Cassidy didn’t reply because she knew she would only let him down with her answer. The thought of having to go through all those painful moments with someone new was too much. With Jay, she had walked many hurtful roads, crying so hard that she couldn’t stop, hurting so bad that she felt wrecked for days. The only thing that helped was exercise—mostly running, these days, though surfing would be her first choice—and working, though she had come to realize that work was just a diversion.
Tears tickled down her hot cheeks. “I can’t, Jay,” she said but it came out like a plea.
“You can always call me,” he said.
Cassidy held herself and sobbed quietly. Jay had told her he could still see her, either by video or voice call but the idea that she would need him so much that she had to hop on a Skype call once a week in Seattle was too much. And she hadn’t felt like she needed it when she left Eugene. She thought she was better.
But she wasn’t. I’m fucked up and it’s never going to get better, she thought. Tonight is proof of that. She knew saying this out loud to Jay would worry him, and he would try to tell her about the progress she’d made, but none of that counted if these things could still happen to her.
“Can you move to a place of safety where you can rest?” Jay asked.
Cassidy thought of Quinn’s apartment. “Yeah,” she replied.
“Okay,” Jay said in a voice tinged with relief. “Goodnight, Cassidy,” he said.
Cassidy nodded, though she knew Jay was hundreds of miles away, and slowly lowered the phone.
Standing under the trees, her lips feeling numb, she took a moment to collect her thoughts. Car whizzed by on the busy street a half a block away and the bright streetlights illuminated the silent parked cars along the road, the strip of dry grass along the sidewalk. Breathe, she told herself as the heavy weight of fatigue fell upon her like a lead blanket.
Walking back towards the corner, thinking she would find a more prominent intersection to call a ride, memories from the last few days flipped through her mind like a slide show, as if taking advantage of the emptiness there. She remembered the details from Cody, and the fight with William, the conversation with Preston Ford. Then there was Saxon, a person under suspicion for illegal forms of prostitution. Had he simply given Izzy a ride to the apartment she’d visited? Or had that been some ruse to steer her off the trail?
It didn’t matter now because she had failed. She was broken, beaten, with nowhere else to go, nowhere else to look.
I’m sorry, Izzy, Cassidy thought as the tears began to flow again.
Twenty-Four
Cassidy waited to cross, realizing that in her panic, she had fled past the university to Turk street, the same that paralleled the back of Silver’s on the other side of town. Her mind formed a plan: call an Uber, get to Quinn’s, book a flight to Seattle for tomorrow, pack, fly to Hawaii tomorrow night. Step one: get to Quinn’s.
After crossing Turk, she pulled out her phone to call up a ride, and was trying to figure out her location to complete her order when the sound of car wheels squealing caught her attention. She turned to see a shiny, dark car accelerate from beneath a two-story Victorian onto the street. The blonde woman sitting in the back was thrown against the seat by the sudden lurch in movement. Almost instantly, the car turned from view, but something about the flash from the woman’s hair and the brief glimpse of a profile connected several thoughts at once in her brain.
Izzy.
The car accelerated and Cassidy broke into a sprint. “Izzy!” she called. The car continued down the street, paralleling the university. “Izzy!” she cried again, her lungs heaving. She pulled out her phone and dialed Bruce’s number, keeping her eyes locked on the dark car.
“It’s her!” she gasped when he answered. “I just saw Izzy!”
“Where?” Bruce said into her ear.
Her feet pounded the pavement. “She’s in a car. She’s being driven somewhere. I know it’s her!”
“Can you see the license plate?” Bruce asked.
Cassidy swerved around a trash bin. “No!” she said, her breathing echoing into the phone. Ahead, the car slowed as it approached a stoplight. She begged her legs to go faster as she strained her eyes to read the symbols on the license plate. “Izzy!” she screamed, desperate for the girl in the backseat to turn around, but the figure sat motionless. The signal changed and the car, a Mercedes, moved to the right lane to turn. Cassidy made out the white plate with blue letters, the blurry “California” written in red cursive across the top. “Eight-T-R-M . . . ” Cassidy paused to squint but the car was moving too fast. It was turning away! “Two-four-four!” she exclaimed as the car’s back end flashed from view and turned down the street.
“Got it,” Bruce muttered.
The numbers rang through Cassidy’s head again as she reached the corner and turned to follow. 8-T-R-M-2-4-4. The car was too far away now but she yelled Izzy’s name one more time, her voice straining so hard that her throat felt scorched.
The car continued gliding away from her, blending in with the other cars.
“Hey!” a woman’s voice yelled down from somewhere above her. “Shut the hell up!”
Cassidy slowed to a stop, gasping for breath. How could she follow them? She glanced up at the street sign to get her bearings: McAllister Street. The car had been heading towards the waterfront. Towards Silver’s. Just then a detail scratched to the surface. The memory played in her mind of a waiter: something about a sharp look. What was it? Cassidy concentrated, tried to filter out everything else. She replayed the memory again, and
