Getting Wilde (32 page)

As soon as I said the words, I knew I’d somehow misstepped. In my defense, it’d been a really long day.  
 

“My style?” Brody’s words were too careful, too quiet. “Based on what? Your oh-so-thorough assessment of my character when you were seventeen years old? The scene in your rearview mirror as you vanished into thin air?” Sharp brows lifted above his resolute gaze, and his lips twisted. “Tell me, Sara, was it my
style
that made you leave the city without informing the police that you were still alive the morning after your mother was taken? Was it my
style
that
caused you to disappear completely, leaving us to assume you’d also been killed—or were kidnapped—by the same thugs who’d gotten to her?”
 

His words assaulted me, bringing back memories still too fresh after ten years. The explosion, the screaming, the nightmare of pain and rancid fear… I stiffened, turning away from him. “What I did and why I did it is none of your business.”
 

“Wrong answer.” Brody moved so quickly that my gasp was caught in my throat. My feint was more like a faint, and his hands locked on my shoulders, catching me up against the wall.  
 

Heat pulsed through me as he shifted his hands to rest against the wall on either side of my head. Now I really did feel trapped. And intimidated. And overwhelmed by emotions I couldn’t even process. Brody Knight, the star of a million fantasies and a million nightmares, was in front of me now. Real. Alive.
Leaning into me.
I was afraid to even blink as he edged closer yet. His lips were so near, they brushed against mine, and a million jolts of completely non-Connected energy shot through me. I whimpered, my lungs suddenly forgetting how to work.
 

“Now
this
, Sara, really is my style,” Brody murmured , his lips moving against mine, a hint of a kiss so intense that my bones ached for him to just do it already. “So I suggest you start talking.”
 

No talking, no talking
, my body screamed. “I don’t have anything to say to you,” I whispered.
 

“Oh, I think you do.” His leaned back from me to study my face, and his hips torqued against mine. I might be unable to breathe, but Brody’s body was as jacked as mine was, even if his words were still furious. “I think you have about ten years of things to say to me,
Sara
, starting with where the hell you went on the morning of May thirteenth.”
 

I stared at him, memorizing his pupils for something to do while my brain flapped its hands around and bleated. If I could just get him out of this room, I would run. Fast, hard, and for as long as it took to get away. It had worked ten years ago, it’d work now. I couldn’t tell him the truth—not then, and definitely not now. Not ever, really. Some things just couldn’t be undone. “Can you give me some air, here?” I managed.
 

He hesitated, glaring at me.
 

I gaped back, channeling fluster. It wasn’t all that hard.
 
 

Finally, as if it took him far more effort than it should have, Brody stepped back just far enough to reach into his jacket pocket and pull out a small, weather-beaten notebook, fastened with a thick rubber band and bookmarked with a pen. He opened the little book, sliding the pen free, then glanced back up at me. Once more, the cool, confident cop was on display—the hot, hard predator leashed. I didn’t know which Brody was more dangerous. “Okay,” he said, pen poised. “Where did you go?”
 

My lungs finally collapsed again, and with breath came defiance. “How can it possibly matter—”
 

He moved just a half inch closer to me, stopping my words mid-bitch. “Just answer the damn question, Sara,” he said. “It’s important.”  
 

“I left town. I hitchhiked,” I said flatly. “I was picked up at a campground by a woman in an RV. End of story.”
 

“Who was it?”
 

“Doesn’t matter, she’s dead now. Natural causes.”
 

He made another notation. “Then what? Where did you go after she gave you a ride?”
 

“Around.” I waved my hand. “We traveled all over the place. There was a bunch of retirees going from campground to campground, seeing the sights. That’s where I went. Sorry it’s
not more exciting.”
 

“For ten years.” His gaze on me was level and hard. “You mean to tell me that you’ve been roaming around with a group of itinerant campers
for ten years.
No job, no school, no credit cards—”
 

“Last time I checked, none of that was a crime.”
 

“I was looking for you!” he exploded, fury and disbelief raging over his face. “The morning of the explosion, we all thought we’d find you in that rattle trap of a trailer, and there was nothing—nothing! There were no calls, not one of your classmates knew where you’d gone, there wasn’t one scrap of information. I tracked Jane Doe deaths and kidnapping reports for the next three years, expecting either you or what was left of you to show up. When nothing happened, I didn’t know if that was good or bad.”
 

So much death. Swirling all around me, so much death
. “I wasn’t your responsibility,” I said stiffly.
 

“Your mother had been killed on my
watch
, Lara. That makes you my responsibility.”
 

“Your mother…killed.”
Hearing the words rocked me in a way I couldn’t have expected. Something inside me, the last fragile bud of disbelief, curled up and died.  I’d known my mother was dead, of course. I’d known it ten years ago. But no one had ever said the words to me. No one had ever—
 

“Okay, Mr. Hide Your Witness in a Closet, time’s up.” Nikki had appeared in the doorway, taking in the scene with the air of a woman ready to take a body down. “Unless you’re going to arrest Sara for unlawful saving of everyone’s asses, we’re done here. You’ve got other fish to fry.”
 

Brody growled as I pushed myself off the wall and scrambled to the side. “Not even—”
 

“Detective.” A man in a white coat entered the room as well, waving an official-looking
clipboard. “Having all these uniformed officers on site is not part of our normal protocol. If you could just sign—”
 

Brody shot out a hand and caught my arm, turning me around to face him. His eyes were hard as flint, a mixture of anger and—something deeper, more primal in his face. “This isn’t finished.”
 

Nikki stepped closer. “It’s not even begun, Sugar Lips. Now go do your manly business, and let me get Sara over to Dixie’s.”
 

He blanched. “That’s where she’s staying?”
 

“You know the number!” Nikki clapped her hands on my shoulders, steering me out the door as the doctor pushed his clipboard into Brody’s hands.
 

By the time Brody looked up again, we were gone.
 

An hour later we were in a whole new world. With donuts.
 

Nikki had brought me to the Palazzo Casino and, after a brief stop at the front desk, had sent me into the mega-hotel’s rabbit warren of shops and restaurants to secure provisions. My instructions were clear and simple: get donuts, wait about twenty minutes so we wouldn’t be seen in the casino together, then head up to the room.
 

So now here I was, trudging through the Palazzo, the key card and a box of deep-fried love in my hands the only things keeping me going. A beefy security guy waved me through to the special bank of guest elevators, and, I’m not going to lie, I appreciated his extra muscles, though my problems weren’t going to be solved by brawn. I rode up to my floor alone, then shambled down the long, luxurious hallway past several double doors whose numbers I barely registered. My entire world had diminished to four very important digits. 2-0-1-5. I’d get there eventually.
 

After what seemed like an inordinately long time, the rooms dwindled to single-door dwellings, with doors spaced farther apart. Then, suddenly, Suite 2015 loomed in front of me. I slid my passkey home, somehow absurdly pleased with the green light that flicked on. I shoved
the far too heavy door open, walked inside—and stopped short. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”  
 

Suite 2015 glowed in the warm, ambient shimmer of several discreetly placed lamps in the foyer, the light glinting off a white marble-inlaid floor that spilled out in pristine beauty across the foyer, down a short set of steps, and into a sunken living room area. The room was stuffed with every conceivable luxury: a giant flat-screen TV, unreasonably large overstuffed couches, a prissy work desk bristling both with electronics
and
a huge bottle of champagne in a bucket, and…a floor-to-ceiling view of the most extraordinary world I’d ever seen.
 

Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas.
 

Mesmerized, I dropped the donuts on a table and walked toward the window. My eyes filled with the city’s bright lights—and its enormous phantom casinos: The pristine white-and-black towers, the fairy-tale castle and its neighboring hulking keep. Above the Flamingo Hotel, Scandal’s glass-fronted lightshow had changed to a pulsing neon burst of purple flames.
 

I leaned against the window frame, my gaze inexorably drawn yet farther south. Because there, of course, was the final casino, crouched like a predator at the edge of the city. Prime Luxe. It was larger than all the rest, more elegant and more barbaric by turns, its glowing metal spires thrusting up in a primitive and powerful cry to the heavens. I wondered if Armaeus was in there somewhere, watching for me, waiting.  
 

Well, he can go screw himself
. I was wrung out, feeling worse, not better, with each passing hour since I’d tripped the light fantastic in the council’s conference room and had my Brody showdown. God, that had all
sucked
. Even the parts that still sent my heart racing. Because I knew what I had to do.
 

I was staying as long as it took to get the girls out of danger, then I was out of here. Permanently.
 

Even as I thought the words, the white spires of the Prime Luxe turned red—pulsed—
then went dark.
 

I wheeled back from the window as if I’d been slapped. Jerking the curtains closed, I blanked the view of the city.
 

“You bring the donuts?”
 

I looked up, and Nikki stood in the doorway to the second bedroom of the suite, her hair in a garish turban and her body ensconced in an enormous kimono.  
 

“Kitchen table.” I pointed.
 

“You’re the best. She padded over, and I realized that she was wearing giant poodle slippers. “I left you a change of clothes on your bed from my go-bag. We gotta do something about your wardrobe, but not tonight. Tonight is for donuts and champagne. The latter is on the Magician. I’m sure he won’t mind.”
 

I smiled as I trudged my way into the bedroom. The thing on the bed looked like one long piece of cloth, but I didn’t care. I unbuckled my boots, then skimmed out of my shirt and leggings. Eventually I found a neck hole in the garment and pulled it on. It was some sort of weird caftan, and it smelled like bubblegum lip gloss.
 

Nikki hadn’t wanted me to be left alone tonight, and I hadn’t wanted to either. Nevertheless, I was a little out of my depth. It’d been a long time since I’d had anything approaching a girlfriend. Other than Father Jerome, it’d been a long time since I’d had anything approaching a friend at all.  
 

She barked out a laugh when I went back into the main area. I’d knotted the garment to the side, and it almost cleared the ground. “Dollface, I swear, if I posted that on Facebook, you’d have to fight the boys off with sticks. C’mere. The donuts are top-drawer . The champagne sucks, but what’re you gonna do.”
 

“Any port in a storm.” Instead of going with conventional flutes, Nikki served the bubbly
in giant glass tumblers. I picked up the bottle and read the label. “I assume this was the most expensive bottle?”
 

“I figured you needed it more than the sultan of Dubai.”
 

I laughed. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done that, but Nikki grinned at me as I gingerly slid onto the couch. My mental inventory insisted that everything that was supposed to be inside my body remained inside. Even if it all remained a little scrambled.
 

“So.” Nikki leaned back in her chair, her feet stacked one over the other at the ankle, the white fuzzy poodles waging their pink tongues at me. She hoisted her tumbler, but her eyes were direct. Cop direct. And her manner was no-nonsense. “You want to tell me what’s going on between you and Detective Sexy Pants?”
 

“Why—is he dating Dixie?” The words were out before I could stop them.
 

“Nope, but not for her lack of trying. That’s a complication for another day, though, because he pretty much looked ready to eat you alive at the hospital, and pretty much all in a good way, once he gets over his pout. What’d you do to him?”
 

I grimaced. “Let him believe I was dead for the last ten years.”
 

“Well, that would put a guy off, I guess.”
 

I picked up my own glass and took a long swig. Nikki had opened up the curtains again while I’d been changing, and the entire swath of the Vegas Strip lay spread out in front of us like a sorcerer’s playground. I sensed all the questions coming from Nikki, but I beat her to it. Now, this night, I wanted somebody to know.