“So, my sister is lost and you’re not going to do anything?” Meg was incredulous. “What do we pay you for?”
“Call us back in twenty-four hours if she doesn’t turn up,” the officer said curtly before hanging up.
“Twenty-four hours from when? From now, or from midnight of last night?” Meg asked, but, of course, the officer was already off the phone.
Meg went back upstairs and paced the hotel suite, back and forth. She picked up her phone again, but laid it down. Should she really call and alarm people so soon? She waffled back and forth, trying to think logically. People who are severely emotionally distraught don’t act like themselves at times. Perhaps Gen really did just want time to herself.
But Meg didn’t think so. Deep in the pit of her belly, she felt like something was wrong. It was an instinct that had served her well in dozens of surgeries gone wrong. She usually listened to it and ended up saving a life that way. In the operating room, Meg was God. She called the shots. She always knew exactly what to do, because she had learned every contingency through a thousand surgeries on a thousand days, in a thousand different ways.
But this was different.
This wasn’t something they trained you for, and she didn’t have control over it.
Besides, as mercurial as Gen could be, this wasn’t in her wheelhouse.
Even still, Meg paced all the way out to the balcony, and though she was afraid, she pressed her belly against the cold railing and looked down. The sidewalks were bustling, and her sister was nowhere in sight.
“Where are you?” Meg whispered. “Come back.”
She threw on a heavy sweater, pausing only for a minute to scribble a note to her sister before she went out to look again.
CALL ME IF YOU COME BACK. IMMEDIATELY!!!
She walked for several city blocks, checking every bench, every hidden set of stairs, every shadowy crevice. She checked her phone every few minutes.
Gen didn’t call.
She tried to call Gen, but got her voice mail, over and over. You’ve reached Genevieve Thibault. Leave a message, and when I find my phone, I’ll call you back. Or you could just text me. That would be better.
“Gen, call me back. Now,” Meg demanded. “I mean it. This isn’t cool. You’re scaring me.”
She looked at the picture they’d taken the night before, the one in the cab when their eyes were slightly unfocused and their cheeks were pink from alcohol. They were so happy, so delighted with life in general, in spite of everything. And now Gen was gone.
“What happened?” Meg whispered, as she stood there, her heart pounding.
She ducked inside several twenty-four-hour pharmacies, asking the clerks if they’d seen her sister the night before or early that morning. But they hadn’t. At the last one, she bought ibuprofen, and tossed three down her throat. Her head was pounding.
There was another homeless man at the end of the block. She approached him with a photo of Gen on her phone, but he wouldn’t talk to her at all. He grunted and turned away with a snarl.
She was growing more frantic and more alarmed by the minute.
She stopped to question the day doorman. “Are you sure you haven’t seen my sister since she left around midnight?” she asked firmly, waving a photo of Gen from her phone at him. Her hands were shaking, and she hoped no one noticed.
The solemn man nodded. “I’m quite sure, ma’am. But I talked to Peter—he was the doorman on duty last night. He said he told her to be careful and saw her walk down the street. When he looked again, she was gone. He doesn’t know what direction she went after that. I’m sorry.”
He did look sorry. He was sympathetic.
“If I text you this picture, can you show it to guests and see if anyone saw anything?”
He started to nod, but the manager at the desk spoke up.
“No, we can’t do that, ma’am. I’m sorry. We can’t interfere in an investigation until the police instruct us.”
“But there’s not an investigation yet.” She turned, confused. “I can’t officially file a report until midnight. Plus, helping to find someone isn’t interfering.”
“After it becomes an investigation, we’ll do anything the police want us to do. In the meantime, we can’t disrupt our guests.” The manager’s face was stoic.
“Gen is your guest,” she replied slowly. “And she’s gone.”
“I’m sorry about that,” the manager said, but he was still firm. “We don’t want to alarm our other guests unnecessarily. We’ll be happy to cooperate with the police when they request it.”
She was hitting a stone wall here. Annoyed, Meg returned to her room and sat on her bed.
She hadn’t seen her sister since 12:30 a.m. It was now 10:04 a.m. The first session of the convention she came here to attend would be well underway. She couldn’t imagine sitting through panels about advances in medical devices while Gen was missing. All she could do was sit in the hotel room, and watch the clock, and wait. The time passed from 11:04 a.m. to 12:04 p.m., then 1:04 p.m., to 2:04 p.m., and finally, when it was 4:04 p.m. and her sister hadn’t come back, she knew she had to call someone.
Anyone.
She didn’t want to worry her parents yet, especially her mother, so she called Gen’s husband, Thad.
He answered quickly, his voice sharp.
“Yes?”
“Thad, it’s Meg.”
“Why are you calling?”
“Gen’s gone,” she said without hesitating.
There was a pause. “What do you mean, gone?” he asked.
“She came to New York with me, and she went out for a walk late last night and she hasn’t come back to the hotel.”
“How long has she been gone?” he asked calmly.
“Since midnight.”
“That’s not like her,” he admitted.
“No, it’s not.”
“Did you call the police?”
“Of course. They said they can’t do anything for the first twenty-four hours.”
“Okay. Well, call them at the twenty-four-hour mark.”
“Are you coming? I think something is wrong. I mean, really wrong.”
There was silence on the other end.
“No,” he replied finally. “She’s divorcing me, remember? She doesn’t want me involved.”
“You don’t...” Her voice trailed off, and then she squared her shoulders. “You don’t think she...”