Chapter 142
“Look, Cass, you’re killing yourself with this,” Lucy said over lunch in the cafeteria the next morning. “Why don’t we all just agree not to do anymore searches unless we are together. That way, we can keep an eye on our mental health?”
“But when can we even get together?” I replied, not very interested in the overcooked burrito on my tray. How can you ruin a burrito? “With school and cheerleading, my stupid piano lessons, and football games….”
“Well, we play at home on Friday, and Emma is going this week. Why don’t we all come over to your house after the game, and we can work for a few hours then?”
I thought about it. That made sense. We all liked to stay up late on Friday nights anyway, and Lucy would be particularly wired after the football game as she always was. “I guess that will work,” I muttered.
“Great. Until then, no more footage. No more news. Nothing. I want you to think about something else. If your sister has the guy who killed Elliott in custody, then trust her and the rest of the team to take care of it appropriately. Finding Giovani is important, but he’s not the one who pulled the trigger.”
“He shot my sister.”
“The way you sound when you talk about Cadence lately, I’m thinking you might do that next,” Emma said, before taking a sip of her water.
“Thanks,” I replied, narrowing my eyes at her. She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t want to kill her. I’m just… jealous.
“We know,” Lucy said, her voice slightly sympathetic. “We wish we could be out there, too, Cass. It would be a heck of a lot more exciting of a life than what we’ve got going on here.” She looked around the cafeteria at all of the students who seemed like a bunch of immature children to me. “But Elliott said seventeen.”
“And we don’t even know if we are part of this yet,” Emma reminded me.
“I know. But I’ve gotten the impression you are.”
“Even if we can’t Transform, you said humans work there, too, right? At headquarters?” Lucy asked.
I nodded. “They don’t get to do any of the fun stuff, though, like hunting down Vampires.”
“I think I’m better suited to an office job anyway,” Emma said, pushing her glasses up.
“Not me,” Lucy replied, shaking her head. “I want a piece of the action, too. And we’ll get there. We just have to be patient.”
“I wish I could be,” I sighed, pushing my tray away.
“It starts with moderation and paying attention to other things,” my sage of a friend reminded me. “You’ve just got to find something to take your mind off of it. Take up cross stitch. Or biking.”
“Or read a book,” Emma suggested.
“Great. How about Twilight?” She rolled her eyes at me. “A Shade of Vampire?”
“Cass?” Lucy was using her stern mother voice.
“Okay,” I repeated. “I will try.”
“No research until Friday night.” Her blue eyes looked serious.
“Fine.”
* * *
Not picking up my laptop to watch footage of Giovani was hard for the next couple of days, but I somehow managed to keep away from it and from the headlines. When my dad turned on the evening news after diner, I found a way to move myself to another room. I decided reading a book was a good idea, so I tried to lose myself in a space fantasy series I’d been wanting to read but then ended up picking up a vampire romance instead. It was compromise, and I was actually beginning to feel a little more like myself. For once, I actually wanted to practice the piano instead of rushing through my lessons and heading upstairs to stalk the interwebs.
But the entire time I was cheering Friday evening, my mind was heavy. I knew I’d be searching the cameras for Giovani’s face soon enough, and like a dieter craving sugar, I could hardly stand to wait until the game was over. While I still enjoyed cheerleading, I realized if I got my wish and moved to Kansas City early, I’d have to give it up anyway, so there really was no point in putting my whole heart into it anymore, and like most things, it turned out to be easily replaceable as I started to focus on the search.
Lucy drove the three of us to my house, and we both hurried and showered so we didn’t smell like sweaty cheerleading uniforms anymore. I used Cadence’s shower so we could get done even faster, and when we all assembled on my bed, laptops at the ready, my hands started shaking a little bit. It should’ve been a signal that I seriously needed some help, but I ignored it and got to work.
We’d been watching footage for a couple of hours straight, and the clock on my nightstand showed it was past 11:00. I sighed and stretched my back.
Lucy must’ve been feeling it, too. “My eyes are seriously starting to burn,” she complained, rubbing both eyes with her fists. “I don’t know how much longer I can stare at this grainy footage.”
I agreed. Even after only two hours, it was getting rough. “Take a break.” I tossed a pillow at her head, tired of hearing her whine. “We aren’t going to be any use to anyone blind.”
“I’ve been taking a break for the last fifteen minutes,” Emma admitted, “and I still can’t see straight.”
Lucy threw the pillow back across the room, just missing Emma as she dodged out of the way. “Maybe that’s why you thought that dude looked like a lady,” I teased, remembering when Emma had pointed at a person with long, dark hair, similar to Zabrina’s. When he’d turned around and had a full beard, we’d gotten our only laugh of the evening.
“I didn’t have my glasses on, remember?” Emma said, narrowing her eyes at me.
“Look, the guy’s not stupid, right?” Lucy rationalized, spinning to face me, her long blonde ponytail whipping around as she did so. “We’ve already checked all of the major airports, all of the major airlines. Maybe he took a private plane. Wouldn’t that make more sense?”
“Sure it would, but most people who fly in private planes don’t ever come inside the airport. They wouldn’t be on the security cameras,” I shrugged at her. The thought had occurred to me before over the last few months I’d been poring through this footage. How would I even check for that sort of thing?
“Maybe not those security cameras,” Emma agreed, “but the tarmac is still under surveillance. Didn’t Christian give us that footage, too?”
I thought about the program Christian had installed on my laptop. I didn’t remember him mentioning anything about checking those cameras, only the ones inside the airport itself. But what she said made sense. “I guess so.” I pulled up the original files on my MacBook. After a few minutes of searching, I found an entire set of files labeled “Exterior Cameras.” I unzipped the file, and then opened the first folder which contained a link that opened up a new window in my browser. It took me a moment to figure out what I was looking at. “This one is from London Heathrow,” I explained and my friends moved in closer where they could see. Sure enough, we had a clear view of the tarmac and could even see a small plane deboarding in the background.
“Let’s take a look at those files,” Lucy suggested. “And let’s not start with the big airports; that seems too obvious.”
“Okay. What do you suggest?” Cassidy asked as I shared the files with my friends. Since Emma had installed the program on their laptops, they would be able to access the same footage I was once they unzipped them.
“We could just go through in alphabetical order and skip any airport in a major city,” Emma suggested.
“Sounds good. Should we start in Austria, then, since Cadence thinks he’s in Europe?”
“Yep,” Lucy agreed. “I’ll take Vienna.”
“I’ll take Salzburg,” I said.
“I’ll try Linz,” Emma replied thoughtfully. “It’s pretty close to the Czech Republic, too. Kill two birds with one stone.”
“Or two Vampire bats,” I muttered under my breath. With a deep breath, I said, “Good luck, ladies!” and jumped back into it, invigorated by having a new path to explore.
It seemed as if we had been searching forever with not even a glimpse of a couple who fit the description of Giovani and Zabrina, when suddenly Emma sat up straight. “You guys,” she said, frantically hitting Lucy’s leg beside her, “what did Cadence say the first letters of a plane out of Brazil would be?”
“She said to keep an eye out for anything that started with PP,” I reminded her, wondering if she was actually on to something. A quick glance at the clock told me it had only been about an hour.
Emma was nodding slowly. “Take a look at this…” she said pivoting her laptop around so Lucy and I could see it.
“What am I looking at?” Lucy asked, shaking her head and rubbing her eyes yet again.
Pointing to the far back corner of the screen, Emma said, “It’s hard to see, but there’s a small plane back here, and you can clearly see the PP, though I can’t tell what the rest of it says.”
“Okay…” I said slowly. “And?” not sure what she was getting at just yet.
“And then watch this,” Emma continued. The footage continued to play, and a few seconds later, a couple stepped out of the back of the plane. For a split second, the man turned so that his face could be picked up by the camera before a baggage handler blocked the view.
“Shut up!” Lucy screamed, covering her mouth. “I have goosebumps! Look at my arm! Look at it!”
“I think that’s him,” Emma said, much more calmly, rewinding the footage so she could look at it again. “What do you think, Cass?”
I watched the footage again, my mouth agape, unable to speak. After all of these months of searching, it turns out I was just looking in the wrong place. Finally, shaking my head to clear my thoughts I said, “I think… I’d better call my sister.”