She tried stopping this line of thinking with Jay’s words: what would you have said to Quinn if this had happened to him?
Quinn, Cassidy thought, squeezing her thighs so tight her fingertips felt like pincers. She realized how desperate she was to talk to him. To someone she trusted. She extended her hand into the empty space in the bed next to her. A fantasy of Quinn arriving at her hotel room, his familiar face settling her emotions instantly. He would take her into his arms—though only briefly, Quinn wasn’t much of a hugger—then sit on the bed. Knowing Quinn, after listening to her story, he would bring out a deck of cards and insist that they play gin.
She thought of Jay and his calm, measured expression, the smile lines around his eyes. His office was painted white, and the colors of his furniture—yellow and tan leather and the green accents from the little plants he grew on a shelf—made it feel open, fresh. While she never looked forward to going there, she began to feel okay about sharing things with him. He had coaxed her memories and pain from the deepest places of her mind and held them carefully, then taken her by the hand and showed her the way out.
Would he answer a phone call at midnight?
Using a breathing exercise he’d taught her and pretending she was in his office, Cassidy finally felt the tug of sleep. She woke from a doze with her phone still in her grip, and checked her call log, thinking that a call about Izzy woke her. Her screen showed a handful of voicemail messages, all from foreign numbers. She began playing them—if only to clear them from her log.
“Good evening, Cassidy, this is Arabella McKee from Crosscut. Please give me a call. We’d like to hear your side of the story.”
“Uh, yeah, Cassidy, this is Carter Tibbins, from NBC. We’re prepared to make you a deal. You sell us exclusive rights to your story and the rest of those people burning up your phone go away. Let me know when you’re ready. Our proposal could buy you an awful lot of seismometers.”
“Ms. Kincaid, this is—” Cassidy deleted that one before he got going. If he didn’t have the wherewithal to call her by her proper title, then he didn’t deserve to have his message heard.
The next voice shocked her. “Cass,” Mark’s rich voice said. “Look, I know you’ve probably got a hundred messages a mile long.” A loud breath buzzed into the phone. “Call me. I wanna find out how you’re doing. You don’t have to tell me the story, okay? Just . . . Jeez, honey, I just . . . did that stuff really happen to you?” Cassidy waited through a long pause. “All right. Call me,” he added, then hung up.
She could feel the emotion building up and blinked at the dark ceiling. Tears leaked down her temples and tickled into her hair.
She pictured Mark’s bushy beard and mustache and the way his eyes always danced. Then the memory of digging through the pile of hardened snow after the avalanche to find Pete followed—her feelings about Mark would always be tied to that day. And the memorial when after, she’d fallen asleep in his arms.
She removed her glasses and wiped her eyes, then returned to the task of clearing her messages. Playing the fifth one, she froze.
“Yo, Cassidy, I found your girl,” a gruff voice said. “Call me.”
Cassidy sat up, her stomach liquifying in the process. She knew that voice—it still made her shiver: gravelly and arrogant all at once. It was the biker at the truck stop in Biggs. After tapping “reply,” she gathered the covers around her lap, suppressing a shiver from the over-cooled air.
The phone clicked. “What, you up late, polishing your telescopes?” the biker’s gritty voice said, confirming her conclusion. “We had a deal. You gave me your number. You’re supposed to answer.”
Cassidy’s hackles went up. “I don’t even know your name,” she said.
“Dutch,” he replied. “Feel better?”
“Where did you see Izzy?” Cassidy said, ignoring his banter.
“Whoa,” he said. “I never said I saw her.”
“God damn it, this isn’t funny!” she cried. “Have you seen the news?”
“Take it easy,” the voice said in a patronizing tone that had the opposite effect of helping her relax. Then, Dutch exhaled a long breath that Cassidy could visualize—his broad chest falling, his shoulders curling in. “It’s not her.”
Cassidy blinked. “What do you mean ‘it’s not her’? How do you know?”
“Because I know, okay?” he barked. Cassidy could hear distant music in the background. Or voices, maybe.
“The place is crawling with cops now, but before . . . I know one of the guys who found that girl.” He paused, and Cassidy heard the swirl of ice in a cup. She imagined herself at home holding a glass of whiskey, the ice hitting her teeth and the burn of the liquid searing her throat.
“It’s not her,” he said again.
Cassidy felt the first tingle of relief. She clung to it, desperate to believe it. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer your call,” she said, feeling foolish for ignoring her phone all evening. First, she’d missed a call from Mark, and now this. “It’s been sort of a crazy day.”
Another shifting of ice cubes. “There’s a café in Klamath Falls. Along the run. Lotta bikers stop there. I asked around. A few guys saw her with a rider named Lars. That’s all I know.”
“What time?”
“These guys don’t exactly wear wrist watches. It’s a breakfast place, so . . .
