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Birdie’s bright green eyes study my face. The humor leaves her expression, although her voice keeps its reassuring tone. “Maybe he is. People get sick, turn off their phones, and sleep through half the day.”

“Connor doesn’t.”

“Everyone does eventually,” she says.

“He’s never missed work without calling, and he’s never ignored me for this many hours.”

She rests both palms on the table. Blue paint marks one knuckle, and a thin scratch runs along her wrist from her latest project. “Did you try his building?”

“I called the front desk. The evening concierge remembers seeing him leave yesterday morning, but no one noticed whether he came back. His building has a garage, so he could have returned without passing the lobby.”

“There you go.” Birdie nods as though she has placed a reliable fact between us. “He came home, felt terrible, parked downstairs, and went to bed.”

“Then why didn’t he answer when I called last night?” I counter.

“His phone died,” Birdie offers.

“He owns six chargers.”

She pauses before trying again. “The power went out.”

“In one apartment in Seattle?”

“A very selective outage,” she concludes with a straight face.

I try to smile, but my mouth doesn’t cooperate. Birdie sees the failure and comes around the table. At five foot four, she is two inches shorter than I am, but her hugs have the force of a woman who hauls antique dressers through narrow doorways for fun. She wraps one arm around me and rubs her paint-stained hand between my shoulder blades.

“Don’t panic yet,” she murmurs. “Worry if you need to, because telling you not to worry would be insulting, but panic makes every possibility look like the worst one.”

“The worst one is already doing a decent job of presenting itself.”

“Then stop giving it better lighting.” She eases back and keeps her hands on my arms. “Connor is smart, cautious, and irritatingly prepared. He has jumper cables, an emergency blanket, three flashlights, and enough protein bars in his car to survive a minor apocalypse.”

“The chocolate peanut butter ones expired in June,” I remind her.

“That detail is not helping my speech,” Birdie complains.

“He would know they expired if he let me clean his car.”

“You reorganized his glove compartment by category,” she points out.

“There were napkins mixed with insurance documents,” I explain.

“A crime against civilization.” Birdie gives my arms a final squeeze before returning to her side of the table. “My point is that Connor takes care of himself. There are dozens of ordinary explanations.”

I glance at my phone again. “Name one that explains all of it.”

“I already named several,” Birdie reminds me.

“You invented a private power outage.”

“Fine. He met a woman,” she suggests.

I blink at her. “Yesterday morning?”

“She was very persuasive,” Birdie says with a shrug.

“Persuasive enough to make Connor skip work without calling his boss?”