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He briefly gripped her elbow and squeezed. “You’re smart. You won’t make any mistakes.”
Hmm. Nice thought but not true. Still, it did make sense for her to do the interrogating. But she wasn’t used to doing things she wasn’t good at.
Colin crossed the giant space and led them into a long, broad corridor. Though there was no door, the walls must have been insulated because the noise level dropped by several decibels. He was checking rooms to his left and right and finally entered a room to the right. If she’d thought about it, Emma would have imagined separate rooms at a sexy club to be remakes of Victorian bordellos, but this was modern, elegantly furnished without the beach motif, a perfect place to have a conversation. In fact, there were several couples in little seating pods scattered around the room. The music that had been deafening out in the main part of the club was pleasantly muted in here, a lively background noise.
Colin walked across the large room to the back wall, to a seating arrangement that could fit six people. A small white leather couch for two, four white leather armchairs, a round transparent plexiglass table in the middle.
Instead of sitting, Colin downed the last of his drink, set the glass on the table and walked to a brass and glass bar set against the wall. He got another glass, poured himself another Negroni, placed his bracelet against a reader and held it until it beeped.
Raul looked at her. “Something to drink?”
Colin was so hostile, maybe it would help if they all had a drink in their hand. “Yes, thank you. White wine, please. Preferably Chardonnay, but any decent white wine will do.”
He smiled at her. “You got it.”
She watched him get a glass of white wine for her, a finger of Scotch for himself, and imitated Colin, pressing his bracelet against the reader.
Colin sat in the middle of the small couch, making it clear he didn’t want anyone beside him. Okay. Emma sat in one of the armchairs, Raul sat right next to her. He was quiet, leaving this part to her. The ruse of looking for his brother’s friend was over.
Luckily, Emma wasn’t going to have to lie, she was so bad at it.
Colin gulped down half his Negroni and leaned back, scowling. He was like a Pantone wheel –pupils bright blue, the white of his eyes stoplight red, black and greenish bags under his eyes. Complexion pale gray. Silver silk shirt, lilac tie.
“So.” He was belligerent, looking at them out of half-closed eyes. But Emma suspected it was more because he was drunk than hostile. “The fuck you want? Talk.”
Emma couldfeelRaul bristling beside her and laid a casual hand on his knee.
Down boy. Colin was not only drunk, he was hurting.
Emma leaned forward, trying not to wince at the smell of alcohol rising from Colin like a miasma. “Colin. When was the last time you saw Toby? Do you remember?”
“Do I remember? Do Iremember?”His face tightened. “Yes, I fucking remember. I saw him seven days ago. Last Friday evening. We spent the night at my house. We had agreed to move in together. Otherwise, with my job we weren’t seeing each other enough. It was Toby who suggested that he move in with me. My place is larger, a house on Alamo Square. It was a big step for him, a big step for me. I don’t usually like people in my space, but with Toby – well, it works. Worked. So, we agreed that he’d break his lease, but he’d plan on starting to move in over the weekend. I’d asked for the weekend off.”
“What do you do, Colin?” Raul leaned forward too as he asked.
“I’m an emergency room physician. At St. Francis Memorial. As you can imagine, I work long hours. It cuts into your private life. I was so happy when Toby suggested moving in. It works. We – we work.” His mouth twisted. “No. We worked. Toby changed his mind, clearly. He was going to start boxing things on Saturday and I planned a really nice meal at home to celebrate on Sunday. Catered because I don’t cook but I have good china and silverware. I had two bottles of Veuve Clicquot chilling in the fridge. Candles. He was supposed to be at my house with his suitcases by 7 p.m. Seven came and went, eight, nine. He doesn’t do what I do, I couldn’t imagine an emergency in banking. I started calling at eight but his phone was off. He doesn’t have a landline. My calls became frantic, I called the emergency wards of all the hospitals. Around midnight I started to get a clue. I’d been ghosted. He’d ghosted me.Me!I didn’t call his office on Monday because I didn’t want to embarrass myself. But the fucker never called, didn’t even try to explain himself.”
Colin’s voice broke and he looked sharply away in a vain attempt to hide his emotion. Emma could see he was suffering. “And you haven’t slept since, have you?” she asked softly.
He shook his head jerkily. “Maybe an hour or two, here and there. My work was starting to suffer. Yesterday and today, I took the day off. I’ll get over it. But I thought –” He blinked rapidly. “I thought we really had something, you know? Nowadays it’s really rare when you connect and I thought we had.”
“Colin.” Emma waited a moment for his extreme emotion to pass. She needed to have his full attention. “I don’t think Toby ghosted you. In fact, Toby is missing.”
Colin blinked, face slack in shock. “What?”
She nodded sharply. “Toby is missing. He hasn’t been in to work this week. No one knows where he is. I’ve called him time and time again and get voicemail. We answer our phones, always. We’re in money markets and they move fast and it’s unheard of for a quant like Toby to just ignore his phone for days. I’m really worried. I think –” she glanced at Raul, “we think something might have happened to him. That he is in danger. He was working on something that has enormous implications, that is possibly a huge criminal conspiracy. I don’t have all the details, but I think Toby does. We’re talking a lot of money and Toby knows what it is, but we don’t, not yet.”
Colin was sitting up straighter. “You think he’s in trouble. Over something he found out, doing his job.”
“I do.” Emma nodded. “We do. I’m not entirely certain what it is because Toby put it all together and then disappeared. I don’t have his data. But I think he knows something is going to happen and there are people who stand to make a lot of money who don’t want him talking. Plus — maybe I’m not as close to Toby as you are, but I have been working with him for a while now and I think I know him. Toby does not have a streak of cruelty. He wouldn’t treat you like that. He wouldn’t disappear. He wouldn’t make you worry. He wouldn’t make me worry. If he hasn’t contacted us, I very much fear it’s because he can’t.”
Colin was silent, staring in the distance. Clearly piecing things together in his head. Finally, he nodded. “It seemed really weird to me, too. Not like Toby at all. Have you been to his apartment? Maybe there’d be something there that would tell us where he is.”
Emma glanced at Raul. “We were thinking of going tomorrow morning. See if Raul can break in. Raul is former military.”
Colin shot Raul a penetrating glance, and Raul gave him a blindingly angelical smile. Colin looked down at his empty glass. “Not really necessary,” he said.
“Bad security? Good security?”
