Nathan hires Gillian to find his daughters, turning his inability to locate them into the premise of a new search and the closing bridge to another story. His ex-wife has taken the girls out of the country, and neither Nathan nor his private investigator has been able to find them. The request follows the resolution of Paige’s disappearance, placing a new family separation at the edge of the preceding story’s ending.

Background and the Request

The scene takes place over a meal: Nathan finishes an enchilada, takes a drink of soda, and asks Gillian to take his case. He explains that his ex-wife took their daughters out of the country six months earlier. He has been unable to find them, and his private investigator has failed as well. His question is direct, but the circumstances behind it make clear that this is not a routine assignment: he is a father separated from his children, asking a friend to help where formal private investigation has not succeeded.

The request is framed by Gillian’s demonstrated attentiveness. Nathan first observes that she had made someone realize he was worried without saying so or admitting that she knew. Gillian replies that this was easiest. Immediately afterward, Nathan discloses his own family crisis and asks for help. The transition links her capacity to perceive unspoken feeling with the work he hopes she will do for him, though the scene does not specify how her gift will operate in the search for his daughters.

Investigative Context

Gillian’s work is associated with a broader effort to find missing people, especially children. Lincoln Granger explains to Emma that Gillian works with Jake Donovan, a former police officer turned private investigator, and that they established a foundation for this purpose. Donations from people they have helped provide funds for the organization’s work. The foundation is presented as a resource for people who cannot afford continued private investigation: Emma, unable to pay a previous investigator after Paige disappeared, is told the search is not contingent on her money.

The novel shows this work drawing on different kinds of inquiry rather than a single method. When Gillian investigates Paige’s disappearance, she speaks with Paige’s former associate Craig Jamison and contacts the detective assigned to the case. Although police had examined whether Barrett Henderson’s death and Paige’s disappearance were connected, Gillian senses that the detective is withholding something and associates Paige’s photograph and necklace with San Diego. Jake brings a separate investigative skill set: he checks Paige’s phone records, notes that their use stopped on the day she disappeared, and seeks to interview her friends. These details establish the practical and intuitive approaches available to Gillian’s work, while Nathan’s request itself leaves the procedures of his daughters’ case unstated.

Narrative Significance

Nathan’s appeal comes after the search for Paige has exposed the painful reason she ran away: she had slept with Barrett and could no longer face Emma. The revelation changes the meaning of Paige’s absence from a straightforward missing-person mystery into a story of guilt, betrayal, and exploitation. Nathan’s request then redirects the search motif toward another family: this time, the missing children are his daughters, taken abroad by their mother, and the father asking for help is himself unable to reach them.

The scene functions as a handoff rather than a resolution. It confirms the daughters’ separation and the failure of Nathan’s existing investigator, but does not reveal where they are, why their mother took them, or what Gillian will discover. By ending with Nathan’s plea, the book turns Gillian’s established work with missing children into the starting point for a further narrative, carrying forward the contrast between investigative limits and the possibility of another kind of help.