I get a strange feeling about the fact the husband was already worried at 6:15 AM and the way it was escalated to "panic" by 6:45..... like maybe he knew there was a potentially dangerous situation that Alan was in / something was going to happen while at the gym.
Or maybe, rather than believing that there was some specific reason for Alan to be in danger, it was merely a matter of Alan having ALWAYS arrived at home by 6:00 AM or that he had ALWAYS arrived at home by whatever time he advised he would be home by. And, maybe, if had ever been delayed due to something unexpected that came up at the last minute such as a traffic jam, he had ALWAYS called or texted to let his husband/others know about it.
If that had been a long-standing pattern and, one morning, out of the blue that pattern had suddenly changed, it would be something very much out of character. And any time somebody behaves in a way that is extremely out of character, it is entirely normal and reasonable for their loved-ones to become concerned.
My guess is, based on Alan's past behavior, by the time he had still not shown up at 6:45, especially given he had to be on a 7:00 AM meeting, Rusty concluded, not unreasonably in my view, that Alan not having called or texted him and his not returning Rusty's calls and texts meant that, for some reason, Alan was in a situation where he was not
able to place or return calls and texts. And I think it would entirely reasonable for him to panic at that point. That doesn't, in my mind suggests that he "kept tabs" on Alan or was somehow a controlling husband. It simply meant that he was concerned about Alan and was worried about his safety.
And maybe I am about to cross into mind-reading here - but Rusty describing the progression of his concern in 15 minute increments also makes a lot of sense to me. If you have ever been worried about a loved one, by the very nature of worry one's mind tends to immediately jump to worst-case scenarios well before one has any real evidence that such is the case. One way of dealing with such worry is to tell oneself: "Maybe there is a non-horrible reason, factor or circumstance I haven't taken into consideration - it is way too soon for me to assume the worst. I will give it X number of minutes/hours and only then I will allow myself to ramp up my worry to the next level." And given that traffic is not horrible at that time of day and Alan had plenty of optional routes he could have taken and the fact that Alan was planning to be on a meeting at 7:00, putting off the escalation of one's worry in 15 minute increments seems perfectly reasonable.
Ultimately, Rusty's initial gut feeling that something awful had happened, unfortunately, turned out to be correct. I am quite sure he would have loved nothing more than to have been proven to be a paranoid alarmist about this particular matter. In retrospect, Rusty didn't call the police too late. If he had called much sooner (and if the police would have even been allowed by their policies to take it seriously given their lack of the same level of knowledge about Alan that Rusty had) perhaps an APB on any matching Porsches seen on North Texas area roads might have made a difference.
