“Have you heard from Quest?”
Beat of silence. “Nah. Not since he left for the trip. Why?”
“He’s not answering. I’ve called him six times in two days. Texts aren’t delivering. Mehar’s phone is completely dead. Nothing.”
Another beat. Longer this time. I could hear Prime thinking and Prime thinking was a specific kind of quiet. It wasn’t empty. It was loaded. It was the quiet of a man running scenarios in his head and eliminating the ones that didn’t end in violence before he spoke.
“That’s not like him,” Prime said. His voice had dropped half a register. Subtle. Most people wouldn’t catch it. I caught it because I’d been hearing that shift since we were kids. RelaxedPrime talked in his chest. Alert Prime talked from somewhere lower. Somewhere closer to the version of himself that most people never met and never wanted to.
“I know it’s not like him. That’s why I’m calling you.”
“Aight. Let me have Zainab try Mehar. Sisters talk different than we do. If Mehar’s ignoring us, she’s not ignoring Zainab.”
“Bet. Call me back.”
I hung up and waited. Leaned back in my chair, stared at the ceiling, tried to talk myself out of the feeling that was settling into my chest like concrete. There were reasonable explanations. Bad cell service on a private island. A resort with spotty wifi. Quest being so wrapped up in Mehar that the outside world didn’t exist. All reasonable. All plausible.
All bullshit and I knew it.
My phone buzzed. Prime.
“Nothing,” he said. One word. No inflection. “Zainab tried three times. Mehar’s phone is off. Zainab said she hasn’t heard from her since the night they left.”
The night they left. Which meant Mehar hadn’t contacted her sister in two days either. Mehar and Zainab talked every day. Every single day. Through everything, the warehouse, the recovery, the pregnancy, they had not gone a single day without talking since Mehar came home. If Mehar wasn’t answering Zainab, something was wrong. Period.
“I’m calling the resort,” I said.
“Do it now. I’m staying on.”
I pulled up the booking confirmation from Quest’s email. He’d given me access to his accounts months ago because I managed the finances and Quest didn’t have the patience for receipts. Isla Solara. Private island rental outside of Bonaire. I found the contact number and three-way called it while Prime stayed on the line.
A woman answered. Pleasant voice. Slight accent. “Isla Solara, good afternoon.”
“Yeah, hi. My name is Justice Banks. My brother, Quest Banks, booked a stay at your property. He was supposed to arrive two days ago. Can you confirm whether he checked in?”
Typing in the background. A pause. Then: “I’m sorry, Mr. Banks. We show a reservation for Quest Banks arriving on Friday, but the guest never arrived. We attempted to reach the contact number on file but were unable to connect. The reservation is still active and we’ve been holding the property.”
The guest never arrived.
Five words. Five words that rearranged every molecule in my body. I gripped the phone so hard my knuckles ached. The room got very still and very loud at the same time. I could hear Prime breathing on the other end, steady, controlled, but I knew that breathing pattern. I knew what it meant. It meant Prime was already past worry and into the next phase. The phase where plans get made and people get found.
“Thank you,” I managed. “We’ll be in touch.”
I disconnected the resort and it was just me and Prime on the line. Neither of us spoke for about five seconds. Five seconds that felt like five hours.
“He never made it,” I said.
“I heard.”
“Prime, he took off from Virginia two days ago and never landed. His phone is dead. Mehar’s phone is dead. Nobody has heard from either of them.”
“I know what it means, Justice.” Prime’s voice was flat now. Not angry. Not scared. Flat. Which was worse than both because flat meant Prime had already accepted the worst-case scenario and was building a plan around it. “I’m calling the Coast Guard. I’m calling the FAA. I’m calling anybody with a boat and a radar.”
“I’ll pull his flight plan. He filed one before he left. Tail number, departure time, route, fuel load, all of it. If something happened mid-flight, the data will tell us where.”
“Do it,” Prime said. “And Justice?”
“Yeah.”
