The playful spark in his eyes filled her with relief. Even though he was furious with her—and likely the entire task force shared this sentiment—they were still friends. Speaking to the task force would be taxing, but she wasn’t going to have to do it alone.
“Bruce,” she said as they paddled side by side toward the lineup. “What about Saxon?”
“He’s gone into hiding.” He made a gesture with his hands. “We’ve got him on cameras entering Mexico.”
A rush of relief flooded her, but it didn’t last. For how long would he stay away? Would they catch him when he tried to come back? “Do you think…I’m in danger?”
Bruce glanced her way, his face pulled tight in a grimace. “As long as you’re with me, and do what I say, you’ll be safe.”
Cassidy inhaled a steadying breath. “Then I better tell you who I called before I left.”
Two
“I swear I left it right here,” Cassidy said, rubbing her forehead. She scanned her desk again, zooming out to take in the two stacks of notebooks, her laptop, and the loose piles of papers on the floor. Her tired eyes were dry after the long flight to Seattle, so she blinked a few times, then tried again.
“Where did you last have it?” Bruce asked from where he was leaning against the door jamb.
She had expected it to feel weird, having Bruce in her house, but after the awkward moment when he stepped over the threshold passed, she discovered that it wasn’t.
“Oh, the table, maybe,” she said, stepping past him into her kitchen. On the edge of the picnic table she used as dining room furniture she found the stack of papers hiding the notebook. “Here it is,” she said, relieved that she wasn’t losing her mind.
On the night she’d returned from San Francisco, she’d already figured out that Pete and Lars were somehow connected. Before switching gears to depart for her field work in Hawaii, she had pounced on the box full of Pete’s notebooks. In the three hours between flights, she had steeled her courage and flipped through every single one: pocket-sized ones, full-sized ones with no lines, medium-sized ones with recycled covers, spiral-bound, book-bound, even the single sheets of 8 ½ x 11 paper folded into fourths that he used in a pinch. Seeing his tight scrawl flying across so many pages, sometimes careful, sometimes so rushed it was illegible, had cracked open another hole in her damaged heart.
But she’d forced her way through the emotions and the result was a name: Brad Sawyer.
Pete didn’t use a formal calendar, instead he made one out of a single 8 ½ x 11 piece of paper every Sunday and kept it in his back right pants pocket. But the notebook—spiral-bound, unlined paper, plain blue cover—contained details she recognized from the period before his death. At that time, he had been interviewing athletes for his book about near-death experiences, an idea inspired by his own brush with death in an avalanche the year before. But he also had been researching the story about the “umbrella girls” they had seen working the backroads of Sicily.
Cassidy opened the notebook to the page containing her find and handed it to Bruce.
Dressed in pressed khakis and a button-down blue shirt, he could be a businessman traveling home after a long week of meetings, but his athletic frame and quick eyes made her think scholar with a running habit, or personal trainer. Certainly nothing that said, “federal agent.” That’s probably why he can work undercover, she thought.
“You called this guy?” Bruce said, looking up from the page where Pete’s handwriting scrawled meet Brad @ 10 – fish market. There were other names scattered throughout his notes, but the dates didn’t match.
Bruce slid onto the picnic bench and flipped through the pages.
“I’m not sure it’s important,” Cassidy said, leaning her back against the edge of the sink. “But I remember Pete was thinking about what he wanted to do next, after the book. He was still torn up about those girls he’d seen in Sicily.”
“The ones brought in from Africa?”
Cassidy nodded. “He couldn’t get an editor to touch that story.”
“Smart,” Bruce said, giving her a look.
Cassidy frowned. Bruce was probably right, but if he’d been allowed to research that story, would he have never stumbled into the one that got him killed?
“Does his name ring a bell?”
Cassidy closed her eyes for a moment, sifting through the fragments of conversation that still lived in her mind. So many of her memories had faded since those horrible days after Pete’s death. Plenty were lost forever, either from her dangerous escape of mixing Xanax with alcohol, or because her brain was trying to protect itself from the ache.
She remembered an afternoon of picking blackberries, the sun hot on her shoulders while Pete shared his ideas. He had so many ideas. She had just returned from a grueling week of field work and the joy of being back home with him had created a strong memory.
And then her stepbrother, Reeve, had visited.
“Ugh,” Cassidy breathed, her voice shaky.
Bruce’s eyes sharpened. “What?”
She shook her head, willing the terrifying images of Reeve going off the rails to fade. “I just remember Pete telling me how he met that guy in San Francisco one night, with Quinn. They were out scoping the competition. He had a story he wanted help with, or something. Pete was excited.”
“But this Brad person hasn’t called you back?”
Cassidy shook her head.
“What did you say in your message?” Bruce asked, leaning back, a serious glint in his eyes.
“I told him my name and that I was Pete’s…” Cassidy took a breath for bravery “…fiancé.”
Bruce groaned. “Okay, from now on, no more freelancing.” He placed his hands on his hips. “I mean it, Cassidy.”
Cassidy hugged herself tighter and sighed. “Okay.”
“We have no idea how deep the network goes, who we can trust.”
“Right,” Cassidy whispered as the walls slowly pressed in on her. She glanced around her kitchen—two moving boxes still to go—the too-big couch, the empty fridge.
Bruce stood and approached her just as she caught the tear threatening to leak from the corner of her eye. “Hey, we’re going to get these guys.”
Cassidy nodded; the emotions she’d been bottling up threatened to break free. Since that moment in Quinn’s apartment, she had forced everything down, running to the safety and escape of her field work in Hawaii, hoping that while she was away, everything could return to normal. Calling Brad had been stupid. Why couldn’t she just leave it alone?
Bruce touched her shoulder gently and ducked to catch her gaze. “You going to be okay tonight?” he asked.
Cassidy swallowed the lump in her throat. “Yeah,” she replied.
“Okay,” he said, stepping back. “I’ll pick you up for the flight at five.” Bruce returned to the table. “Can I take this?” he asked, holding up the notebook.
A tug of anguish pulled at her. “Of course.”
Bruce pocketed the notebook, then the two of them walked toward the front door. “I’m going to check in with our operations and follow some leads.”