15. Erin
CHAPTER 15
ERIN
E very day used to be a long day when I worked three jobs, but over the past several months, I’d grown used to early nights. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be this tired. But we’d saved the dog, and that was awesomely cool.
“Where do you want me to drop you off?” Sin asked as I buckled up in the back seat. Rusty had offered me the front seat, but I’d waved him off. Had I overreacted in the waiting room earlier? I’d woken up and felt his hand on my shoulder, and my thoughts had still been fuzzy as I lashed out. Then I’d spilled more of my secrets than I intended. What did he think of me now?
“You want to go back to the Galaxy?” Sin continued when I didn’t answer right away. “Or are you staying at Rusty’s place too?”
Rusty turned to her. “What do you mean, ‘too’?”
“I’ve been allocated surveillance duty in your spare room.”
“I thought Ari was doing that.”
“Ari’s communing with the math guy, so you get me instead. Congratulations. If you don’t piss me off, I might order extra pizza.” She twisted in her seat to look at me. “What’s it to be? If your shower still isn’t working, Ari left a spare key at the desk so you can use hers.”
“Your shower doesn’t work?” Rusty asked, his words polite but his tone saying, “What the fuck?”
“Water comes out, but it’s cold.”
“Why are you still staying there? Move to literally any other hotel in Vegas.”
“Uh-uh-uh,” Sin sang. “They’re at the Galaxy for operational reasons.”
“This surveillance thing has something to do with the Galaxy?”
I put a finger to my lips. “Shhh.”
“Rusty should know the basics,” she said. “One of the people involved in the case is connected to the Galaxy. They think someone’s following them around, and right now, we’re trying to understand whether they’re in genuine danger or cuckoo for cocoa puffs.”
“And which way are you leaning?”
“The jury’s still out. Erin—hotel or house?”
“I’m not sharing a room with you.”
“Relax, I don’t snore.”
“It’s not snoring that I’m worried about.”
She probably slept with a gun under her pillow, cocked, locked, and ready to rock. One wrong move…
“What are you worried about?” Rusty asked. Shit.
“I sleep like a starfish, and Erin likes her space.” Phew. Saved by the frenemy. “I’m assuming there’s only one bed?”
“The house has five bedrooms. I wouldn’t recommend the master because fuck knows what Mav’s been doing in there, but Erin could use one of the others.”
That was actually a really sweet offer, especially considering Rusty hadn’t wanted us there in the first place. But Sin was right about me liking my space—and I wasn’t sure how, seeing as I’d known her for less than a day.
“I’ll stay at the hotel tonight. But thank you.”
When we reached the forecourt of the Galaxy, Sin pulled up, and Rusty jumped out to open my door and make me feel even guiltier for snapping at him earlier.
“Thank you for going into the canyon,” I said quietly as I climbed out of the vehicle. “I’m not sure I could have done it.”
“I’m glad you didn’t have to.”
“And I’m sorry I snapped at you.”
“I’m sorry that I put you in a position where you felt uncomfortable.”
“Can we start fresh tomorrow?”
He nodded. “You want me to pick you up in the morning?”
“Okay.”
“Sleep well, Erin.”
And then he was gone.
Nine a.m. on Monday morning, and we were back in a public place. Thank goodness. Today, Kelsey had dressed for work in a cream silk blouse and smart charcoal pants.
Once again, we ate breakfast in the dining room at the Neptune, then tailed her to the Las Vegas office of Miller, Sigmund, and Pace, where she disappeared inside and out of sight.
Now we were waiting.
And waiting.
And waiting.
And eating.
It could have been worse. We’d found a small café with a view of the building’s front door, and since Kelsey had taken a cab to work, it was unlikely she’d exit through the parking garage as Rusty thought she’d done once before, but Alexa was tracking her as a backup. A new tab had appeared on my Alexa app, and Kelsey’s phone was a red blob among the sea of buildings.
The café was pretty full, but as long as we kept ordering from the menu and tipping well, the server was happy for us to hog a table by the window. We’d both brought laptops. I was studying a tenth-grade science textbook in between reading through the background information Alexa was sending over. Kelsey was smart and well-respected by all accounts. Past projects of hers included a billionaire’s tennis pavilion and an eco-hotel in New Mexico.
Meanwhile, Rusty scrolled through BuzzHub, muttering occasionally about trash that people had posted about hockey in general and the Cali Commanders in particular. It seemed they’d been expected to make the playoffs, but they’d lost their place by a single point to a team they should have beaten easily. The fans were unhappy.
Rusty was unhappy too. He’d only played two minutes of the game before he was benched with a thumb injury, and I thought that would make him feel better, given that he’d barely been involved with the loss. But apparently, it was actually worse because he felt guilty that he hadn’t been on the ice.
“Maybe you’ll make it next year?” I said.
“We’d better fucking make it. Winning the Meadows Cup is the number-one item on my bucket list.”
“The what?”
“It’s the championship trophy awarded to the winning team in the end-of-season playoffs.”
“Okay, so you want to win all of hockey. What else? You said there wasn’t much. ”
“Most of the items got scraped off and flushed earlier this year.”
Yikes. “Those were the girlfriend ones?”
“Yeah. Buy our dream home, get married, have a kid or two, all the important things. Which were incompatible with winning the Meadows Cup.”
“Huh?”
“My girlfriend wasn’t a hockey fan. She thought playing in the league was just a phase.” Rusty sighed. “You really don’t have a bucket list?”
His career was a phase? Wow.
“Nope, but when we flew over the Grand Canyon yesterday, I got to thinking I should start one.”
I picked at my poached eggs and avocado toast. People laughed about avocado toast, but it actually tasted pretty good.
“No time like the present. If Kelsey works nine to five, we’re here for another four hours. You could write a bucket novel by then.”
“I don’t know where to start.”
“Just throw out some ideas. Doesn’t matter if they seem impossible—put them on there.”
“Okay, I want to surf a big wave one day.”
“How big is a big wave? Compared to a normal wave, I mean?”
“One of the big waves, at least twenty feet high. Jaws, Pipeline, Mavericks, Teahupo’o, Nazaré. The dream would be Ghost Tree—Pescadero Point—but it’s really a tow-in wave, and ever since they banned PWCs in the area where it breaks, you have to paddle in. So I guess that would be, like, item ninety-nine on the list.”
Maybe even lower than that. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be brave enough. Ari said it was because of my inbuilt sense of survival, the idea of being held down by tons of water if it all went wrong …
“I don’t understand most everything you just said. What’s a PWC?”
“A personal watercraft, a jet ski. I had a job riding them once.”
My old boss owned a bunch of rental businesses along the Florida coast, and I got hired to move the PWCs from one place to another depending on bookings. It was a hoot, riding around with my colleagues, one of my favouritest jobs ever. I hadn’t realised we were being used as drug mules, honest. Thankfully, he paid cash in hand so there were no records, and I’d had a day off when the DEA raided the place.
“You can’t drive a car, but you can ride a jet ski?”
“I used to work at an off-airport parking lot, so I’m great at moving vehicles around. Navigating actual roads? Not so much.” And that was lucky because the parking lot had been owned by the PWC guy’s brother, so the cars were also being used as drug-mobiles. “Jet skis are way easier. You don’t need to worry about lanes and stoplights on a jet ski.”
Or raccoons.
“So, surf a big wave. We’ll put that at number one. What else?”
“I guess it would be cool to own a house someday. Not a mansion or anything, just a space I can call my own. Sharing sucks.”
“Sin wasn’t kidding earlier, huh?”
“When you spend pretty much the first sixteen years of your life living with family you hate, and the next six years in nasty house shares, you learn to appreciate having your own bathroom.”
I’d left the Promised Land a month before my sixteenth birthday. The closest I’d come to living alone was the occasional night in a hotel, and that luxury was only a recent thing .
Rusty nodded. “I guess I can understand that. So, your own house and your own bathroom.”
“And I want to go somewhere cold.”
“Somewhere cold?”
“Like Alaska. I’ve lived in California, Texas, and Florida—although I’d rather forget the Texas part—and I’ve never seen snow. Staying in one of those ice hotels would be real cool.”
Okay, so I might turn blue, but the hypothermia would be totally worth it for those kinds of memories.
“I stayed in an ice hotel once.”
“And? What was it like?”
“Peaceful. No phone signal, no TV, no evening entertainment. Great cocktails. But it’s damn freezing, and you have to sleep in your clothes.” He twisted his napkin in his hands for a moment, and I got the impression he was deciding whether to add something. Finally, he said, “I think ice hotels are an acquired taste. Florence hated it. So maybe just book a night or two?”
“Florence was your girlfriend?”
“She was. We left two days early and went home. She said it was bad enough growing up in Minnesota without spending our vacations freezing as well.”
“Well, I still want to try it.”
“And what other goals do you have?” He focused on his laptop screen again. “A bucket list needs more than three things on it.”
“I want my brother to win the World Surf Tour.”
“This is your bucket list, not your brother’s.”
“Yes, but seeing him win would be the best thing ever. He came second last year, and I know he can do it. And I want him to finally hook up with Maya Torres. Everyone knows they’d make, like, the perfect couple, but they won’t admit it to each other.”
“That should be on their bucket lists, then. ”
“Why? Why can’t I wish for other people to be happy?”
“I guess when you put it that way… Don’t you ever want to get married?”
Should I tell him that I’d once been Mrs. Elvis Wilkes? Would he judge me? Maybe if I told him being married wasn’t as fun as he thought, it might make him feel less miserable about losing Florence. And did it really matter if he judged me? After next week or the week after, I wouldn’t see him again unless I tried watching hockey on TV, which I might do because it did sound vaguely interesting. And also a little violent.
“I already tried being married. Didn’t like it.”
His eyes saucered. “You were married? What are you…” He did the math. “Twenty-three?”
“It was an arranged thing. I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.”
“How long were you married for?”
“A year, give or take.”
“Smart not to waste your life on him if it wasn’t working. At least there were no kids involved.”
Of all the things Rusty could have said, that one hurt the most. I bit my lip hard enough to sting, but at least it stopped me from crying. When I didn’t say anything, he turned a shade paler.
“There were no kids involved, right? You’re not still tied to him?”
And in a quiet corner of a café in downtown Las Vegas, I blurted out a truth that few people knew.
“We don’t have children, but I…I never got a divorce. I don’t think the marriage was legal because Elvis had four other wives, but I…I just don’t know. Even now I hate being on TV in case he sees me, but I tell myself it’s okay because TVs are banned in the Promised Land.”
After I left, I’d lived in the shadows for years. Alexa had even gotten me a mostly legit passport in a new name— Erin Prince—but then I’d reunited with my brother and it felt wrong to use a different surname to his, especially when I was so proud to be his sister. After some soul-searching and a late-night heart to heart with Kai, when he told me that he’d considered changing his name too, but kept it as a big fuck-you to the Prophet— look what I can do without you —I’d nervously switched back to Kealoha.
“Well, fuck,” Rusty said. “The Promised Land? Is that a town or…?”
“It’s more of a compound. A cult.”
There, I’d said it. My lip was bleeding now; I could taste the coppery tang.
Rusty’s eyes widened again. “You grew up in a cult?”
“It’s not like I had a choice. Looking back, it was weird as hell, but when you’re there and you don’t know any different, it just seems normal. It was only after my brother got thrown out that I began to question things, but it took me another three and a half years to escape.”
“Damn, I’m sorry,” Rusty said again, which was dumb because none of my past was his fault.
“So, there won’t be any relationship goals on my bucket list, but maybe I’d like a dog someday. Trooper’s real cute, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, he is. Getting a dog is on my list too. As soon as my travelling days are over, my first stop will be the shelter.”
“Hey, isn’t that Kelsey?” I said, remembering why we were supposed to be here. It was Kelsey. I recognised her red pumps. They were so pretty, but I’d break an ankle if I tried to walk in them.
“I’ll go,” I told Rusty. “She’s probably just heading out to grab lunch.”
And besides, I needed a moment alone. Somehow he had a way of drawing my secrets out of me by being so damn nice about it. And he hadn’t judged or criticised or told me I should have done things differently. A relationship wasn’t in the cards for me, but if I were that kind of girl, Rusty was the type of guy I’d look for. Minus the hockey career, of course. I didn’t like the idea of him getting into fights.
Not that I’d considered spending time with him after the case was done, no siree. Rusty was barely more than an acquaintance.
Stop overthinking.
I picked up my purse and hurried after Kelsey.