Chapter 14

FOURTEEN

DONOVAN HAD SURVIVED some tough stuff, but the twelve hours following Cassie’s disappearance would forever rank at the top of his “worst ever” list.

He stared at the laptop he’d set up in the dining room of Hideaway and accepted a cup of coffee from Amos. The poor man had stayed all night. At some point in the wee hours of the morning, he’d decided to bake. Cassie had been right when she’d said the man was a genius with pastries. He’d been plying the team with food since dawn, and it was the only thing giving them any energy right now.

Because they certainly weren’t running high on the adrenaline of leads.

They had nothing.

As far as they could tell, Cassie had willingly climbed into the van around 9:30 p.m. The dry cleaners were based out of Canton, about forty-five minutes away. Brick had pulled the van driver over thirty minutes outside of town.

And what he’d told them had made absolutely no sense.

The driver claimed that he’d been checking his phone before beginning the last leg of his route. Cassie had knocked on the door of his van and told him she needed to get off the property. She handed him a hundred-dollar bill and said all he had to do was drive through the gate and then let her out at the trailhead to Gossamer Falls.

“I figured it wouldn’t hurt to give her a ride.”

Donovan had never felt compelled to strangle someone before. But this guy? “I bet the hundred bucks wouldn’t hurt either.”

The driver had the decency to look ashamed. “Well. No. But I didn’t hurt her or anything, man. She was kind of manic. Like she couldn’t figure out if she was tired or wired. I drove her to the trailhead, and when we got there, she looked at me kind of funny. She said, ‘Why did you stop?’ and I told her that she’d asked me to.”

“You didn’t think maybe she needed a doctor or something?”

“Man, I didn’t know! But I wasn’t gonna leave her there alone. I told her she could wait in the van for a few minutes. So we sat there. About ten minutes later, this car pulled up. A guy got out and came to the door. He was all smiles and happy. He opened the door, said, ‘Man, thanks for getting her out. ’Preciate it.’ Then he took her hand, and she went with him.”

By this point in the interview, Donovan had lost all faith in humanity. “And you just let her go.”

“Well, yeah.” As if that was the obvious answer. “She seemed to know the guy. He took her hand and he was real gentle with her. He helped her get in his car and drove off.”

“What did he look like?”

The driver wrinkled his face in concentration. “It was dark, man. I don’t know. I think he was a White guy. No facial hair. He had very white teeth, I remember that. He was probably six feet?”

He made his last comment a question, and Donovan didn’t try to get more of a description. “You didn’t happen to notice anything about the car, did you? Make, model, tag number?”

“Nah. He parked close but not that close. And out of the lights. It was an SUV. Smallish. Not like a Suburban. More like a RAV4. Maybe? Dark?”

His description gave them nothing to go on. Eyewitnesses were notoriously inaccurate, and the only thing this guy seemed confident about was that it wasn’t a car, van, or truck.

“Did you notice which direction he went?” Donovan didn’t expect an answer, but this time he was in for a surprise.

“Yeah. He went back toward Gossamer Falls. I kept going toward Canton. Until I was pulled over.” At this the driver frowned. “Which was completely bogus. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Donovan let all his fury and frustration bleed into his voice. “A woman is missing and you are the last person known to have seen her.”

The driver paled. “I didn’t hurt her.”

“You didn’t help her, either.”

At that point, Gray had stepped in. The driver had been allowed to go home, but it was with the understanding that he might be facing charges.

Donovan had gone outside to try to pull himself together ... just in time to come face-to-face with Cassie’s mom and dad. Her mom had been crying. Her dad looked like someone was burning him alive from the inside out.

“I’m so sorry.” What else could he say? “So sorry.” His own voice broke.

And then John Quinn III pulled him into a bear hug. “Gray told us what happened. Wasn’t your fault, son.”

Smaller hands around his back, a softer voice murmuring against him, “There’s no blame here. Nothing you could have done.”

He wiped at his eyes. “I’m going to find her.” To consider any other outcome was a fast track to a nightmare.

The hours that followed had been fruitless. He still believed that he would get her back, but now he couldn’t stop the gnawing terror that threatened to overwhelm him.

He would find her. And no matter what, he would stay by her side.

CASSIE’S MOUTH FELT like someone had forced her to eat cocoa powder. Her head pounded. And her stomach churned.

She blinked and tried to shift into a more comfortable position. There was a weird lump under her back. Had she gone to sleep on a pile of clothes or something?

She went to roll over onto her left side but came face-to-face with the back of a leather sofa. She didn’t own a leather sofa.

She attempted another swallow, and her tongue glued itself to the roof of her mouth. The split second of panic at the unexpected issue cleared a few cobwebs from her mind.

And a whole new level of panic washed over her.

Where was she? Why was she on a couch? What had happened to her? Her mind frantically searched for the last memory she could claim and came up alarmingly blank. She tried to slow her breathing and focus.

The concentration sent a shock of pain through her head, and she remembered she’d been at work and she had a headache. And ... nothing.

Voices filtered through to her consciousness, and she strained to hear what they were saying.

“You imbecile.” Male. The voice wasn’t deep and resonant. It had a thin tone that was familiar. The unmistakable sound of a hand meeting flesh. “What exactly was your plan?”

“You said you wanted her out of the picture.” Male. Not Southern. And slurred. Maybe the slap she’d heard hadn’t been the first one he’d been subjected to. A coughing sound. Then spitting. “I’m bleeding.”

“A busted lip is the least of your worries.” The first voice. “Again, what are you planning to do with her? I told you I wanted her off the property. I didn’t say anything about kidnapping her.”

“She wouldn’t quit.” The second male was angry. And defensive.

“Yeah. I noticed. And I told you to let it go. I wanted her gone, but she’s a good chef. She’s so good that despite your efforts to make a royal mess out of everything, the entire weekend was an unmitigated success.” The first man was icily calm. “Which is why I told you to wait. We needed to leave her alone for a while and let things cool off. But instead of waiting, you kidnapped her.”

“There’s no proof of that. None. She was a willing participant.”

At those words, Cassie almost lost the battle with her roiling stomach.

“So help me, if you touched her—”

“I didn’t.” The second man sounded a little desperate now and his words came faster. “I picked her up from the spot, drove her here, and put her on the couch. I haven’t laid a hand on her.”

Cassie wanted to cry from relief, but the possible horror had jolted her into full consciousness. She sat slowly, careful not to make any sound that would attract her captors.

The second man was still talking. “But I didn’t kidnap her. Don’t you see? That’s the beauty of the plan. She got in that van of her own free will and asked the driver to give her a ride.”

“Because you suggested it.”

“Well, yeah, but she did it.”

“Sure she did. But there’s only one reason she would agree to such a ridiculous request. What did you give her?”

A pause. “GHB. In her lemonade.”

“Idiot.” This time the word was low. “You could have killed her.”

“But I didn’t. And GHB is perfect for this. She won’t remember anything. She won’t be able to testify about anything. She’s in there asleep. All we have to do is dump her somewhere. The whole town is looking for her. She’ll be found.”

Cassie took her time but got on her feet and looked at her surroundings. The room she was in looked like a bedroom that someone had converted into a small den. There was a recliner, a TV, bookshelves, and enough drug paraphernalia to get half of Gossamer Falls high.

“Yeah. And what happens when she’s found?” The first guy again. Cassie struggled with the voice. She knew that voice. Why couldn’t she remember? “ You’re the one she’s going to remember. And when she does, you’ll be arrested. Or have you forgotten about what happened the last time you were in the same space as Cassie Quinn? Huh? Oh, that’s right. An innocent man was killed and then the man who killed him later killed himself because he couldn’t live with himself when he found out what he did while he was high on drugs. Drugs that you s old him.”

The words fell like tiny little grenades all around her heart.

The second man started talking, and Cassie had to concentrate to hear him. When he finally stopped cursing, he said, “I have a good thing going here. And so do you. So I suggest you help me figure out how to handle this, because if they take me down, you can be sure I’ll take you with me.”

In the silence that stretched between the two men, Cassie fought to process what she’d heard. The second man had been in Atlanta. He was the one who’d been selling the drugs? How had he wound up in Gossamer Falls?

And now he was back in the drug business. And he believed that Cassie would recognize him. Cassie sat back on the sofa and tried to breathe.

“Fine. How much longer do you think she’ll sleep?”

“Who knows? I didn’t think I’d dosed her that much, but she’s a lightweight.”

“She’s probably never done anything stronger than a Tylenol. The Quinns don’t do drugs.”

There was venom in his voice when he said “the Quinns,” and it was in that moment that she recognized the voice.

This was bad.

This was very, very bad. Oh Father, help me. Please. Cassie knew that prayers weren’t always answered in the way she wanted. She’d prayed her heart out for twelve solid hours that night in Atlanta. No one could have prayed with more desperation or faith than she had.

And while she’d survived, she’d lost friends, and for a while, she’d lost part of herself. But she knew that prayer mattered. She knew that it was a declaration, albeit a silent one, of trust in her heavenly Father.

Her mind flashed to Donovan. Help him, please. He would be a disaster by now. Her parents and family. Cal, Mo, Meredith. Bronwyn. They would all be devastated. She had no doubt that they were turning Gossamer Falls upside down and inside out to find her. And she knew they would succeed.

But if she didn’t stay alive for the next few minutes, they might find her body after it was too late.

She had way too much living to do. She wanted to kiss Donovan Bledsoe and tell him that she loved him. She wanted to build on what Chef Louis had done, but also make Hideaway her own.

And she wanted to be sure Steven Pierce and his mysterious accomplice went to jail.

“Do you think we can leave her here?” Steven’s voice was closer to the room than it had been before.

Cassie made the only choice she could. She lay back down on the sofa and tried to get herself into the exact position she’d been in when she woke. She closed her eyes and waited. Father, protect me was on a permanent loop.

The door opened moments after she settled in. A pause, then it closed. “She’s still breathing, she hasn’t moved, hasn’t puked. So yeah, I’d say we can leave her. What do you have in mind?”

“We’re going to have to figure out a way to kill her but make it look like an accident. Which means both of us have to be far, far away from here.”

“You know someone who can do that?”

“I do.” There was no hesitation in Steven’s voice.