Page 65 of Second Chance

Empty.

Daniel would have woken them up when he came home.

Tony finds his phone on the coffee table, his battery at 11 percent.

Daniel still hasn’t read his messages.

With shaking fingers, Tony dials his number. It goes straight to voicemail again.

On the couch, Colette groans and stretches. “What…”

“He’s not home.” Tony’s voice sounds awful. Dry and cracked and terrified. “Colette, he didn’t come home.”

She straightens. “Do we call the police?”

“I’m calling Taylor.”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

Tony shrugs. Some of Daniel’s deep and abiding skepticism toward law enforcement has rubbed off on him during the last year. Detective Taylor’s handling of Mario’s murder put Colette under wrongful arrest and Daniel and Tony in danger. The slow, slow seconds, when the only thing between Daniel and death were Tony’s hands gripping his arms as he dangled over the Hudson River, altered a part of Tony that used to have optimism and faith in community.

The police should have been there earlier. They should have found the solution themselves. It shouldn’t have been him and Daniel.

“She’s still the only person who can actually help,” he says anyway.

“We could call Lily,” Colette suggests.

When she tries, it goes straight to voicemail again.

Out of options, Tony scrolls through his contacts for the personal number he was hoping he would never have to use. It rings and rings and rings, and finally, when he thinks it’s time to give up and try 911, Detective Taylor answers, groggy and annoyed.

“Hi. This is Tony d’Angelo. It’s about Daniel Rosenbaum. He’s missing.” Saying it out loud sends a bolt of fear straight down Tony’s spine.

Tony answers a few questions Taylor asks distractedly—when he last saw Daniel, whether not coming home late is unusual for him, what he was doing when he went missing.

“He texted me around four and said he was in a meeting with counseling, but counseling says he never showed up. Anyonecould have texted from his phone, though.” Tony feels compelled to point it out. Daniel refuses to use a biometric lock on his phone. He says he doesn’t trust them, but his pin is easy.

Not that a biometric lock is safe from criminals. Stacy had Tony press his thumbprint to his phone so she could text Daniel to stop him from looking. She was pointing a gun at him. He had to do it. If someone was pointing a weapon at Daniel, he’d have told them Worf’s birthday.

Don’t spiral, Tony tells himself firmly.It won’t help.

There’s probably a rational explanation: Lily Peterson waylaid Daniel in a crisis; he took her to the hospital; his phone ran out of battery; he doesn’t know anyone’s number by heart except the landline in the New York City apartment he used to share with his grad school roommate, Paul Weintrob.

It will be fine, and Detective Taylor will be pissed at them for wasting her time.

She shows up half an hour later, wearing her dress shirt inside out, badge pinned to it haphazardly.

Colette grabbed her coffee grounds and cooker from downstairs, which is a mercy. Tony has no idea what he would have done with the time if not sit there and drink coffee. Worf reads the nervous energy in the room and hides under the couch, purring incessantly as if it will calm them all down.

“Walk me through it,” the detective demands as she sits on the chair she always uses to interrogate them. “You last saw him yesterday morning.”

“We left here around eight,” Tony confirms. “I went to work in Kingston. Daniel and Colette drove to Lobell.”

Colette nods. “We got there at around twenty past, I believe. I went to my office. Daniel went to a meeting with the president. He texted in the afternoon to say he would drive us home at six.”

“And he texted you as well?”

“Yeah.” Tony thumbs open his phone to show her. “He said he was meeting counseling to talk about the room searches, and he’d be home by six or six thirty.”

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