After She's Gone (West Coast 3)

“Could someone else have?” Cassie asked. She was standing on the porch off of Trent’s back door and staring at the dreary day. The sky was gun-metal gray, the clouds low. Cattle lumbered in the fields separated from other pastures where horses plucked at the grass. A cool wind slipped through the screens, to tug at Cassie’s hair.

“My phone is always with me or in my office or my house, so I don’t see how.” Her tone changed. “How’re you doing, Cassie?” Was there an undercurrent beneath the solicitous tones, a hint that Dr. Sherling thought she was making up the story about the texts?

“I’m fine.”

“That’s good to hear.” Again, Cassie sensed a falseness to the psychiatrist’s words. “I think it might be a good idea if we had a session. I’d like to hear how you’re doing, what you’re working on, where your life is heading. Your thoughts on everything. You did leave abruptly.”

“I’ll call you,” Cassie said. “Right now, I don’t have time, but thank you. Good-bye.” She hung up before the doctor could say anything else.

“Not her?” Trent asked, as she stepped inside.

“No.”

“I have a theory,” he said slowly, his gaze careful, his eyebrows drawing together as they always did when he was thinking.

“All right . . .” she responded cautiously.

“The kid who knows all the stats? Rinko? What if he got hold of the doctor’s phone and texted you quickly, then erased the message so Doctor Sherling wouldn’t find out.”

“The message about Santa Fe?”

“He knows everything about sports and cars, right? That’s what you said and he sure as hell knew every detail about my truck. He’d spied it in the lot at the hospital and figured it belonged to me.”

“That sounds like Rinko,” she said. “He’s amazing.”

“Okay. So maybe Santa Fe isn’t about the city, but about the car, an SUV. And the 07 is the model year of the car. Maybe he’s talking about a 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe.”

“That’s kind of a stretch,” she said, but felt as if she’d stepped into a time warp. How many times, while she was in the hospital, had Rinko gone on and on about the cars he’d seen in the parking lot? He knew what type of car each member of the staff drove and remarked when one of the nurses, aides, or doctors came in something new, or a loaner or their spouse’s vehicle. With his near-photographic memory, Rinko could remember most vehicles that had ever wheeled onto the tree-lined lot of Mercy Hospital.

“It could be. But what does it mean?” she asked. “An SUV made in Korea?”

“The vehicle was unusual, probably. My guess is it wasn’t normally in the lot, or he wouldn’t have felt compelled to send the text. I’m guessing it might belong to your nightmare nurse, the one who dropped her earring.” He carried his cup to the sink and added it to a stack of breakfast dishes. “Why don’t we go talk to Rinko?”

She withered inside at the thought of returning to the hospital. She was certain to run into someone who would alert Dr. Sherling that she was on the premises.

“Come on,” Trent said, and he was already reaching for his jacket. “We’ll make the rounds. First to visit Jenna, assure her you’re all right, then to Rinko to have a little chat with him, see what else he might be able to tell us about the Santa Fe.”

“If that’s what it is.”

“Easy to find out.”

She recalled that Trent had been in military intelligence, though his stint in the army had lasted less than five years and had occurred before he’d met Cassie. “If I have to I can call one of the guys who was in the army with me. He ended up with his own detective agency. High tech. He has connections with the police.”

“Don’t tell my stepfather. He thinks everything should go through the proper channels.”

“For once I agree with Carter. That is, until the channels are clogged. After talking to Rinko, I think we’d better go to the police station to visit Nash and show off the fun gift that was left in your suitcase.”

Her good mood evaporated at the thought of seeing the detective. “Nash thinks I did it, you know. That somehow I made Allie disappear.”

“Maybe the mask will change her mind.”

“She’ll probably think I was behind it as well.”

“Maybe they can get some prints off it.”

“Let’s hope. But . . . let’s not let Mom know that someone was in my apartment and left it there. She’d freak.” She thought of Jenna and how she’d become paranoid for her children after the trauma that had occurred ten years earlier.

“She’s going to find out soon enough.”