Emma
“Poppy, you there?” Emma asked into the payphone.
“Emma?”
“Yeah. I told you that I would call you back.”
“I know, but I just had—never mind, it doesn’t matter. I thought you said you were getting rid of your cell phone, remember?”
Emma’s brow furrowed. “I did. I tossed it right after we talked.”
“Then why do I have a text from your phone from five minutes ago?”
Dammit.
Her phone required a locked passcode to get inside. The only way someone could send a text from it was if they had broken the lock or entered the correct passcode. Emma was positive that she had thrown her phone in a spot where Calisto wouldn’t find it if he came after her.
She’d hoped …
“You there?” Poppy asked.
“Yeah.”
“Did you hear what I said about the text? Why is it there?”
“I don’t know,” Emma said quietly. “Did you respond?”
“Not yet.”
Emma’s anxiety climbed higher. “Don’t. Okay?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Outside the coffee shop, Emma took note of the lowering sun. A pink and orange sky highlighted the horizon, reminding her that it was getting late and she needed to find a place to sleep for the night. She had taken the few hundred dollars that was stored in the bottom of her jewelry box, and the two-hundred in twenties that she found in the glove compartment of Calisto’s Mercedes, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
Emma hadn’t thought taking off would be easy, but she stupidly figured she would be able to at least get out of Las Vegas before nighttime came. She hadn’t factored in where she would go, how she would get there after she left Calisto’s car in a random parking lot, or what to do after.
She didn’t have enough money. She had no way to get anywhere without spending what money she had. Her plans were failing. Fucking miserably.
She felt like an idiot.
Emma had seen the cordless phone unattended on Calisto’s lap, thought security might screw up who was who in the apartment, thought about the exit door, and taken a chance. She hadn’t stopped to consider all that would be involved in taking off without money on hand, or any real plans to go by.
Her lingering guilt about tricking Calisto, and leaving him on the hook to explain her sudden disappearing act, wouldn’t let up. It was eating away at her, but Emma forced it to the back of her mind. She didn’t have a choice but to leave.
She couldn’t go to New York willingly.
No way.
“Where are you right now?” Poppy asked.
“Downtown.”
It was the most Emma would give her friend. Poppy Johansen came from a well-to-do Vegas family that had a hand in a few casinos. Emma met her old friend during one of the many charity events her family attended.
“A good spot or a bad spot?”
“Kind of in between,” Emma replied.
“Will you tell me what’s going on now?” Poppy asked.
“Better you don’t know. I just want to know if you can point me in the direction of someone who could help me, Poppy. That’s all. I need a safe way out of Vegas without someone knowing it’s me. Did you get any more info on that guy you mentioned this morning when I called?”
Poppy made a sad sound. “Are you running, Emmy?”
Emma sighed. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me. What happened?”
“Things,” Emma said vaguely.
“Is this about what your uncle does … the mafia and all that stuff?”
Emma didn’t want her friend involved in those affairs. She didn’t even want Poppy to think about it. It certainly wouldn’t lead to anything good.
“Poppy, stop asking me questions. I need help without a fucking inquisition. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay, I get it.”
“The guy—Mika, you said. Right?” Emma asked.
“I mean, that’s what we’ve always called him, but he doesn’t give out his last name.”
That didn’t sound good.
“You don’t know his last name?”
“Well, when someone wanted a little something-something, they gave Mika a call and he would show up with whatever they wanted.”
“Like drugs?” Emma asked.
“Yeah.”
It wasn’t uncommon. Rich kids didn’t dabble in drugs the same way other people did. Their dealers weren’t shady people on a street corner, or a guy leaning out of a low-riding car. Their dealers were typically on speed-dial, showed up in a suit, and didn’t look out of place in a crowd of wealthy brats.
That hadn’t been Emma’s scene. She knew that sometimes Poppy indulged in substances. It wasn’t for Emma to judge.
“But I don’t think you want to go to him, Emmy,” Poppy said after a moment.
“Why not?”
If the guy could get her out of town, Emma didn’t give a fuck how he did it.
“I made some calls and asked around. Mika isn’t in the business of dealing like he used to be. He’s working with other people—bad people. Or so the word is, anyway. I can’t confirm any of it since I haven’t talked to Mika in a year.”
“But if you could get a hold of him, would he do you a favor?”
Poppy blew out a quiet breath. “I used to date the guy. We ended it on okay terms. I think he would, but it doesn’t sound good. What people were saying about him, I mean.”
“Like what?”
“Not a lot. But when dealing goes from a good, solid source of income to something that’s only whispered about, it can’t be all that safe or great, Emmy. From the sounds of it, he stopped catering to the users and might be working with skin instead. That’s not the kind of shit you want to be mixed up in, all right?”
Skin …
The term didn’t register to Emma.
“Yeah, but—”
“And he might come with a price,” Poppy interrupted softer.
“I get it. You’re worried. I just need some help. Will you help me or not?”
Poppy was quiet for a long time. Long enough that Emma thought her friend might have hung up the phone on her.
“Will you tell me what happened?” Poppy asked.
“I’ll tell you that I’m running,” Emma said instead.
“I’ll give Mika a call. He had a private number for me to use that wasn’t the same as his number for clients. Maybe he still has it. If not, then I’ll make some more calls.”
“Thanks.”
“Call me in the morning. It’s getting late. Try to get a decent hotel room for the night, eat something, and think this all over. I don’t want you getting mixed up in bad stuff, Emmy,” Poppy finished, sounding sadder than ever.
“Don’t worry about me. I can handle myself. And hey, if your ex can get me out of the state without trouble, then I’m willing to turn cheek to whatever business he’s got going on.”
She’d spent her whole life turning her cheek, after all.
What difference did it make?
“Just be careful,” Poppy said. “There was a reason why I broke it off with Mika.”
“Why was that?”
“Because I was starting to think I didn’t even know who he was.”
Emma sucked in a slow breath.
She would take the risk.
“I’ll call you in the morning, Poppy.”
“Be safe, Emmy.”
Emma hung up the phone, and took a moment to gather her thoughts. She might not have had a very good plan before, but she was going to start by putting together a better one now.
One step a time.
She decided to start by refilling her coffee, grabbing some soup and sweets from the café to eat, and then finding a decent hotel room that wouldn’t cost her a lot to sleep in for the night. Grabbing the waiting bag down at her feet, Emma made her way to the register. She ordered the coffee and food, and then paid and waited for her order.
“There’s a quiet, clean motel two blocks away,” the cashier said.
Emma glanced up from the floor. “Pardon?”
The cashier nodded at the small suitcase in Emma’s hand. “I’m guessing you’re probably looking for a room, unless you’ve already got one. Sometimes we see a lot of last minute tourists come in and they don’t have anything booked. Like I said, there’s a decent place two blocks away. Tracy’s Motel. It’s not very big, but you won’t have to worry about strange people or bad business.”
Emma didn’t realize that she looked like a tourist, but with the small luggage, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that the cashier assumed she was one. It didn’t matter. Emma now had an idea of where to go for a place to hide out for the evening.
The woman pushed the coffee and bag of food across the counter. Emma took it.
“Coffee is fresh, as I just made a new pot. You might want to warm up the soup when you get to the hotel, though.”
“Thanks,” Emma said.
“No problem. Have a good stay. Try not to sleep too much of it away. Vegas is the city that never sleeps, you know.”
Emma laughed.
Yeah, she knew.
“Sleeping is the last thing on my mind.”
That was truer than the cashier could possibly know.
Twenty minutes and a two-block walk later, Emma found the motel that the cashier had mentioned. The parking lot had a decent amount of vehicles, and the place seemed quiet enough for being in a poorer part of the city. At the front desk, Emma paid for a room, allowed the woman to photocopy her ID in case damages incurred during her stay, and left with a new key ring in her hand.
Emma walked up the stairs outside to the second level of the motel and found her room four doors down from the left. Once she had the door unlocked and was inside, Emma finally took a real breath.
She hadn’t felt like she could breathe in hours. Not since she snatched Calisto’s keys, made a rash decision with nothing but blind faith in her pocket, and ran.
Tossing her small luggage into the corner, Emma found a chair by the window and sat down. Her feet ached. She was pretty sure that she hadn’t ever walked as much as she did today. Her first sip of coffee was heavenly.
Emma fingered the curtain covering the window, and pulled it slightly to the side so that she could look outside. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Emma still let the curtain fall back in place just in case someone—no matter how unlikely it was—might recognize her. She knew she was safe for the moment. Oddly, it didn’t help the nerves crawling beneath her surface.
She had felt better when she knew Calisto was watching her back, as crazy as that was.
Had she made the right choice?
Could she do this?
Would it work?
Emma hoped so.
Hugging her middle, Emma stepped up to a bouncer guarding the door. She stood on the front steps of a club that she would never be caught dead inside. This kind of club was not the sort that her father or uncle would approve of.
A sign flashed overhead, showcasing a girl grinding mostly naked against a pole.
Emma remembered her conversation with Poppy earlier in the day, and what her friend had said about the strip joint.
Mika will be in the back. Let the guy inside know your name is Emma, and that you’re there to see Mika. Make sure you mention that you’re a friend of a friend, and bring up my name to Mika when you see him.
Poppy had also mentioned that Emma would know who Mika was on sight, and again repeated her worries that this might not be safe.
Emma didn’t have a choice.
She was out of options.
Another night in the motel would cost her eighty dollars. She’d already paid for last night, and because she needed a place to leave her bags, she booked the room for another night. With food, plus the burner phone that Emma picked up after she grabbed breakfast, her cash was dwindling fast.
She wondered if her parents knew yet that she had skipped out. Or even Affonso.
Emma couldn’t go back now.
She had to see this through.
“You gonna stand there all day looking up at the fuckin’ sky like it’s gonna fall in on you or what?” the bouncer asked, crossing his meaty arms and snapping the gum in his mouth. “Show me your ID or get the fuck off the step.”
Emma blinked, stunned at the man’s crudeness. “I’m here to see Mika.”
“Is that so? What for?”
“A friend of a friend sent me. Business, you know.”
Emma didn’t have a fucking clue what business that was exactly, but apparently that’s what she was supposed to say.
The bouncer snapped his gum again. His bald head and thick neck, mixed in with his barrel-shaped chest and trunk-like limbs, certainly made Emma want to take a step back from the man. Nothing about him screamed “nice” or “safe.”
She supposed he was good for his job.
“What friend?” the guy asked.
“That’s not for you to know, it’s for me to tell Mika,” Emma said quickly.
The bouncer chuckled. “Good one, little girl.”
Little girl?
Emma bristled, but managed to keep quiet.
“You look familiar,” the man stated, checking her out from the shoes she wore to the jacket she was hugging. “Like I’ve seen you somewhere before.”
How many socialite magazines did the guy read? That was the only place she might have graced this man’s presence before.
She didn’t say a thing.
“Mika, you said?”
“Yes,” Emma replied.
“I’ll give you a warnin’ before you go on in there lookin’ for Mika,” the bouncer said.
Emma glanced up, meeting the man’s gaze. “What’s that?”
“Don’t go in there lookin’ for him at all. Mika don’t mix business with pretty, clean things like you.”
“Clean things?”
The bouncer reached out and snagged Emma’s arm in his palm before she could react. He yanked the sleeve of her jacket up to her elbow and waved a finger over her unblemished skin.
“You’ve got no track marks in your arm and your teeth are good. You don’t use, which means you don’t need the kind of business Mika’s got working in there for the girls needin’ a fix. Do you get what I’m sayin’, girl?”
No.
Emma was beginning to feel like she was far more sheltered in her life than she had previously thought. She had clearly stepped out of her element in a big way. This was not her side of the tracks, and the chill running up her spine reminded her of that fact as she stared down at her unmarked skin.
She didn’t use drugs, but sometimes she had fun. She liked to frequent clubs, and her family had long since been considered one of the elite families in Nevada because of their wealth and status. She had seen people pop pills with their glasses of morning wine and hadn’t blinked a lash.
What this bouncer was suggesting, however, made her skin crawl.
“I don’t have much of a choice,” Emma said honestly.
The bouncer smiled grimly, let go of her arm, and then opened the door to a dark hallway. “Well then, I guess all I can say is good luck. And don’t you say I didn’t warn you.”
Emma quickly fixed the arm of her coat as she stepped inside the business.
“Keep going straight until you see the girls on the pole,” the bouncer said from behind her. “You’ll know Mika when you see him.”
Just like Poppy had told her.
“Thank you,” Emma replied.
The bouncer laughed dryly. “Don’t thank me, girl.”
Emma continued down the hall, ignoring the creepy vibe settling deep in her stomach. The closer she came to the end of the corridor, the more music and lights she could see. She barely reached the end before a stage was practically right at the outside of the door and a girl’s ass was upside down, in the smallest G-string, and pointed in Emma’s direction.
“Holy shit,” Emma muttered.
She quickly side-stepped the stage and moved toward the bar where a few patrons of the joint sat on dingy, red-covered stools. She pretended like their stares didn’t bother her as she walked in front of them and moved past another stage.
Obviously they weren’t used to seeing fully-clothed women in the place.
Taking the floor in, Emma quickly found who she was looking for. Poppy and the bouncer had been right. Mika was obvious. He sat in a roped off area with a bottle of Patrón on the table, a game of cards in play with another man at the table, and four more men dressed in black guarding the section.
Mika, dressed in a black suit, looked completely out of place in the dive. His well-dressed appearance and lit cigar spoke of wealth, but the strip joint was seedy as fuck.
Hell, even Emma could see that.
What had she gotten herself mixed up in now?
Do it or go back, her mind taunted.
Emma took another step forward. Then she took another, and another. Finally, she was close enough to Mika and his men that one of the bodyguards put an arm out to stop her from going further.
“I’m here to see Mika,” Emma told the man quietly.
Mika didn’t even glance up from his card game. He didn’t say a word.
“You’re here to see nobody,” the bodyguard told her.
Emma didn’t budge. She directed her statement over the shoulder of the bulldog of a man. “Poppy says hi, Mika.”
Mika smiled slowly as his dark gaze lifted to look Emma over. “Emma, is it?”
“Emma,” she confirmed.
“Come have a drink, Emma.”
It didn’t actually sound like an offer. In fact, it sounded like Mika wasn’t going to give her a choice at all.
Emma swallowed hard, feeling something terrible well in her gut. Instincts didn’t lie, and something was telling her that she had made the wrong choice in coming here. She didn’t know what it was, but as she looked around at the dazed girls dancing on the stage, the men surrounding Mika, and the predatory smile Mika leveled on her, Emma just … knew.
This was bad.
“A drink,” Mika repeated firmly.
The bodyguard stepped aside.
Emma felt a hand press on her lower back and push her forward.
Shit.
“I hear you need some help disappearing for a little while,” Mika said when Emma was sat down in a chair at the table.
“Poppy said you could help to get me out of state.”
Mika chuckled. “Oh, I can help with that.”
Suddenly, a clear glass with red liquid was put in front of Emma. She eyed it, wondering what in the hell it was.
“Just a Sourpuss and 7 Up mix,” Mika said. “Nothing to hurt you with. We’ll talk first, and then I’ll let you know where we go from there.”
Emma nodded. “Okay.”
“Drink, girl.”
She picked up the glass and took a sip. It was sour, but it wasn’t bad. Mika waved at the glass as if to tell her to take another drink. Emma did, but she was still trying to figure out a way to get the hell out of there without pissing someone off or offending them.
Mika and his guest resumed their card game without a word to Emma. She sipped on her drink, still gauging the high-looking dancers and the patrons to the venue.
“What does a girl like you need to disappear for, anyway?” Mika asked out of the blue.
Emma glanced up, but her vision swam. Her mouth felt dry, too.
“I … I, uh,” Emma tried to say, fumbling for her words.
Her arms were too heavy.
Mika smiled. “Nathan?”
Nathan?
Emma felt a hand land on her shoulder, keeping her upright. She stared up, only to find the bodyguard who had let her pass was standing over her, holding her shoulder.
“You should be careful who you trust,” Mika told her quietly. “Poppy, especially. She’s sweet as sin, but the girl is black in her fucking soul. It’s why I love her. Her daddy would be so proud, I’m sure. Good man he is, donating to the poor and helping the women’s shelters. I bet he’d die to know his little girl was helping to traffic skin like a pro. She’s a damn good fisher, though. I bet you’ll fetch one hell of a price tomorrow, Emma. I don’t know who you are, but if you want to disappear, there’s no better way than the underground auctions. You wanted to disappear, after all.”
What?
Oh, God.
Poppy had warned her.
But she lied, too.
The betrayal made Emma’s stomach twist.
Skin …
Emma had heard of those things before—auctions. She was pretty damn sure of what Mika was talking about. Girls went missing, sold to whomever had the deepest pockets, and were never heard from again.
She thought it was rumors.
It made her blood run cold.
“Take a few deep breaths, or you’ll end up puking all over yourself when you’re out of it,” Mika warned.
Before Emma blacked out, she thought of one person who might be able to help her. The one person she had tricked to get away, stolen his things, and probably pissed him off.
Calisto.