Cerberus

15. Maelstrom

Lydia fled to her room the moment Kassidy shut the bathroom door. She hadn't even stopped to look for her clothes from yesterday or her phone. Thankfully, she hadn't seen Isaac or any of the other staff on her retreat. She shut the door and sank to the floor, pulling her knees tightly to her chest and covered her face with her hands. Embarrassment made her face flare hot.
Why had she done that... had she read the moment wrong? Was it all in her head? No. She knew exactly what he'd been feeling when she felt what was happening under his sweat pants.
She forced herself to take a deep breath and tried to clear her head. So much had happened in the last 24 hours, she needed to sort through her thoughts. She needed coffee and her phone. Shit, where was her phone?
She groaned when she realized it was probably downstairs somewhere, most likely in Kassidy's room. She steeled herself, then made her way to her closet and found a pair of sport shorts and a loose fitting T-shirt. She left Kassidy's massive shirt on the floor. That was a problem for clear headed Lydia, because this Lydia, stupid Lydia, wanted to hold the shirt to her face and smell him.
    She took a final deep breath, then slid out the door and tip toed to the top of the stair case. She listened for anyone who might be downstairs but heard nothing. Heart beating fast, she silently made her way down to the second story of the house and began searching for her phone. There was still no sign of Kassidy or Isaac, but she did note one of the other men standing near the bar area keeping an eye on her movements.
    She froze when she saw the freshly cleaned bar, the floor spotless where just the night before, blood had been splattered across the hard wood. She shook her head, pushing the memories out of the forefront of her mind and continued her search.
    Her phone wasn't out here, which meant it had to be in Kassidy's room. She swallowed.
    "Um," she spoke to the security guard and cursed herself for not knowing his name, "have you seen Kassidy?"
    "Yes ma'am," he said, voice flat, "he left a few minutes ago."
    Relief flooded her chest. "Thank you."
    Without another word, she made her way for his room and quickly slipped inside. It was empty. She walked to the other side of the bed and spotted her clothes from yesterday crumpled haphazardly on the floor, and sticking out from a pocket was her phone. She made for it then caught a whiff of something that jogged her memories of last night again. Gasoline.
    Crumpled not far from her own clothes, was the clothes Kassidy had been wearing the day before. He must have put them there last night and meant to put them in the clothes hamper with her own. She stepped closer and picked them up. Sure enough, there was a strong smell of gasoline and smoke on them. Interesting... she thought to herself. Behind her, her phone buzzed bringing her back to the present. She dropped the pants and retrieved what she'd come for. She left Kassidy's room and made her way to the ground floor and into the main living area.
    Once she'd settled on the couch, she pulled her phone out fully intent on ordering a coffee to be delivered to the house. She could have been doing this all along, but ordering Isaac around had been a lot more entertaining. All thoughts of coffee evaporated when she pressed the button on the side of her phone and she saw the onslaught of notifications.
    Multiple people had sent her messages, most of them containing a hyperlink to a news article. Not some fluff piece gossip article, but the actual news for Las Vegas locally. The title read: Two Affluent Sons of Freemen Financial Group CEO Found Dead in Car Wreck Early This Morning.
    On it was a picture of a car burnt beyond recognition, wrapped around a telephone pole, fire trucks and police cars surrounding it. Lydia almost dropped her phone. The Freeman brothers were... dead? But she'd just seen them, they had been here and alive and Isaac had taken them home, this didn't make any....

I'll take of it.

I'll kill him.

    Gasoline.

Kassidy's words from last night came back to her. Her head felt light, her fingers tingling. There was no way, it had to be a coincidence. Kassidy was intense, but he wouldn't kill anyone. Would he? She felt like she was going insane. She was jumping to conclusions, she had to be. She was tired and a little hungover and jumping to conclusions.
She'd ask Kassidy where he'd been last night and demand answers. That felt like a good place to start. Surely, there was a perfectly sane explanation as to why he'd been MIA at the same time as the Freeman boys fatal car wreck.
She let her phone slip out of her hands as another realization settled in. Scott was dead. The man who had so quickly flipped her already shit show of a life on its head, was dead. And damn, if a small part of her didn't revel in the fact.

~

Kassidy didn't come back to the house until after 8pm. Lydia was in the home gym when she heard him and Isaac walk into the living area nearby, talking in hushed tones. She'd been doing everything she could do to keep her mind off of the news she'd heard that morning. Her and Kassidy still had a lot to unpack, so she'd arranged with the chef to have a dinner made and planned to force Kassidy to answer some questions. Whatever he knew, Isaac was in on it. She wasn't going to let either of them off the hook this time.
She shut off the treadmill and strode across the room, slamming the door open. Isaac and Kassidy both whipped their heads her direction in surprise.
"Hey boys," she said casually, "where have you been?"
"Out." Kassidy replied, quickly looking anywhere but her direction. She still felt embarrassed from this morning, but she wasn't about to let it show.
"Riveting." She said sarcastically. "Dinner is in 30 minutes, be there." She walked past them with exaggerated false confidence and headed up stairs to rinse off and change.