“I feel ya, Dr. Kincaid,” Alice said. “Something about this is seriously fucked up.”
Cassidy began to pace alongside her car. “I need to call the resort,” she said. “And then I need to call Cody and William again,” she added.
After locating a convenience store, Cassidy bought a six pack of a local microbrew and drove to the empty library parking lot, finding a corner with some shade. She cracked the lid off of the first bottle and sat back, savoring the cold. Her stomach rumbled, but before she hunted down dinner, she had to make sure the woman in the video was Izzy.
She dug out her headphones, plugged them in, then tapped the link Franklin had sent her. It opened to a black screen that showed thumbnails of images with disgusting titles like “She likes it rough.”
Cassidy closed her eyes, her finger hovering on the play button. I really, really don’t want to do this.
The top thumbnail image showed a female and two males from the chest up. The female was sandwiched between the males, their shirts off. The image was dark, making the female’s skin glow. She was wearing a pair of lacy underwear and a strapless bra. Bracing herself, Cassidy completed her payment info to enter the site—wondering if in doing so, she would spend the rest of her life getting spam from sites like this. Uck, she thought, her stomach churning.
The video started with kissing and undressing, but still didn’t show the actors’ faces. Cassidy recognized Cody’s tribal tattoo on the arm of one of the males when he tucked his hand into the woman’s panties. The other male lowered his mouth to the woman’s breasts, showing the side of his face: William. Then, the three moved to the bed and the camera view changed. Izzy’s face flashed into focus. Cassidy stopped the video and put her phone face down on the seat next to her. Her hands shook as she sipped from the beer, which tasted funny—too bitter, too warm all of a sudden. She put the beer in her console. Then, she got out of the car and threw up into the weeds.
After, still shaking, she started walking, not sure of a destination, only that she needed to move. The images from the video tumbled through her mind. She heard Cody’s confident voice speaking to Izzy in a way that disturbed her—aggressive, dominant. Though Izzy seemed not to mind, the emotion that rose to the surface after she’d walked for some time was sadness. Why did Izzy feel the need to participate in behavior like this?
Then, Cassidy zoomed out. Was she being judgmental? Maybe this was fun for them. Or they were acting. Who am I to criticize? she thought. As far as she could tell, everything looked consensual. In fact, if the sounds Izzy was making were any indication, Izzy was enjoying herself.
But why?
Seeing something so . . . taboo, dark . . . was it really all fun and games?
She thought back to what Charlie had shared about Izzy’s freshman year. After someone hurts you like that, you’re never the same, she thought, as wounds from her past came out of their hiding place. After college, she had followed her boyfriend Luke into a life as a ski patroller, a life that slowly imploded around her when Luke became more and more aggressive and controlling, and then he blatantly slept with their boss. One of Cassidy’s coworkers had been kind enough to tell her but not before the whole squad knew.
Had Izzy become involved with Cody and William looking for a casual night of fun, or was it part of a pattern driven by the trauma of her past?
Cassidy understood what it was like to want to be loved, to want to fill a hole with the attention from someone new. And the attention from two young men . . . well, that might have been too hard to resist.
Was Izzy looking for love, or some form of it, with William and Cody? Then in Biggs Junction, had something happened between the three of them? Something that made Izzy run?
Those fuckers, Alice had said. Could they have made the video without Izzy knowing, and then Izzy found out during the drive?
Cassidy put herself in Izzy’s shoes—I find out that Cody betrays me, so I hitch a ride to Bend and spend the night with my favorite professor.
She let this sit for a moment, realizing that it was possible.
Why then, after seeing Charlie, didn’t Izzy return to Eugene? She should have had enough money to get home. So why hadn’t she turned up there?
Izzy had left Charlie’s sometime in the early morning hours, at least twelve hours ago, maybe as many as fifteen hours. Cassidy used the search engine on her phone to look up bus routes and times. She found a 7:30 a.m. bus and a 1:00 p.m. bus, the ticket costing thirty to seventy dollars. Even if Izzy had taken the later bus, which was more direct, she would have arrived home several hours ago.
Where else would Izzy go besides back to Eugene? Her father lived in L.A. but Cassidy didn’t think that was her target. Cassidy wondered if seeing Charlie had been the destination or a stopover to somewhere else—like to see Dominique.
Keep checking Izzy’s apartment, she texted Alice, and got a “thumbs up” reply almost immediately.
Cassidy closed the browser window displaying the video, but not before the image of the three of them burned a memory into her brain. Then, she dialed Cody’s number. Those assholes, Alice had said.
Thirteen
With night approaching, Cassidy wondered where she would sleep. The department will pay for your expenses, Richard had said. She felt as if she’d milked all she could from Bend, Oregon. Izzy’s trail had turned cold. William and Cody were her only leads, though the idea of confronting them about the video made her wrung-out stomach feel sour.
No matter how hard she
