Laura Anne Gilman Read Free

without cause.” And the local cops had more important things to worry about than one adult who hadn’t checked in with his girlfriend; that vibe had come through loud and clear. Considering the scandals that had rocked the local P.D.s in the three years since she’d moved to the New Haven area, she wasn’t surprised.
    “And you’ve gone over there and hammered on his door, demanding that he come out and explain himself?” Glory said.
    Jan shook her head, biting her lip.
    “No? Janny...” Glory leaned forward so that her face filled the screen. “Girl, if you’re that worried, why not?”
    “I called his super—I met him once, when there was a problem with the heat. I asked him to check.” She hadn’t felt comfortable going over there, not if he hadn’t called; it was too...stalkery. She could worry in private, but letting him know she was worried...
    “Oh, Jan. And?”
    “And Tyler wasn’t there, and there was no sign of any forced entry, so...”
    “So.” Glory sat back and idly twirled a pen in her fingers. “Back where we started, then.”
    Jan reached out and touched her inhaler again, the way someone might touch a good-luck charm or a worry stone. “Yeah, I know, I know. Everyone’s giving me the same advice. You don’t think his silence is worrying, you don’t think there’s anything odd in someone going off-line for an entire day without calling or texting his girlfriend. And you all think I’m overreacting.”
    “Janny...”
    “No. I’m not pissed. Normally—normally I’d agree with you. I’d say, oh, he had something land overnight that he needed time away to deal with, and he forgot to email me. Maybe there’s an unsent email on his laptop, that says ‘going off-line for 24, dinner when I get back.’” She forced a smile for Glory’s sake. “You’re all probably right. Once I make him properly apologize, I’ll let you do all the toljasos in the world.”
    “Damn straight,” Glory agreed. “Go back to work, girl. Let me know what happens, okay?”
    “Yes, Mother.”
    Jan ended the vid-call, and ran her hands along the surface of the desk, noting that new email had landed while she’d talked to Glory. One was from Steve, asking if there was any update.
    All right, maybe she had overreacted a bit. Clicking on that email, she typed in a response.

    Not yet. He so owes me dinner for this!

    She studied her response, decided that it had just the right tone of aggrieved but not-worried girlfriend, and hit Send.
    The other two emails were follow-ups on projects she’d closed out last week, her name on the cc list. She didn’t have any websites going live this week, and nothing else seemed currently to be on fire, so she had room to breathe.
    Except she couldn’t. Despite what she’d said to Glory and to Steve, Tyler’s continued absence—the worry about his continued absence—was almost like an asthma attack, closing up her chest and making her feel a little weird, off balance and dizzy.
    “It’s silly,” she said out loud. And it was. Everyone was right: she knew that. She and Tyler had only met four months ago, and, yes, they’d pretty much fallen into each other’s lives without a hitch, like the true love neither of them had claimed to believe in, but there were always surprises, bumps and revelations along the way, and twenty-four hours wasn’t all that long for an adult to be out of touch, especially since there wasn’t any indication there was anything wrong.
    Except Jan knew. Deep inside, in some skittish reptile part of her brain, she knew. Something was wrong.
    * * *
    The rest of the day, Jan tried to take the excellent advice she had been given. She closed the text box in the corner of her monitor and cleared her in-box down to zero, then worked on a project with an extended deadline until she was actually ahead of schedule.
    And if every ping of incoming mail or text message made her heart speed up in anticipation, she didn’t let it distract her. Too