The Trespasser

by Tana French

The rumors say I got this gig because O’Kelly needed to tick the token boxes and I tick two for the price of one—and those are the nice rumors. All of them are bullshit. When the gaffer brought me onboard, he was down a D—one of his top guys had just put in his papers early—and I was Missing Persons’ shining star, waving a sheaf of fancy high-profile solves in each hand. I was fresh off a headline-buster where I’d whipped out every kind of detective work in the book, from tracing phone pings and wi-fi logons to coaxing info out of family members and bullying it out of friends, in order to track down a newly dumped dad who had gone on the run with his two little boys, and then I’d spent four hours talking him into coming out of his car with the kids instead of driving the lot of them off a pier. I was hot stuff, back then. Me and the gaffer both had every reason to think this was gonna be great.