She sat down on the couch, pulling Ty beside her. What a day. Her head was already pounding, and to say she was on edge would be an understatement. Every time she turned around, she expected to see someone there, an unknown face full of vengeance, ready to kill her.
“I tried to do some research on Greg Marks earlier,” Cassidy started. “But there’s nothing on him. In fact, that’s probably not his real name. Ryan claims he works with law enforcement in some capacity, but without calling my contacts, I can’t confirm that.”
“Should we ask Mac to report him?”
Cassidy shook her head. “I thought about that. But it will send the feds here. It will only bring more attention to Lantern Beach and . . .”
“To you,” Ty finished.
“That’s right. I feel like my hands are tied.”
“We’ll think of something.”
Cassidy reached for Lucy’s calendar, which was always a source of comfort. It sat on the end table beside her couch. But Cassidy froze when she looked down at it.
“What is it?” Ty asked.
She stared at the magazines on her end table. They were mostly tourist booklets that the cottage owner had left, each filled with coupons and advertisements cleverly disguised as articles.
“The stack seems different,” she said. “It’s . . . straight.”
“Aren’t they always straight?”
Cassidy didn’t quite know how to word it. “Well, yes. But not this straight. I know that sounds weird. Maybe it’s just the stress of the day getting to me.”
“If someone broke in just to straighten up your magazines, then they’ve got an interesting hobby going on.”
Cassidy stood, her instincts blazing. “I just want to look around one more time.”
Ty followed her lead. “I’ll go with you.”
She pulled out her gun, just in case. And then Cassidy wandered through her house again. Had someone been in here? Or was she just paranoid? It was hard to tell, and her emotions didn’t make it any easier.
She checked each of the rooms before ending in the kitchen. She checked the cabinets and the silverware drawer. Nothing. Finally she opened the drawer below the phone—where she kept her stash of guns in a false bottom.
The papers inside—a phone book, some menus from local restaurants, a notebook containing a list of groceries she needed to buy—were all straightened and looked immaculately organized. But her guns were still there.
Had Cassidy done this? Had she gone looking for something and absent-mindedly straightened the contents of the drawer?
It was the only thing that made sense.
Yet it didn’t.
“Well?” Ty stopped behind her.
“Maybe everything is getting to me.” She pressed her hands against the counter. She wanted to believe her words were true. She really did.
“Maybe. But you have good instincts. One thing I learned in the battlefield was to never ignore those reflexes.”
She nibbled on her lip a moment, needing to think this through a little more. “Why would someone come in to my house and straighten papers?”
“Maybe they were looking for something and tried to tidy up so you couldn’t tell.”
Her blood felt even colder. Ty could be right.
Cassidy’s phone rang and snapped her from her thoughts. And that ring indicated it wasn’t her regular phone. No, it was her secret phone. The one that usually only Samuel called on.
She fished it from her purse and sucked in a deep breath.
Was she reading the number correctly?
“Who is it?” Ty asked.
Cassidy glanced up and met his gaze, her heart thumping into her rib cage. “It’s Lucy’s mom.”
Cassidy hadn’t expected this. Hadn’t expected that a plan she’d set in motion three days ago might actually work.
What she’d done had been risky—maybe too risky.
But the payoff had seemed worth it, and she’d been desperate. Maybe even foolish.
Cassidy put the phone to her ear.
“Hello?” Cassidy’s voice trembled with anticipation.
“Cady?” Mae’s voice stretched across the line, tinged with confusion and curiosity.
Hearing Mae say her real name sucked her back in time to her old life. “It’s me.”
“You’re . . . okay.”
“Yes, I am. For now. You can’t tell anyone about this call.”
“That works . . . because you can’t tell anyone about what I have to tell you, either.”
Cassidy’s pulse spiked. Was this the conversation that she’d been wanting to have for months now? “I can do that.”
Mae let out a soft sigh, like she struggled with the ramifications of this phone call. “I . . . I know I shouldn’t be talking to you. But I have to. I have things to tell you.”
Cassidy clutched the phone tighter and paced toward the window. “What is it, Mae?”
“It’s about that night you asked me about before I hung up on you.” Her voice cracked.
“The one in February? The year Lucy died?” There’d been a page missing from Lucy’s calendar, only Cassidy hadn’t realized it until she’d ordered a replica. She was just following a hunch here—but sometimes hunches could lead to answers.
“That’s right.” Mae let out another sigh. “It was a bad night, Cady. I don’t have much time before Hiroto returns, so I’m going to have to be quick. There was a big fight that evening.”
“Involving Lucy?”
“No, between my husband and me. I was afraid he’d become involved in something less than honorable. He’d been acting strangely, and I demanded answers. I was tired of it—tired of the secrets. He told me to be quiet and just comply, for the sake of everyone involved.”
Lucy had mentioned there were some problems at home. Maybe she hadn’t delved into the full extent of just how bad things were. “I can understand how that may have been difficult, but why would Lucy rip that day out?”
“She was upset, but we begged her not to mention it to anyone. Even to you. I later went into her room and found that page crumbled on the floor. I think she had a harder time that night than she wanted to let on. She feared her father and I would get divorced. She told me she’d never seen her dad so upset. Neither had I, to be honest.” Mae’s voice trailed off with unspoken emotion.
“Do you know what was wrong?” Cassidy turned away, needing for a moment to block out Ty so she could focus on this conversation. Still, Cassidy could sense him close behind her and at the ready if she needed him.
“I think someone was threatening him. Of course, you know what happened three days later.” Mae’s voice cracked. “Lucy died. She was in my room that night. She’d had a nightmare. After she fell back to sleep, I went into the study. I hardly ever did that, but I just needed to clear my head. I fell asleep in a chair there.”
“I see.” Cassidy remembered those details but didn’t rush Mae.
“It was supposed to be me, Cassidy.” A sob escaped, a sob that turned into a wreck of emotions and tears and wailing. “I was supposed to die that night, not Lucy.”
Cassidy waited a few minutes, trying to murmur words of comfort. But were there any in a situation like this?
When Mae’s cries calmed, Cassidy asked, “Are you sure it was supposed to be you?”
“Nearly certain.”
Cassidy squeezed the phone harder. All she could hear was her heart thump, thump, thumping in her chest. “Did you tell the police that?”
“No. I knew how it would look. I mean, I told them how I got up from bed, but not about the fight within the family. I didn’t want to believe that my husband might have had anything to do with our daughter’s death.”
“But now you do? What changed your mind?”
Silence stretched, and Cassidy feared Mae might hang up. She stared out the window, waiting and praying this wasn’t the end of the conversation. She still needed more information.
“He has secret meetings. Men stop
by the house when Hiroto thinks I’m sleeping, but my husband refuses to talk about it. He just says he’s doing what he has to do, and unless I want to cause more trouble, I should mind my own business.”
That didn’t sound good—at all. Cassidy remembered Hiroto as being such a gentle, quiet man. “What do you think is going on? Certainly you have a theory.”
All these years should have given Mae plenty of time to think about it.
“I think someone is holding a gun to him, making him create some kind of drug. I don’t know what kind.”
Cassidy had an idea. Flakka. DH-7’s calling card, of sorts. Flakka was a designer synthetic street drug. It was a psychoactive mix of alpha-PVP, a cathinone, that made people act crazy—paranoid, delusional, agitated. Basically, they went crazy after taking it.
Cassidy had wanted answers. But part of her hadn’t wanted this. She’d hoped Mae was wrong—dead wrong.
“I need to go,” Mae said. “He’s home. I’m trusting you with this information, Cady.”
“I understand. Thank you for calling. I’m . . . praying for you.”
“Don’t stop. We need all the prayers we can get.”
Cassidy hung up and turned to Ty. He stood behind her waiting, curious.
“What was that about?” he asked.
“Our plan worked.”
Chapter Eight
Cassidy and Ty sat at the dining room table, cups of reheated coffee in hand and some caramel corn spilling from a clear bag between them. Cassidy picked up a piece but didn’t eat it. Not yet.
“When you were in Texas, I asked you to buy a track phone for me and to secure it under a Greyhound bus,” Cassidy started.
He nodded. “Yes, you did. And I did. And you said you’d explain it all when I got back.”
“That’s right. I know a method of daisy-chaining the phones, so calls go to one phone and ping off it, while the actual call goes to another phone. It’s confusing, but it works. It’s a way of not being traced.” Cassidy had learned about it in one of her investigations back in Seattle—a mob boss who’d been stealing money had utilized the trick.
“Okay. Go on.”
She put her popcorn down, and her hands circled her coffee mug instead. “Where was that Greyhound bus heading?”
“Florida.” Realization swept over his face. “So that if that phone number does ping, the location would be all over the place.”
“Exactly. I did it because I wanted to contact Lucy’s family. I knew it was a risk. But I couldn’t help but think Lucy’s death was somehow connected with this whole mess. If I could figure that out, then maybe I could figure out what was going on with DH-7.”
“Not sure if that was wise, but I’m following your logic.”
Cassidy had expected he wouldn’t approve. “After you did that—while you were gone—I called Lucy’s father. He owns one of the top pharmaceutical companies in the world. He started as a chemist, and he’s brilliant. I believe that DH-7 is coercing him somehow into developing new versions of flakka.”
“That’s not good. You called him? How did that go?”
“He was shocked to hear from me, to say the least. And then he panicked. He told me he had no idea what I was talking about. He hung up and refused to answer again. So I called Lucy’s mom. She had a lot of the same reaction. But I could tell she knew more.”
“And that was her that just called?”
Cassidy nodded, strains of their conversation replaying in her mind. “That’s right. She pretty much confirmed what I’d begun to suspect. Lucy’s father somehow got involved in the creation of flakka. Because of that, Lucy died. I believe he’s still working with DH-7.”
It sounded surreal to say the words out loud.
“Do you think Lucy’s dad is the puppet master you’ve referred to before?”
“No, I think he’s being blackmailed. Probably with Mae’s life. She was the one who was supposed to die. After Lucy was murdered, Hiroto knew these guys weren’t playing.”
“This is becoming more twisted all the time, Cassidy.” Ty grabbed her hand, squeezing it like he never wanted to let go.
“I know. And now I don’t know what to do with this information. Ordinarily, I’d tell Samuel. But now he might be a bad guy, and Ryan is here claiming I should leave. I don’t know who to go to with that information, who I can trust.”
He leaned back and let out a thoughtful sigh. “There’s no one above Ryan?”
“Ryan did mention that they’d brought someone in to fill Samuel’s position. But I have no connection with this new guy. Besides, Ryan was just elected as prosecuting attorney for the county. The only people above him would be on the federal level. I could go to the FBI, I suppose. But I don’t have all the evidence concerning Lucy’s murder. I just have hearsay and theories and a missing calendar page.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
Cassidy took a sip of her coffee, but it wasn’t as satisfying as she’d hoped. Instead, she let her thoughts turn over and over again.
Ty’s phone rang. He glanced at the number and squinted. “It’s the Lantern Beach PD.”
That was strange. Why were they calling Ty?
He put the phone to his ear and mumbled a few things before hanging up. “It’s my cousin Ralph. Apparently, he decided to come into town to surprise me, but he was in a traffic accident.”
“Is he okay?”
Ty nodded. “Yeah, but ‘Redneck Dream’ didn’t fare as well. He needs someone to pick him up. I’ll see if Austin can do it.”
Cassidy hadn’t met Ralph yet, but he’d named his obnoxious truck a title fitting for the vehicle. “Don’t be silly. You can go pick him up.”
Ty hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Leaving you isn’t a good idea.”
“I’ll have Kujo and my gun,” Cassidy said. “Besides, you’ll be back in the blink of an eye.”
Ty still didn’t look convinced. “Are you sure about this?”
“I am. I’m going to drink my coffee and eat my caramel corn. Caramel corn makes everything better. At least, tonight it will.”
True to her word, Cassidy sat at the table with her coffee and caramel corn. Her gun rested beside her, and Kujo sat at her feet. She passed the time slowly, not really scared but subdued over everything that had happened.
Outside, the wind was stirring up. The storm was getting closer, and darkness had fallen, making the change in atmosphere feel even more charged with danger.
It was going to take a while to comprehend the implications of today’s events and news. Part of her still thought it might be a good idea to run. But who was she running from? Samuel? His henchmen?
She didn’t know.
She popped another piece of caramel corn into her mouth. As she did, she heard something nearby.
Kujo did too—he barked, and his body went rigid, on alert.
Cassidy grabbed her gun, her throat feeling unnecessarily tight.
Had this Greg guy arranged that accident to get Ty out of the house? Was he here now for a moment of reckoning?
Before Cassidy could dive any further into the thought, she heard a cry.
A little kid’s cry.
Her heart lurched at the sound. What was going on?
Footsteps—fast footsteps—raced up her stairs and pattered across her deck. More cries sounded. They were definitely coming from a child.
Throwing aside her promises, Cassidy rushed toward the noise. She threw the door open and froze.
A girl, probably twelve years old, stood there with tears streaming down her face. “Please, help!”
“What’s wrong?” She placed her gun back on the table, trying not to scare the girl.
“My mom went for a swim. But she disappeared in the water. I can’t find her. Please, help!”
Cassidy sucked in a breath. The undertow had been especially brutal lately. She’d seen uncountable rescues in the past couple of weeks. Many tourists didn’t know
any better than to go in the water anyway.
She shoved her phone into the girl’s hand and locked the door behind her. “Call 911. Where’s your mom?”
The girl pointed to the beach in front of Cassidy’s place. “Right out there. You were the closest house. You’ve got to help her. Please.”
“Kujo, stay,” Cassidy ordered. She knew the dog would help comfort the girl.
Wasting no more time, Cassidy darted down her steps, across the dune, and toward the angry ocean.
Could she even save someone from rough surf like this? She didn’t know. But she had to try.
She dove into the waves, immediately feeling the pressure of the water around her. The current tugged at her. Challenged her. Dared her to try and resist.
Cassidy came up for air, treading water. It was so dark out here. The water was so rough.
She swung her head around. She’d gotten farther from shore than she’d thought. The undertow must be pulling her out—and fast.
Where was the girl’s mother?
Cassidy glanced around again. She’d seen a head bobbing out here. Had the woman gone under? If so, where had she gone? How would Cassidy find the girl’s mom?
On second thought, maybe Cassidy shouldn’t have done this. She wasn’t a strong enough swimmer. She glanced at the shore again.
She’d been swept out another several feet.
The current pulled at her. A wave splashed her face, going up her nose, making her cough.
Could she even make the swim back to shore?
Cassidy didn’t know. It was like she’d been pulled by an unseen force—and a relentless one, at that.
Where was the girl? Had she called 911? Because they might need to do two rescues now.
No, Ty always told Cassidy not to panic. Panicking was the worst thing a person could do. She needed to swim horizontal to the current until she got out of it. Then she could swim back to shore.
If she wasn’t too exhausted.
She wouldn’t be. She could do this.
Why did Cassidy always want to be the hero? She should have just called 911 herself. But she’d seen that girl’s face. Seen the panic. She had to help. She’d had no choice.
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