Chapter 9
VAUGHN
The black car is waiting at the rear of the hotel, exactly where I ordered it. A Mercedes SUV with windows tinted so dark you can’t even see outlines from the outside. The engine is already running.
I open the rear door for Riley, and for a second, I wonder if she even notices that this car isn't a taxi or an Uber.
I slide onto the leather seat beside her; it’s pleasantly cool. Riley settles in, smoothing the wrinkled fabric of her dress, and looks straight ahead.
The driver doesn't turn around. Dark hair, sunglasses, and a thick neck that leads into an even broader back. He catches my gaze in the rearview mirror, gives a minimal nod, and shifts into gear. The car glides silently onto the road.
Riley casts a brief glance forward, then at me. "Your driver?"
"My driver."
"Of course you have a driver." She leans her head against the headrest and closes her eyes for a moment. "A penthouse, a tailored suit, and a driver. Are you secretly a billionaire?"
"Not secretly," I answer.
She laughs, thinking I’m making a joke.
The car turns onto the Strip. Las Vegas in the morning looks like a woman waking up under harsh white neon after a binge.
Garbage trucks crawl between casinos. Tourists stumble through the heat with sunglasses and to-go coffee cups, the air already shimmering over the asphalt even at nine in the morning.
Riley turns her head, watching the buildings pass by.
"How much longer are you staying in Vegas?" she asks. Her tone is forced and casual. She’s trying to use small talk to avoid the elephant in the room—or rather, the car: a one-night stand with a nice stranger, an amusing accident, a story to tell a best friend—if Riley had a best friend, which she doesn’t.
"Hard to say," I reply. "Depends on how things go."
"You sound like a business traveler."
"I am."
"And card counting is your business?"
"Among other things."
She grins and taps her finger against the glass. "You have to be careful. They take that very seriously at the Onyx. They have an IT department that’s probably already uploaded your face to every database between here and Macau."
"Sounds impressive. Who runs that department?"
A brief flicker in her eyes. "No idea. Someone. It’s a big place."
"Hm." I look out the window. "So? Am I going to be banned from your casino?"
A second of silence. Riley turns her head toward me.
"My casino?"
"The casino where you work. For the accountant. In the back office." I let the words fall slowly, like coins into a slot machine. "Or was it the IT security department? I’m getting confused."
Her jaw muscles tighten. But she recovers.
"I told you I work for an accountant."
"You did." I turn my face to her. "And I told you my name was Jack. We both lied. The difference is, my real name is out on the table now."
She opens her mouth, then closes it again. Her fingers toy with the hem of her dress. A tell that betrays her when she gets nervous. I first noticed it at the blackjack table last night.
"Anyway," she says, her voice a pitch thinner than before. "I don't think you need to worry about being banned. Usually, card counters only get caught if they come back multiple times."
"You’re probably right about that." I lean back. "But I don't think I’ll get banned from my own casino anyway."
The words hang in the air like a bomb about to go off.
Riley turns slowly toward me. Her eyebrows knit together. Her mouth forms the word, but no sound comes out at first.
"Your casino?" she finally says.
I don't answer, letting the silence do the work.
Riley shakes her head. An uncertain laugh escapes her. "You’re joking."
I’m not joking, but I don't tell her that yet. I let the uncertainty work in her mind like a virus slowly eating through an operating system.
She changes the subject. Or tries to.
"Can I use your phone for a second?" she asks. Her tone is pointedly casual. "I really need to call someone. Mine wasn't at the front desk at the Meridian either."
"No signal." I point out my side window, where the buildings are thinning out. Suburban developments. Wasteland. The first outskirts of the Mojave. "No one has reception out here."
"We’ve only been driving for twenty minutes. There’s signal everywhere here."
"Not in this car. Signal blockers. Standard security for armored vehicles."
She blinks. "Armored?"
"I’m a cautious man."
"Vaughn." Her voice has lost the small-talk tone. "Can I see your phone? Just for a second."
I turn my head and look directly at her.
"Don't you trust your husband?"
The word husband hits her like a punch. I see it in the way her pupils contract, how her shoulders pull up, how her hand instinctively reaches for the door handle. Not to open it, but to hold onto something solid. A reflex.
Riley Blackstone is starting to realize something is wrong.
She doesn't know what she’s stepped into yet. But it’s enough to sense that the man beside her isn't the charming card counter from last night. That the marriage wasn't a one-time Vegas prank. That the car she’s in isn't heading toward the Onyx Grand.
She turns toward the window. The last houses of the city grow smaller behind us until finally, the Mojave Desert stretches out ahead. Flat, empty land under a sky so blue it’s almost white. The road stretches as a straight line to the horizon.
"This isn't the way home," she says softly.
"No," I answer. "It isn't."
"Where are we going?"
"To a safe place."
"Safe for whom?"
Good question. A very smart question, actually. Even with a hangover and in a crumpled evening gown, her mind works faster than most people I know.
"For both of us," I say.
"Stop the car." Her voice gets louder. "Vaughn. Stop the car."
I don't react, and neither does my driver. The Mercedes glides at seventy-five miles per hour over the empty highway. The air conditioning hums. The engine noise is barely audible.
"Stop the damn car!" She turns to my driver. "Hey! Stop! Now!"
Valentino looks straight ahead, motionless like a mannequin. Riley’s hand finds the door handle. She pulls. Once, twice, three times. The door doesn't budge. Child locks.
She whirls toward me, her green eyes wide. But there’s no hysteria. Not yet. There’s something worse: the cold, analytical recognition of a woman who has spent her life seeing through security systems and just realized her own has failed.
"Who are you?" she whispers.
The question fills the car like toxic smoke.
I could tell her everything now. About my parents.
About Richard Blackstone. About the decades I’ve spent planning every single day to take everything away from her father that matters to him.
I could show her the marriage contract and explain what she signed last night.
I could tell her she isn't in danger, that I won't hurt her, and that everything is going according to plan.
But that would be a lie—at least the last part. Because the plan didn't involve me lying awake all night watching a sleeping woman reach for my hand in her dreams.
The plan didn't involve the thought of seeing her cry being more uncomfortable than it should be.
"My name is Vaughn Mercer," I say. "I'll tell you everything else when we arrive."
"Arrive where?"
"Stop asking questions. Nothing is going to happen to you."
"You’re kidnapping me, Vaughn." Her voice breaks on the last word. "How can you say nothing is going to happen?"
Riley turns away from me, pressing her forehead against the tinted glass and staring into the desert.
Her hands lie in her lap. The fingers of one hand grip the silver ring on the other.
My ring, which I put on her finger last night when she laughed like a woman who was free for the first time in her life.
Now she sits beside me in a locked car, silent.