by JJ Knight
“See,” Jo whispers. “There she is.”
An elderly woman is sitting at the end of the row of individual sinks, all gleaming white with gold faucets.
“Take a seat,” Jo says and drops down on one of the benches in a sitting room adjacent to the one with the stalls. “Colt’s worried about what happened to you last night. Did anyone hurt you?”
I want to laugh. Hurt me? In how many ways?
My expression must make Jo anxious, because she asks, “Nothing really bad happened? Nobody…touched you? Or worse?”
“No. No. Not like that.”
She exhales in a big rush. “Okay. I figured you would tell Parker if that happened. Jax would want to know.”
“They just tied me up with duct tape. They…threatened to do…that…a couple times. But some of the people weren’t on board with it. They wouldn’t help.”
“Shit,” Jo says. “That had to be terrifying as hell.”
“Wasn’t my best night,” I say.
“Why don’t we get you home?” Jo says. “When is your flight?”
“Not until midnight.”
“I bet we can get you something sooner. Do you want that?” Her face looks so young, so worried. I know we’re about the same age, but she is so petite, I always forget that she used to be known for going ballistic on other women in the fighting cage.
I wonder for a second why she doesn’t fight anymore.
“It’s okay,” I say. “It’s really just a few more hours.”
“All right.” She looks around. “I don’t know how you grew up, but this is a long, long way from the projects for me.”
I glance up at the gilded trim on the ceiling. “My father is homeless,” I say simply.
“Really?”
“Yeah. I never could figure out a way to help him.”
She sits back against the wall. “I only met my mother a few months ago. She ran away from the hospital the night I was born.”
“Sounds like we’ve both had lives of wealth and ease,” I say, a laugh starting to bubble up.
“And they just keep getting easier,” she says. “I get shot. You get kidnapped. Maybe we should run from these guys!”
Now we’re both laughing. It seems so ridiculous. “They should make a movie about our lives,” I say.
“Ooooh, I think you should be played by Zooey Deschanel,” Jo says.
“And you should be Jennifer Lawrence!” I tell her.
“Who would be Zero?” Jo asks, and the question makes us laugh so hard that I almost miss it when my phone starts going crazy with alerts.
“It’s working!” I say.
There are messages from Delores and Lily. One from work.
Then two I don’t recognize.
I scroll through, and freeze. “Oh my God,” I say.
The first one.
Found ya.
And the next.
Still flashing those green panties like a whore?
I start sobbing and hiccuping and retching at the same time. I can’t control anything about my body and slide off the bench.
“What is it, Maddie?” Jo asks. She kneels next to me. “Talk to me.”
I shake my head and clutch my phone.
“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.”
I stumble until I’m standing up. I keep shaking my head.
The hand-washing lady doesn’t look our way. I turn to the door. I have to get out of Vegas. I have to go now. If they know where I am, they’ll know Lily. I have to get home. I have to get to my baby girl.
“Maddie, let me help you,” Jo says.
But I can’t do that. She’ll involve Parker. I have to get away. But she’ll follow. Then he will. My only hope is to escape all this. Far away. Gone again. Where no one can find us. Not Parker. Not these crazy enemies.
My brain is racing. Get a cab. To the airport. No, they’ll go there. Just take the cab a long way.
I stop by the door, ready to fake whatever behavior I have to show to escape. “I need Parker. I need to go. Can you get him for me? I don’t want to walk through the restaurant.”
“Yes,” Jo says. “I’ll get him right now. You want to stay here?”
“Yes.”
She hesitates by the door. “You promise you’ll stay right here?”
“I will.” Though I know I won’t.
She leaves the bathroom. It’s not far to the table, but at least they are in the back corner.
As soon as the door closes all the way, I pull it open again and dart along the side wall. I’m afraid to try and make it to the front door, so when I see the swinging doors to the kitchen, I go in.
A few cooks look up in surprise, but I’ve already spotted the back door, which is open to an alley. I run through before anyone can stop me. It’s a short sprint to the street and then I’m blending in with the Vegas crowd, the sun beating down on us.
I spot a taxi and wave at it, jerking open the door before it even comes to a full stop.
“Can you drive away from the Strip?” I ask.
The taxi merges back onto the street.
I look back at the door of the restaurant. Just as we are about to go out of view, I see Colt and Jo and Parker burst out onto the sidewalk. I watch as we drive away, Parker looking frantic, dashing one way, then the other. Then we’re too far and their figures are lost to the bend in the road.
Chapter 17: Parker
“Where the hell did she go?” Panic courses through me. The sidewalk is full of people. The street has a lot of cars, but they’re flowing through easily.
Maddie could have done anything, run any direction, jumped in a cab.
“You think she went back to the hotel?” Colt asks.
“Why would she run like that if she was just going there?” I ask.
Jo turns around from scanning the street. “She got a bunch of messages that upset her,” she says.
“What did they say?” I jerk out my own phone. Is something wrong with Lily?
“She wouldn’t tell me, but they really freaked her out,” Jo says.
I punch my phone on and send Maddie a quick text. Where did you go?
Colt claps my shoulder. “We’ll find her.”
But nobody else is staying at our hotel. No one can intercept her if she goes there to grab her things. And I don’t even know if she went there. She might be heading for the airport.
What the hell sort of message did she get?
It had to be about Lily.
I scroll through my old messages and find where Delores wrote me to meet me at the airport what felt like a lifetime ago, when I first went back to see them for the party. I tap out a message to her.
Have you heard from Maddie this afternoon? She has a new phone.
Hopefully that will seem like a normal message. If Delores finds out about any of what happened in Vegas, she’ll no doubt pressure Maddie to stay away from me.
Although I’m starting to wonder if maybe that’s the way it has to be.
Colt leads us down the sidewalk. “Let’s go to the hotel first. I can alert Jax again.”
“No,” I say. “We need to handle this ourselves this time.”
He nods. “You’re probably right. Their system doesn’t quite mesh with how fighters handle things.”
“Exactly.” If Delores comes back with no news, we can drop that possibility from what might have upset Maddie enough to bolt.
My phone buzzes. It’s Delores.
Not yet. Is her flight delayed?
I’m not sure what to feel. Relief that Lily is obviously fine. But an increasing sense of unease that maybe something worse has happened. Something with Striker.
No, she dropped her phone and had to get a new one. Just seeing if it’s working.
Hopefully that will satisfy her.
“It’s not Lily,” I tell Colt and Jo. We walk swiftly toward the Bellagio.
“Then it has to be Striker,” Jo says. “Unless there is someone else in her life that could upset
her that much.”
“How would he find her?” I ask. “We’ve been very careful about who knows about her. She’s been out of the press. Nobody knows I have a daughter or that Maddie lives in New York.”
“Did Maddie put you on the birth certificate?” Colt asks.
“Well, sure. I pay child support.”
“Then there’s public records.”
We push through the crowd at the water fountains in front of the hotel. They are all so happy, taking pictures, having an easy day. I want to shove them all around, make them realize that shit is going down. That Maddie is threatened.
The elevator up is so slow I almost wish we’d taken the stairs, despite being on the tenth floor. I could stand to work out the soreness of so many fights last night. The real one, then Striker and his pals, then the two dolts he sent. Plus that last group outside the broom closet.
Striker has a good-sized network for an outcast. Assholes flock together. But how could he know about Maddie? Nobody knows. I don’t buy for a second that his delinquent crew went through public records.
We race down the hall to the rooms. I want to smash the door open, and when the stupid door key won’t swipe correctly, I’m about to crash through it when Jo takes the card from me.
With a gentle push, the light turns green and we’re inside.
Nothing has been moved. Maddie’s clothes and suitcase are still right where we left them. I slam my hands into the wall. “Where the hell did she go?”
“Did you put a tracker on her phone?” Colt asks.
Jo whirls around to him. “Did you put one on mine?”
Colt holds up his hands. “I wouldn’t dare. You’d kick my ass.”
She turns back to me. “You better not have either.”
“It’s not on my account,” I say. “Even if it had one, I wouldn’t have access to the data.”
“She’s got to be headed to the airport,” Jo says. “That’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“She can’t get on a flight right away,” Colt says. “Everything is always booked out of Vegas. She’ll be in a line somewhere, trying to fly standby.”
Jo slips her arm through mine. “Let’s go find her,” she says. “Once we know what’s going on with her, we’ll be able to help.”
“But she didn’t come to me in the first place,” I say. “In her mind, I must be part of the problem.”
“You think she’ll fly home?” Colt asks. “Are you certain enough to get on a plane?”
I’m not. I pull away from Jo and sit on the bed. Maddie has always been impulsive, like a flash fire. She’ll do something drastic, then she’ll realize her mistake and pull back.
But she felt she couldn’t turn to me. Whatever was going on, she needed to move fast and act without me.
Then suddenly, I start to see the bigger picture. Striker couldn’t know who Maddie was. But someone else might.
I look up at Colt. “If you were Striker, who would be pretty much the only person you’d be willing to admit to what happened last night?”
He leans back against the wall. “Not my parents.” He glances at Jo. “His girl already knows.”
I forgot that Colt is an only child.
“I know what you’re saying,” Jo says. “I have a brother.” Her eyes are already going dark with anger. “I see where this is going.”
Colt stands up. “How long have you been friends with that family?”
“Since we were kids. Striker wasn’t around. He got sent to military school. That’s where he took up boxing.” I hesitate. “But not his sister, Lani. We hung around each other all our lives.”
Jo’s body has gone completely tense. Lani befriended her before that betrayal, the one that ended with Colt and Jo shot in an alley. “So Lani knows Maddie,” Jo says.
“She’ll remember those days. I bet Striker called Lani after the van prank. And when Striker described Maddie, Lani knew exactly who she was.”
“Should we call Lani or just go?” Colt asks.
“Back to LA?” Jo asks. “What if Maddie is still here?”
“You stay behind, then,” Colt says. “You can handle yourself.”
“That’s a good idea,” Jo says.
“What if Maddie is headed to New York? What if Lily is in trouble?” I ask. Damn, surely they wouldn’t go so far as to hurt a child.
“You go to New York, then,” Colt says. “And I’ll go to LA.”
“You don’t have to do this for me,” I say.
“You forget,” Colt says, and his hand cutting across his belly reminds me of that night, blood pouring out of his gut from the gunshot wound. “I have a score to settle with these people myself.”
“We have to end this,” I say.
Colt nods grimly. “We definitely have to end this.”
Chapter 18: Maddie
After another fifteen minutes pass, the taxi driver pulls up to a red light and turns around. “You decided where you’re going yet, miss?” He’s got a huge mustache that pushes up into his nose and completely covers his upper lip.
I’ve been fussing with the new phone, trying to learn how to use it while also figuring out where to go. No doubt Colt and Parker are already trying to intercept me at the airport. I can’t go there.
“Is there another airport other than the one in Vegas?”
“I reckon you could go to Flagstaff.”
“How far is that?”
“Three hours.” His fingers smooth the black mustache. “Kinda far for a cab ride.”
“How can I get to Flagstaff?”
“Other than the airport?”
“Right.”
“There’s a bus.”
“Head that way,” I say.
He turns back around. I frantically search for the bus schedule out of Vegas. I don’t want to arrive too early and sit around. If anyone thinks to go there, they’ll find me. I won’t be able to decide what to do with Parker pressuring me. Nothing he and Colt and those other people did last night did any good.
As long as Striker feels he hasn’t evened the score, he isn’t going to stop.
But I can’t exactly tell them to kill them all.
I have no answers for this situation. I just want to be with Lily. I have to get her moved, hidden, safe.
Finally the bus schedule comes up. I can book a ticket from my phone. Perfect. Once I’m out of Vegas, I can worry less. No one will think to look for me in Flagstaff.
The bus doesn’t leave for an hour.
I lean forward. “Sir? How long will it take to get to the station?”
“About ten minutes.”
“Can you drive around a while? I don’t want to get to the station for another 45 minutes.”
“Your dime,” he says.
I find a flight schedule out of Flagstaff. There’s nothing available into New York, but I can get to Newark, New Jersey, by midnight. Close enough.
I sit back and look out the window. This part of Vegas looks like any other city. Houses. Strip malls. Parking lots full of cars. Beyond the businesses are normal neighborhoods with houses and kids and probably parks. There’s definitely less green here. No bodies of water. And certainly the dizzying lights of the Strip in the distance set it apart at night.
But everyday life happens here. At least outside this car.
I have to say something to Delores that will make her understand this is urgent, but not make her panic so that she calls the police. I don’t know if involving them will help. I doubt it.
I pull up messages and reply to one of hers.
There’s been a hiccup in my schedule. I have to fly into Newark. Can you guys get a hotel near there? The Marriott? I’m dying to see Lily.
That sounds normal.
After a minute, she replies.
Parker said your schedule was fine. That you got a new phone.
So he’s already written her.
It just happened when I checked in. I didn’t get to do it early due to the new phone.
God, lightning is going to strike me for these lies.
Are you sure that’s what you want us to do? Lily will miss school tomorrow. And don’t you have to work?
Like any of that is important now.
Took the day off. Lily can miss a day.
I look out the window as I wait for Delores to reply. We’ve left the city. The desert stretches out as far as I can see on any side. I feel utterly alone, me and my mustached driver. I don’t know what I’ll do next. Obviously Striker and his buddies have found me. How long until they discover Lily?
Come on, Delores. Agree to get out of the house.
Finally the message comes.
Okay, I’ll pack our things. I’ll leave a key at the desk so you can come in.
I hold the phone to my chest. They will be safe, at least for now.
Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe it’s just a silly unsubstantiated worry.
After a minute, Lily sends a picture of her wearing her princess crown. Below it is a message she can do herself.
Hi, Mama.
I work hard to hold back a sob. This is why I stayed away from Parker all this time. This is why I couldn’t face the life he led. These crazy people. This lifestyle. This being okay with living with such violence, in the cage and out.
My hands shake as I type.
You look pretty. I love you.
Delores will have to read her that. I type one more, a word I know she knows because it’s on so many of her shirts.
