Chapter Twenty
It sucked.
All of it sucked. She wanted to leave and go back to Pine Valley. She didn’t want to be with Wyatt and Wayne and their constant talk of how awesome it would be to spit roast her again.
She wasn’t letting either of their dicks near her. At all. She’d managed to fake her period for the past week when it had started to be clear that two of them were serious about the threesome. She was only going to be able to milk that another day.
Time to start faking a sickness. Something gross and un-ignorable. Like herpes or death. Death was a good idea. The two of them were acting like she wasn’t there and didn’t have a say in what was going to happen.
And she would snap their dicks off before she let them touch her again.
I belong to Niko.
It had been her mantra for a week now. Her reminder that when—if—she ever got back to Pine Valley, she would march right up to Niko and tell him they were on his schedule now. No more of her chicken shit hiding from the truth. Maybe they had only known each other for a few weeks. There was no denying what was between them. She loved him.
She missed him.
The days spent in Vegas were horrible. She had been dragged all over the place, Wyatt and Wayne demanding she case the places and figure out if they were rob-able. What she never told them was that she could get into and rob any place they showed her. She only told them the places that would not cause suffering to the owners in any way. Big casinos. Large department stores. Chain stores. Anything but the mom-and-pop shops that would suffer at the loss Wyatt and Wayne would inflict.
On top of that, Betsy was done being patsy. She kept a notebook for each place they ripped off in that. What they took, how long it took, where they fenced the goods, how much it was worth—and mailed the notebook to the cops so everything could be recovered.
She had too much to pay for already. Who knew how many years she’d be away from Niko at this point. If she ever got back to him.
The twenty-five-hour drive to Vegas from Pine Valley had been done straight through, so after the few heists they pulled off, Wyatt was ready to fence the diamond and go buy his ranch.
There wasn’t a chance in hell Betsy was going to let him fence that stone. That was hers and she wasn’t letting it go. So the last heist they did, she made sure they had enough cash to keep him off the diamond for now.
It had been a lot of money. A lot. More than she had dared set up ever. She made sure, as usual, no one got hurt.
Betsy was so over this.
Their newest scheme had them on the road to Reno. She barely paid attention to what they were talking about anymore. She just sat in the back of the car, looking out the window, scanning the sky, and hoping Niko had found his wings.
From what she had listened to, they were going to Reno for another robbery and then they were going to go buy a farm in the Toiyabe Mountains, somewhere north of a town called Tonopah. Fuck all if she knew what they were going to do with the farm. Some of the Great Basin area was the driest in the country. Couldn’t do crops. Couldn’t do cattle. She imagined they were going to raise tumbleweed at this point.
More, she imagined not going there.
But once they were there, she would have a chance to get out, for good. They were going to be north of Las Vegas and there had to be an excuse she could come up with to head down there and get on a plane at McLaren and never look back.
It might take a few weeks, or even a few months. She might have to take one for the team to make sure they were going to trust her.
The idea made her throw up in her mouth a bit. Well, actually, if she hadn’t been sitting in the back seat with the window, she probably would have thrown up a lot. But she would do what she had to get back to Niko and spend the rest of her life making it up to him.
She was hopeful, though. She had been reading up on what she could find on dragon lore, and she left clues for Niko all over Las Vegas. She’d done what she could to leave him a trail of breadcrumbs.
“So, I got all the paperwork lined up for this place,” Wyatt said, turning and looking at her. “I sent them the deposit and told them we’d pay the remained in cashier check at closing. We need you to find us a target that will pay it off. We have another half of it, so you only need to close the last thirty percent.”
Betsy picked at a nail. “What do I have to choose from? Target wise?”
“Casinos. Jewelry stories. Armored cars. I do believe there’s a gold warehouse.” Wayne waggled his eyebrows.
“Because fencing a bar of gold is going to be the easiest of all those options. You know they stamp them. And you also know they weigh a ton. You can’t walk around with those things in your backpack. You want untraceable bills or fencible stuff. As always. I tell you this every single time. If you can trace it you don’t want it.”
“Don’t get smart with me, girlie. I’ll fuck that smart mouth to silence.”
Wyatt snickered, and Betsy just rolled her eyes.
Reno was a small unimpressive city near the Sierra Madres. The mountains were glorious, and she could stare at those all day. With winter almost there, the snows were falling lower and lower in elevation, capping them with pure white. She wanted to run into them and disappear forever.
She’d probably die of exposure in short order.
The hotel Wyatt had picked out was a seedy shithole on the outskirts of the little city, and Betsy wanted to wrap herself up in antibiotic cellophane and run. She didn’t even want to try and climb out the bathroom window because that meant going into the bathroom.
“Really?” She stood in the doorway, staring in. “Really, Wyatt?”
“Stop being a high-maintenance bitch, Betsy.”
“I just stole you one hundred and seventy thousand dollars. And you get the cheapest, crappiest, filthiest place. If I’d known you still insist on sleeping in the toilet trap, I would’ve stolen a fucking rewards card for a decent chain.”
Wayne grabbed her chin. “Stop running your mouth or I’m gonna stuff it full of my cock right in this doorway.”
Ripping her chin from his grip, she snapped back. “Keep your fucking hands off me, Wayne! You have no claim to me! I steal thousands and thousands of dollars for you two assholes, and all I want in return is a fucking room in the Best Western. Not these disgusting, splooge coated, pay-by-the-whore rats’ nests. Christ, all I want to do is take a shower without footwear!”
Betsy spun and marched down the sidewalk outside the motel, straight for the car. She still had her own keys, and she shoved those into the ignition, speeding off as soon as the engine started.
Perfect.
Grinning, she couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity to leave them behind in that room and drop another breadcrumb for Niko to find her. She also knew by the time she got back, Wayne would be beyond pissed and Wyatt would have a reservation at a better hotel.
She had to watch herself around Wayne.
They were also idiots for letting her carry the diamond.
She found a reputable jeweler in one of the casinos and walked in, making sure she looked more than presentable and that they got a good look at her Birkin bag. She leaned over an outlier counter and crossed her one ankle over the other, exposing the distinct red sole of the Louboutins she was wearing.
Everything she did at this point was carefully crafted and orchestrated to convince the gentleman behind the counter that she had every right to be carrying a two-hundred-thousand-dollar diamond.
“May I help you?”
Betsy nodded benevolently. “Perhaps. I’m looking for a serious buyer for a diamond. My husband, the ninny-headed fool, managed to gamble away most of our cash for this trip. He did so well in Vegas and then here… well. He’s a dolt. We need the money to make some purchases, and I was wondering if you might be able to help me.”
“Do you have the stone with you, Ms…?”
“Florin. Jessica Florin. And of course. I would be willing to give you a generous portion of the proceeds if you can find us a buyer. We have enough capital to get home, but the petty cash is terribly underfunded.”
He nodded as Betsy put the stone down in its box. She tried to be as casual as possible with it, but it was hard. The stone belonged to her and she’d never felt the kind of connection it offered her.
The jeweler pulled a loupe from the counter and slipped it over his head, as he flipped the box open.
“...oh my God.” His voice was quiet. “Ma’am, I can tell you right now, I don’t even have enough insurance to hold it here.”
“Oh, that’s fine. I have it insured. I can keep it on me. But I need someone to work as an intermediary.”
“Of course.” Sliding the magnifying glass over his eye, he picked up the stone with the utmost care. He turned it over and around and back again. Eventually, he put it down and scribbled something down on a paper.
“You’ll excuse me while I run the GIA number.”
“Of course.”
This was run number ten on the number. They recorded both the places where the inspection had been done and if the stone had been lost or stolen. Niko hadn’t yet reported it stolen, on the first nine runs.
Either he had and she was going to jail, or he hasn’t and she dropped another breadcrumb.
“This is a very expensive stone, Ms. Florin. As I said, I don’t have the coverage to house this here.”
“As I said, no issue. I have it insured to myself.”
He nodded. “What would you like to do with this, Ms. Florin?”
“Well, you can see I’ve had it assessed before, and it’s worth quite a bit. Since none of those gentlemen and ladies were able to buy outright, I’d like to try a different approach. I would like to commission you to sell it. Serious buyers only, of course. Put it up online, no low best offer.”
“I can do that, certainly.” He pulled out some paperwork and started filling it out. “My usual commission is fifteen percent. Is that agreeable?”
“Absolutely.”
His pen ticked across the page as Betsy watched. After a moment, he spun the paper around and handed her a pen. “Your name, address, and phone, please.”
Taking her time and filling out the paper carefully, she put her false name down, but the real address of the place in Tonopah. She used a Google voice number she had managed to set up while Wyatt and Wayne had been gambling.
She really hoped this breadcrumb was more like the whole loaf and Niko was hungry.
* * *
“God, I’ve always hated this place.”
Keni nodded in agreement with Amy as they stood looking over the Strip from their window.
“Never been,” Niko said.
“I lived in Henderson in the ’50s. “Keni pointed out beyond the airport. “The place was mafioso Mecca. It was horrible. The guy I was seeing at the time was a mid-level enforcer. Worst relationship. I couldn’t get out. But when the ’60s came and he started dipping into drugs instead of fraud… well. Bad things happen to bad people.”
Both Amy and Niko stared at her, then glanced at each other.
“Did you kill him?” Amy seemed like she didn’t really want to ask.
“No. He was caught in a bust. Where a rogue cop shot him in the head. It wasn’t supposed to go down that way. I only wanted him caught.” She looked angry for a moment, then relieved. “So, here we are, Sin City. Looking for two criminals and a magical loci who could save or destroy the world. Where do we start?”
Twisting his lip in disgust, Niko walked away from the window. “With that assessment? The bar.”
“We’ve gone over this a thousand times now, Niko,” Amy said. “Do you think she’s here, and do you think she wants to be found? Her note said not to come after her.”
“I think she wants to be found,” Niko answered. “I think her note was a spur of the moment thing and she wants to come back.”
“Thank you. Damn. Twenty-six hours for a straight answer. And you think women are complicated.” Amy turned to Keni. “Whatcha got for us in terms of magical tracking?”
Keni pulled her bag from the floor and started rooting around in it. She hmm’ed and mmm’ed a few times and finally pulled out a few objects.
“I can do a wide net search... about ten miles, to see if she’s here right now and generally where she might be in the area.”
A series of items were spread on the table in the room: a candle, a bowl, a lemon, and some incense. Keni set about setting it all up, sending Amy to get spring water from the fridge, and then down to the store when all the mini fridge had was filtered tap.
“You trust her?” Keni asked as the door closed.
“Do I have a choice? Do we have a choice?”
Keni arranged her paraphernalia on the table. “No, Niko. Do you trust her?”
“I guess so.”
Keni expelled an exasperated breath. “Niko. We all did you a disservice growing up. You lost your father twice. Once when your mother died. He withdrew and only told you the most basic information about being a dragon. You lost him again when he died. And because you were eighteen, none of us stepped up to help you. We all knew you didn’t know how to be magical. None of us did anything.
“Sia and I have talked about this lack of magical education before. And it’s time you had one. We did not do our duty as the supernatural community we purport to be.” Keni walked over and pressed a hand to his chest. “Niko. Do you trust her? Here. Inside where all your magic resides.”
“I’m just a dragon shifter.”
“You have powers the likes of which you have no comprehension. You are not just magical. You are magic. You could not exist without it. Sia, Poppy, and I will teach you. And your grandfather will be called to task for not doing this. A three-thousand-year-old dragon not taking the damn time to help his grandson… really.”
Niko laughed. “You sound like an old woman!”
“Older than you, bucko.”
“Only by fifty years.”
Poking him in the chest, Keni brought him back to the matter at hand. “Do you trust her?”
Niko had a little experience with his power. He wasn’t nearly as strong as Keni thought he was, but he knew what she was trying to do. He concentrated on Amy and then on the question, and the answer bubbled out. “Yes. I trust her. She’s an ally.”
“There. Good. Now, go find your mate’s bra and give me a piece of the cloth. I need it to locate her. And for God’s sake, don’t be shy about it. It’s a bra. Two out of three people in this room are wearing one.”
Hustling off to his bag, he found the bra. Niko started hunting for a pair of scissors.
“Use your claw!”
“I can’t without water.”
Keni popped around the corner. “You serious?”
“Yes, I’m serious. It’s a problem. Why do you think we didn’t fly here? I have to submerge to shift. I can’t even get the claw out without water. So do you have scissors?”
“That’s so... weird…” Keni pulled out a pair and handed it to him. “You should be able to shift without water.”
“Well, I can’t. Can we move on?”
“Mmph.” She accepted the piece of cloth from him and arranged it on the table of paraphernalia. She smoothed it down, and just as she was about to ask him something, the door opened again. Amy handed her the bottle of spring water and shut the door.
Niko and Amy stood back as Keni got going on her spell. It wasn’t complicated and didn’t take long. But, he knew something was wrong when she moved to a new spot at the table and started again.
“She’s not here, is she?”
With a finger to her lips, she hushed him. She continued the spell around the table, stopping in each direction and trying again. When Keni reached her original cardinal direction, north, she stopped.
“She’s not here, Niko. I’m sorry. This is a spell I’ve done a hundred times.”
Glancing at the window, Amy pursed her lips. “There’s no way she’d leave without letting us know. The sun goes down in a few hours.” She looked back at Niko and Keni. “I’ll dreamwalk tonight and see if I can get a hint from her. Where she is or a clue she left. She doesn’t know I’m a dreamwalker, so I don’t know how she’ll take to me showing up there. I never taught her lucid dreaming, which is why I haven’t been able to find her without the phone signal.”
“She believes in all this now,” Niko said. “She might not know how to lucid dream, but she’d welcome you if you showed up in her dream.”
Steadying herself with a deep breath, Amy nodded. “Let’s get some food. I’m hungry and dreamwalking takes a lot out of me.”