bag. After stuffing a few extra pieces of clothing into it, he zipped it up and grabbed his car keys. He’d drive up the coast, clear his head.
As he walked toward the front door, his phone rang. He paused and started toward the table to pick it up. Halfway there, he stopped and let it continue to ring. Finally his answering machine picked up the call.
“Jameson, this is Scott. After seeing you tonight at the café, I knew I needed to talk to you about this story I’m working on. Please call me as soon as you can.”
Jameson reached for the receiver and froze, his wedding ring he still wore ridiculing him. No. He couldn’t deal with Cassie’s brother right now. Scott looked so much like Cassie. He would speak to the young man when he came back tomorrow evening—after he’d closed his heart to her.
THREE
Friday night Jameson tossed his duffel bag onto his bed and glanced at his answering machine. Three messages. Sinking down onto the covers, he pushed the button to listen to the recording.
“This is Scott. I was checking to see if you were home since you weren’t at the college. I want to come by to talk to you.” The time of that call was noon.
Jameson pressed the next message left three hours ago.
“I’m on to something big. I need your advice. I may be too close to this. Call as soon as you can. I have to talk to you. If I’m not here, my calls are being forwarded to my cell so I’ll be available.”
Jameson lifted his receiver and punched in Cassie’s brother’s number. When he didn’t pick up, Jameson told him to call as soon as he could, that he would be at home. Then realizing he had another message, Jameson listened to the last one, left only a half an hour before.
“Jameson! Where are you?” Jameson heard a sound in the background, but he couldn’t tell what it was. “Call! I need to talk—” The line went dead.
Had someone interrupted Scott? The message ended so abruptly.
Concern seeped into Jameson. He replayed the message, but still couldn’t figure out what the noise was. He tried both Scott’s cell and his apartment, but again no answer. Why didn’t Scott pick up on his cell if he was waiting for him to call? Maybe Scott hung up earlier because he was angry that he wasn’t home. That could explain the sudden end to the message.
But what was that noise? Maybe Scott was pacing and knocked into something.
Unease nagged Jameson as he trudged toward the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. He needed to grade those papers. He would do that while he waited for Scott to return his call. Maybe he was busy and couldn’t answer. Scott was a reporter and a grown man. He could certainly take care of himself, but there was something in his voice that…
He shook off his worry, remembering when he’d been a reporter and working a case. Sometimes he would lose track of time and become so focused on the story that nothing else mattered, not even eating.
After fixing a mug, Jameson took it into his office and settled down to work. But as he stared at the stack of essays, his mind was filled with his unsuccessful trip up the coast. Cassie’s smile still dominated his thoughts. She was a breath of fresh air in his stale life. For the past twelve years he had been going through the motions of living, but how could he have gone on with his life when Liz was in a coma because of him?
The phone blared, jerking Jameson out of his reverie. He grabbed it on the second ring, expecting it to be Scott. So when he heard Cassie, surprise—and something he didn’t want to acknowledge—flowed through him.
“Jameson, I’m sorry to bother you, but I wasn’t sure what to do. Scott called over three hours ago and said he was coming to Magnolia Falls. He said he needed to talk to us and then see you. We haven’t seen him. Is he there?”
“No, I haven’t talked to him, but he did leave me several messages.”
“I know I shouldn’t be worried, but…” There was a long pause, then in a low voice Cassie said, “Scott didn’t sound right. Something’s wrong.”
He didn’t want to mention it, but he had to. “Have you checked with the highway patrol?”
“I hadn’t thought about that. I’ll call them,” she whispered, her distress conveyed in her hushed tone.
Remembering the urgency in Scott’s voice in the last message prompted Jameson to say, “I’ll come over. That way if he shows up I’ll be there, and we can talk then.”
“Thanks.”
Her gratefulness pushed to the background all his doubts about the wisdom of seeing her again. In his gut he knew something was wrong. He’d gotten this feeling several times when he had been a reporter and each time it had been dead-on. The last message from Scott had sounded almost frantic—not like the young man he knew. What kind of story was he working on? Why did Scott need to talk to him?
Cassie looked toward her mother sitting at the kitchen table, worry lining her face. “Jameson is coming over.” She picked up the phone again and called the highway patrol. As she asked if there were any accidents on the road between Savannah and Magnolia Falls, her mother’s expression darkened.
“Were there any?” Victoria Winters asked when Cassie replaced the receiver in its cradle.
“No.”
“Try Scott again.”
“I’ve already called and left four messages.”
Her mother rose and leaned into the table with her fists on its wooden top. “Try.”
Cassie called but didn’t bother to leave another message. Something was wrong. They both knew it but neither wanted to say it out loud. Not showing up when he’d said he would was something he had done back when he had been drinking heavily.
She could remember one time in particular a couple of years ago when her mother had insisted she go over to Scott’s apartment after he hadn’t shown up for a job interview with a friend of the family. She had found him passed out on the floor, completely unresponsive. The doctor had later said that if she hadn’t gotten him medical help when she had, he would have died.
“Something else probably came up. The life of a reporter can be unpredictable,” Cassie offered.
Her mom shook her head. “No. No, that isn’t it. He made it a point to make sure we would be here so he could talk to us. Something else has happened, Cassie. I know it in here.” She tapped her chest over her heart. “I don’t get this feeling often, but when I do, there is always something wrong.”
Cassie wanted to argue the point with her but couldn’t find the words. Her mother was right. The few times she had insisted something was wrong, it had been. “What do you want to do? Call the police?”
Her mother’s eyes grew round, and she sank down onto the chair. “The police? If for some reason Scott has started drinking again, he would be so upset that we—”
The doorbell chimed. “That’s probably Jameson. I’ll be right back.”
On her way out of the kitchen she heard her mother mutter,
