Paul swallowed. Something prickled the base of his neck—instinct, warning? Glover was standing straight now, hands in his pockets.

“You must know where Sanderson is,” Paul said. “Whether he—”

Glover held up a palm. “Paul. Your head’s all over the place. This is every parent’s worst bloody nightmare. But you have to let Missing Persons find Freya. There’s no point taking matters into your own hands, raking over things that are probably unconnected . . . things I know you don’t want to dredge up.”

Paul felt the rise of fury only a split second before it burst out. “Well, what the fuck would you do?” He banged the desk, dislodging sheets of paper. “Wouldn’t you make the same assumptions as me, if it was one of your kids?” He seized the framed photo and held it toward Glover, who refused to look at it, his face shutting down. “Wouldn’t you do everything you could to make sure they weren’t in danger because of what we did?”

There was a heated silence. Paul continued to thrust the picture at Glover, his grip so tight he was convinced either the frame or his knuckles would break.

Eventually Glover snatched it from him. “What we did?”

Paul stared at him, still trembling with rage, tasting it in his throat. He couldn’t believe he’d thought he could come here for help. He’d forgotten how smoothly his former boss could switch compassion on and off.

Glover called after him as Paul strode to the door. Paul stormed down the stairs without brushing the walls or the banister, unwilling to touch another thing in this place. Then he was back in the night, the London fumes less poisonous than the air inside the police station. He wanted to go back to Steph but he couldn’t bear the hurt and confusion on her face. Something had been ripped open by Freya’s disappearance, and what if there was no way to repair it? What if this was only the beginning?

As he collapsed onto a bench, his mind’s eye began leafing through the file that Glover had denied him access to. Its pages would crystallize in his head if he let them, like pictures developing in a darkroom. Before he got very far, breathlessness grabbed him by the neck. His throat closed and he gasped, clawing at his collar. It had been years since he’d had a panic attack. But now here he was, fighting to breathe, breathe, breathe, tilting forward on the bench as people passed with barely a glance.

Even as the attack subsided, there was a slow swirling dread. That time, that place . . . He’d managed to free himself, heal himself, but what if it had come back for his little girl instead?