He cut himself short, embarrassed about becoming emotional again, and then looked away from me. I’d worked a lot of cases, and seen a lot of people cry; from the outside looking in, the idea of a brawny twenty-six-year-old man being reduced to tears so easily might have seemed unusual. But I saw it all the time. You grieved for a disappearance just like you grieved for someone you loved when they died, but they weren’t exactly the same thing – not quite. When someone died, you walked an upward trajectory, a path out of the darkness, however slow: the grief got easier eventually, or you buried it effectively enough for it not to destroy you every day. When someone vanished, the trajectory went in the other direction: the longer you went without answers, the worse it got. There was no certainty in a disappearance. All of the demons, all of the pain, were in the unanswered questions. What happened to the person I loved most in this world?

What if someone had hurt them?

‘You don’t need to thank me, Ross.’

‘I want to,’ he said, holding up a hand. ‘It’s just, we thought it was the end of the road, I guess. The police haven’t called for a year. They seem to have forgotten us. I mean, I know they have to move on, I get that, but Rina, Tori and me, we just stay where we are. We’re stuck.’

He swallowed and expelled a long breath.

‘I know you’re not doing this for free,’ he said, his voice barely audible above the rain, ‘I know we’re all paying you, so I suppose this is just a job for you as well –’

‘This isn’t just a job for me,’ I said.

He looked at me, blinked.

‘It’s not just a job,’ I repeated, more softly.

He wiped at his eyes, the rain disguising his tear trails, unsure if I meant it, or if I was just repeating myself for his benefit. But I wasn’t. I meant every single word.

This wasn’t just a job to me.

Missing people were my life.

Joline

1985

Los Angeles | Tuesday 23 July

Her pager started buzzing just before 5 a.m.