“Ugh!” Cassidy said, outraged.
“Yeah.”
They continued walking. “Remember when we were in Sicily?” Pete asked. “And we stumbled on those girls standing on the side of the road?”
“I don’t think I’ll ever forget them.” Cassidy remembered the encounter with a shiver. She also remembered waking to Pete’s absence that night. “You’re not saying that those girls end up in San Francisco, are you?”
“No,” Pete said, shaking his head. “It’s just . . . I’ve never been able to let it go.”
Cassidy sighed. “So what is this guy thinking? Is he going to try to bring down the staff?”
“Apparently they’re tied to someone really powerful, and drug smuggling is somehow mixed in, too.” He kicked a pebble with his toe.
They waited at a corner before crossing. “Why can’t the cops handle this? It sounds big.”
Pete shook his head. “I think they’re overwhelmed.” He sighed. “Like I said, he was pretty drunk and I just let him talk. I didn’t want to spook him with a lot of questions. He’s going to call me on Saturday.”
They cut diagonally across the baseball outfield, the dry weeds snapping against their bare toes. “I’ve been doing some research, though. Apparently San Francisco is one of the biggest sex trafficking hubs in the country,” Pete said.
A shiver went down Cassidy’s spine.
“The whole thing is pretty thin,” Pete said with a resigned sigh. “But maybe Brad can tell me more when we talk.” They reached the row of blackberry bushes, the purple-black fruit bursting from the vines. “It’s just, well, the book is almost wrapped up, and so I’m starting to think about what I want to do next.” He plucked a fat berry and inspected it carefully, then popped it into his mouth.
Cassidy tasted a berry and the sweet explosion of flavor filled her mouth.
“It would be pretty amazing to bust an illegal sex trafficking ring, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” Cassidy said, “as long as you’re not trying to take down the whole city singlehandedly.”
“Of course not,” he replied. “I’m assuming there’d be a team of us working together.”
She tasted another ripe berry, then found another and put it into Pete’s mouth.
“Mm,” he said, then his eyes quickly shifted to that faraway look again. “It would be really cool to do that. It would mean a lot to me.”
They picked in silence for a while.
“I go back to San Francisco in October to work out all the marketing stuff for the book,” Pete said, brightening. “Why don’t you come? We could hang out with Quinn together. I know you’ve been wanting to visit him.”
“I wish,” Cassidy replied with a sigh. She didn’t need to explain that her postdoc was like a marathon and every minute counted. Unless she offered a very good reason, traveling to San Francisco would draw the kind of attention she wanted to avoid.
“Even if it’s just for a few days? That’s not a big deal, is it?” he said with a grin. He popped a berry into her mouth.
“We’ll see. I’m going back to Arenal in December, then it looks like I’ll be doing a joint project in Hawaii.” She grinned. “You should come with me on that one. You can write a story on how much red tape we have to deal with to do work inside a national park. It’s actually a huge issue,” she went on, warming to the idea. “There’s mounting evidence of Kilauea’s activity increasing, and everyone wants to know when it’s gonna blow and for how long, and what areas are going to be affected, yet the Park Service won’t let anyone build any sensors! It’s ridiculous!”
He raised his eyebrows. “I like the way you think, Kincaid. You may just have an angle there.”
That night, they took a bath together, a habit established at Casa de Rocas that almost always ended with a lot of water on the floor.
Cassidy stepped into the hot water and lay back against Pete’s chest.
“What would we have done if I hadn’t found a house with a tub?” she asked, pulling Pete’s arms around her middle.
“We would have improvised,” he said.
“Like a water trough in the backyard?” she asked, laughing.
“Hey, it worked for me as a kid.”
“Ahh,” she said. The hot water soothed her aching muscles. Her heels and shoulders felt bruised, and she was relieved that she wouldn’t need to wear shoes or carry a pack for a while.
He washed her hair, his fingers gently massaging her scalp. She closed her eyes and savored the care in his touch. After a week of gritty fieldwork and lukewarm showers with minimal water pressure, she knew it would take days to feel completely clean again.
“What’s on the agenda for tomorrow?” he asked.
“This,” she sighed.
“What about the pile of work that you told me about?” he asked.
She groaned. “Maybe they can do without me for one more day.” She lathered up her hands with soap and ran them over his skin. His chest and shoulders looked pale compared to his arms after a summer in short sleeves. His legs, too, were deeply tanned, while his hips and upper thighs were white, almost glowing in the dim bathroom. “I deserve a break, don’t I?”
“Hell, yeah,” he replied, stroking her thighs. “You just never take one,” he added. “You feeling okay?”
She laughed again. “I think I just really missed you,” she added, lying back against him with a sigh. “But you’re right. I do have to go in tomorrow.”
He stroked over her hips, his thumbs caressing the rise of her hipbones. She turned slightly to look at him, and he kissed her forehead.
“What about you? More edits?”
“Yep. Also, that phone call.”
“Right,” Cassidy said, thinking through what Pete had told her about the story.
Pete kissed her neck and his hands caressed her shoulders. She closed her eyes and savored his gentle touch, her skin coming alive.
“I love you so much, Cassidy,” Pete said and kissed her ear, and the almost-tickle sent her blood zipping through her body.
“I love you too.” She rolled over
