“You did what?!”

Two

Emmersyn

“Please. Is there any way you can call Mr. Andrews? He has to be in.”

He was expecting me. Had to be. There was no way Heather would let me down. She’d promised me her older brother would take me in.

I had nowhere else to go.

“I’m sorry, Miss…” The security guard, Kevin, glanced down at the note he’d written and back to me. “Miss Houghton. Mr. Andrews is not in, and I’m unable to reach him on his personal line as of yet. If you can pull off to the side for a few moments, perhaps he’ll respond to either mine or the calls you claim his sister made.”

Right. Because I was making all of this up. I’d known Heather since we lived across the hall from each other in college, but that wasn’t how we met.

She’d almost punched a guy in a bar when he hadn’t been willing to accept the fact I didn’t want a drink from him. I was with friends, but they’d all paired up with other guys. Seeing I was alone and ready to bail after that encounter, Heather invited me to join her friends, at least until the guy left. I bought her a drink as a thank you, and the rest was history. We bonded immediately, and while I’d only met her brother once, it was easy to say Heather was his biggest fan.

“She made the calls.” She had to have. Heather was my best friend, and she and her brother were closer than close.

In front of me, my taxi driver sighed. “Miss, I do have other runs to make.”

Great. “I know. Please, just a few minutes.”

It was late. Maybe Kane was sleeping. “Five more minutes, please.”

“Five,” my taxi driver said.

I leaned back out the window through the driver’s side rear door. “Please. Can you please try Kane again?”

He sighed but reached for the phone, but as he did, it rang in his palm. I waited while he announced himself, and then his eyes widened and slid slowly toward me. “Yes, sir, Mr. Andrews. There is a friend of Heather’s here… okay… yes, of course, sir.” He hung up the phone and looked almost bummed Kane had called him. He reached for a button on a panel. “You may continue to his house, Miss Houghton. He told me to tell you he’ll be home in twenty minutes. You may wait outside for him.”

Relief washed through me like a wave. “Thank you.” Finally, something in this horrific day had gone right.

The driver made his way through the neighborhood. It was dark, but there was no mistaking the elaborate homes of cement and stucco and brick and rock that were hidden behind gates and elegant landscaping.

The mansions faded as we drove through the neighborhood, a wealthy area of Las Vegas, but I’d been born to wealth, even if I chose not to live like it, mostly due to circumstances I wasn’t willing to currently consider.