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“Got that covered already.”
“We got any contacts in the Berkeley PD?”
“No, but Trawley will keep an eye on any alerts. We could file a missing person’s report, but we should give it a little more time. The other roommate, a Kat Rosenthal, hasn’t shown up either. Maybe they’re shacked up in a motel together. I’ll check those next.”
After I hang up with Marshall, JD walks back into my room, now half dressed.
“I’ll get my guy, Travis, to help Marshall out,” JD says. “Who knows? He might find her before Marshall does.”
“Thanks,” I reply as I continue to pack.
“Seriously, though, I think you’re overreacting. You don’t want to leave early only to find out Bridget was having a one-night stand with some frat boy because she was upset at seeing your text—”
“My text?”
“I meant the photo of you with Mei Ling.”
“Bridget’s not like that.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do. I trust her more than I’d trust some of our own family members.”
JD seems taken aback. “I didn’t know she had you wrapped around her finger this much.”
I stop and stare at him. What the fuck kind of comment is that?
He backs off a little. “I’ve just never seen you this worked up about a chick before. But I’m gonna help you find Bridget if that makes you feel better. Tell your guy Marshall to call Travis with everything he knows so far.”
I appreciate my cousin’s help and resume packing.
Dinner is difficult. I’m not in the most social mood when half the time I’m thinking about Bridget. Marshall texts that he found nothing at the local hotels, everything from budget motels to The Claremont, and that he’s turning in for the night and will resume his search first thing in the morning.
Around midnight my time, I try calling Bridget again, even though she might be sleeping in since it’s only eight in the morning in California. This time I get voicemail right away. So her phone is either off or dead.
Even though Marshall didn’t get much sleep, I call him next. Good man that he is, he’s already up. I tell him that he can check with her statistics professor, the library where she works, and her internship in Oakland.
“She also has a woman who’s a close family friend,” I say. “Coraline or Coretta.”
It makes sense that if this “aunt” of hers lives nearby that maybe Bridget would be staying with her.
I stay up until two in the morning for an update from Marshall.
“She hasn’t shown up at her apartment or the hospital so far. She didn’t show up for work the morning they found Amy,” Marshall informs me. “But she called them later that day to explain why. I haven’t tracked down her stats professor yet, and she didn’t show for her last day at the internship. They were supposed to go out for drinks. Instead they got an email saying something came up for her and she couldn’t make it.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s what I was told.”
“I’m surprised. She’s usually so conscientious about her obligations.”
“Maybe the trauma hit her hard.”
Remembering what she was like after the shooting, I reply, “Possibly, but she’s pretty damn resilient and level-headed.”
My father once told me, “The people you want to let closest to you, you want to be able to trust in a war where your life is in their hands.”
I actually would pick Bridget to go into war with if I had to. Marshall and Cheryl would be a close second.
