Page 19 of Betrayed

I have to take them.

I have the address of their new apartment.

Cass and Ryan are outside in the grassy common area, bundled up in the cold, playing catch with a blue rubber ball.

Ryan sees me first. “Lucian!” He comes running over to greet me.

“Hey, little man.” I hug him and lift him up. He grins at me then glances over my shoulder.

“Did you bring the good car?”

I laugh. He’s thinking of the Cabriolet convertible—the one Erin and I took him out for ice cream in.

“Not today, kid.” I settle him down, telling him I need a word with his mom.

Cass sends him inside, and he stands there, giving us a curious look. “Go inside and close the door.”

“Listen to your mom, Ryan.”

Finally, the door closes.

Cass turns toward me, then grabs the arms of her chair. “I don’t know where she is.”

“You let her leave?” I ask, my voice sharper than I intend.

“And how do you suggest I stop her?” She makes a dramatic up-and-down motion with her arms at her sides, signaling that her mode of transportation is a wheelchair.

“Fair point.”

“Besides, I didn’t even know she left. I just found a note this morning when I was making breakfast.” She narrows her gaze suspiciously. “Actually, I thought she might be at your place enjoying post-grown-up sleepover bliss.”

“Don’t look at me like that, Cass. I’m not a suspect. I’m the one looking for her. Why don’t you try taking a break from true crime for a minute?”

“It’s always the boyfriend,” she sniffs.

Ignoring her comment, I restate the facts. “So she snuck out of my place super early. Snuck back here, then left.”

“Correct,” she nods. “Unless there’s any foul play you want to confess to, I think her disappearance is actually pretty straightforward.”

Cass looks at me for a moment, then quickly looks away. Too quickly. Like she knows way more than she’s telling me.

I close the space between us and grab her arm. “What did the note that she left you say?”

“What it didn’t say is what you want to know.” She pulls away. “I don’t know where she is.”

“But you know why she left,” I counter. “Tell me. Now.”

She looks down at her lap, intertwining her fingers, then releasing them. She sighs before looking back up again.

“Cass.”

Finally, she says, “She’s been working for the Morettis. And she didn’t want to tell you. She’d do anything not to have to tell you.”

“Why?”

“That.” She points at my face with a gruff laugh. “That look on your face when you find out she was sent to betray you.”

Something in Cass’s voice takes me back to that night in Blaze’s garage when I introduced Erin to Bachman playtime, using a riding crop to drag the secrets I could feel she was hiding from me to the surface.