I was exhausted, it was only about 9pm but I was already thinking about a nice comfortable bed.

Not only did it take nearly 5 hours to get to Vegas but we spent another 3 or 4 hours actually searching for the spot where the auction was held.

“Do you have any connections we could use?” I asked as I stirred some milk into the last bit of my coffee. We had stopped at a 24 hour diner to get some food, I could still see the fire in Axel’s eyes, he didn’t want to rest until he found the place.

“I wish, there used to be an MC up here that we were on good terms with. I haven’t seen a single sign of them since we got here though, hell I’ve barely even seen a motorcycle since we’ve come into this city.”

He stared out the window silently, looking at his bike parked outside the diner. He tapped his finger on the table rapidly, making light sounding clicks that showed how stressed out he was.

I took his hand in mine, I had to admit I was stressed out too, just being in this city made me think about that auction non stop. Seeing those men eyeing me up and down as they adjusted themselves in their seats, each one willing to pay thousands of dollars just to keep me. It sent shivers down my spine.

I gripped Axel’s hand tight and he gripped it back, I wanted him but I was afraid of furthering my attachment to him. It would just make it harder to leave if the time came.

I tried to think back to the auction to try and remember anything else that could possibly help us. I had tried to hard to block out all those bad memories that there truly was a lot that I had forgotten, not to mention how many of those memories were overshadowed by Edgar’s basement.

A waitress came to fill up my now empty coffee, it wasn’t our original waitress so she didn’t know that I only intended to drink one cup. I had never been much of a coffee drinker so I looked up to stop her.

“Oh no thank you I’m good for-”

I made eye contact with her, and for a moment both of our faces went blank. I recognized her from somewhere but I couldn’t remember where. She had deep hazel eyes and black hair braided into cornrows that ran to her shoulders. She had smooth dark brown skin but a face that somehow reminded me of my own at one point despite how different we looked, it was a face of despair and exhaustion.

I was knocked out of my trance when she accidentally over poured my coffee while staring at me, causing it to slightly burn my hand.

“Oh my god I’m so sorry” she said nervously as she grabbed some napkins and tried to dry my hand off.

“I’ll be fine I said” trying to make her feel better, I watched her as she tried to clean up the spill and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew her.

“I’ll go get more napkins for you I’ll be right back, just please don’t tell my manager” she said as she looked around for any signs that her manager saw what she did.

She went back into the kitchen and I immediately turned to Axel.

“I know that girl, I don’t know where but I’ve met her before. I can see it in her eyes too she thinks she recognizes me.”

“Maybe it’s just someone you went to school with?”

“No I don’t think so” I said shaking my head. “I went to a small school in Oklahoma, I doubt I’d run into anyone I knew in school here.”

The waitress came back with more napkins to help me clean up, I looked at her shirt but she unfortunately didn’t have a name tag.

As she wiped down our table we kept making our contact, she wasn’t weary of me but it seemed like she was in the same boat I was with trying to figure out how we knew each other.

Suddenly she stopped wiping the table and looked up at me, I could see in her eyes that she finally recognized me but I still couldn’t figure out who she was.

“Oh my god, it can’t be you, what are you doing back here?” she asked worriedly.

“So you do know me. Who are you? Where do I know you from?” I asked.

She looked around to make sure she wasn’t watched before whispering to the both of us.

“I can’t talk here, meet me out back in a minute.”

She left our table and Axel and I looked at each other, this might have been the first real lead we had gotten since we arrived in this seedy city.

“Hey Jerr” the waitress called out to the back of the diner. “I’m going outside for a smoke break, all the customers are taken care of I’ll be back in a minute”

Before the man she called out to could complain she disappeared out the back door.

Axel took a few 20s out of his wallet and left it on the table, motioning me to follow him outside.

We quickly walked out of the diner and went out back to where they kept the dumpsters. It was dark with only a single street lamp giving us some light but we saw the girl leaning up against the wall puffing on a cigarette.

“I’m Veronica. I know you can’t remember me but I remember you, and I remember the man that bought you and that right there is most certainly not the man that bought you.”

“You… you know me from the auction? But they kept us in separate bedrooms before the auctions happened, how do you know who I am and why can I remember your face?”

“They brought me into the auction room a little early by accident and we saw each other for a moment, I got to see the end of the sale and you being bought by that creepy fat guy.”

She looked to make sure nobody was coming out from the diner and then flicked her cigarette, walking up to me.

“What the hell are you doing back in this city?” she asked grabbing my arms. “Why aren’t you thousands of miles away from here? Why didn’t you get out?”

“I… we, have some business to take care of” I replied not telling her what Axel and I were really doing here. “But I can ask you the same question, why are you here working? Why haven’t you run off?”

“You think I’m here because I want to be here?” she asked me. She leaned down and rolled up the leg of her jeans, revealing a discrete ankle brace.

“The bastard that bought me bought another girl too, he has us working jobs like this so that he doesn’t have to work and can just live off of what we make and his retirement money. He put this brace on both of us that’ll shock us to death if we go too far from the city, I can’t even escape. Every morning he drops me off at work and every night he picks me up, he makes me and the other girl share a bed with him in some weird, sick, twisted fantasy.”

That sounded all too familiar.

“But why don’t you tell the police? Why don’t you tell anyone and try to free yourself?” I asked.

“The police have to be paid off, I went to Nevada state police and they look the other way whenever they see my brace or tell them my story. When I try to tell other people they just think I’m some crazy woman on probation who’s trying to convince people to break her out. There’s nothing I can do.”

“The police look the other way?” Axel asked. “Sounds like the same deal that’s going on back home in Arizona is going on here.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised” Veronica said. “I don’t know how big this thing is but I do know it’s a well kept secret. You’re the first girl I’ve met to actually break out though, what happened to your owner?”

“Well, now he’s dead but-”

“Holy shit you killed him? Neither of us have the guts to do it, we’re afraid someone would come after us if we did.”

“I didn’t kill him actually” I said. “I waited two years for a moment of weakness and then took my chance, he kept me chained to a wall so there was nothing stopping me from making a run for it once those shackles fell off.”

“I envy you girl” she said twirling the end of her cornrow in her fingers. “I’d still get out of here if I were you, if someone recognizes you then your man will probably be shot on sight and they’ll take you back to be resold.”

“They can try” Axel said “but that’s not gonna happen.”

“Veronica, we need to find the auction house, there’s something we really got to take care of and we can’t until we find it. We’ve been looking for hours with no help.”

“You sure you want to go there? That place is guarded tighter than a bank.”

I looked up at Axel, knowing that he couldn’t fulfill his promise to me unless we found out the location.

“I’m positive, we have to get there.”

“Well I don’t know the exact place but I do know that it’s in this part of the city, I wish I could help you more.”

“What about a purple neon sign? A big one, like what you would see on a casino in the distance. Did you see anything like that when they took you out of the building?”

“I went out a different way then you I think... but a purple neon sign? There is the Purple Rock Casino that you could see from Auburn street, it’s the only place I can think of that has a purple neon sign.”

“We must have driven down every street in the area, why haven’t we seen it?” Axel asked.

“They don’t turn the sign on until 11pm, they make a huge deal about it every single night. You go to Auburn street at 11pm and you’ll see that sign light up light a christmas tree.”

I pulled Veronica in for a hug, she felt stiff at first, the same way I felt around Axel initially. I guess she was just so put off from human contact because of everything she had been through.

“I’m not leaving you behind” I told her.

“You have to, I can’t get out of here as long as I have that brace.”

“There has to be something we can do” I said turning to Axel.

“I can’t do it now, but I’ll send some guys up to break you and the other girl out of here, they should be able to do short work of your ankle bracelets… You don’t deserve to live like this” Axel said.

“Don’t make a girl a promise you can’t keep” she said.

“I always keep my promises” Axel replied to her before looking me straight in the eyes. “Always.”