Chapter 143
I was glad calling my sister didn’t actually require any dialing because I imagined I’d be like one of those nervous women in one of those old films, trying to get her shaking finger to make the rotary dial go all the way around in a circle. Instead, I only had to press a few buttons to get my sister on the phone. For some reason, I decided to FaceTime her. Probably not the best idea since Lucy and Emma were there, and I didn’t know if Cadence was aware they’d been helping me. I had a feeling Aaron knew—he seemed to know a lot of things he shouldn’t be aware of—but at the time, I didn’t care. I just needed my sister to see the sincerity in my expression when I told her the big news. We’d actually found Giovani.
“Cassidy? What’s up?”
Cadence looked relieved to see I was calling for some reason. Though her greeting was nonchalant, I could tell by her tone something was going on. I tried to figure out where she was by what was behind her, but it looked like a restaurant I’d never been to before. “Cadence you are never going to believe what I found!” I blurted, remembering why I’d called in the first place.
“We--we found him,” Lucy chimed in, sticking her head in front of the screen.
Two seconds before I dialed, I’d reminded them to stay out of the shot “Luce! I told you not to let her know you were here!” I shoved her out of the way, maybe a little harder than I meant to. I didn’t even get to tell my sister the good news. Granted, Emma had been the one to find him, but after months of searching… I wanted the chance.
I was more than a little surprised to see Cadence sigh and roll her eyes. That was not the reaction I was expecting.
“Relax, Cass. Jeez!” Lucy said rubbing her arm. “I didn’t tell her anything else!” she whispered sharply, and I couldn’t help but narrow my eyes at her.
“What is it, Cass?” Cadence asked, almost like we were interrupting something important, or she didn’t know what we were even talking about.
“It’s footage of Giovani getting off a small private plane in Austria!” I explained. “And his girlfriend is with him. And don’t worry--my friends have no idea why we were looking for him. They just wanted to help.” I hoped my fast thinking didn’t sound too obviously like a lie, although it probably did. But then, at this point, I guess I didn’t really care anymore.
Rather than responding to me, Cadence said “Hey, Emma. How are you?”
I looked over my shoulder to see Emma was also in the shot now and about lost my mind when she said, “Hi, Cadence,” quietly. All I could do was mutter under my breath.
“Cass, are you sure it’s Giovani? It’s not Charlie from Lost again, is it?” Cadence asked cautiously.
That was enough to make me want to throat punch her through the phone. She seemed to think that Dominic Monaghan joke was so stinking funny. “God, Cadence! No, it’s him. I told you; we even saw his girlfriend.”
“Okay, well, send me the footage, and I’ll look it over,” Cadence said. Her voice was calm, not at all like what I’d expected as I’d nervously called her.
I couldn’t help but let my frustration show. “Fine. But, why aren’t you more excited?” There was really only one explanation for her nonreaction. “You don’t believe us, do you?”
“I do!” Cadence assured us. “It’s just… we pretty much already knew he was over there. We just haven’t been able to find him. And while it’s great to have confirmation, it doesn’t really help… that much.”
“What?” Lucy screeched, jumping back into the shot. “We’ve been poring over this video footage for half of our lives, and you don’t think it helps? OMG!” I had to agree with my friend on this one. What in the world was wrong with Cadence that she would let us keep searching through this footage and not even tell us that she knew he was already over there? Not to mention saying visual confirmation meant nothing? The least she could do was pretend.
Cadence held the phone back from her face a bit, like she thought Lucy might climb through the screen and slug her. “I’m not saying it isn’t useful. I’m sorry--look I’m getting ready to go on a… job… thing, and I’m kind of thinking about that right now, so just send it over, and we’ll look at it. We appreciate your help.”
As Cadence tried to blow us off, Emma leaned back in front of my phone. “What if we could somehow use this footage in combination with other exterior shots of the airport, now that we have a timestamp, to see if we could track where he went after he arrived in Austria?”
“Now, that would be helpful,” Cadence agreed.
“You are infuriating,” Lucy muttered as she slid over on the bed away from the phone with her arms crossed. I was so glad my friend wasn’t too shy to tell my sister how she really felt as I was of the same opinion right now. Would we go to all the trouble to do what Emma had suggested just to find out that our work was unappreciated again?
Cadence sort of rolled her eyes again and shouted, “I love you, too, Luce. But Emma, I’m not sure what kind of footage we can access. I’ll get this over to Christian and have him check on that okay?”
“Fine,” I said again, speaking for all of us. If she was getting ready to go on a hunt, that explained her dismissive behavior, but I was still irritated. It didn’t explain the restaurant, though. Thinking about the danger she was in, I said, “Well, be careful….” But then I realized there was someone else in the shot and I froze. I couldn’t see him very well, but he had familiar looking green eyes and a crop of wavy dark hair. I could no longer speak as my mind tried to process what I was seeing.
My sister must have realized my confusion. “What’s wrong, Cass?” Cadence asked.
I didn’t know how to ask my question without being rude, because obviously, whoever this guy was, he could hear me. So… I asked anyway. “Who is that guy you’re with?”
My sister looked almost as perturbed as I had when I realized my friends were visible to her. She looked at the guy sitting next to her and sort of nudged him out of the way with her shoulder as she hesitantly said, “Oh, um, this is Brandon.”
Undeterred by my sister’s jab, he was back, his face pushing between Cadence’s and the screen. “Hi, Cassidy,” he said smiling. “How are you? I’ve heard a lot about you.”
There wasn’t a single part of my brain that wasn’t puzzled as I stammered, “Yeah, hi. Nice to meet you,” because that was the polite thing to say.
Lucy jumped back over into the screen. One look at Brandon, and her eyes narrowed as well. “Brandon? Wow, you look a lot like…”
“Elliott,” I whispered. The word came out before I could contain it. Who was this person? Why was he with my sister? And why was he wearing my dead best friend’s face?
“Yeah, that conversation is going to have to wait until another time, Sis,” Cadence replied, shoving Brandon away from her phone once more. “Aaron and I seriously have to go.”
I could tell she was about to hang up on me, and there was no way I could possibly process what she may have to tell me at that instant anyway, so I did the only thing my mind would let me do and muttered, “Okay.”
“Bye, Cassidy. It was nice to see you!” Brandon said, ducking back in front of the phone before Cadence pushed him away again.
I nodded, having no idea what to say to him, or to my sister for that matter.
“I’ll call you in the morning, okay?” Cadence assured me, and I got the impression she wasn’t just blowing me off this time.
“All right. Be careful,” I managed again before Cadence disconnected the call. I stared at my blank phone for a long while before I turned to my friends. “OMG,” I whispered.
