Cassidy Jones and the Luminous (Cassidy Jones Adventures Book 4) (11 page)

“Boys are territorial? I hadn’t noticed.” I picked up the bottle of Luminous she had already drained. “So it’s good water, even though the giver sucks?”

“Uh-huh,” Mom answered, taking another drink.

The fact that she didn’t chide me for the slam on Mr. Wells surprised me. It was so unlike her.

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it.” I was thrilled to have something to do. As I passed the family room, the boys didn’t even glance at me.

I threw open the door to Jared’s distraught mother. Her hair was disheveled, her suit wrinkled, and she had dark half-moons under puffy, bloodshot eyes that held traces of smeared makeup. It was shocking to see the usually immaculate Eileen such a mess.

“Cassidy—” She rushed into the house, forgetting her suitcase on the porch. “Where’s Jared? Jared!” She called before I could answer, looking around frantically.

Jared bounded out of the family room. Eileen broke down at the sight of him. Her laptop bag slid off her shoulder, tumbling toward the floor. My hand shot out at lightning speed and caught it. Behind Jared, Nate raised his eyebrows at me. Luckily, Eileen was too distracted to notice. I don’t think she even realized she had dropped the bag.

Jared embraced his mother. “It’s okay, Mom.”

She buried her face into his shoulder and sobbed.

My throat tightened with sympathy. Her reaction was more of what I had expected from a parent whose child had been threatened. Jared was her life.

I grabbed the handle of her suitcase. Across the street, Emery stood in his front doorway. Obviously, the Phillipses had seen Eileen arrive.

“We’ll be over soon. Call if you need us,” he said in a normal speaking voice, knowing I would hear him.

I gave him a thumbs-up and wheeled the suitcase inside.

“I love you,” Eileen wept, kissing Jared’s face. “I am so sorry.”

I closed the front door.

“It isn’t your fault, Mom.”

“It’s Owen’s.” She spat his name as though it were a foul word. “Has he turned up yet?”

Jared nodded, glancing away from her. “He stopped by a couple of hours ago.”

“He
stopped by
?” she repeated, disdain on her face.

“Eileen,” Mom spoke up. “Why don’t we have a seat in the living room? Can I get you anything?”

Eileen smiled weakly. “Thank you, Elizabeth. A glass of water would be wonderful.” She rubbed her throat as though she’d just realized it was parched.

Mom looked at Chazz. “Would you get Ms. Kirsch water, please?”

Chazz bolted, as though fetching a glass of water was a matter of life or death.

We found seats in the living room. My family gave Eileen and Jared the sofa. Nate claimed one wingback chair while Mom sat in the other one and I parked my backside on the arm, which Mom would normally object to.

“I talked to Detective Woodrow on the way over,” Eileen told us, wiping her wet eyes. Her other hand gripped Jared’s, the white bone of her knuckles shining through the skin. “He said the men who came to the apartment have declined to talk.”

“Yes, but the main thing is they are in police custody,” Mom pointed out. “Eileen, you should’ve called. I would have been happy to pick you up at the airport.”

“I couldn’t wait. The taxi was right there.”

Chazz tore into the living room with a bottle of Luminous. “Here!” He shoved the water at Eileen. “It’s good for you. It has electricity.”

I smiled to myself. Chazz meant electrolytes.

“Thank you, Chazz.” Eileen took the bottle with a gracious smile, which evaporated when she looked back at her son. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you.” Fresh tears sprang into her eyes.

“It’s okay, Mom. Dad said he’s taking care of things.”

Eileen barked a cynical laugh. “I bet he is.”

Following an explosive phone conversation with Eileen later that evening, Owen seemed to have fallen off the face of the planet. Well, not completely. He had returned to work. Dad had called his law firm on Monday to make sure.

I felt awful for Jared. I couldn’t believe his father hadn’t called to check up on him. If I’d been in Jared’s shoes, I would have felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest. But I had no way of knowing what his true feelings were—he avoided the topic of his loser dad altogether.

Mr. Wells also appeared to be the farthest thing from Eileen’s mind. However, I knew differently. Kicked back on the attic sofa bed—I’d given up my room for Eileen—I eavesdropped on late-night conversations between her and my mom. I learned stuff that I’m sure Jared didn’t know, and, hopefully, never would. He thought he hated his dad now.

I didn’t feel any qualms about letting my ears wander where they shouldn’t, until Eileen shared details about how she’d discovered her husband was unfaithful. Guilt overruling the busybody in me, I flipped on the television to drown out their voices. If I distracted myself, my ears couldn’t roam. The attic didn’t have cable, so I had three options: sports, a Spanish program, or the news. Since I couldn’t speak Spanish and I hated sports, I went with option three. Breaking news—

another missing person.

That makes eight reported missing people now
, I thought, but amended the number to seven, remembering that Anita Harris was no longer missing. She had turned up a couple of days before, safe and sound. In an interview, she claimed to have “taken a break.” She had apologized to her family, friends, and anyone else whom her thoughtlessness had hurt. The thing was, she hadn’t seemed all that sorry.

Anita Harris wasn’t the only missing person to resurface. Joe told me Doc was back after he’d disappeared from the streets six weeks earlier. He’d glimpsed his friend, smiling and appearing “fit as a fiddle” while unloading cases of bottled water from a truck at the shelter. Doc had obviously cleaned up, Joe had said, meaning he’d stopped drinking. I didn’t know how Joe could tell just by looking at Doc, but he’d lived on the streets for a long time, and he knew about addiction.

Anita Harris and Doc not being victims of anything horrific eased the fear and sick feeling that each new missing person news report had given me. If nothing bad had happened to them, maybe nothing bad had happened to the other people.

~~~

For three weeks, tension had been palpable in the air—everyone was on edge about the locals who had disappeared. However, as the days wore on, I sensed a shift. Eyes were less watchful and suspicious, and fewer glances were cast over shoulders. Perhaps I wasn’t the only one to lower my guard after Anita Harris’s happy homecoming.

But it was more than diminishing public panic. There seemed to be more smiles and laughter everywhere I went, as though chill pills had been passed out like Halloween candy. This should have been a positive thing, but the movie version of
The Stepford Wives
popped in to my head every time complete strangers flashed me oddly sated smiles, as though they were tripping across happy clouds. People were just being too nice.

Of course, our twenty-five-year-old bum of a neighbor, Jason Crenshaw, was the exception. Behind those crafty, hazel eyes of his was nothing nice. Which was my exact thought after school on Monday, when he crooked his forefinger at me to come hither as he sunned himself in a chaise lounge among immaculate flowerbeds that his mother slaved over and he used as ashtrays.

“I’ll be right in,” I told Jared and Nate, glaring at Jason. Emery was climbing his front porch steps and had missed the summons, just as Jason had planned. Whatever he wanted was between him and me. This thought turned my stomach. I wasn’t a fool. I knew I couldn’t outsmart the scoundrel.

Jared’s eyes followed where my glare was aimed. He put two-and-two together.

“Ignore him,” he advised.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because Crenshaw has too much dirt on her and Emery,” Nate explained for me, taking the backpack I handed him. Part of me suspected he secretly admired the cunning slacker.

“That sucks,” Jared said, sizing Jason up.

Jason reclined in the chaise again, his hands folded behind his sandy-blond head. He had no doubt that I’d obey his command.

“Indeed, it does,” I agreed with Jared. “Emery and I totally underestimated him.”

Or, at least, I had. Emery had hired Jason to drive us back and forth to Catamount Mountain, where we’d been hunting a tiger and a “metal man.” Emery claimed to have known exactly whom he was dealing with, and had even set aside extra money to pay for Jason’s pending blackmail. Jason didn’t let him down.

“I can come with you,” Jared offered.

“Thanks, but he won’t say whatever it is he has to say if you’re there.” I assumed it would be a shakedown for more money.

Jared and Nate went inside the house while I strolled to the Crenshaws’. I tried to give the impression that I wasn’t worried. I’m sure Jason wasn’t fooled.

What are you plotting behind those sunglasses?
I sent him as I entered the pristine yard of the pristine Victorian through a pristine white picket gate. Mrs. DeAngelo watched me from her Dutch Colonial’s dining room window next door.

“What?” I parked myself in front of Jason, casting a shadow over his half-naked body. I kept my glare pinned to his smug face, although I had to admit his abs looked better than I’d expected, especially for a former high school football player whose current workout consisted of his moving his thumbs around a video game controller.

Jason waved a lazy hand for me to move out of his sunlight. I could see his eyes were shut behind his shades.

“Aren’t you cold?” It was only, like, 65 degrees.

“Won’t be, when this irritating black cloud passes.” He again motioned for me to move. There was no way I’d budge.

“Get on with it. What do you want?”

“Patience, sugar.”

Gritting my teeth, I held my tongue and watched him with hostility as he took his sweet time adjusting the back of the chaise into an upright position.

“There.” He smirked and relaxed into the cushion. My disloyal eyeballs admired his chest before I caught myself and flicked them to a rose bush.

“Now, none of that,” Jason chided, and I wanted to slap him and myself. Of all people to get caught ogling! “Sir Lancelot is jealous enough,” he added, referring to Jared.

My blush deepened, which infuriated me even more.

“It’s only a matter of time before he and Slick have a little fisticuff right out there on the stree—”

“What do you
want
?”

“We’re talking, Cupcake. It’s called a conversation.” He trapped a cigarette burning among discarded butts in a cut-crystal bowl, then brought it to his smirking lips. The bowl was probably one of his mother’s favorite pieces. He was just that kind of guy.

Exhaling gray death, his gaze meandered to Emery’s house. “That must be quite a remodeling project they have going on,” he said.

I fidgeted, and Jason noticed—darn it.

“Yeah, it is. The house was a dump.”

“Interesting that McCormick sold.”

“McCormick?”

“The previous owner of said
dump
. You wouldn’t remember him, since you were just a snot-nosed kid in diapers when he lived there.” Jason tapped ashes onto the grass.

My mind raced.
Where is he going with this?

“McCormick, that old coot.” Jason took another long drag from the cigarette while looking thoughtfully at the Phillips’s house. “He and my dad are still chums.”

“Fascinating.” I doused my tone with an extra helping of sarcasm to cover my skyrocketing alarm. Gavin never did mention how he’d gotten the previous owner to sell his rental house. “Well, it has been a hoot! But I must be on—”

“This Marathon Construction seems like a proficient outfit,” Jason interrupted, as though he hadn’t heard me.

I glanced over my shoulder. Cristiano tipped a wheelbarrow of dirt into a dump truck from the top of a ramp. He shot us a smile. What was up with that guy?

“They’ve hauled a lot of dirt out of the house. Are they tunneling to China?”

I looked back at Jason. His eyes assessed me from behind the shades.

What does he know? Why is he out here, anyway? Spying?

“Yeah, but they ran into some trouble with a T-Rex at the center of the Earth.” I prayed that I appeared irritated, but calm. “Any other questions?”

“You’ve told me all I need to know, Pumpkin.”

My stomach plunged.
What had I told him?

“It’s been stimulating, Jason. Truly, it has,” I said, walking toward the gate. “We must do this again sometime.”

“Give Slick my regards.”

How did he know I was going to Emery’s?

“Will do!” I sang and slammed the gate, resisting the urge to break into a run.

~~~

“Hello!” I flashed a plastered-on smile to another Marathon worker wheeling dirt down the hall.

This is out of control!
I thought, heading for the stairs.
Who are these guys, anyway? Hit men who do construction work on the side?

“Emery!” My voice cracked. My feet climbed faster.

He poked his head from the spare room/laboratory/spy headquarters. Oh, geez, this was crazy!

“Everything okay?”

“Dandy.” I shoved him into the room and shut the door. “How did your dad get the former owner to sell this house?”

“My dad can be
extremely
persuasive.” He socked his fist into his palm.

“Emery, can’t you see that boy from across the street has unnerved Cassidy enough?” Serena scolded. She squeezed liquid from an eyedropper onto a microscope slide and looked at us.

“So you were watching Jason and me?” I asked.

“What else would we be doing?” Emery teased.

“This is no time to be funny! Jason was dropping major hints that he had information about how your dad
persuaded
the owner to sell this house.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Serena chided me now. She fitted the glass slide on the microscope’s stage. “Gavin had made the previous owner an offer that only a sentimental fool would refuse: twenty-five percent over market value.”