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enough to make sure she was completely finished with one guy before she took up with another, but maybe she was getting less scrupulous about these matters now that we were over thirty. And while I’d thought she had been spending time with Iggie solely for the purposes of her story, perhaps he finally won her over. Stranger things had happened. Hilary had never cared much about money, but a billion dollars could go a long way in making the previously unthinkable thinkable.
    “I know that—it was hard to miss them on the dance floor last night. But I tried her mobile, too, and it went right into voice mail, and you know she never lets anything stop her from taking a call, no matter where she is. And there’s something else. Do you know if she tried to reach you?”
    “I didn’t see any calls or messages from her. Why?”
    “This is what started me worrying in the first place. I have a strange text on my phone. It was sent shortly after midnight from a number I don’t recognize, one with a San Francisco area code.
    I tried to call the number back, but it only rings and rings before going into an automated voice mail.”
    “So?” I still wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about. “It was probably just somebody’s mistake.”
    “I don’t think it was a mistake, Rachel. The message says SOS.”
    “Oh,” I said, the smile fading from my lips.
    There are couples who have signals they use to communicate privately with each other in public venues. Fiddling with an earring could mean “I’m ready to leave” while adjusting a shirt cuff could be a warning to stay away from the salmon puffs. My friends and I developed a similar set of signals when we were in college, but SOS was the one we used most frequently. It was easy to form the letters in sign language with one hand by making a fist for the first S, opening the fist into a circle for the O, and then closing it again for the second S. This could be done discreetly, with your hand at your side or even, with enough practice, while holding a drink.
    I’d found it to be an especially useful tool at social events when cornered by an ex-boyfriend or someone I would never want to be my boyfriend, ex or otherwise. I would give the signal, and soon one of my friends would arrive at my side, claiming an urgent need to speak to me privately. It might not have been terribly mature, but it was effective. Of course, usually Hilary had been the one doing the rescuing rather than requiring rescue; given her lack of adherence to social norms, she’d never had trouble extricating herself from uncomfortable situations without assistance. For her to use this signal at all was remarkable, and in the context of her unexplained absence, it was definitely cause for alarm.
    “Did you check with Jane and Emma?” I asked. “Could one of them have sent it?”
    “It would have been three in the morning on the East Coast, but I checked with them anyhow,”
    said Luisa. “And they didn’t know anything. So it had to be Hilary. Did you get anything similar?”
    “Let me take a closer look at my messages,” I told Luisa. I put the call on hold and started scrolling through the log again.
    “What’s wrong?” Peter asked. He’d ended his own call with Abigail and had picked up on my change in tone.
    “I’m not sure yet,” I told him, studying the BlackBerry screen. There were the several missed calls from Luisa beginning around nine-thirty. Under those, with a time stamp of twelve-nineteen, was a text message from an unfamiliar number with a San Francisco area code. I clicked it open.
    “SO” it read.
    That was it. Just the S and the O. As if its sender had been interrupted before she’d had a chance to finish what she wanted to say.
    And when Hilary had something to say, she didn’t leave it unsaid. At least, not by choice.
    I flipped back to Luisa. “We’ll be right there,” I told her.

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    On the one hand, there had been some talk about mountain biking, so I was