“None taken.”
Her face fell, some of the cheer draining away like water over rocks. “I just wish it weren’t a kid on the line.”
“We’ll find him,” I said quietly, as much to reassure myself as Fletcher.
The light in front of us switched, allowing us to trundle onto the long bridge over the water. The Moray Firth sparkled a dark blue in the sunlight, stretching its long arm out to reach the sea which turned grey as it faded into the distance.
“Have you ever worked a missing persons case before?” Fletcher asked. She signalled and changed lanes to pass the slow-moving car in front of us.
“A woman came to us about a missing husband a few years ago,” I answered. “But he had somehow forgotten his phone and wallet, gotten off the train at the wrong stop, and wound up lost in the middle of nowhere in Devon.”
“How did he manage that?” Fletcher laughed quietly.
“I honestly have no idea.”
We rolled off the bridge on the other side of the firth, and Fletcher began to pick up speed, weaving in and out of the passing lane as she overtook the other cars. I watched the scenery roll by out the window. The hills oozed by, their peaks worn away by the short, wild grass. Grey rocks, spotted with brown and green moss, broke up the smooth lines, rising from the earth like lost gravestones in a forgotten field. To our left, off in the distance, the mountains struggled to reach for the sky while their broad sides spilt back to the earth like poorly bound locks of hair. The road curved for a few kilometres, and then the ocean hemmed us in from the other side. The blue-grey waters glittered in the afternoon soon as it stretched itself across the world to meet the horizon. Waves crashed against the rocky shore not twenty metres from us, throwing white spray into the air.
Fletcher kept the music low, but the sombre dirge still permeated the car, sinking right into my bones, though it couldn’t quell the nerves curling in my stomach. I focused on the way the tires rumbled beneath me as they ate up the distance, on the way the sun warmed my hand where it rested by the window. A life hung in the balance, and we had no way of knowing if we would be there in time to make a difference. We didn’t even know if we were headed to the right place.
I watched a seagull alight on a scrap of driftwood on the beach for the barest of seconds before taking off again. All my cases mattered, of course, but this was the first one with tangible, fast-approaching stakes. With the others, the danger was, for the most part, in the past. A murder victim couldn’t be killed again, a burgled item couldn’t be re-stolen. There was time if it was needed. Today, we had none, and yet, we were still eating up minute after minute as the road wound lazily between the hills.
“Was that a new girl or an old girl?” I asked Fletcher because I needed something to fill the space and calm the ache within my stomach.
She glanced at me in surprise then focused back on the road. “Sort of both. We were friends in uni but lost touch because she moved up here, and I went to Glasgow. I called her up when I found out I was moving here.” An embarrassed smile lifted the corner of her mouth. “Truth be told, I always had a bit of a crush on her.”
“Did you have fun?”
“I did.” Her grin turned from embarrassed to sly as she looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “You seemed like you were having an awful lot of fun with Lena after her gig.”
“Not for long,” I grumbled, still a little bit put out that she’d left so quickly.
“Does someone have a crush?” Fletcher teased.
“I’m not twelve.”
The rise we were on grew steeper, and as the engine began to whine, Fletcher downshifted to give it more pep. “Why don’t you text her and ask her out?” she suggested. “If the case winds up tonight, it’ll no longer be a conflict of interest.”
“She’s got that whole thing with her ex.” I wasn’t sure she would even be interested in going out with me, nor was I particularly fond of opening myself up to rejection.
“Her ex.” Fletcher hit the accelerator and ducked into the oncoming lane to pass the slower car in front of her. “Look, I may not be able to tell when someone’s interested in me, but I can always see it in other people, and there was something in the way she looked at you. She’d say yes if you asked.”
I shook my head. “I’m not going to.”
Fletcher’s eyes narrowed as she glanced at me through the rearview mirror. “Then I’ll put ‘Baby Shark’ on repeat until you do.”
I looked at her with mounting horror as she reached for her phone and, without taking her eyes off the road, opened up Spotify. She began to type in the search bar. I crossed my arms and glared at her. If I suffered, she suffered. She found the song and selected it, finger hovering over the play button. I remained resolute. Her thumb descended towards the screen as if in slow motion. She turned her head to look at me, and our eyes locked. She would not falter. She would play that song all the way to the castle if she had to.
“Fine!” I snapped the nanosecond before her finger hit the screen. “I’ll text Lena.”
Fletcher grinned triumphantly and put her phone down while I picked up mine and scrolled through my recent calls to find Lena’s number. I put the digits in a new text message and then stared at the blinking cursor for a long moment until Fletcher coughed menacingly.
“Fine,” I said again and got to work.
“Hi Lena, this is Callum MacBain. I’m sorry
