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Logan sighs. “Okay. Try to relax. Take a long shower, get into bed, and get some sleep.” I hear the crinkle of cardboard. “I’m going to take this with me so there’s no temptation.”
The Xanax, I imagine. He’s cutting her off.
Their voices recede, and I picture them walking toward the front of the house. A few minutes later, I hear the front door latch. Logan must have left. I listen for Cass’s footsteps coming back to the bedroom, but it’s quiet.
I wait for a few minutes, trying to process everything I’ve heard. Did Cass do this? Did she really kill Lucy? Was I right all along?
I sit there, waiting for some sense of validation, but instead, I feel an overly familiar emotion course through me, one I’ve felt so often throughout my life. Disappointment.
I continue to plod through my muddled thoughts until I hear Cass’s footsteps, followed by the trickle of water running from inside the bedroom, eventually turning into a steady stream. Cass must be showering. I wait another minute or so, until the heat begins to fog up the glass of the patio door, and then I take my chance.
I steal back into the bedroom, opening the patio door as quietly as I can, bracing myself for the creak that will give me away. But it doesn’t come. I peek quickly toward the sound of water, where a thin curtain shields me from Cass’s sight, before scurryingpast into the living room, through the front door, and down the stairs. When my feet hit the pavement, I open my stride into a full sprint back toward my bike. The burner phone I found beneath Cass’s bed rubs against my leg from where it rests in my shorts pocket.
By the time I’m back at the resort, most of the adrenaline has worn off. I push open the door to my room, the familiar damp air hitting my nose, and pull out the burner phone.
Why would Cass have this? And why would she leave it half-hidden under her bed?
I process these questions as I locate the power button, bringing the phone slowly to life. I pull up the call log first. It’s full of past calls. Most outgoing but some incoming as well. There are two incoming calls from a number saved as “Dan,” and I realize with a jolt that those must be from Daniel, although I’ve never heard Cass refer to him by a nickname. I look hurriedly at the time of the calls, thinking I may have found the person Daniel was meeting last night, but both are from Saturday morning, when he should have been at the dive course. I remember seeing him there on the beach, standing with Cass and the Israeli couple as I waited for Sengphet to deliver my coffee at the Tiki Palms. If he was with Cass at that time, what reason would he have to call her?
The realization hits me like a bullet.
Unless this phone doesn’t belong to Cass.
The rest of the calls in the log—both those outgoing and incoming—are to one unnamed number. Ten digits, starting with a country code I don’t recognize. I consider calling it, but I have no ideawhat I would say if someone answered. I need more information first.
Instead, I check the photos. The phone’s album is completely empty. No luck there. I move on to the text messages. There’s one message chain, an exchange with the same unidentified number that appears in the call log.
It’s clear that a large portion of the message chain has been deleted. All that’s left are a handful of incoming messages that came in three nights ago, the night of the Full Moon Party. The owner of the phone has read them but has not responded.
Are you okay? Where did you go?
Please answer.
I have a bad feeling about this. I shouldn’t have let you go off with her alone. She lives here. She has the upper hand.
Just come back to the party. We can talk this through. Tell her you’ve changed your mind. I don’t trust her.
The messages come in short bursts, each sent only a few minutes apart. I can feel the sender’s panic bubbling through the phone as I read them, leaving me with a dull pain in my gut. If this phone does belong to Cass, who was she texting with, and who was she planning on meeting the night Lucy was killed?
The dull pain turns to fire when I scroll down to the last message. One final plea for information, a last-ditch effort to confirm the reader’s safety.
Please just tell me you’re okay, Lucy.
The last word hits me square in the chest.
This was Lucy’s phone.
She was planning to meet someone the night she was killed. A female. Who lives on Koh Sang.
I think of this phone sitting discarded beneath Cass’s bed less than an hour ago. And then I think of how Cass couldn’t account for where she was the night Lucy was killed. And the image of the blond woman talking to Lucy that I saw in Daniel’s photos. And the anger, the jealousy she felt when she saw Logan and Jacinta together. How that must have resurfaced when she saw him talking to Lucy at the Full Moon Party.
And just like that, the pieces finally fall into place.
Cass killed Lucy.
24
CASS
