatever he did, whatever he needed to do, it wasn’t with her.
Chapter 14
NICK KNEW MORE THAN anyone the likelihood of finding Hannah alive diminished after three days. He’d been the one to talk to parents. He’d moved missing persons files to the cold case section and told families when they should assume their loved one wasn’t coming home. Had he really thought that they went on with life? How in the hell did a person do that?