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  “How have you been in the front house being all smart and ambitious and I didn’t notice you?” she asked.

  “I noticed you,” Ryan said. And then he blushed.

  * * *

  Madison left Ryan at Su Casa and raced over to McGregor’s Grill in the Mission Gorge area of San Diego to meet Tom. She would be a little bit late, but she figured Tom would wait. He was probably there for the night anyway.

  She didn’t know what to think about Ryan. He seemed nice, and smart, and he certainly was her type. But something made her hesitate. He was pretty young, but the intelligence and the career goals balanced that out. She didn’t want to get involved with someone when she had this stalker and a huge investigation going on. It was stupid of her to even entertain the idea. But in the back of her mind, something was gnawing: was it just that he wasn’t Dave?

  She pulled into the parking lot at McGregor’s and looked for a space. It was packed. There wasn’t much out this way except the stadium, which didn’t have an event tonight. So the streets were fairly empty and it was quiet except for the sounds coming from the bar.

  McGregor’s was a known cop hangout, or at least known that way to cops and their entourage. Located in a strip mall, it had fried food, cheap drinks, and televisions playing whatever game was good that night. Madison found a parking space across the parking lot and a few doors down from the bar. All the other businesses in the strip mall were closed. She walked in and saw Tom talking to another cop at the bar.

  “Hey, Madison.” Tom pointed to the guy he was standing with. “This is Ken.”

  “Hi, nice to meet you,” Madison said.

  “And nice to meet you, finally.” Ken showed his teeth.

  “Finally?” Madison said.

  “Shut the fuck up, Ken.” Tom signaled for the bartender.

  “I’m only kidding.” Ken took a swig of his cocktail. “I’m just winding you up.”

  “Ken was just leaving,” Tom said.

  “Hey, hey, hey, I can take a hint.” Ken drained his drink. “But the night is young. I’ll just step over here and leave you two lovebirds alone.”

  “Seriously?” Madison said as he walked away. “Lovebirds? What the hell?”

  “He’s just being a dick.” Tom ordered another beer from the bartender, who’d finally seen him waving. “I’ve known him a long time. He’s just giving me a hard time.”

  “Okay, anyway,” Madison said. “Can we sit at a table?”

  Tom got his beer, and Madison accepted his offer of a drink, but she got club soda. They moved to a table in the corner.

  “Okay, so what’s the latest?” Tom asked.

  “First, I have a question for you.” Madison set her glass carefully on the napkin. Beads of condensation were already forming. It was hot in the bar. “Why didn’t you ask me on the phone what the new note said?”

  Tom was drinking from his beer bottle. He waited until he’d swallowed and set the beer down on the table. “Didn’t I?”

  Is he stalling? Madison thought. That was a technique liars used: ask a question instead of answering, so you have more time to figure out what to say.

  There was an explosion of yells from the other side of the bar. Madison turned and saw a bunch of guys playing darts. Someone had hit a bull’s-eye and was getting congratulated, and a round was being ordered. She came back to Tom.

  “No,” Madison said. “You didn’t.”

  “Look, I told you I was in court. The DA was standing right next to me, trying to get me off the phone. I didn’t have time to chat.”

  That made sense to Madison, but it didn’t make sense why he hadn’t just said that instead of deflecting her question. She would file it for later. She pulled the note in its plastic sleeve out of her purse and handed it to Tom.

  “A man of few words.” Tom handed the note back to Madison. “What is he talking about—‘What did I tell you?’”

  “Okay. A lot has happened.” She started shredding the cocktail napkin under her drink.

  “‘A lot has happened?’” Tom stared intently at her. “Don’t you mean Madison has been doing things she shouldn’t be doing again?”

  “Just listen. I have to explain a lot to bring you up to speed.”

  She recounted how she had realized her tweets about the missing girls in the Gaslamp District might have something to do with the note on her door.

  “So I went down to the Gaslamp to look around.”

  “And?”

  “I found something.”

  “What did you find?” Tom was trying to stay calm.

  “I found a cell phone near the parking lot where Elissa Alvarez parked her car.”

  Tom sighed. “Oh. Okay. You found a random cell phone. Is this story going somewhere?”

  “And I carefully picked it up and put it in a bag. First I met with Samantha’s sister, Felicity, at the Pannikin. She said the phone wasn’t Samantha’s.”

  “You met with a witness in an ongoing police investigation? With a piece of evidence in that investigation?” There was a vein in the middle of his forehead that was pulsing.

  “I didn’t know if it was evidence! You just said yourself that I found a random cell phone. And anyway, you knew I wasn’t going to sit around and let someone else figure out who was stalking me. Oh and last time I checked? I was licensed to talk to witnesses.”

  Tom was shaking his head. “Okay, okay, okay. Fine. Keep going.”

  “Felicity said she didn’t recognize the phone.”

  “Shocker.” Tom took a drink of his beer and glanced at the game on the TV in the corner.

  Madison ignored his sarcasm. “When I got home from meeting with Felicity, that second note was on my door. But first, your wife was sitting on my stairs.”

  Tom was quiet for a minute. “Okay, well, anyway, he is clearly following you. I don’t like this.”

  “He? We don’t know it’s a he, now do we?”

  Tom’s eyes flared. “What are you implying, Madison?”

  “She came to my home, Tom. She was angry. Then I walk upstairs and that note is on my door.”

  “It’s not my wife.”

  “You don’t know that. She said she follows you and she knows you’ve been coming to my apartment.”

  “It’s not my wife.”

  “Do you think if you keep repeating that, it will make it so?”

  Tom took a deep breath and let it out. “Madison, will you let this one go? I’m telling you, she is the sweetest person … I’ve put her through hell.”

  Frankly, Madison didn’t think his wife was the type to leave nasty notes, but what did she know? She decided not to push it for the time being.

  “Okay,” Madison said. “I’ll keep calling him a he. So he thought I was investigating him when I wasn’t investigating him. Now he thinks I’m investigating him, still, and now I am investigating him. So I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t—but at least if I investigate, I might figure out who it is.”

  Another explosion of yells, this one louder. Madison looked over and saw big men jumping and throwing their arms around each other. They must be betting on the darts, Madison thought. Then she saw Ken at the other end of the bar, staring at her.

  “Why is your friend staring at me?”

  Tom looked over and saw Ken. Ken waved, and Tom nodded his head.

  “He’s a man. You’re pretty. Why do you have to be such a ballbuster? Why can’t you be sweet?”

  Madison laughed. “Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot. My purpose in life is to be on display for men to enjoy. And to be sweet. I’ll be a good statue and shut up and look pretty.”

  “That’s not what I meant. But could you?”

  “Yes, it is what you meant,” Madison said. “And I’m ignoring your joke because you weren’t joking when you said it. That’s exactly what you meant. I’m supposed to be flattered that guys stare at me and make me uncomfortable.”

  “Maybe he’s not staring at you. Maybe he’s staring at me.”
/>   “You just said he was staring at me because I’m pretty.”

  “Look, I’ll take this new note in, and we’ll see if it tells us anything,” Tom said.

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  Tom stood up. “I’m getting another beer. You make me want to drink.”

  “Wait, I have more to say.”

  “I’m coming back; calm down,” Tom said. He walked away and went to the area where the restrooms were. Apparently Ken felt this was his chance, since he started to make his way to the table. Madison jumped up and walked toward the restroom. She managed to avoid Ken’s arc while pretending she didn’t see him.

  When she came out of the bathroom, Tom was at the table with a new beer. She came back and sat across from him.

  “Oh I thought you’d left.” Tom kept an eye on the TV on the wall. “Too bad. Anyway, do you want to hear about the first note, or are we going to discuss how men are from Mars and women are from Venus?”

  “Shut up,” Madison said. “Yes, I want to hear about the note.”

  “Nothing, unfortunately. No DNA, no fingerprints.”

  “Yeah,” Madison said. “That was to be expected.”

  “I’ll take this new one in, but don’t expect much.”

  Madison took a deep breath. “Okay, but there’s more.”

  “Why do I feel like I’m not going to like this?”

  “You’re going to. It makes the fact that I’m doing an investigation on my own worth it.”

  “Okay, so?”

  “I met with Elissa’s mother. She recognized the phone. It is Elissa’s phone. One hundred percent certain.” She pulled the iPhone in its plastic bag out of her purse and slid it across the table to him.

  Tom sat quietly looking at the phone on the table without picking it up. Madison knew that this piece of evidence was too glorious for him to get mad at her.

  “Only you, Madison. Only you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Tom laughed. “I’ve told you before, I think you’re a great investigator. But this is … only you would go out to a scene as big as the Gaslamp and find a cell phone that half the police force hasn’t been able to find in two years.”

  Madison smiled. Sometimes her confidence annoyed people; some people thought she was full of herself. But the fact was, she only cared about doing a good job. She didn’t care about being pretty or boyfriends or anything other than the pride she felt in a job well done. Having outside validation of that once in a while was nice.

  “Thanks, Tom,” she said.

  He toyed with the bag that held the phone, thinking. “Now I’m going to have to figure out how to report this discovery. Which means I’m going to have to tell the detectives handling the missing persons about the notes on your door.”

  Madison thought about the phone call that Felicity had received. She really wanted to tell Tom about it. But she had promised Felicity.

  “I know. Do you know anything else about the investigation? Do they have any leads?”

  Tom put on his poker face. “You know I can’t share details of an active police investigation.”

  “Disclaimer received,” Madison said. “So, what do you know?”

  Tom sighed. “I don’t know much. If they had something, I probably wouldn’t tell you. But as far as I know, they have nothing. They still don’t even know if the two disappearances are connected. They don’t know if the girls just ran off and it’s a coincidence. I will tell you this: it might look like nothing is happening, and sometimes, for a while, it isn’t. But we never give up on missing persons. Years can go by without a lead and then something will come in. Or a new set of eyes looks at the case and gets an idea. It can take a long time, especially on cases that have gone cold. But we don’t give up. And hey, maybe this will help.” He held up the iPhone.

  Madison had hoped for more, but she understood.

  “Have they checked out rideshare drivers in the area?” Madison kept coming back to this. Maybe it was because of the other cases she’d been reading about. It just seemed so easy to pick up a drunk girl and then she’s gone, just like she disappeared. Because she did disappear—one minute she’s walking down a crowded street, and the next minute she gets into a car that pulls up and she’s gone. Quick and neat and perfect for a predator.

  “As far as I know, that was one of the first things they checked. That and employees at the bars. But nothing.”

  Madison couldn’t be sure that Tom would tell her everything the police had learned. He liked her and trusted her, but he was a cop first and foremost. He wouldn’t have any qualms about lying to her if it meant protecting the integrity of a case.

  “Nothing, huh? Okay.” Madison looked over at a group of women sitting nearby. They were all about Madison’s age, and they looked as fit as Madison. Their heads were together, discussing something they didn’t want others to hear. Madison decided they were cops. Before she returned her attention to Tom, she glanced around some more. She was trying to give the appearance that they were just relaxing, having a drink, and she wasn’t hanging on his every answer.

  She turned back to Tom. “Nothing. Hmmmm. Okay, so … does that mean they weren’t able to get information out of the rideshare services, or does that mean it is confirmed the girls didn’t take a rideshare?”

  Tom took a pull of his beer and glanced up at the TV. When his eyes returned to Madison, they had lost their humor. “Don’t fucking try to question me like I’m a subject in your investigation. Nothing means exactly that: nothing.”

  Madison didn’t want to push it and make him mad. She decided to try something else. “I read that Samantha’s phone only pinged in the Gaslamp, so it was likely shut off or the battery went dead before it moved. I didn’t know about Elissa’s phone, but since I just found it in the Gaslamp, I’m guessing it didn’t ping outside of that area either. Does that jive with everything you know?”

  “You don’t want much, do you?” He shifted in his seat. Madison sensed he didn’t want to get angry either. They had just started talking again, and despite the fiery aspect of their relationship, neither of them wanted to have a real fight and go back to not speaking. “Listen, I don’t know all the ins and outs of the investigation, other than what we talk about around the station. But they’ve wanted those phones for sure. This will be a big find.”

  “So I did a good job, huh?”

  “Yes, you did a good job.” Tom smiled at her. When he smiled like that, she wished he weren’t married. “I don’t suppose I can get you to stop now and let the police handle this?”

  “No,” Madison said. “You can’t.”

  Someone had put a 1970s rock song on the jukebox in the corner. It was from a movie. Deer Hunter. A bunch of the guys threw their arms around each other and started singing at the tops of their lungs. The guys didn’t sing very well, but they were committed to the song. Cops had a rough job, and it was nice to see them blowing off steam.

  “Okay, well I’m going to take off.” Madison stood up.

  “So soon?”

  “Sarcasm noted,” she said.

  “You take care.” Tom had returned his attention to the game on the TV.

  “You know, you’ve never said you’re sorry.”

  Tom looked over at a game of pool that was down to the eight ball. Madison glanced that way just as the player scratched. A group on the other side yelled at the game on TV; it was hard to tell if they were thrilled or destroyed by the play. Tom gave her a sideways glance.

  “Maybe I’m not sorry.”

  Madison wasn’t expecting that. Actually, she wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting.

  “I got carried away.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I parked outside your apartment. I wondered about you. As a cop, it’s easy when you’re wondering to go check something out. Maybe I did it too much. But it’s not like I hurt you.”

  “You scared me.”

  “No I didn’t, Madison.” His eyes drilled into her. “You don’t
scare that easy, remember?”

  Madison had been scared when she realized Tom had been sitting outside her apartment watching her, several nights a week. She had confronted him and he’d stopped. She hadn’t taken it further because that kind of report could get him investigated and demoted from what was any cop’s dream job—Robbery/Homicide. It was true, he hadn’t hurt her. And as a PI, she knew what it was like to cross the line in your personal life because you were so used to watching people.

  But she hadn’t told him about her tweet where she’d said she didn’t scare easily. Had he seen it?

  “What do you mean by that?” She stared at him to try to read something from his face.

  “Whaddya mean, what do I mean?”

  “What you just said: ‘You don’t scare that easy.’”

  “Are you trying to pick a fight with me? What the hell? You say that all the time.”

  Madison didn’t think she’d ever said that, except in that tweet yesterday. Because it wasn’t actually true. “I don’t recall saying that.”

  “Jesus. Okay, well, you just don’t seem like the kind of girl who scares easily. All tough and brave, all the time. But for what it’s worth, I’m sorry, I guess.”

  Madison rolled her eyes and turned to walk out. She wished she hadn’t brought it up. No apology was better than that half-assed one. Ken was eyeing her from the bar, and as she walked toward the door he started on a route to intercept her. She really didn’t want to deal with this guy right now. Tom had annoyed her, as usual, and she just wanted to go home.

  “Hey, so, anyway, nice to meet you,” Ken said as he caught up to her. She was walking fast on her long legs, but he managed to keep up. She pushed the door to go outside and didn’t hold it for him. It was twilight on a summer night in inland San Diego: warm and dry with a tequila sunrise–colored sunset still painting the western sky after the sun had disappeared.

  “It’s cool, I’ve got it,” he said as he grabbed the door that was shutting on him and shoved it open. He pushed it so hard it slammed against the outside wall and stayed open. It startled Madison. She realized she was being rude to this guy because she was frustrated with Tom.