She walked into the den. Trent was seated on the couch. No lamps had been lit and the television was dark. The only light came from the dying embers of the fire.
“You waited up?”
“Yeah.” He was pissed.
“You didn’t need to—”
“Didn’t I?” he snapped, his face in shadow. “When all hell’s been breaking out? If you haven’t noticed, people all around you have been disappearing or assaulted or killed.”
“Still.”
“Still what? I shouldn’t have worried? Is that what you’re saying?” He climbed to his feet and for a second a bit of firelight reflected in his eyes. “Hell yes, I waited up. More than that, I tried to chase you down.”
She felt her heart sink.
“What was I supposed to do? You wouldn’t answer my calls. And when you finally texted that you were on your way home, I came back here.” He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced pointedly at the digital display of the time on the television. “That was hours ago.”
“I . . . I know.”
“What have you been doing?”
“Driving around. Thinking,” she hedged as he crossed the short distance between them. What could she say that didn’t sound like a lie or whacked or both? How could she explain losing two hours?
“In the middle of the damned night? When people have been killed?”
“In LA. Lucinda was—”
“Lucky,” he cut her off. He was towering over her, his face etched with concern. “If you can call it that. She could have died just as easily. What were you thinking?”
“My cell phone was nearly dead.”
“Nearly.”
“I thought I should save it for an emergency.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” he said, placing his hands on her shoulders. Warm, strong hands. Deeply worried eyes. “This is a fucking emergency. You’re living it.”
She wanted to argue, started, then thought better of it. “Okay. All right. I should have called.”
She could see him struggle to rein in his own ragged emotions. He dropped his hands and took a step back. “So why the hell did you meet Brandon McNary? I thought you didn’t like the son of a bitch.”
“I didn’t. I don’t.”
“Then why? What information did he have that was so all-fired important that you had to go racing off in the middle of the night?”
She crossed the room and put some space between them as she stood before the glass door of the wood stove and felt the heat radiating, warming the back of her legs. “He thought he’d seen Allie, in Oregon City, and of course he couldn’t get near to her. When he tried to chase her down? Poof!” Cassie snapped her fingers. “She was gone.”
“Big surprise,” he said sarcastically.
“And then he got this text that he thought was from her. It came from an untraceable cell phone.”
Trent’s eyes seemed to bore into her and she shifted slightly.
“All it said was ‘I’m okay.’ ”
He waited, then asked, “That’s it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“The text could have come from anyone.”
“He’s convinced it was from Allie.”
“Someone’s just messing with him,” Trent said, taking a seat on the arm of the couch. He was close enough to touch her again, but didn’t reach forward.
“That’s what I told him.”
“Or he’s messing with you.”
“I suppose.”
“He could have sent the text to himself from a burner phone he bought. It wouldn’t take a genius for him to leave his real cell at his place, drive ten miles away, to like, oh, I don’t know, Oregon City? Then he could call himself so that if the police ever got involved, they could trace the ping from a tower there. They might think the message was legit. As long as no one saw him or his vehicle, he’d be home free.”
Cassie thought about the older Chevy Tahoe Brandon had been driving. Definitely not his style.
Trent added, “Or he could have had someone else make the call, then toss the phone into the river near the falls. The fact that he got a text from someone doesn’t mean it was Allie.”