Pip watched Connor’s fingers as they slipped down the glass.
“Jamie’s missing?” she said.
“Yes.” Connor stared at her.
“When?” she asked. “When did you last see him?”
“At the memorial.” Connor paused to take another gulp of water. “I last saw him at the memorial, just before it started. He never came home.”
Pip’s breath caught. “I saw him there after that. Maybe around eight, eight-fifteen. He was walking through the crowd.” She pulled up the memory, unpicked it from everything else last night. Jamie knocking into her as he made his way to the other side of the crowd, his hurried apology, the way his jaw was set, determined. She’d thought it strange at the time, hadn’t she? And the look in his eyes, not unlike Connor’s now: somehow both distant and sharp. They looked very similar, even for brothers. They hadn’t as kids, but Pip had watched it happen over the years, the gap closing. Jamie’s hair was a couple of shades darker, closer to brown than blond. And Connor was all angles where Jamie was heavier, softer. But even a stranger could tell they were brothers. “Have you tried calling him?”
“Yes, hundreds of times,” said Connor. “It goes straight to voice mail like it’s off or…or it’s dead.” He stumbled over that last word, his head hanging between his shoulders. “Me and Mom spent hours calling anyone who might
know where he is: friends, family. No one has seen him or heard from him.
No one.”
Pip felt something stirring, right in that pit in her stomach that never quite left her anymore. “Have you called all the local hospitals to see whether—”
“Yes, we called them all. Nothing.”
Pip awakened her phone to check the time. It was five-thirty now, and if Jamie hadn’t been seen since around eight last night, seen by her, that meant he’d been missing for over twenty-one hours already.
“OK,” she said firmly, bringing Connor’s eyes back to hers, “your parents need to go to the police station and file a missing persons report. You’ll need —”
“We already did,” Connor said, a hint of impatience creeping into his voice. “Me and my mom went down to the station a few hours ago, filed the report, gave them a recent photograph, all that. It was Nat da Silva’s brother, Daniel, the officer who took the report.”
“OK, good, so officers should be—”
Connor cut her off again. “No,” he said. “No officers are doing anything.
Daniel said that because Jamie is twenty-four, an adult, and has a history of leaving home without communicating with his family, there is very little the
police can do.”
“What?”
“Yeah, he gave us a reference number and just told us to keep calling Jamie’s phone and anyone he’s been known to stay with before. Said that almost all missing people return within forty-eight hours, so we just have to wait.”
The stool creaked as Pip shifted. “They must think he’s low risk. When a missing persons report is filed,” she explained, “the police determine a risk assessment based on factors like age, any medical issues, whether the behavior is out of character, things like that. Then the police response depends on whether they think the case is low, medium, or high risk.”
“I know how it might look to them,” Connor said, the look in his eyes a little less far away now, “that Jamie’s disappeared a couple of times before and he always comes back—”
“The first time was after he dropped out of college, wasn’t it?” Pip said, scratching at the memory, how the air had been thick with tension in the Reynoldses’ house for weeks after.
Connor nodded. “Yeah, after he and my dad had a huge argument about it, he stayed with a friend for a week and wouldn’t answer any calls or texts.
And it was two years ago when Mom actually filed a report because Jamie never returned from a night out in New York. He’d lost his phone and wallet and couldn’t get home, so he just stayed on someone’s couch for a couple of days. But…” Connor sniffed, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. “But something feels different this time. I think he’s in trouble, Pip, I really do.”
“Why?” she asked.
“He’s been acting strange the last few weeks. Distant, kind of jumpy.
Short-tempered. And you know Jamie, he’s normally really chilled out. Well, lazy, if you ask my dad. But recently, he’s seemed, at times, a little off.”
And wasn’t that how he had seemed last night when he knocked into Pip?
That strange focus, like he could see nothing else, not even her. And why was he moving through the crowd right then, anyway? Wasn’t that a little off?
“And,” Connor continued, “I don’t think he’d run off again, not after how upset Mom got last time. Jamie wouldn’t do that to her again.”
“I…,” Pip began. But she didn’t really know what to say to him.
“So me and Mom were talking,” Connor said, shoulders contracting like he was shrinking in on himself. “If the police won’t investigate, won’t contact the media or anything, then what can we do ourselves, to find Jamie? That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Pip.”
She knew what was coming, but Connor didn’t pause long enough for her to cut in.
“You know how to do this; everything you did last year where the police failed. You solved a murder. Two of them. And your podcast”—he swallowed —“hundreds of thousands of followers; that’s probably more effective than any media connections the police have. If we want to find Jamie, spread the word that he’s missing so people can come forward with any information they have, or sightings, you are our best hope of that.”
“Connor—”
“If you investigate and release it on your show, I know we’ll find him.
We’ll find him in time. We have to.”
Connor trailed off. The silence that followed was alive and teeming; Pip could feel it crawling around her. She knew what he’d been about to ask. How could it have been anything else? She breathed out, and that thing that lived inside her twisted in her gut. But her answer was inevitable.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I can’t do it, Connor.”
Connor’s eyes widened, and he grew back out of his shoulders. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but—”
“It’s too much to ask,” Pip said, glancing out the window, checking that her parents were still busy in the yard. “I don’t do that anymore.”
“I know, but—”
“Last time I almost lost everything: I ended up in the hospital, got my dog killed, put my family in danger, destroyed my best friend’s life. It’s too much to ask. I promised myself. I…I can’t do it anymore.” The pit in her stomach ripped wider still; soon it might even outgrow her. “I can’t do it. It’s not who I am.”
“Pip, please…” He was begging now, words catching on their way up his throat. “Last time you didn’t even really know them, they were already gone.
This is Jamie, Pip. Jamie. What if he’s hurt? What if he doesn’t make it? I don’t know what to do.” Connor’s voice finally cracked as the tears broke the surface of his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Connor, I am,” Pip said, though the words hurt her to say.
“But I have to say no.”
“You aren’t going to help?” He sniffed. “At all?”
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t.
“I didn’t say that.” Pip jumped down from her stool to hand Connor a tissue. “As you can probably guess, I have a certain relationship with the local police now. I mean, I don’t think I’m their favorite person, but I probably have some sway in matters like this.” She scooped up her car keys from beside the microwave. “I’ll go talk to Detective Hawkins right now, tell him about Jamie and why you’re worried, see whether I can get them to rethink their risk assessment so that they’ll actually investigate.”
Connor slid from his stool. “Really? You’ll do that?”
“Of course,” she said. “I can’t promise anything, but Hawkins is a good guy, really. Hopefully he sees sense.”
“Thank you,” Connor said, wrapping his awkward and angular arms around her quickly. His voice lowered. “I’m scared, Pip.”
“It’s going to be OK.” She attempted a smile. “I’ll give you a lift home on my way. Come on.”
Stepping out into the early evening, the front door got caught in a cross breeze and slammed loudly behind them. Pip carried the sound with her, inside her, echoing around that hollow growing in her gut.
