She pulled it out. The WhatsApp number she had called before, the same one Reeve had called the morning he disappeared, was calling her back. Cassidy looked for Bruce, but he had gone inside. She tapped the flashing icon on the phone. “Si?” she answered, holding the phone with a light touch, as if something dangerous might pop out of it.
“Tienes una entrega?” a woman’s voice asked.
Do I have a delivery? Cassidy thought, panicking. “Si,” she said.
“Una hora,” the woman’s voice replied.
Cassidy’s pulse whooshed past her ears as she tried to process what to say. “Where?” she blurted, but the call had ended.
Bruce joined her. “What was that?” he asked.
Cassidy looked at him in anguish. “The number. They called it back.” She brushed back tears. “It’s drugs. He was making a delivery.”
Bruce’s face twisted into a grimace. “You sure? What exactly did they say?”
Cassidy relayed the conversation word for word.
“Shit,” he said. He looked uneasy.
Cassidy stabbed the heels of her hands into her eyes and groaned.
“One hour,” he said. “Here?”
“Maybe.”
“Look, I know you’re committed,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. His face was pinched. “But can I make a recommendation?” His gaze flicked from side to side. “Now would be a good time to quit.”
Slowly, Cassidy realized what was bothering her about Bruce’s look. He was scared.
“I mean, what do you think’s gonna happen? That they’re gonna just tell you, ‘Oh, yeah, that guy? We killed him.’”
Cassidy felt her stomach lurch.
“Sorry,” Bruce said, as if reading her thoughts. “Maybe he’s alive. But he met someone and delivered something. Probably something illegal. The kinds of people he likely dealt with don’t play nice.”
The smell of the diesel fumes from the gas station, coupled with the sour reek from the garbage bin was making her head swim. “Sounds like you know something about it,” Cassidy said, crossing her arms. Sure, this was dangerous stuff, and the phone ringing was like a hand reaching up from the underworld, but she had seen Reeve’s world before, and she had never feared for her own safety the way Bruce seemed to be.
Bruce’s expression didn’t change. “Maybe I do. And maybe I’ll tell you about it someday. But for now, I strongly recommend we skedaddle.”
She looked away. “Did you ask inside?” she asked.
Bruce shook his head. “They don’t remember seeing anyone who fits his description, but he likely didn’t buy gas or go inside. And the gas station was closed when the stabbing occurred. At least that’s what they told me.”
The resignation hit her like a cold splash of water. Cassidy felt her shoulders drop out of her ears. “So it’s over?” she asked.
Bruce gave her steady look.
Cassidy looked around, imagining Reeve in a scuffle, the flash of a knife. Thugs dragging his body to its final resting place, wherever that might be. A lonely patch of desert? A crocodile-infested river? The ocean? Overwhelmed with sadness, a shuddering sob escaped from somewhere deep inside her. She clapped her hand over her mouth, but the tears came anyway.
Bruce stepped close and gathered her in his arms. It was a gentle, kind embrace, and he didn’t say anything, or try to stop her tears. Cassidy closed her eyes and imagined Pete doing the same thing. A wave of ache rattled through her, and she clenched her fists and gritted her teeth until it passed. After a moment, she was able to regain control, and stepped back.
“Where do you want to go?” he said. In the low light, his brown eyes looked pained, and she realized that he too was upset. “The hotel?”
Cassidy followed Bruce to the moped. He started the engine, and she swung her leg over the back and gripped his sides. As they sped away, Cassidy looked back, taking a lasting snapshot of the place where Reeve had likely engaged in a battle for his life—and lost.
As Bruce sped down the main street, snippets of thoughts flipped through her head like movie clips, only jumbled, and some with no significant meaning. Reeve, about age ten, riding a wave into the shore on a boogie board, his grin bright and joyful. Reeve, arriving home from school with one of his sidekicks to smoke pot in his room and listen to Beastie Boys at high decibels. Reeve at Christmas dinner, looking pale and quiet, and the rest of the family agreeing they should forgo alcohol this year. Reeve with wild eyes, showing up at her and Pete’s house, demanding money. Then she pictured him at the beach in San Juan with the girl, his look peaceful, his eyes clear.
What had happened to him? Had he been clean, like he swore to Rebecca? Or had he slipped back into the party life and was making ends meet by delivering drugs to and from Nicaragua?
Would he put Bruce in jeopardy like that?
Cassidy knew that when Reeve was using, his morals vanished. Nothing mattered except the next high. He had hurt so many people while locked in this battle.
But if he was delivering drugs, where did they come from? Cassidy had followed Reeve’s abuse cycle enough times to know how the system worked, and the facts were off. Had he bought drugs in Costa Rica to deliver to someone in San Juan? If so, was he killed before he could make the delivery, and that’s why his apartment was trashed? How did the girl play into the story? Maybe she was simply an innocent bystander who had agreed to have her picture taken and had nothing to do with his disappearance.
Reeve had arrived in San Juan, stayed aboard that afternoon, and come ashore early the next day. He had snapped that picture with the girl, then made a call. Later that same day he didn’t show up to drive the group back to the Trinity. That night he calls her. The next day his phone is found in a dumpster at the scene of a stabbing.
It all seems jumbled, she thought, hugging Bruce’s middle tighter as they
