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I look up to find them both staring at me. I nod.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense.” I look down at the cables and hooks again.
Ezra picks up the hook again. “Keller’s thick in the head. I don’t think he would be able to pull off something like that.” He twirls the dark metal in his hands. “He has to be working with someone else.”
“We know he’s working with Vico and Cesare,” Vance offers.
Ezra shakes his head. “They’re even dumber than he is, they like to work with their hands. This would have to be someone more devious, crafty. Someone crazy enough to think the risk of pulling some shit like this is worth it. They would have to be playing at this for a while now, too.”
The puzzle piece clicks into place in my head.
“Cassidy.”
* * *
I storminto my room with Ezra and Vance hot on my heels.
“Are you sure she could even pull this off?” Vance asks me, but I’m too wrapped up in my thoughts to answer him.
All I can think of is howstupidI was to miss the signs.
They were all there.
The way she would always pop up at the most inopportune times—even when I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. Like that night in the city on that rooftop. The little “gifts” she would leaveinsidemy room, she had to know when I wasn’t around to be able to do that.
Even the fact she was able to tell Alize about the cabin.
The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. It’s absolutely batshit crazy. But that’s literally Cassidy’s modus operandi. She doesn’t have a sane bone in her body. I start tossing things to the floor in my room.
I’m not even sure what I’m looking for.
The chain I wore to the party where I met Alize was from Cassidy, unbeknownst to me. I run a hand along my chest of drawers, toppling all the cologne and jewelry onto the floor. I tear the paintings off the wall. I even strip the sheets from my bed and overturn the mattress.
All her coded threats, all her strange attempts to get me to change my mind about Alize. It was all entitlement. “It’s her,” I say, finally. “It’s fucking Cassidy, I know it.”
“What makes you sure?” Ezra asks, taking a step into the room.
The two of them have been standing at the threshold watching me tear the room in two. I’m still deep in my quest for something,anything, to prove my theory. I start ripping the curtains down, and the wallpaper is next. It has to be in here, somewhere.
“For the first few weeks after our hookup, she used to always leave gifts inside my room,” I say, sucking in a deep breath. “At first, I thought she was getting one of the guys to drop them off, so I started locking my door. But they kept fucking showing up.” This is the first I’m recounting her strange behavior to them, and I can’t fucking believe how easily I overlooked all of this. “They got infrequent after I told her I wasn’t interested, but they still showed up.”
My mind travels back to the Freshman Welcome Party. “Eventually I stopped noticing them. The last thing she left was a chain. I wore it to the Welcome Party accidentally. I didn’t even realize it was from her.”
Their interest is piqued. “What did you do with it?”
“I gave it back to her,” I say. “I always do that, or toss it once I realize it’s from her.”
They’ve fanned out to opposite corners of the room. I turn back to the curtains, running my hands along the seams. She might have hid it there. It would have to be somewhere inconspicuous, somewhere I wouldn’t notice.
“Were all her gifts jewelry?” Ezra asks.
I nod. “Most of the time,” I say. “Lots of chains. Sometimes earrings. A pair of cufflinks.”
Things I had to wear.
Fuck.
Vance turns to me. “And you sure you’ve found every single one of her gifts?”
