Cassidy Kincaid Mysteries Box Set

They usually talked about once a week, most often in the afternoons. Certainly never in the mornings when he was only just dipping into his good REM sleep.
She cancelled her flight home and figured she would wait to book a new one until after she was sure of her departure date. She checked out of her room at Crazy Mike’s, though they graciously offered to store her extra gear and laptop while she was away. Earlier in the day, she had accepted Mel’s friend request on WhatsApp, but he wasn’t at the bar when she walked through it on her way to catch her bus for Playas del Coco. She remembered their night with a shiver of secret delight and wondered if she would ever see him again.
The bus ride made her sleepy, but her mind couldn’t rest. Would she find answers in San Juan, or more dead ends? Either way, she could tell Rebecca and Pamela that she had tried, really tried, to find any trace of Reeve.
The open-air bar faced the cocoa brown sand. She looked for a table of rowdy surf rats but didn’t see such a group. Bruce had not yet arrived; she was a little early. So she ordered a cup of coffee and sat watching the young waitresses buzz around the tables. A group of forty-something women had ordered a round of drinks and chips and salsa. Halfway through her coffee, one of the women came to the bar. “You Cassidy?” she asked.
Surprised, Cassidy turned to her, and nodded.
The woman, who looked impossibly petite, with deeply tanned skin and dark wavy hair, gave her a lopsided grin. “I thought so. Bruce told us to keep an eye out for you. He’s running a bit late.” The woman extended her hand, and Cassidy shook it. “I’m Benita.” She tilted her head to the rectangular table situated in the shade where four other women were gathered. “Come on, we ordered you a drink.”
Cassidy picked up her bag and followed Benita to the table.
“Girls, this is Cassidy—” she broke off and gave Cassidy a scrutinizing look. “Cassie? Cass?”
“Not Cassie,” she said, relieved to have gotten that out of the way. She loathed Cassie—it sounded like a kid’s action figure, or a line of cosmetics. “Cass is okay.” She didn’t tell them Pete’s nicknames: CeeCee, Kincaid, or on special occasions, Kinney. Her gut lurched with remorse—she realized that she had never made up her mind about taking his last name.
The group gave her a rowdy greeting, and one woman passed her a glass containing orange juice with a blush of bright red floating like a cloud near the top. They toasted to epic waves and drank. Cassidy tasted the cocktail and figured she was holding a tequila sunrise. The orange juice was fresh squeezed and ice cold.
The group introduced themselves. Besides Benita, she met Marissa, Libby, Jillian, and Taylor.
“Glad to have you,” Benita said, raising her glass.
Cassidy smiled. “Thanks for letting me crash your trip.”
“Absolutely,” Benita said. “Us surfer girls have to stick together.”
“Have you guys done trips with Bruce before?” she asked, sipping her drink.
“Yep, two years ago he chartered us a boat in El Salvador.”
“And he set us up with a killer spot at a new resort last spring—in Mexico. It was just us and these two hot local boys,” Marissa said.
The group razzed her. “You could have been their mama,” Benita chided.
“Hey,” Marissa said, grinning. “No harm in lookin’, right?”
“Jared’s not good enough for you?” one of them teased.
“Jared’s her husband,” Benita said. “He’s a model.”
Marissa, who could be a model herself with her long blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes, and tall, slender build, rolled her eyes. “Please, you guys are too much,” she said.
“So, yeah, we know Bruce,” Benita said. “He always seems to have something new, or can put something together that’s unique.”
“Have you surfed any of the waves we’re headed to?”
“Some of us have surfed Manzanillo. It’s in front of a shi-shi resort—”
“At five hundred bucks a night,” Taylor interrupted.
“So what? Why make money if you don’t spend it?” Benita countered.
“You make money,” Taylor corrected. “I make a living.”
Benita shrugged.
“Manzanillo’s a barreling left,” added Libby. “Epic when it’s on.”
“Urchins though,” said Jillian. “That’s why the boat is key.”
Cassidy felt like she was getting whiplash from following all the threads of this conversation.
“We usually do a trip a year, the six of us, except this year Michelle had to bail last minute. Her kid got appendicitis. Enter you—her replacement. We all live within a few hours of each other, but life gets in the way, and we don’t always get a chance to surf together. Three years ago we went to the Maldives.”
“That crossing just about killed me,” Taylor groaned.
“But then we scored, so you forgot all about it,” replied Libby.
Taylor grinned. “Yeah, I guess I did.”
Cassidy had read about surf trips in the Maldives, which were located in the Indian Ocean. She wondered how Bruce’s boat trip would compare. Despite her trouble with cars, boats were unpredictable. The trip to Witch’s and Ollie’s hadn’t bothered her, but an oceanography trip off the Oregon coast a few years ago had been sheer torture, start to finish.
“Where you from?” Marissa asked, tying up her long blonde hair in a loose topknot.
“Eugene,” she said before thinking. “But I learned to surf in Ventura. I moved there when I was ten.” She hadn’t meant to say so much so soon. It must be the tequila.
Just then, Bruce arrived. “Ladies,” he said with a little bow. “Everything’s set. We’re ready when you are.”
In a flash, the women downed their drinks. Libby threw some bills down on the table, and the group collected their things.
Cassidy took a deep breath and followed them down to the water’s edge. Was she embarking the trip of a lifetime, or was this the final step towards some terrible truth?
After they boarded the Trinity, Bruce’s bigger boat, complete with three bunkrooms and a modest galley manned by a slight, dark-skinned older man