Kincaid was unable to be reached for this story, but a close family member revealed that Kincaid was in Costa Rica to search for her missing stepbrother, then became tangled in Tomlinson’s web. Without Kincaid’s help, it’s unlikely the truth about Bennington would have surfaced.
So, Mel was going to jail. Cassidy tried to examine her feelings on this but the memory of his brutal hands groping her arm for a vein shoved into her mind instead. Cassidy closed her eyes she felt the prick of the needle followed by the sudden rush of euphoria, as if her brain was a guitar and someone had just strummed the most perfect chord, the sound vibrating the most intense pleasure through every nerve. She had floated away on this cloud, all her worries left behind. The sensation quickly changed, however, and as the high faded, her body craved that violent sweetness again, her mind becoming desperate for another hit, even while it began to shut down. As the overdose took hold, her body felt limp, her skin burned, but she had been powerless to fight it.
And then Bruce had come.
A sense of anger boiled up from the hardened place behind her heart. Who had leaked her involvement? Not Bruce—they had a pact, and she trusted him. Thinking, she wiped the condensation off her beer glass stripe by stripe until the surface was clear. After scrolling back up to the top of the article, she found the name of the reporter: Larry Jeffers from the AP.
In her mind, she ticked through the people who knew about her ordeal besides Bruce: her roommate and closest friend, Emily, her brother Quinn, her stepsister, Rebecca and her stepmom Pamela. Of course, Jay, her grief counselor, knew all about it. She wouldn’t have been able to get through the aftermath without him.
Emily would never sell her story, same with Quinn. Jay and Bruce of course would never reveal her involvement. Rebecca was too busy, which left only one person.
Pamela.
Two
Cassidy felt the fight drain out of her. She took a long sip of her beer and looked out at the beautiful view down the lake valley framed by the textbook-perfect glacial moraines. The low sun’s rays created a mirror of a million lights on the water’s calm surface and warmed the colors of the hillsides from brown to a soft taffy.
Give Pamela a chance to talk about Reeve and she wouldn’t have been able to resist. After Cassidy returned from Costa Rica, Pamela had leaked Cassidy’s name. Now that the media had a new story about Mel’s trial, the press reached out to their old ally. But now the story was bigger, and surely, Cassidy’s phone would blow up all over again.
Because the Boy Scout camp and field area had no internet signal, she had kept her phone in airplane mode. Feeling a sense of dread, she toggled the phone’s settings and watched it search for a signal. Sure enough, her home screen flashed with a series of missed calls and messages, all from numbers she didn’t recognize.
Just as she set the phone down, it chirped, jolting her from an image of having to confront Pamela at their next family gathering. To her relief, it was Quinn, her younger brother and best friend.
“Finally made it back to civilization, huh?” Quinn said, the smile in his voice making the air around her feel lighter.
“Yeah, last night,” she said. “Tomorrow everyone goes home.”
“Don’t suppose you’ve seen the news yet?”
“I just did,” Cassidy replied, taking a sip of her beer.
“You okay?”
Cassidy put down her glass. “After this beer I’ll feel better,” she joked.
“That’s the spirit,” he replied heartily.
“Good to know Bruce is still involved, though,” Quinn added. “You guys still in touch?’
“Yeah,” Cassidy replied simply. Her feelings about Bruce were too jacked up to talk about.
“Looks like it’s up to the prosecutors now,” Quinn said. She heard a loudspeaker in the background.
“Oh hey!” she said, remembering where he was. “You’re on your way to Aspen for the marathon, aren’t you?’
“Yep.”
Cassidy knew how hard he’d trained for this event. “I still think you’re nuts. Twenty-six miles? Almost all of them above eight thousand feet?”
“You should do it with me next year,” he said.
“Right,” Cassidy replied, wishing he was here with her instead.
“Call me during your drive tomorrow, okay?” Quinn said. “I’m going out for an acclimatization run but I’ll be able to talk.”
“Okay,” she replied, accustomed to Quinn’s limited attention.
“Welcome back,” he said before signing off.
Returning to her work, Cassidy dug up several urgent emails from her liaison at the Hawaii Volcano Observatory regarding her upcoming research trip. She jumped in, finalizing her itinerary and double-checking the various permits. Kilauea’s recent eruption, though deadly, provided an incredibly opportunity and Cassidy couldn’t wait to get on the ground. After sending off her last message, Cassidy packed up her laptop and brought her glass back into the darkened bar where the party was indeed in full swing.
Martin stood mingling in the throng of students holding a cocktail glass and Cassidy suffered through a brief craving for a nightcap, a habit she and Jay had worked to break after things went so wrong after Pete’s death. For an instant, she pictured herself slinging her shoulder bag over the back of a chair and cradling a highball of Irish whiskey on ice, the first taste a blend of sharpness and heat while the students crowded around her, eager for a piece of her attention. Cassidy’s other graduate student, Bridget, was seated at the bar in deep conversation while two students hung on her every word. Most likely they were talking about rock climbing, Bridget’s favorite topic.
A handful of students were dancing to a song playing on the jukebox in the far corner of the room while the others mingled close by, their sounds of laughter and hearty conversation rising over the music. Cassidy was surprised to see curvy Alice swing dancing with Franklin, a tall, lanky student, his face in deep concentration as he
