Cassidy felt her power slipping away. “Okay,” she said, feeling helpless. “Thank you.”
“Goodnight, Dr. Kincaid,” Mr. Ford said.
Cassidy called Richard Gorman and left him a brief message, then drifted back inside to the couch. She tried one last time to reach Dutch, but her text went unanswered. In the morning, she would call the hospitals. Quinn would help her retrieve his bike. With this plan blooming in her mind, she pulled the comforter over her body, and fell asleep.
Thirty-Three
Voices in the room startled her awake hours later. Cassidy blinked her eyes open, realizing that she was still wearing only one contact, and the one remaining felt scratchy and thick, making her eye burn. Grimacing, she peeled the dehydrated contact from her eyeball and reached for her backpack where she dug out her glasses.
Across the room, Izzy stood at the door, tugging into a pair of Quinn’s running shoes. Next to her stood Cody.
Cassidy jumped up. She was still dressed in her U.W. Geology t-shirt and shorts. “What’s going on?” she asked.
Izzy turned sharply. “I’m not going anywhere with my dad.”
Cassidy watched Cody’s face, but he wouldn’t look at her. She saw that Izzy had borrowed a pair of shorts from the drawers she kept spare clothes in and still wore the shirt she’d loaned her the night before.
“Come on,” Cody said softly, opening the door.
“But,” Cassidy tried, at once wondering how this could happen, and realizing that she had no way to stop it. “What’s your plan?”
Cody stepped into the hallway, and Izzy looked back wearing her trademark expression of confidence, but this time Cassidy saw the hurt behind it. And then she was gone.
Confused and with an unspecified anger she couldn’t quell, Cassidy went out to the balcony. Dawn was just a hint on the horizon, and the city smells and scents from the bakery at the corner filled her senses. She tried calling Preston Ford, but got no answer. Was Izzy going to Las Vegas? Or back to Eugene? Would she find a way to help her mother? While Cassidy remained convinced that she had made the right call in storming the warehouse, a twinge of guilt slowly grew alongside it. In Izzy’s mind, she had a plan, and Cassidy had taken it away. She must have dozed in the chair because the doorbell buzzing startled her awake some time later.
When she moved back through the apartment, Quinn’s bedroom door stood ajar and his running shoes were missing from the shelf, meaning that even though he had run twenty-six grueling miles barely forty-eight hours ago, he was out running. Feeling filthy and disheveled, she walked on her broken feet to the door and peeked through the peephole. A slender man in a dark blue suit with delicate facial features stood with his hands clasped in front of him, his stark blue eyes calm, as if waiting was no trouble at all.
“Who’s there?” she called out at the door.
“Jeff Jenkins,” the man in the hallway replied. “Preston Ford’s personal assistant.”
Cassidy blinked. “Uh, where’s Mr. Ford?” she asked.
“He was called away to New York this morning. Ms. Izzy will be joining him in L.A. tonight.”
Cassidy placed her forehead on the door, a strange sense of sadness pulling on her heart.
She opened the door to see a trim-figured man in a tailored suit. His bright blue eyes peered at her expectantly.
“I’m sorry,” Cassidy said. “But Izzy’s gone.”
After Mr. Jenkins left, not even bothering to say thank you or inquire as to the circumstances, Cassidy took a long shower, then dressed the wounds on her feet. By the time she stepped into the living room, Quinn had returned.
“Did Izzy leave with her dad?” he asked, making coffee in his kitchen, still wearing his running getup.
“No,” Cassidy said, still feeling strange about seeing Cody in Quinn’s entryway. “She left with a friend.”
Quinn frowned. “Sounds interesting,” he said.
“Fucked up might be a better term for it.” Cassidy remembered Izzy s by the door. “And she stole one of your old pairs of sneakers.”
Quinn shrugged. He set the pot to brewing, then turned to her. “Feel like going surfing? The swell is tiny, so at least I won’t drown.”
“Do we have time?” Cassidy asked, looking at the clock. Her flight to Seattle left in four hours.
“I think so,” Quinn replied.
“Then yes,” Cassidy said, feeling like he’d just thrown her a lifeline.
Fifteen minutes later, she and Quinn descended the stairs clad in wetsuits and with boards under their arms to the street. They set off towards the beach, a cool breeze pushing at their backs. Being barefoot on the gritty pavement made her careful about where she stepped, and Quinn had to wait for her several times. Quinn wasn’t much of a surfer, but he did it from time to time with Cassidy.
“You know the last time we did this was to spread Reeve’s ashes?” she said.
Quinn frowned. “Glad we’re not spreading anyone’s ashes today.”
Cassidy felt a shudder race through her. She remembered the gun exploding in her hands. Would she have killed to protect Izzy? Herself?
The bigger question, one that hovered just below the surface was: by going into that warehouse, who was she really trying to save?
“Think she’ll be okay?” Quinn asked while they waited for the light on the corner to change.
Cassidy tried to close the door on her emotions. “Physically, yes,” she replied, remembering the red marks on Izzy’s flesh and the tight bonds lashed to her wrist. Is that what the men were paying for? To inflict pain? Cassidy shuddered. “Emotionally, no,” she added as the light turned and they crossed.
Ahead of them, a man dressed in a black wetsuit exited one of the houses, a surfboard tucked under his arm. The wetsuit was peeled down to his waist revealing the man’s muscular chest swirled with dark hair. He nodded at them, then trotted off towards the beach.
They walked on, and Quinn filled in
