by Amy Waeschle
Cassidy rubbed her dirty hands on her thighs. “I wasn’t sure they’d come.” She caught a whiff of her hair as she tossed it back—it did stink. “And remember Bruce, the FBI agent?”
Quinn nodded, looking confused.
“Well, he sort of helped me find Izzy. But when Saxon’s name popped up, he told me to back off. Apparently, they have an agent undercover trying to bring down some illegal activity, and me stirring things up could jeopardize the case.” Cassidy took a breath. “So I told myself that if I rescued Izzy without involving the police or compromising his mission, that was a fair deal.” She thought again of the media hounding her about Costa Rica. “Plus, after my recent bout with fame, I wanted to protect Izzy from having to be in the spotlight, especially about something so damaging.”
“Her father will certainly appreciate that,” Quinn said gravely.
Cassidy inhaled a long breath. “I suppose. Though I did it for Izzy. She’s a smart kid with her whole future ahead of her. I didn’t want it derailed by something like this.” She lay back on the bed. “She’s not seeing it that way right now though.”
“Think she’s confused?” Quinn said, brushing back his wet bangs.
“Definitely. She’s angry that I stopped her from earning a bunch of money tonight. She’s convinced she’s the only one who can help her mom, who’s sick.”
“That’s a really fucked up way to raise funds. Heck, I could have put her to work at Drift. A good waitress can easily pull in a thousand bucks a weekend in tips,” Quinn said.
Cassidy sighed.
Quinn checked his watch. “Are you going to call her dad? It’s almost two a.m.”
“Yeah,” Cassidy sighed, and rolled off Quinn’s bed.
She shuffled to the balcony, grabbing one of the extra blankets on her way, and draped it over her shoulders as she stepped outside. The air tasted of the ocean she couldn’t see but knew churned only a few blocks away. In the distance she could see the lights from passing ships.
Preston Ford answered on the second ring.
“I’ve located Izzy,” she said.
“Thank heavens,” he replied, his voice boomed. “Where is she?”
Cassidy gave him Quinn’s address. “It’s been a really long day. But if you could be here in the morning, I think that would be helpful.”
“Of course.”
“Mr. Ford?” Cassidy asked. “Are you in touch with Izzy’s mother?”
“No, why?’
Cassidy sighed. “Well, Izzy put herself in a lot of danger tonight to help her.”
Mr. Ford groaned. “Not this,” he said.
A horn blared from the street below, its sound drawn out like a siren as it passed. Cassidy was pulled back to the fire engines arriving at the warehouse. Cassidy had counted two at the back entrance, plus the police car. The front entrance was out of sight, but she could hear the sirens and the yelling from the crews racing to assemble to fight what they must have believed was a massive fire. A part of her felt incredibly guilty for summoning them. The other half was overcome with gratitude—their arrival had saved Izzy. But what about the other girls in that warehouse? Had Saxon and his men taken them away in time? Where were they now?
Cassidy gripped her phone. “I think Izzy is going to need some help,” she said. “And not just to recover from this. I think it . . . goes deeper than that.”
“Thank you for your concern,” Mr. Ford said briskly. “I will be sure to talk with Izzy about it.”
Cassidy felt her power slipping away. “Okay,” she said, feeling helpless. “Thank you.”
“Goodnight, Dr. Kincaid,” Mr. Ford said.
Cassidy called Richard Gorman and left him a brief message, then drifted back inside to the couch. She tried one last time to reach Dutch, but her text went unanswered. In the morning, she would call the hospitals. Quinn would help her retrieve his bike. With this plan blooming in her mind, she pulled the comforter over her body, and fell asleep.
Thirty-Three
Voices in the room startled her awake hours later. Cassidy blinked her eyes open, realizing that she was still wearing only one contact, and the one remaining felt scratchy and thick, making her eye burn. Grimacing, she peeled the dehydrated contact from her eyeball and reached for her backpack where she dug out her glasses.
Across the room, Izzy stood at the door, tugging into a pair of Quinn’s running shoes. Next to her stood Cody.
Cassidy jumped up. She was still dressed in her U.W. Geology t-shirt and shorts. “What’s going on?” she asked.
Izzy turned sharply. “I’m not going anywhere with my dad.”
Cassidy watched Cody’s face, but he wouldn’t look at her. She saw that Izzy had borrowed a pair of shorts from the drawers she kept spare clothes in and still wore the shirt she’d loaned her the night before.
“Come on,” Cody said softly, opening the door.
“But,” Cassidy tried, at once wondering how this could happen, and realizing that she had no way to stop it. “What’s your plan?”
Cody stepped into the hallway, and Izzy looked back wearing her trademark expression of confidence, but this time Cassidy saw the hurt behind it. And then she was gone.
Confused and with an unspecified anger she couldn’t quell, Cassidy went out to the balcony. Dawn was just a hint on the horizon, and the city smells and scents from the bakery at the corner filled her senses. She tried calling Preston Ford, but got no answer. Was Izzy going to Las Vegas? Or back to Eugene? Would she find a way to help her mother? While Cassidy remained convinced that she had made the right call in storming the warehouse, a twinge of guilt slowly grew alongside it. In Izzy’s mind, she had a plan, and Cassidy had taken it away. She must have dozed in the chair because the doorbell buzzing startled her awake some time later.
When she moved back through the apartment, Quinn’s bedroom door stood ajar and his running shoes were missing from the shelf, meaning that even though he had run twenty-six grueling miles barely forty-eight hours ago, he was out running. Feeling filthy and disheveled, she walked on her broken feet to the door and peeked through the peephole. A slender man in a dark blue suit with delicate facial features stood with his hands clasped in front of him, his stark blue eyes calm, as if waiting was no trouble at all.
“Who’s there?” she called out at the door.
“Jeff Jenkins,” the man in the hallway replied. “Preston Ford’s personal assistant.”
Cassidy blinked. “Uh, where’s Mr. Ford?” she asked.
“He was called away to New York this morning. Ms. Izzy will be joining him in L.A. tonight.”
Cassidy placed her forehead on the door, a strange sense of sadness pulling on her heart.
She opened the door to see a trim-figured man in a tailored suit. His bright blue eyes peered at her expectantly.
“I’m sorry,” Cassidy said. “But Izzy’s gone.”
After Mr. Jenkins left, not even bothering to say thank you or inquire as to the circumstances, Cassidy took a long shower, then dressed the wounds on her feet. By the time she stepped into the living room, Quinn had returned.
“Did Izzy leave with her dad?” he asked, making coffee in his kitchen, still wearing his running getup.
“No,” Cassidy said, still feeling strange about seeing Cody in Quinn’s entryway. “She left with a friend.”
Quinn frowned. “Sounds interesting,” he said.
“Fucked up might be a better term for it.” Cassidy remembered Izzy s by the door. “And she stole one of your old pairs of sneakers.”
Quinn shrugged. He set the pot to brewing, then turned to her. “Feel like going surfing? The swell is tiny, so at least I won’t drown.”
“Do we have time?” Cassidy asked, looking at the clock. Her flight to Seattle left in four hours.
“I think so,” Quinn replied.
“Then yes,” Cassidy said, feeling like he’d just thrown her a lifeline.
Fifteen minutes later, she and Quinn descended the stairs clad in
wetsuits and with boards under their arms to the street. They set off towards the beach, a cool breeze pushing at their backs. Being barefoot on the gritty pavement made her careful about where she stepped, and Quinn had to wait for her several times. Quinn wasn’t much of a surfer, but he did it from time to time with Cassidy.
“You know the last time we did this was to spread Reeve’s ashes?” she said.
Quinn frowned. “Glad we’re not spreading anyone’s ashes today.”
Cassidy felt a shudder race through her. She remembered the gun exploding in her hands. Would she have killed to protect Izzy? Herself?
The bigger question, one that hovered just below the surface was: by going into that warehouse, who was she really trying to save?
“Think she’ll be okay?” Quinn asked while they waited for the light on the corner to change.
Cassidy tried to close the door on her emotions. “Physically, yes,” she replied, remembering the red marks on Izzy’s flesh and the tight bonds lashed to her wrist. Is that what the men were paying for? To inflict pain? Cassidy shuddered. “Emotionally, no,” she added as the light turned and they crossed.
Ahead of them, a man dressed in a black wetsuit exited one of the houses, a surfboard tucked under his arm. The wetsuit was peeled down to his waist revealing the man’s muscular chest swirled with dark hair. He nodded at them, then trotted off towards the beach.
They walked on, and Quinn filled in the silence with descriptions of his race and the celebration afterwards. “I got tenth in my age group,” he added, his eyes sparkling. “Not bad for someone coming from sea level.”
“Oh right,” Cassidy said. “Your race! Not bad for someone who should be in liver failure,” she added, poking him playfully.
Quinn laughed, and the two crossed the final street then climbed the slight rise through deep sand to the top of the dune. Before them, the wide, indigo-blue ocean extended to the horizon. Cassidy felt the breeze cool the back of her wet head and brush past her thighs. Cassidy picked her way down the sand dune and through the ice plant and across the broad shore. Beyond the shore, waves broke in steep, short bursts. Several surfers took turns at the break directly out front. Cassidy saw the surfer who had hurried past them standing at the shoreline, zipping into the top half of his wetsuit before plunging into the water. She watched him paddle swiftly for the outside, ducking beneath the first row of whitewater.
“And word from Bruce?” Quinn asked, squinting at her as they regrouped at the water’s edge to attach leashes. Cassidy quickly braided her hair and secured it with an elastic from her wrist.
“Just that text,” she replied, referring to the message on her phone that had come in at five a.m. Are you okay? And she had replied. Yes. We both are.
Had defying his request destroyed their friendship? Was his agent safe? How much longer would they need to build a case before they could bust Saxon and his gang? She thought of the girl in that room, waiting for her nightmare to end. Maybe she got away, Cassidy thought with little conviction.
Quinn followed her into the cold Pacific. “You still think about Reeve?” he asked, his face soft and thoughtful.
“I like that we did that,” he said, and Cassidy knew he was revisiting the memory from earlier that year when the two of them had paddled outside the breakers—much bigger that day—to say goodbye.
“Me too,” she replied.
“Are you going to answer any one of those reporters about Costa Rica?”
Cassidy shook her head. “Mark called, not for the story, just to check in. I might talk to him.” Truthfully, she knew the reason she hadn’t called Mark back—just the thought of hearing his compassionate voice brought back that awful night when she’d clung to him, her body telling her one thing while her mind told her something else. She thought again of Jay’s warning: you calling me tonight makes me think that you should consider . . .
Cassidy closed down Jay’s voice and pushed onto her surfboard to paddle to the outside. Her arms felt stiff in the wetsuit, but quickly warmed. Quinn huffed next to her, and she glanced his way, feeling a flood of affection for the one person who truly got her, who would always be here for her. She ducked under an incoming wave, feeling the cold ocean wash over her, tugging her hair back from her upturned face as she resurfaced.
By the time they returned, Cassidy had still not heard back from Dutch.
“Why won’t he answer my texts?” Cassidy asked while Quinn buzzed around the kitchen making breakfast. An iPad propped up on the counter was broadcasting a special report about Kilauea and the screen showed red lava spurting into the sky.
“Maybe he’s too sick. If he had a collapsed lung, that’s pretty serious.”
“I just wish I knew what hospital he went to,” Cassidy said. “I want to know that he’s okay.”
“You’ll still be able to go pick up his motorcycle, right?” she asked. “I don’t want it to get towed away before we can get it back to him.” I also owe him a gun, Cassidy realized, the thought coming out of nowhere.
“Yeah, I can get a buddy to take me out there this afternoon.”
“Cool, thanks,” Cassidy said, a strange unease filling her thoughts. What if Dutch wasn’t okay?
The mechanic from Redding had called, confirming her worst fears about her car. Abandoning the vehicle that held some of her most precious memories of Pete filled her stomach with an empty ache. She would have to solve that problem after her Hawaii trip. At the very minimum, she wanted the opportunity to collect the bits and pieces from the glovebox and console plus the field equipment she always carried in the trunk, and sit in the driver’s seat one last time.
Quinn delivered a giant plate of fluffy scrambled eggs and toast then sat next to her with his own plate.
“I mean, I get it that this sucks for residents,” he said, sipping from a second cup of coffee while his eyes fixed onto the news story on Kilauea, now showing red ropes of lava flowing over an abandoned stretch of blacktop. “But it’s pretty rad to see Mother Nature do shit like this.”
Cassidy grinned. “Welcome to my world,” she replied, forking a bite of hot eggs into her mouth as the story switched to an aerial view of a doomed neighborhood, lava closing in from one side. The broadcast ended and the news show returned to the two reporters at their desk.
“Will you get to fly around in helicopters while you’re there?” Quinn asked, biting into his toast.
“Doubtful,” Cassidy said. “The USGS gets to do all that sexy stuff. I’ll be placing seismic stations in areas outside the hot zone.” Cassidy picked up her coffee and blew across the top as the image on the screen changed again to show a clogged section of freeway from above.
“A section of Highway 101 near Crescent City was closed last night for several hours while authorities investigated a fatal motorcycle accident,” the anchorwoman said.
Cassidy heard her breath catch.
Quinn finished his breakfast and carried his plate to the sink.
Cassidy relived the challenge of driving Dutch’s powerful bike to the warehouse. So many emotions had flowed through her then—desperation, fear—but most of all, she had thought of Pete cresting that hill in the dark, driving too fast, and the skid marks. Had he been avoiding something, and lost control?
The picture of a young man flashed up on the screen. “No!” Cassidy shouted, jumping to her feet, spilling her coffee across her breakfast.
“What’s wrong?” Quinn asked, attacking her spilled coffee with a paper towel and hurrying around the counter to view the screen.
“I know him,” she stammered, her eyes glued to the image of a face she recognized. “From the rally. He gave Izzy a ride, I just talked to him, like . . . yesterday!” Her stomach flipped inside out. Had Lars really been alive just a day ago?
Cassidy gripped the edge of the counter as the rest of the broadcast filled her ears. “ . . . high speeds and lost control . . . still investigating . . . ”
Quinn was watching her shrewdly, hands on his
hips.
“How could this . . . ” she began but stopped. A new picture had just flashed on the screen, this one showing the crash scene, including two ambulances, a fire truck, and a deputy waving cars through the one open lane. The camera angle swiveled and Cassidy felt her lungs spasm shut.
“Cass?” he asked, his eyes wide with fear. “What’s wrong?”
She pointed at the screen, where two sets of skid marks intersected. “It’s the same,” she said, her voice sounding far away.
“What’s the same?” he asked.
But Cassidy was miles away, back in Saxon’s office. “It’s my fault,” she said, her voice ringing high. “I told him Lars had tipped me off.” What had he said to her in the warehouse? This isn’t over. She began to shake.
“You’re freaking me out, Cass,” her brother said. “What the hell is going on?”
“Pete,” she gasped as everything cascaded into her thoughts at once. “His crash . . . and this,” she said. “They’re the same.”
Slowly, Quinn turned back to the screen, and in his eyes, Cassidy saw the same pieces fall into place. “Dear God,” he said.
Cassidy began to tremble. “Pete’s been murdered.”
THE END
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Other books by Amy Waeschle
Cassidy Kincaid Series:
Rescuing Reeve
Meet Me on the Mountain
Finding Izzy Ford
Standalone Novels:
Going Over the Falls
Feeding the Fire
Memoir:
Chasing Waves, a Surfer’s Tale of Obsessive Wandering
Short Stories:
Swimming Lessons
The Call of the Canyon Wren
Father of the Bride
