THE FRIDAY TRAIN HOME

"Get me the plate," Max said.

Marcus was already moving. Cece held up one palm. "Please don't send anyone across live tracks. There's a crossing by the maintenance lot. And Dale has cameras."

Max looked at her as if an instruction from a ticket clerk was a novel experience. Then he turned to Marcus. "Crossing. No shortcuts. Tell nobody to confront the driver."

Cece ran back through the passenger tunnel, her wet shoes squeaking on the steps. Dale was still at the heater. It had begun making a noise like a trapped cricket.

"Don't tell me you fixed him," he said.

"Not even close. We need the lot camera. A service van just left the old baggage entrance."

Dale put down his screwdriver. "Nobody has authorization for that entrance today."

He opened the operations office and signed into the station system while Cece called transit police from the number posted beside the desk. She gave the direction of travel, the logo, the approximate time, and the scarf. She did not claim to have seen Iris. The dispatcher asked her to remain available and instructed her not to follow the vehicle.

Max filled the doorway, rain dripping from his jaw. "I have the license plate from Marcus."

"Give it to the officer," Cece said, offering the phone.

He did. A man who could command a roomful of people stood beneath a flickering fluorescent fixture and spelled out seven ordinary characters to a police dispatcher. Cece appreciated the incongruity more than she would admit.

The recording showed the van arriving at 3:58. It had entered through a contractor gate with a badge number assigned to Northline Station Services, the firm overseeing a planned renovation. Its rear window was blocked by shelving. At 4:16 the driver returned from the baggage building carrying a flat document case, shut the rear door, and backed out.

Cece leaned closer. "Pause there."

The scarf hung from the latch before the driver shut it. A narrow strip of blue stitching marked one corner.

"Iris repaired it herself," Max said. "My mother taught her to sew. She always used blue thread because she couldn't find the yellow spool."

Dale's finger hovered above the keyboard. "I can preserve this footage and give it to investigators. I can't hand anyone my login."

"Nobody asked you to," Max said.

"Your face did."

To Cece's surprise, Max accepted the rebuke with a tired nod. She had thought men with reputations like his would punish anyone who bothered with procedure. The truth, so far, was more complicated. He could be frightening without being irrational. He could also be wrong.

His phone rang. The name WARREN appeared on the screen. Max let it ring twice before answering.

"Where are you?" asked a brisk male voice, audible in the quiet office.

"The station."

"Again? Max, the Riverbend hospital contract needs your signature in an hour."

"Which of our vans was sent to Hawthorne?"

A pause. "None that I'm aware of. Why?"

"Find out."

"Iris hasn't turned up, has she?"

Max looked at Cece. "No."

"Then please let me handle operations while you deal with the family situation."

The call ended. Cece wrote the name on the back of a refund form without thinking. Max noticed.

"Warren Pike," he said. "My chief operating officer. He's been with me for thirteen years."

"That doesn't answer the question I haven't asked."

"You think he knows about the van."

"I think people who say 'let me handle it' should still tell you what they're handling."

Dale cleared his throat. "I'd like that engraved above the payroll terminal."

A uniformed transit officer arrived twenty minutes later. Officer Kim reviewed the original recording and asked Max about the scarf. Max produced a photograph of Iris on his phone: laughing on the kitchen floor with a bowl of strawberries and the yellow scarf knotted over her hair. Cece saw the resemblance in the eyes. The same sharp intelligence, though Max's was buried beneath worry.

"She is an adult," Officer Kim explained. "If she is safe and chooses not to contact someone, that is her right. But a missing-person report and possible evidence of coercion are reasons to follow up. We will check the van's registration and the contractor records."

"And if the driver leaves the state?" Max asked.

"We'll act on the information we have. Please don't try to stop the van yourselves."

Max looked like a man being asked to watch his house burn while someone searched for the correct hose. But he handed over his number and repeated the description of the scarf, calmly enough that Cece could hear every word.

When the officer left, Dale walked them to the unused baggage entrance. It stood beyond a fenced maintenance walkway, not the passenger platform. The door was shut; its padlock had been replaced recently, the metal clean against the rusted hasp. Dale showed them the outside only, staying within his authorized route.

"The contractor says this area is empty," Dale said. "We're supposed to clear it for demolition next month."

Cece spotted a pale rectangle on the wet ground: the clean impression of something heavy recently removed. A rubber wheel mark crossed it. No dramatic revelation, just evidence that empty was an optimistic description.

"Who signs off on contractor access?" she asked.

"The regional property office. I can request the log."

Max offered to pay for an independent security review. Dale said the railroad had to authorize one. Max made no second offer. Cece filed that away as another detail that did not fit the stories people told.

At seven, her shift ended. The train had long gone; the sky beyond the station windows was already black. Max was still there, this time standing beneath the awning rather than sitting in the rain.

"You could go home," she told him.

"So could you."

"I have an actual home to go to. My mother will send search parties if I miss her meatloaf."

He considered that. "Are they competent search parties?"

"She's sixty-two and knows all my embarrassing childhood addresses. Terrifyingly competent."

He almost smiled. Then his gaze moved to the tracks. "Iris stopped answering me after an argument. I didn't tell the detective how badly it went."

"You should," Cece said. "Not because she owes you a return trip. Because it might tell them where she chose to go."

He rubbed his face. "I called her concerns about the company a college argument. She graduated two years ago. I still talked to her like she was fifteen."

Cece did not absolve him. "Then if she comes back, let her be twenty-three."

Marcus pulled the SUV to the curb. Max took the paper ticket from his pocket again. The handwritten heart had begun to blur.

"She wrote that when she was nine," he said. "Every time she missed the train to her grandmother's, she'd race me down the platform. 'Run if you're late.' It was our joke."

Cece looked through the glass at the empty tracks. "You have a chance to do something besides race this time."

Her phone buzzed before she reached the employee parking lot. Dale had forwarded a routine contractor bulletin, copied from an email received after closing. Under the heading BAGGAGE BUILDING — FINAL CLEARANCE, one line had been changed that afternoon.