6
I had to return to the bus, of course. Or the “scene of the crime,” as Terry whispered when I came up beside him, not looking over as he mentioned he had been there, seen everything…and survived. I glanced at him askance, then realized he thought I was a spectator, and he’d positioned himself behind the yellow police tape for just this purpose. Prima donna.
But there was quite a crowd for him to play to. Even my cabbie was standing alongside his open door, smoking and gossiping and staring at the destroyed party bus now surrounded by the yellow tape and flashing sirens. It was an abnormal sight, even for Vegas.
A handful of ambulances made a U shape in the center of the street, back doors flung wide to administer aid to the lightly injured, which helped me feel momentarily protected. Mackie wouldn’t return as long as there were this many people milling about. He, like all agents, operated in the shadows.
“…not everyone else was so lucky.”
I glanced back at Terry as he closed his eyes, a tear slipping from beneath one tarred lash. The mesh of his shirt was torn, his eyeliner smeared, and the new piercing in his ear was bright pink against his sallow flesh. I bet Tripp hadn’t even sterilized the piercing gun before sticking a hole in the poor guy. For some reason, that made me feel sorry for him. I returned my gaze to the destroyed bus, its top peeled back like a tomato can.
“We are lucky.” I shook my head, but immediately regretted it. It was as if Tripp’s infective, tapering smoke had slid past my earlobes and into the fragile drums to clog my thoughts like swamp water. I raised a hand to my head. “Though my hearing feels funny.”
There was a gasp beside me, and I turned in time to watch Terry’s eyes widen. “Concussion!” he screamed, pointing at me.
Three EMTs surrounded me like bees on a hive.
“The cowboy knocked her out as he carried her out of the bus,” Terry said as someone started feeling up my skull. “She shouldn’t even be standing here now!”
Well, that was true enough.
A female tech tugged me in the direction of the nearest ambulance, but I was practically bowled over halfway there.
“Suzanne.”
The bear hug tightened. “Oh, darlin’! Oh, dear! Oh, honey-are you okay?”
She punctuated each exclamation with a smacking kiss, but I managed to nod in the middle of the gentle mauling, which earned me more bracing hugs and heavily accented endearments. The female EMT, clearly used to such emotional displays, disentangled me from the distraught woman and her seemingly eighteen limbs, but when Suzanne pulled back, I noted the knots in her hair and circles under her eyes. She looked a decade older than when she’d trailed a bunch of disgruntled socialites off the bus.
My heart fell cold and plummeted to my toes.
“Cher?” I asked in a small voice. The last I’d seen
Oh God. If something had happened to the vapid, shallow, softhearted ninny because of me…
As I searched Suzanne’s swollen red eyes, the fine lines of worry around them crinkled, belying her age. “She’s in the hospital, but she’s fine. They’re making sure the bump on her head is no more than just that.”
“Like we should do with you,” the tech put in, blotting out Suzanne as she shone a light into my eyes.
I let out a breath I hadn’t even known I was holding, and blinked away the spots and threatening tears. Suzanne gave me a watery smile when I again met her gaze, while a stethoscope was pressed to my back. The tech had the endless pockets of a circus clown.
“But what happened to you?” Suzanne asked as I was dragged to the bright interior of one of the ambulances and pushed onto a stretcher despite my obvious fitness. I concocted a story about being woken by the sound of sirens, alone in an alley, sans pocketbook. I was halfway through an explanation of the alley’s other inhabitants when a man sidled up next to Suzanne.
“Excuse me.” He had a cop’s inflection, though he wasn’t wearing a uniform. I sat up, ignoring the EMT’s protests, eyes flicking to the badge at his waist. “Can we finish your statement now?”
Suzanne looked at me with injured eyes. “They won’t let me go to the hospital until I finish telling them everything I know.”
Like she was a criminal.
I turned a cold eye on the cop. “Her daughter is there.”
“Stepdaughter,” he clarified, and Suzanne and I both narrowed our eyes. “And if we get this over with now, we can find the man who did this to her much faster.”
I put a comforting arm around Suzanne, who’d begun softly weeping. “You clearly don’t have children.”
His brow lifted. “And you
The professional tone altered into derision. I leaned forward, slipping a fraction inside of his personal space. “I have people I care about, if that’s what you’re asking. I was with one of them when she got knocked unconscious by…”
“Then maybe I should take your comments as well.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, matching the arctic chill in his voice, and before he could protest, I sat back. “I’m suddenly feeling a little dizzy.”
The EMT glommed onto me like she’d been waiting for those words, and my arm was cuffed before I blinked. The officer shifted into view over her shoulder, mouth thinned. “Then maybe I should contact you at your workplace instead?”
“Sure,” I said lightly. I pointed with my free arm into the distance at the tallest, brightest building in the sky. Valhalla Hotel and Casino. Which I now owned. “You know where it is.”
His eyes narrowed into pinpricks. “Yes, being a casino heiress seems to pay very well. Though even the loftiest job can’t keep you safe all the time, huh?”
He dug out a business card and handed it to me, and one to Suzanne as well. “You ladies contact me if you manage to think of anything useful.”
Suzanne, missing the slight, just sniffled as she deposited the card in her purse. I crossed my legs and gave him a carefree smile, letting it fall when he joined a handful of other officers across the lot. After a moment they looked over, shaking their heads and muttering under their breaths. I knew how Suzanne and I looked in our designer wear and bleached hair-like two fireflies trapped in a bottle between the late night neon and harsh ambulatory lights. I didn’t need superhearing to know they thought us frivolous and useless, our brain matter as thin as tissue. Everyone made judgments based on first impressions, and police officers were most often proven right. Besides, how could those men know that beneath this waxed, perfumed, sculpted frame was a former heroine with a vigilante’s heart?
Then again, most people had some form of street smarts lurking beneath their chosen exteriors. Even Suzanne had some iron to her spine. She ran marathons, had raised a teenager on her own, and navigated the annual sale at Nordy’s with a warrior’s instinct. I glanced over to find her cleaning her nail beds.
Well, a shark’s instinct, anyway.
But Suzanne’s sort of savvy, as well as Cher’s, was harmless. Admittedly I hadn’t always felt so benevolently toward them, but after being turned into Olivia, I’d lost the ability to sum a person up based on their skin alone. I no longer judged them for using their looks to shape their realities. Besides, it wasn’t as if they were operating a Ponzi scheme. Their need to shellac, color, and buff every possible body part was a bit obsessive, but it didn’t hurt anyone else. So big deal.
“Don’t pay attention to it, Livvy-girl.”
I hadn’t realized I was glaring at the clustered men until Suzanne spoke. I shook my head, my hearing taking a momentary dip until equilibrium returned. “They’re jerks.”
“Well, that’s as obvious as Terry’s need for attention,” she said wryly, causing both me and the tech-clearly the one to treat the distraught man-to snort. “But what did I tell you years ago, when you were broken-hearted for your sister and embarrassed about your runaway Momma?”
