She taps a voice memo and a familiar voice crackles through the air. It’s not a great connection on the recording, but I know it’s Cassie the second she says, “You’re going to be okay. Better than okay. You’re going to come out the other side of this stronger than ever. No doubt in my mind.”
The person on the other end of the line sobs and Cassie makes a soft, clucking sound of sympathy. When she speaks again, her words are thick with emotion. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. I hate that he hurt you. I want to fly down there right now, wrap my hands around his lying, cheating, sheep-abusing neck and strangle him.”
“It is sheep abuse,” Savannah wails. “He said they were in love, but a sheep doesn’t have feelings. Not like that. A sheep can’t choose, Cassie. A sheep is just a sheep!”
“I know, I know.” Cassie growls. “Argh. That creep should be in jail.”
Savannah’s next sob ends in a bitter laugh. “Yeah, right. Steve’s still a pillar of the community. No one wants to believe it. I’m the deviant who owns a sex toy factory. A sucky sex toy factory that’s probably going to be out of business by the end of the year.”
“That’s not true,” Cassie says. “Things are going well, you said so yourself just last week.”
“Not well enough and I’m too tired to fix it now. I’ve lost my will to care about orgasms. I hate orgasms. I hate sex. And I hate sheep. And I hate half the people in this town for loving Steve so much. They don’t even believe me. I hate everything.”
Cassie makes hushing noises for a long beat and Jessie and I exchange uncomfortable looks. It feels wrong to be eavesdropping on a private conversation, but I’m assuming we’re getting close to the allegedly incriminating part, a hunch confirmed with Savannah sobs, “I just want to run away, Cass. Torch my life, run away, and let it burn.”
I frown. If this is the evidence, they’re reaching hard for it. Savannah’s clearly talking figuratively, not literally. I’m about to say as much when Cassie’s voice pipes up again.
“And if it comes to that, I’ll help you, okay? But let me come down there and fill in for you first. You can take a trip, and I’ll mind the factory while you’re gone. That way you can take time to heal before you decide what you really want to do.”
“Burn it down,” Savannah mumbles. “Burn it all down.”
“Okay, okay,” Cassie soothes. “We’ll figure it out. Just don’t do anything crazy before I get there to help, okay?”
Jessie taps the end button. “There’s more, but that’s the relevant part.”
“It’s a stretch, chief,” I say, shaking my head. But I can’t deny there’s a whisper of doubt in my head that wasn’t there before. I’m still ninety percent sure this is an innocent conversation taken out of context, but…
“It is,” Jessie agrees. “And like I said on the phone, it’s inadmissible in court. But the fingerprints they pulled from the chemical drums Sheriff Briggs found at the dump yesterday are going to be enough to put Cassie in a tough spot.”
“What chemical drums?” I ask, propping my hands low on my hips.
“The sheriff got an anonymous tip from a concerned citizen, probably the same one who sent him this conversation.”
“How did they get their hands on that conversation, by the way?” I ask, jabbing a finger at Jessie’s phone. “That was clearly private.”
Jessie’s shoulders rise and fall. “I don’t know. Maybe someone was recording outgoing calls from the factory. Or maybe someone suspected Savannah was on the verge of doing something dangerous and tapped her phone.”
“Sketchy. And not someone I’m inclined to believe. If they’re so righteous and concerned, why not come out of the shadows?”
Before Jessie can answer, the wailing of sirens echoes through the square. We turn in time to see a fire truck rush by and we hurry out of the alley.
“I’ll call dispatch, see what’s up,” Jessie says, but I already know what’s up.
Or what’s been lit up.
The smoke rising from the end of Main Street could be coming from the post office or the taxidermy shop, but I instinctively know it’s not. It’s Sunshine Toys.
On fire.
Again.
Twenty-Seven
Cassie
* * *
I’m an idiot.
I noticed the back door felt warm to the touch, but I went in anyway. I pushed inside, got doused with a rush of foul-smelling liquid someone must have propped above the door, and now I’m trapped in a smoke-filled room. Something’s on fire in the staff locker room and the door I came in through is stuck tight.
I haul on the handle, throwing my full weight into it, but it doesn’t budge and soon I’m coughing too hard to stand up straight.
I fall to my knees, sucking in deep breaths. The air is cleaner down here.
After a few moments my head clears, and I start toward the staff bathrooms on my hands and knees. There’s a window in the women’s bathroom. It’s high and tight, but there’s a chance I can get through it. Even if I can’t, I can at least soak my clothes with water and huddle in the far stall until the cavalry arrives.
The fire department will be here soon, before this fire has the chance to become too dangerous.
I’m sure that’s what whoever started it was counting on.
Someone started this fire, I realize in a burst of clarity. Someone started this fire and then summoned me here so I’d be right in the middle of it when Happy Cat’s finest showed up to put it out.
I’m getting angry—really angry—and then I push through the door to the bathroom and look up to see a pair of shoes disappearing through the open window.
They’re Italian loafers.
Italian fucking loafers.
I know those loafers. Savannah bought those loafers the last time she came to see me in San Francisco.
As a present.
For the sheep-fucker.
“Steve!” His name emerges as a croak from my smoke-raw throat and my demands for him to get his ass back here and confess to what he’s done end in a coughing fit. I shut the bathroom door behind me, but the smoke is still getting in somehow.
A vent? The ceiling?
I have no idea, but by the time I crawl-cough down the aisle of toilets to the window, I’m dizzy and my lungs feel like they’ve been clawed at from the inside. I stand, reaching for the window ledge, but I’m too short. I can barely curl my fingers around it and there’s no way I’m going to have the strength to pull myself up. Even a rock-climbing badass my height would struggle with this one, and I am no kind of badass.
I’m an idiot. A fool covered in foul-smelling funk, coughing her head off on the floor of a bathroom, reduced to praying that someone will come save her before it’s too late.
My gut says Steve didn’t intend to kill me—just frame me good and proper—but that might not matter.
I could die here, I realize, head spinning as I sag against the wall, tears rising in my eyes. I could die and Ryan will never know why I left his bed or how I came to be here. He might even assume I really am behind all this and that…
Well, that is maybe the saddest thing ever.
My chest goes tight, so tight, and raw. And then my head is spinning and I’m sliding onto the white tile for a nap, visions of Steve being stabbed with a hundred tiny pitchforks while demon sheep tap dance on his spine spinning through my head.
Then there’s nothing.
It’s all smoke and fog and a buzzing sound, high and insistent in my ears.
And then suddenly I’m waking up on a gurney outside under a pale blue morning sky with an oxygen mask covering my nose and mouth and Ryan staring down at me with a mixture of worry, pain, and disgust that breaks my heart.
Broken—crash, bam.
Right in two.
Twenty-Eight
Ryan
* * *
I hunch over the Wild Hog’s bar, head pounding, heart aching, gut roiling.
Dual images keep flashing in my head.
One of Cassie, dousing lighter fluid all over the factory.
The other of her ashen face when Jojo pulled her out of the building.
“Pour me another,” I order Jace.
He scowls at me, slams both hands on the bar, and leans across it until he’s right in my face. “I cannot serve you liquor until eleven. I told you that.”
He also filled my first glass with our grandmother’s lemonade, which would probably get him shut down if anyone knew what was in it.
I don’t give two shits right now.
“She set the fire, Jace.” The words are hollow, and they taste like burnt black licorice and raccoon shit. “She set the fucking fire.”
I still can’t believe it, but between that phone call recording, everything that’s gone wrong for Sunshine the last two weeks, and then finding her there, when she was supposed to be at my house, what am I supposed to think?
Something smacks the back of my head, and I realize it was my brother’s hand. “If you believe that,” Jace growls, low and tight, “then you don’t deserve her.”
“Whatever he’s having, I want something different.” Blake slides onto the stool next to me. “And can I order a shower for him? He smells like smoky ass.”
Jace hooks a thumb toward the john. “If you can get him in there, you can give him a shower in the sink.”
The Wild Hog’s pretty much deserted this early in the day, with just one small group of farmers back at the arcade games. Most of the town’s gawking at the carnage over at the Sunshine factory—happy name for a miserable place—or they’re busy telling the sheriff all the ways they knew Cassie wasn’t right in the head from the moment she got back.
Those Sunderwell girls were never really one of us. So stuck up, with all the Hollywood attitude. We should’ve known they were deviants—not too far a stretch from selling perverted toys to setting fires.
I thought they were wrong, that it was small-town pettiness. But then, never in a million lifetimes would I have suspected Cassie would set fire to anything.