Last Breath (2 page)

Travis had grudgingly agreed to turn in the paper for her. She thought now that he’d stuck it into his backpack. Hadn’t he? But then he’d accused her of having her “priorities screwed-up” and told her to get someone else to finish the car wash arrangements. “You’re not indispensable!” he had said, his voice cool. “Why is it so important to you to think that you are?”

Later that day, they’d resumed the argument and taken it to its logical conclusion…an angry good-bye.

But she had assumed that he’d turned in the paper first.
Before
that last blowup.

“I’ll check it out,” she promised the psych professor. “I did finish that paper. All I have to do is find it.”

She went looking for Travis, anger bubbling in her chest as she hurried to Lester, a tall, skinny, brick dorm opposite the Quad. He hadn’t turned the paper in? Had he just forgotten about it? They’d both been upset. It could have slipped his mind when he got into the psych room. So it could still be in his backpack. She’d get it from him, turn it in, and Dr. Bruin would know that she actually had finished the assignment.

“What paper?” Travis said when she explained why she was there.

He didn’t look all that happy to see her, it seemed to Cassidy. She’d sent someone looking for him and when he came out of the elevator and saw her standing in the lobby, he didn’t smile.

His eyes used to light up when he saw me, she thought, feeling a pang of regret as he approached. But he had wanted too much from her, too much time, too much devotion.

Maybe that was irritation she was feeling, not regret.

“I don’t remember your giving me any paper,” he added when she had reminded him.

“But I did, Trav! I can’t believe you don’t remember. We were standing outside of the Quad, near the fountain. I had the car wash to set up, so I decided to cut psych, remember?” Her lips tightened. “You gave me a lecture. But you did take the paper. I think you put it in your backpack.”

His eyes were uncomprehending. “Well, I’ll go look. But I’d have run across it by now if it was in there.” He took the stairs two at a time. He was an athlete. A runner and a biker. She had planned to go to his track meets, his bicycle races, cheering him on. But not now. He wouldn’t want her there.

He was back in minutes, the black backpack dangling from his hands. “You look for it,” he said. “You’ll recognize it faster than I would.”

The paper wasn’t there. The backpack was stuffed to overflowing with notebooks, loose-leaf, paperbacks, a wallet, sunglasses, but no essay with Cassidy’s name on it.

“Maybe you just thought you gave it to me,” he said as she straightened up with a disappointed sigh. “Seems to me you had a lot on your mind that day.” Without smiling, he added, “But then, when don’t you?”

“Please, Travis, don’t start,” she said, trying to concentrate on that day, trying to remember. Could he be right? Maybe she’d intended to give it to him, and then forgotten. She’d been thinking about the car wash. So much to do, so little time! Maybe she’d never handed him the paper, after all.

“But if I didn’t give it to you,” she said, “then where is it? I
know
I finished it.”

He shrugged. “In your room, I guess. Anyway,” he added stiffly as he bent to refasten his backpack, “is that all you wanted?”

Images flashed across Cassidy’s mind: The two of them meeting for the first time at a bike club gathering. A few nights later, dancing together for hours in the rec center. Walking across campus holding hands and talking nonstop about school and how different it was from high school. Sitting in a darkened movie theater sharing a giant box of popcorn and laughing at Bill Murray’s antics. Biking together to the nearby state park. Sitting in Travis’s car, kissing, his arms feeling so right, so right.

But she’d been so busy, working like mad to prove just how strong and healthy she really was now. And after a while, he had said, “You never have any time for me. You fill up every minute with activities and you don’t leave any time for its.”

She shook the images away. Life was too short for regret.

“Yes,” she said clearly, “the paper was all I wanted. I’m going to go hunt for it in my room.”

“Good luck,” he said as she turned away and hurried from Lester.

She searched every inch of her cluttered dorm room and when Ann, Talia, and Sophie came home, she enlisted their aid, too. They lifted clothing from chairs and beds, set aside towers of books on shelves and tables, even slipped their CD’s from holders thinking the paper might have slipped down behind the wooden racks. It hadn’t.

Although Cassidy was absolutely positive that she had slaved over and finished the essay for psych 101 class, the paper was nowhere to be found.

“I’m sure I gave it to Travis,” she said when they’d given up and were sitting on the floor trying to restore some semblance of order in the room. “I remember it so clearly. At least, I think I do. But he doesn’t have it.” One hand went to her aching forehead. “Maybe that stupid asthma attack damaged my brain cells.”

“Or maybe,” Sophie said lightly, “Travis is madder at you than you thought he was.”

Cassidy’s eyes went to Sophie’s round, pink-cheeked face. “How could he be madder than I thought he was? He was furious.”

“My point exactly.” Sophie fell silent then, busily sorting CD’s, but her implication was clear to Cassidy.

She thinks Travis
has
that paper, Cassidy thought miserably, getting up to go over and lie down on her bed. Or
had
it, anyway. Sophie thinks maybe he deliberately sabotaged me with Dr. Bruin because we had that fight.

It was Ann who came to Travis’s defense. “He wouldn’t do something so slimy,” she said firmly, tossing a handful of sweatshirts into the closet. “Not Travis.”

But Cassidy, remembering Travis’s face burning with anger on that day of their last argument, wasn’t so sure.

O
N SATURDAY MORNING, THE
autumn-hued campus was bathed in bright sunshine, but there were dark clouds gathering low on the horizon.

“Let’s hope,” Cassidy said as she dressed in bright red sweats, “that the rain holds off until after the car wash. We’ve hustled our buns pulling this together. No one wants to see it washed out.”

Ann, plucking her eyebrows at the dresser mirror, laughed at Cassidy’s unintentional play on words. Sophie said, “It’s not supposed to rain until later. We should rake in a pile of money for the dance. So relax, Cassidy. All of your efforts will not be in vain.”

Talia, in exercise clothing, came in, telling Cassidy that she had just talked to her mother on the phone. With an impish grin, she said, “She says you probably lost that essay on purpose. Passive-aggression, she called it. You didn’t really want to turn it in, so you lost it instead. Isn’t the human mind intriguing? And that’ll be fifty bucks, please.”

“I’m sure your mother charges more than that,” Cassidy said drily.

“Not over the phone.”

“Well, I don’t
have
fifty bucks, and I
didn’t
lose that essay. Travis did.” Cassidy wasn’t wild about the idea of Talia discussing her with a shrink, even if it was her own mother. And she had, too, wanted to turn in that essay. She’d worked hard on it.

Psychiatry was obviously not an exact science.

None of Cassidy’s roommates would be at the car wash. They had helped her set up the event, but Ann was baby-sitting for her economics professor, a widow with three children for whom she often sat, saying she needed the “brownie points” because her grade in that class was “iffy.” Talia was running in a race, and Sophie had left an important paper until the last minute, as Sophie always did, and planned to spend the day in the library.

“Traitors!” Cassidy had accused half-seriously. “My own roommates, letting me down. Can’t count on anybody these days.”

“You’ll have tons of people,” Sophie assured her. “Everyone I know is planning to help.”

Cassidy had no choice but to take Sophie’s word for it.

On the way to breakfast in the Quad’s basement dining hall, Ann asked Cassidy, “So, is the new love of your life going to be there? At the car wash, I mean.”

“Sure. That’s how I met him, remember? We put out a call for volunteers, and blond, gorgeous Sawyer Duncan showed up, almost like I’d placed an order.”

“And the rest is history,” Ann said drily. “Poor Trav.”

“I didn’t
dump
Travis,” Cassidy replied, glancing up at Ann who, like Talia, was considerably taller than her. “We had an argument, that’s all.”

“You mean a
fight
,” Sophie said. “I heard you guys yelling at each other. Sounded like a fight to me.”

“Leave Cassidy alone,” Talia ordered. “She’s been sick. Quit picking on her.”

My sentiments exactly, Cassidy thought as they entered an uncrowded dining hall. Leave poor Cassidy alone. She’s not quite herself just yet.

Sometime today, between the car wash and the movie Sawyer was taking her to later, she was going to have to rewrite that stupid psych paper. Dr. Bruin had made it very clear that asthma or not, Cassidy Kirk was expected to turn in the assignment.

“You’re not eating anything,” Sawyer’s voice said over her shoulder ten minutes later. He sat down in the chair beside her. His broad bulk, in jeans and a blue windbreaker, filled the chair. His sun-streaked blond hair was windblown, and a grin creased his strong, ruddy face. “Aren’t you supposed to be rebuilding your strength? We’ve got a busy day ahead of us, kiddo.”

Cassidy poked at watery scrambled eggs with her fork. “Nothing on
this
plate is going to rebuild anyone’s strength. Anyway, I’m fine. Let’s get started before the rain does.”

The car wash was being held in the center of campus. Although Cassidy had worried that not enough people would show up, they had plenty of volunteers, anxious to be outside in the sunshine while it lasted. Cassidy decided, after some thought, to ask that only one person work on one car at a time. She suspected that working in groups would cause so much goofing-off with garden hoses and buckets of soapy water, they’d never get done. People who weren’t washing cars could keep the lines of cars in order and the car-wash supplies filled up.

No one complained about working solo.

“This place is a madhouse!” Sawyer, pail in hand, declared as he brushed past Cassidy an hour later. “More people than cars.”

“We’ll just get done faster this way,” Cassidy answered. She was scrubbing the white sidewalls of a blue convertible, using a scouring pad. “And I’ll get out of here in time to work on my psych paper.”

“The one you lost?”

I didn’t
lose
it! Cassidy thought, irritated. But Sawyer was already on his way to the next waiting car.

The line didn’t seem to get any shorter. As sparkling clean vehicles pulled away, dirty ones sprouted like mushrooms in their places. Seeing the apparently endless line circling the parking lot like a wagon train, Cassidy sighed. That psych paper might have to wait until tomorrow.

In spite of her impatience, she couldn’t help admiring the black TransAm when it pulled up in front of her. Through a thick layer of dust and grime, she could see its clean, sporty lines, imagine it roaring up the highway between Salem University and the nearby town of Twin Falls. She had no trouble picturing herself behind the wheel.

Impossible to see who really
was
behind the wheel. All the window glass was tinted a dark, smoky color that kept the driver hidden from view. Cassidy didn’t recognize the car. A cool car. Whoever owned it was probably a really cool person.

Two red plastic hearts tied together and fastened firmly to the driver’s door handle bounced about as Cassidy sprayed the TransAm with one of several garden hoses. Thinking Sawyer would love this car, she glanced around, intending to signal him.

She didn’t see him anywhere. And if she called his name, he’d never hear her over this din.

Giving up, Cassidy returned to the task at hand.

When the black TransAm was spotless, the driver rolled the window down a crack and thrust a crisp, ten-dollar bill through the opening. Cassidy caught only a glimpse of a cream-colored parka hood.

She was fumbling in her leather fanny pack for change when the TransAm’s engine roared, gears shifted, and it veered out of line to peel across the parking lot, disappearing from sight.

Weird. Ten bucks for a car wash? The guy must be loaded.

There was a brief lull in customers just then and a sudden, chill spray from Sawyer’s garden hose on her left ear caught Cassidy by surprise, distracting her from the vanished TransAm with its generous, unseen driver. Using her own hose as a weapon she took up the challenge. Others armed with hoses and buckets joined in. Arcs and streams of water cascaded down upon the already-puddled parking lot, soaking jackets and jeans, hair and hands, faces and feet.

“Enough, enough!” Cassidy finally shouted, her own clothes dripping. “Lay down your arms!” A new line of cars had formed, snaking around the parking lot in a semicircle. “Back to work!”

There were groans at an end to the horseplay, but everyone obeyed.

It was much harder working in wet clothes, Cassidy promptly discovered. The sun had disappeared behind the thickening clouds, turning the air chilly. Her sweats clung to her like tissue paper, and her hands felt like ice. Dumb idea, getting wet, she told herself as she approached the third car in line. I don’t have time to get sick again. Dumb, dumb, dumb!

She saw the two red plastic hearts before she noticed the car idling next to her.

The black TransAm.

In line again, and for good reason. Although it had been spotless when it raced from the parking lot twenty minutes or so earlier, it was once again coated with a thick layer of dirt.

Cassidy peered more closely at the car. Couldn’t be the same one. That guy had paid ten bucks. He wouldn’t have gone right out and gotten the car filthy again so fast, would he?

But there were the red plastic hearts, dangling from the driver’s door handle.

What were the chances that there were
two
black TransAms on the campus of Salem University with dark, tinted glass and a pair of red plastic hearts tied to a door handle?