“Over twenty-four hours. Hasn’t used her mobile or debit card. Friends haven’t heard from her. No activity on her social media or . . .” He couldn’t finish. The facts were brutal kicks to his stomach. If it had been somebody else’s daughter, a case with no personal connection, he would have been working on the gravest assumptions. He saw Glover glance at a framed photo on his desk. Paul guessed it was a picture of his two kids, who’d been babies when they’d worked together. He hoped he could appeal to the fatherly side of Glover’s personality to get what he needed. His old instincts for other people’s motivations were waking, the subtle persuasiveness he’d once had in his toolkit.

“How old is Freya now?” Glover asked.

“Seventeen.” Paul heard the break in his own voice. Freya was feisty and smart, but there could be a naïveté to her when she wasn’t playing sport, when there weren’t clear-cut goals to compete for. She could punch a volleyball in a way that would make Paul think, That’s my girl, and she’d astounded him and Steph with her witty, charming acceptance speech when she’d won Players’ Player at the school sports awards last year. But she also constantly lost things, closed her eyes at upsetting animal sanctuary adverts, became pensive or wildly indignant when they watched the news, as though she couldn’t quite believe the things that happened in the world outside her safety zone. The thought of her out there in that world—in the parts of it he’d known—was terrifying to Paul.

“I need to see the Sanderson file.” He flinched inwardly as he said their former target’s name. “Especially any . . . updates.”

Glover sat back in his leather chair. Assessing something, though Paul wasn’t sure what. Always calculating risk.

“I won’t do anything stupid,” Paul pressed. “I’ll keep you informed of anything I need to follow up.”

“Follow up?” Glover’s eyebrows jerked. “You’re worrying me now.”

“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t a matter of . . . It’s my daughter, Tom.”

Glover stood and walked to the window, looking out at the floodlit courtyard to the rear. It was such a familiar move of his—striding to the window for a “time-out,” keeping his back turned for just longer than was comfortable—that Paul shuddered with recollection.

Delicate was the word Glover liked to use about what had happened back then. It conjured up images of thin glass on the verge of shattering, fragile bones on the verge of breaking.

Tom turned back around. “I can’t give you access, Paul. You’re not a police officer anymore. There are no updates, anyway. You’ll find nothing in those files you can’t pull from your memories . . . if you choose to.”