“Now we’re gettin’ somewhere,” he said with that same lewd grin, tucking the paper into the breast pocket of his leather vest and buttoning it. “This means that if I call, you answer.”
“That’s the whole point,” she said, losing her patience.
“U.W., huh?” he said, sliding on a pair of sunglasses.
Cassidy wrapped her arms around her chest, as if he had seen more than the lettering on her shirt. “Yes.”
“See you around, Cassidy,” he said, then lifted his feet and accelerated.
Back near her car, Cassidy scrolled through her messages in the shadow of the Kwik Mart building. Dr. Gorman had sent her a PDF of Izzy’s latest transactions courtesy of Preston Ford. Cassidy enlarged the image. There were no new charges since the 300 dollars at the ATM, which meant either that Izzy was being careful, or she hadn’t needed more money. Could Cassidy obtain Izzy’s phone records? She remembered using Reeve’s phone to help follow his trail in Nicaragua. That had been a lucky break—Benita had told her that outside of a subpoena, phone records were only released to a parent if they’d cosigned the account. Cassidy made a note to ask Richard if Preston Ford had such access to Izzy’s records.
“I think she went south,” Cassidy said to Martin. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Bend, Mt. Shasta, Sacramento . . . I mean, those sound a lot better than Yakima, don’t you think?”
“Huh,” Martin replied.
“What?” Cassidy said, hearing the hesitation in his voice.
“Well, it’s probably nothing, and I never believed it,” Martin said, his voice turning uneasy.
“I’m grasping at straws here, Martin.” Cassidy said. “Everything’s important.”
“There was a rumor going around that Izzy was sleeping with Charlie.”
Cassidy sucked in a gasp. She pushed off the brick wall. “Was she? Oh my God.”
“I don’t know. Like I said, it was a rumor. You know how Izzy is. She even flirted with me sometimes.”
Cassidy blinked away an image of Izzy jutting her skinny hip at bearded, geeky Martin. “But Charlie is married, has kids.”
“I know,” Martin replied. “Once, when I was roving, helping students, I came across the two of them. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it, I mean, you end up alone with students sometimes, some of them do their mapping solo, right? But the way she was looking at him . . . ” Martin groaned. “I don’t know what it was, but it seemed . . . private somehow.” Cassidy heard a heavy sigh. “I guess I just didn’t want to believe it. I mean, he’s my advisor. But that look . . . I don’t know, Dr. Kincaid.”
“Wait, what does this have to do with Izzy going south?”
Martin didn’t hesitate. “Remember I told you that Charlie is holed up writing his book?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s where he’s working. His family’s cabin is in Bend.”
Cassidy tried Charlie’s number again. Fuck. This was not good. She accelerated onto the 97 South, Bend 130 miles away, remembering how Martin’s voice had become distraught. “How can this happen?” he groaned. “If she’s run off to . . . be with him, how is this my fault?” Cassidy had no answer. “He’s my advisor, for fuck’s sake,” he said. “And he’s going to ruin my career.”
Martin had no address for Charlie’s cabin. Bend wasn’t exactly a small town—and Tucker wasn’t an uncommon last name; there had to be hundreds. “Can you find it for me?” Cassidy had asked Martin. “Quietly?”
“I’ll try,” Martin replied, and hung up.
She had almost called Dr. Gorman to update him on this development, but stopped herself. Something told her that it was better that he be kept in the dark for now. All that mattered was finding Izzy. If she ended up being with Charlie, then Dr. Gorman could take it from there. Cassidy huffed in frustration. Why would Charlie sleep with a student? Sure, Izzy was young and beautiful, with that confident attitude that men probably went nuts for. But he had to know the risks—his job, his marriage . . . his work, even.
His life.
Cassidy didn’t believe it. Nobody could be that stupid. At most, maybe he and Izzy had some kind of . . . connection. Maybe Charlie acted like a mentor to her. Cassidy imagined that Izzy’s dad, someone so big and powerful, might not have much time for his daughter, which left room for a surrogate like Charlie.
Cassidy knew this firsthand—her own father had passed away when she was a teenager. They had been very close, almost like friends, and living the rest of her life without him would never be easy. In college, it came as no surprise that her senior advisor, mineralogist Dr. John Morrow, had played a fatherly role in her life. At his urging, she had applied to graduate school, and had kept tabs on her academic progress, even serving on her thesis committee. He had even played a crucial role during an especially dark time in her life—her breakup with Luke and leaving behind her life as a ski patroller.
Maybe Izzy shared something like that with Charlie, and she had run off to be near him again. But why ditch in the middle of the drive home? Yes, Highway 97 intersected in Biggs Junction, which could have created a kind of opportunity, but why not ride the van home and drive to Bend from Eugene in her own car? Unless . . . Cassidy realized that there had been something urgent about Izzy’s action.
Cassidy put herself in Izzy’s shoes. Field camp was challenging: camping for weeks, hiking long miles every day, dealing with camp chores and eating burned mac ‘n cheese and soggy sandwiches. And then, finally, the trip home. I’m so over riding in this stinking van…time for an adventure.
Was that it? Was Izzy itching for freedom? If so, why choose that moment to pursue it? Why risk her life hitchhiking to Bend? Or could Bend be a stopover to somewhere else?
Whatever her
