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patient. I turned and nodded again. I was as ready as I’d ever be. He led me to a simple gray room with one desk in the middle; it was sterile, like the hospital had been, but much less bright. I was thankful for that. I didn’t want to feel like I was being interrogated.
    The questions were both simple and complicated: where did you meet Boon, how did you grow close, what did he ever say about his father, what were his friends like, where did they take you in Vegas.
    When asked to describe Tank and the two other men I’d met from the Cold Steel club, I realized that every mistake I’d made was coming back to haunt me. I’d been too drunk and high that night to remember what anyone looked like; if only I’d stayed sober! If only I hadn’t agreed to take that hit! I could tell them exactly who to look for.
    They’d used imaging software to age the sketch they had on file for Tank, made ten years ago when he’d last been in Missoula. But since everyone had been wearing masks, and since changing your appearance was really as easy as shaving, hopes were low that the sketch would yield any results. They’d already sent it out to all the hotels and businesses in the city, but nothing had come back.
    Kevin was patient with me throughout the questioning, giving me plenty of time to think and to, sometimes, cry. I wanted to go faster, to make the whole process quicker so the police could get to my mother quicker, but I realized as I spoke that I wasn’t saying anything helpful. As the questioning drew to a close, Kevin reached into a drawer under the desk we were sitting at and pulled out my phone.
    “ We’ve already dusted this for prints, nothing but yours. We tried calling Boon on it earlier…”
    “ So that’s who was using my phone,” I said, stupidly.
    “ Yes ma’am,” Kevin said. “His phone seems to have been turned off, otherwise we’d be tracking it.”
    “ I thought you could track phones as long as the battery was still in them?”
    “ It depends on the phone. Regardless, we can’t track him,” Kevin said, frustration behind his words. Good, I thought, surprising myself. I was disappointed, heartbroken, by the way Boon had abandoned me, but I still cared about him enough to not want anything to happen to him.
    “ Well, he wouldn’t take you anywhere useful, anyway,” I said, not wanting to tell Kevin that Boon was on his way to Mexico.
    “ Maybe you could leave a message, Samantha. We talked to the DA. They’re willing to drop charges if he helps us,” Kevin said, leaning forward. I could tell he’d been waiting a while to tell me this, that he was excited by the possibility. I shook my head.
    “ He said he wouldn’t sell his dad out,” I said, my heart falling with each word as they reminded me of the way Boon and I had parted: bitterly, with regrets.
    “ Just try,” Kevin said, pushing the phone across the table towards me. I sighed and picked it up; it was dead. For some reason, I thought that was hilarious: some police department, can’t even charge a phone.
    “ It’s dead,” I said, pushing it back. Kevin looked down in surprise, then groaned.
    “ Christ,” he said, shoving his chair back and storming out of the room, shouting out into the hallway: “who the fuck let the phone die?”
    After a few minutes, Kevin reappeared with a charger. Plugging it into the wall and connecting it to the phone, he handed it back to me. I powered it on, waiting for the familiar chime that meant the phone was ready to use.
    Before I could even pull up my phonebook, I heard the chiming of my text message alarm. The first three texts were from Becky and Alicia, from before they’d picked me up. The last text, though, nearly made me drop the phone onto the table.
    I was wrong. I was so wrong. Forgive me. I’m going to make this right, no matter what it takes.
    It was from Boon, of course. I looked at the time stamp. He’d sent it at 10, and it was just around 11. I looked up at Kevin, eyes