Shock Point

Cassie figured the “we” was a good sign. “If I do, I’m afraid they’ll just call the cops and try to have me picked up. My stepdad is pretty hardcore. I want to talk to them face-to-face to get this whole thing straightened out.” Cassie played her trump card, the other reason she had waited until she spotted a young-looking driver driving a beat-up old car. “Besides, I can pay you. At least the jerk left me my babysitting money.”

  thirty-two

  June 21

  Thatcher’s house was dark. Cassie counted windows twice before she was sure she was standing outside his bedroom, then rapped lightly. The sound seemed as loud as a pistol shot.

  She listened closely, but heard nothing. After counting to thirty, she knocked again. The curtain was pushed back, and there was Thatcher, his hair tangled from sleep, looking younger—too young, really, to help her. Why was she here? Then Cassie remembered that she didn’t have anyplace else to go.

  Thatcher’s mouth fell open. Fumbling with the lock, he finally managed to slide the window up. His voice was a piercing whisper.

  “Cassie? Cassie! I thought you were dead.” His face was pale, his eyes wide. Cassie realized she was used to the blank expression kids quickly assumed at Peaceful Cove. As she looked at Thatcher’s open face, tears pricked Cassie’s eyes. She found she couldn’t speak. Leaning down, he gathered her cold hands in his warm ones. “Do you think you could climb in?”

  She put her hands on the sill, levered herself up, managed to get one leg over. She lost her balance and tumbled forward onto Thatcher’s bed. The nest of covers was still warm from his body.

  He pulled her up to a sitting position, then yanked the covers up around his waist when he realized he was only wearing boxers. Reaching forward, he took her hands again. She noticed that he was shaking. “I can’t believe it’s you.”

  “Why did you think I was dead?”

  “The article said you were missing and probably dead.”

  “What article?”

  “An article from a newspaper that I found online. It wasn’t even in the Oregonian. After your mom told me that they had sent you to that school, I was searching Google every day, looking for information about Peaceful Cove. And then I saw the article about the fire.”

  “Can you show me?” Cassie asked.

  He tapped the space bar on his Macintosh and it came to life. “I bookmarked it,” he said as he pulled up the article. She scrolled past an explanation of how Peaceful Cove worked, slowing when she came to the description of the fire:

  With many interior doors locked and windows barred, it was difficult for students to find a way out. Dozens of students suffered from smoke inhalation and burns, most of them minor. Once the teens managed to leave the smoky building and gather in the courtyard, according to eyewitness reports, they began to rebel, staging a small-scale riot. The gate was forced open. Under the cover of darkness, teens ran for the nearby village, in the direction of the beach, or out into the desert. Some staff members tried to restrain the children by dragging them back inside the compound, beating them with fists and sticks, and, some assert, threatening them with guns. Local authorities later intervened and arranged for the students to be returned to their parents in the United States.

  Two sixteen-year-old American students, Hayley Hedges and Cassie Streng, are missing. There is evidence they may have tried to escape the flames by climbing a fence next to a steep cliff overlooking the ocean. Authorities say that if so, their bodies may never be recovered.

  In Mexico, Gary Fisk was detained on Thursday night on a local prosecutor’s complaints of physical and psychological abuse. Police, who seized the program’s computers and files, said that Fisk himself appeared to have sustained injuries in a beating administered by his former students during the riot.

  Cassie’s chest felt bound by an iron band. Hayley must be dead.

  Thatcher and Cassie both jumped when the door flew open to reveal a woman with dark, tousled hair.

  “I guess I should be glad she still has her clothes on, Thatch.” Her voice was a low rasp.

  “Mom!” He and Cassie drew apart and got to their feet. “This is my friend Cassie, the one I told you about. Cassie, this is my mom, Lori.”

  “You mean the one you cried your eyes out over? I’m so glad you’re alive—but why are you here, Cassie?” Lori’s words were blunt, but her expression had softened. “Your mom’s crazy with worry.”

  “We saw her at the store yesterday,” Thatcher said.

  Cassie’s heart felt squeezed. “How did she look? Has she had the baby yet?”

  Lori looked at her steadily. “They took her off bed rest, but she hasn’t had the baby yet. And she looks exhausted. They won’t let her travel to Mexico until she’s had the baby. She said as soon as she does, she’s going down there to find you. Only she’s worried it will just be your body. You need to go to her.”

  Cassie felt like she was being torn apart. “I want to see my mom so bad, but once my stepfather knows I’m alive, I’ll be gone again. Someplace even farther away than Mexico. Rick’s pretty serious about making sure I don’t talk about, about . . .”

  Lori finished Cassie’s sentence for her. “About the Socom, right?”

  Cassie looked at Thatcher. “You told her?”

  “I had to explain why I was so upset when you didn’t show up at school. After a week I went to your house and talked to your mom. She told me Rick had found crystal meth in your room.”

  The injustice of it burned Cassie afresh. “How can she believe that!”

  Thatcher looked away. “I don’t know that she does. I told her I didn’t believe it, and she looked away and didn’t say anything.”

  Cassie looked at Lori. “Do you believe us? I mean, about me not using drugs and my stepfather giving them to kids?”

  Lori ran her hand through her hair so that it stood up in a wild halo around her head. “To be honest, I don’t know what to believe. You seem like a good kid. And I know Thatch likes you and trusts you.” She sighed. “Thatch told me how much money your stepfather gets for every kid enrolled in the drug study. With that kind of money at stake, people do bad things.”

  Cassie let herself relax a little. It didn’t sound as if Lori was going to call her mom or the police—at least not right away. She yawned, a yawn that went on and on until she actually staggered.

  “Come on, kids,” Lori said. “How about if I make us some cocoa?”

  “It’s almost time to get up anyway, Mom. Maybe you should make it coffee.”

  Cassie saw that what Thatcher said was true. The sky was growing light. She looked at her watch. It was a little after five.

  She followed Lori out of the room. Behind her she heard Thatcher hopping on one foot as he yanked on a pair of pants. Watching his mom fill the kettle with water, Cassie started yawning again and couldn’t stop.

  “You look like you need to go to bed for a week.”

  “I’m pretty . . . um . . .” Cassie yawned again. “Tired.”

  “She could sleep here while we’re both at work, Mom,” Thatcher suggested as he came into the kitchen.

  Lori nodded. “Of course she can sleep here. She looks like hell. But she should stay inside until we come home. Her folks live less than two miles away—and there are plenty of kids in this neighborhood who go to West Portland and might recognize her. And after work we can talk about what we are going to do next.”

  We. Cassie liked the sound of that. She was safe now, safe for the first time in months.

  “So you’re working now, Thatcher?”

  “I’m working with Mom at Goodwill. Want us to bring you back a Crock-Pot or a plastic lei?”

  “No, thanks. I’m good.” She took the thick white mug of cocoa Lori handed her, before Lori poured coffee for herself and Thatcher. They sat down at the dining room table and she told them about Peaceful Cove and how she had escaped.

  Lori leaned forward. “Don’t you think if you told your mother all this that she would believe you?”

>   Cassie hesitated. “I honestly don’t know. We used to be pretty close, but now she only listens to Rick. I’m thinking of going to my dad now that I can tell him what was really going on, but he doesn’t have custody and he lives in Minor. And he doesn’t have the money to go to court to fight for custody.”

  Lori sighed. “I don’t feel right about not telling your mom you’re back. This is killing her.”

  Tears started to run down Cassie’s face. “But if I tell her, she’ll tell Rick, and then I’ll be off in another school I won’t be able to escape from.”

  “Just for today, Mom,” Thatcher said. “Let Cassie get some sleep, and then tonight we can figure out what to do.”

  Before she left for work, Lori gave Cassie a hug. Even though she was the wrong height and didn’t smell anything like Jackie, Cassie choked with tears again. Lori felt like a mom.

  thirty-three

  June 23

  Standing in her old living room, Cassie took a deep breath. She could feel her pulse in her throat. The big house felt oddly hollow and fake, like a stage set or a museum diorama, rather than someplace people lived.

  At 7:00 A.M., she and Thatcher had staked out the house, parking his mom’s car a block away. Today was Lori’s day off, and she was still asleep. They knew she wouldn’t approve of what they were doing, so they hadn’t told her. Rick had left the house at 7:40, the same time he always had when Cassie lived with them. Seeing him pass by in his BMW, his expression concealed by his expensive sunglasses, Cassie found her fists clenching. Did he ever think about her, feel remorse for his lies? Did he ever doubt that he had done the right thing by putting Ben, Carmen, and Darren on Socom?

  The next hour dragged by. With no job, Jackie didn’t have a set routine, but Cassie knew she liked to get her errands done first thing in the morning. Finally, they saw the garage door rise and her car back out of the driveway. It turned the other way, so Cassie was spared the sight of her mother’s face. But even watching the black dot of her head made Cassie’s throat close with tears.

  “Ready?” Thatcher asked. Then he saw her face and patted her knee. “Oh, Cas, I’m sorry.”

  She took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to focus as she repeated their plan one more time. “Okay, if you see anybody, honk the horn three times. Then I’ll reset the security alarm, go out the back door and over the fence. I’ll meet you at the tennis courts two blocks from here. If I don’t come in thirty minutes, call the police.”

  Thatcher sat quietly through her recitation, even though he had heard it a dozen times already. He patted her knee again. “Good luck.”

  Cassie walked as fast as she dared up the street, through the side yard, and into the back. Reaching under the deck, she found the hook her mother had hung an extra key on. An extra key Rick knew nothing about.

  But there was still the alarm. She put the key in the door, opened it, and the alarm began to beep a warning. Cassie punched in the security code. It beeped twice and then fell silent. Good. They hadn’t changed the code. She stood still for a second, just breathing.

  Then she shook herself. She had to find proof about what Rick was doing—and quickly. She tried the handle to his office. Locked. According to the plan, Cassie should now be shimming it open, even taking it off its hinges if necessary, but she was suddenly overcome by exhaustion. Even if she did manage to get in, there was no guarantee she would find anything on his computer or in his files that spelled out the problems with Socom. Rick had had plenty of time to change everything.

  She found herself walking up the stairs to her room. Everything was the way she had left it, except for her bed. It was unmade, as it had been when Cassie had left for school the day she was kidnapped, but the pillow was now wadded up and surrounded by a dozen crumpled tissues. She imagined her mother lying on the bed, weeping.

  The closet was stuffed full of clothes. It was hard to believe she had gone from having so much to being able to keep everything she owned in a plastic milk crate—with room to spare. The only thing Cassie took was an old pair of sneakers from the back of the closet. The Nikes she had worn in the desert were coming unstitched at the toes.

  Back downstairs, she started to force herself to search the kitchen junk drawer for a screwdriver. Her eye was caught by a checklist on the counter, written in Rick’s distinctive handwriting.

  Call Food in Bloom, review menu - order more shrimp? Pick up glasses

  Make sure servers know to wear black and white Get extra Socom brochures from printer

  Make sure Infocus machine is working for presentation

  Next to the list was a cream-colored invitation. Please join us for a reception followed by an opportunity to learn more about Socom. This is your chance to learn more about the answer for troubled adolescents, as well as how to get in at the “ground floor” of a pre-IPO enterprise. Cassie looked at the date. The party was being held on Saturday—two days from now.

  Outside, a horn honked three times. Cassie jumped, her heart pounding.

  Shoes in hand, Cassie snatched up the extra key, hit the exit button on the alarm, and then went out the back door. But instead of scrambling for the fence, she hid behind the big cedar, watching the kitchen window. In a few minutes, her mother came in. At this distance it was hard to see her clearly, but her face seemed pale and thin. She opened and closed cupboard doors, obviously putting groceries away. Cassie wanted nothing so much as to run back to the house and into her mother’s arms. Instead she turned away and climbed over the neighbor’s fence. Two months ago, climbing a six-foot-tall fence would have seemed a major obstacle. Now it was barely worth noting.

  When Thatcher saw her walking toward the tennis courts, he ran to her and pulled her into his arms. Cassie felt beyond tears.

  She told him what had happened. “I’ve got nothing, Thatcher. Nothing. There’s no way we can prove he’s connected to these deaths.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” he said slowly. “There might just be a way.”

  thirty-four

  June 25

  Cassie smiled shyly at Thatcher. He ducked his head, but not before smiling back. She had never gone to a prom, but she imagined it must feel something like this. Both of them dressed like grown-ups, trying out new selves for a night. Yesterday, Lori had brought home outfits from Goodwill. For Thatcher, it was a white dress shirt, now freshly pressed, and black gabardine dress pants. His hair had been slicked back into a ponytail, and his piercings were gone.

  Cassie was a blonde now. Thatcher had taken to calling her “Inga, the Swedish model,” and even though she protested, it made Cassie flush with an odd pleasure. When she looked in the mirror, between the new hair color and the twenty pounds she had lost at Peaceful Cove, she didn’t recognize herself—and she hoped Rick wouldn’t, either.

  For Cassie, Lori had brought home a loose white peasant blouse with a red drawstring and a black velvet skirt that came just above her knees. She had even found some size ten black sandals with two-inch heels.

  Cars lined both sides of the street, and they had to park three blocks away. Cassie led Lori and Thatcher to the back door. Under his arm, Thatcher carried the materials they had spent the day at Kinko’s producing. As they had hoped, the kitchen was a swirl of activity, with a dozen staff dressed in black and white rinsing glasses, prepping food, and coming and going with silver trays. No one looked at them twice. Cassie thought they were probably used to working with crews that changed for every event.

  She stashed the Kinko’s bag in the mudroom. Thatcher picked up a serving platter filled with crab puffs. “I’ll go see if the reporter is here,” he told Cassie before walking out into the great room.

  He was back in thirty seconds. “Michelle’s here, all right. Standing right next to Rick and asking him lots of questions.” Thatcher had called the reporter two days earlier and told her about Cassie and Peaceful Cove, as well as the party, saying, “You get in and we’ll promise you a show.” Now they just had to deliver.

&nbs
p; Lori wheeled up a metal cart draped in white. It held a few dirty glasses. “Trade me,” she said to Thatcher, then took his tray of canapés and disappeared. Cassie got the Kinko’s bag and put it on the lower level of the cart. She took a deep breath. It was now or never. The longer she hung out in the kitchen, the more likely that they would be found out, by her mom or Rick or even the real catering staff. “It’s showtime,” she said to Thatcher.

  The room was crowded with close to a hundred people sipping drinks, nibbling shrimp, and listening to Rick, who stood at the front of the room, gesturing.

  “The adolescent brain is still maturing. It’s why teenagers are so much more likely to engage in risky behavior. Many teenagers lack certain brain chemicals that allow them to make mature judgments or even regulate their own emotions. But Socom provides that missing piece. When we take this company public, we fully expect to gain at least forty percent of the existing market share for adolescent depression, in addition to opening up new markets. Even given the existing patient profile, this a twelve billion dollar industry.” He hit hard on the “b” in billion, and a man standing near Cassie whistled. Smiling, Rick added, “Socom’s innovative technology creates an opportunity to obtain and hold a dominant position in the market. Tonight we are offering a pre-IPO opportunity, meaning that you, my friends and colleagues, have the chance to get in on the ground floor before Socom goes public.” He clasped his hands. “Now, does anyone have any questions?”

  “Dr. Wheeler!” Cassie called out before anyone else could say anything. “Dr. Wheeler, I have a question. Isn’t it true that Socom causes delusions that have led to the deaths of three teens?”

  “That’s—that’s not true,” Rick stammered. “With all drugs that treat depression, of course there is a small but recognized risk that as the patient’s depression and inertia begin to lift, they may actually be at slightly greater risk for suicidal ideation. But that risk is no greater for patients taking Socom than for any other drug.”