Chapter 1
Las Vegas, Nevada
Twenty Years Earlier
“You can do this,” Didi told herself as she drove her vintage, specially equipped Cadillac through the city. Neon lights sparkled and shone as daylight slipped away and Las Vegas became a beacon in the twilight desert.
God, she loved this town, with its hot, dry air, bustle, and excitement, and, most importantly, the glamour and glitz of the tall buildings that spired upward into a vast, star-spangled sky. The city itself was almost surreal in its stark contrast to the quiet, serene, eerie desert at night.
Well, it wasn’t quite night yet, and she had no time to think about anything but her mission, one she’d been planning for the better part of a year. A tiny frisson of excitement sizzled through her blood, and the back of her mouth was suddenly dry with anxiety.
“You can pull this off,” she said, the words a familiar mantra intended to calm her jangled nerves, push back her fears. She stepped on the gas as she reached the outskirts of town. Her chest was tight, her fingers clammy over the steering wheel, a million doubts creeping through her mind.
She would have preferred to have the top down on the big car, to let the warm Nevada breeze stream across her face and through her hair, but she didn’t want to muss her makeup, nor her hair, and, really, with the twins, it was best to keep the convertible’s roof snapped into place and just leave the windows cracked enough to let in some air.
In the back, strapped into their car seats, were her two infants.
Her heart twisted at the thought of her precious little ones.
A boy and a girl, six weeks old and sleeping, cooing softly as she drove, not knowing their fates.
“Oh, babies,” she whispered, guilt already gnawing through her soul.
What she was planning was unthinkable. But she was desperate, and everything would work out for the best. No one would get hurt.
She hoped.
Despite herself, she crossed the fingers of her right hand as she gripped the wheel. Was she making a mistake? Probably. But, then, it certainly wasn’t her first—or fiftieth, for that matter.
Swallowing hard, she fought a spate of hot tears and steeled herself.
She had to do this, had to; it was her one chance, their only chance for a better life.
Sniffing, she blinked and wouldn’t let the tears fall and ruin her mascara.
She needed to look good, perfect, to pull this off.
Not like a sad sack of a clown with black streaks running down her cheeks.
Involuntarily, seated in the soft white leather, she straightened her shoulders. You can do this, Didi. You can. She pressed a high heel a little more firmly on the gas pedal, and the Caddy responded, leaping forward, tires eagerly spinning over the dry, dusty asphalt.
But what if something goes wrong?
“It won’t.”
It couldn’t.
Just to be on the safe side, she sent up a quick prayer, something she hadn’t done much of since she’d shaken the Missouri dust off her boots, bought a bus ticket, and headed west when she was still a teenager. She’d left her family, and God Himself, in the huge Greyhound’s exhaust.
Tonight, everything would turn around.
Over the roar of the car’s big engine, she heard a soft sigh, one of the babies probably dreaming.
Oh God.
Setting her jaw, she flipped her visor down to shield her eyes against the sun’s glare and reminded herself that she couldn’t back out now—her plan was set, the wheels in motion.
As Las Vegas became a strip of glorious lights reflected in her car’s oversize rearview mirror, she pushed in the cigarette lighter, then let her fingers scrabble on the seat beside her for her purse.
She shook a Virginia Slims from the glittery cigarette case she scrounged out of her clutch.
A few hits of nicotine would calm her. She cracked open the side window and, after lighting up, held her cigarette near the window—no second-hand smoke for her babies!
That was definitely a thing these days, and as long as she was a mother …
oh, Jesus, how long would that be? … she would keep the babies safe.
Really? Who are you kidding?
Condemning eyes reflected back at her in the mirror as she headed steadily west, where the blazing sun was settling over the cliffs of Red Rock Canyon. While the nicotine did its job, she turned on the radio to an oldies station and heard the Beatles singing “Let It Be.”
Bam!
Paul McCartney’s voice was drowned out as she hit a pothole, and the car shuddered, a loud thud sounding from the rear end of the Caddy.
Oh, puh-leez.
She couldn’t break down. Not now. Not when she’d finally screwed up her courage and set her plan in motion.
Fearing that one of the car seats was too loose, that the strap securing it might have failed in this old car, she glanced over her shoulder.
Nothing seemed out of place. And the car was running well, no popped tire, no bent axle.
The babies were still safely bound in their car seats.
For now.
“It was nothing,” she said aloud. Maybe something had shifted in the trunk or a prop had gotten away from its bindings in the specialized cargo space she’d had retrofitted into the big car so that she could use it in her act.
God, how she loved to pop out of the “empty” white Caddy, in a scanty outfit …
well, those days were gone, at least temporarily, until she got rid of the remaining fat and sagging skin from her latest pregnancy with the twins.
So far, she’d lost a lot of that weight, but things had shifted, and her skin was not as taut as it used to be when she’d been a nubile teenager, and tonight she’d had to wiggle into some damned tight undergarments to even slip into her current outfit—her favorite pink Marilyn Monroe dress.
The jeweled gown’s seams were straining, but scarcely being able to breathe was well worth the trouble. Didi knew she looked spectacular.
Cutting the radio, she kept the pedal to the metal, all the while listening for that disturbing noise again.
She detected nothing more than the thrum of the engine, the whine of the tires, and the rush of wind through the partially opened window.
Since the clunk had stopped, and there didn’t appear to be anything mechanically wrong with the car, thank God, she clicked on the radio again, this time to a current pop station.
She squashed her cigarette on the tab in the ashtray, adjusted her sunglasses to fight the glare of those last eyeball-searing minutes before the sun sank over the ragged mountaintops, and told herself she was ready.
Tonight, her bad luck was going to change.
Forever.
Remmi hardly dared breathe in the tight cargo space of her mother’s ancient Cadillac.
She rubbed the back of her head where it had bumped against the inside of the wall when Didi, at the wheel, had hit something and Remmi had bounced enough to slam the back of her head against the metal roof.
Ouch! She was surprised her mother hadn’t heard the thud, stopped the car, and discovered her oldest daughter stowed away in the area where Didi usually hid the props for her stage act, a part of the voluminous trunk sectioned off in this boat of a white Cadillac.
Fortunately, Remmi had bit back a scream despite the radiating pain.
Now, she was sweating. A lot. Drops drizzled down her forehead and off her chin, and covered her back.
The space she was wedged into was tight.
Claustrophobic. But she didn’t want to think about how she could so easily be trapped inside.
There was a latch of course, but it could jam.
She didn’t want to think about it and swiped at the beads of sweat on her chin.
For a split second, as the huge car’s speed increased and she felt as if Didi were being intentionally reckless, Remmi considered calling out, letting her mom know she was hiding in the space, but she held back.
Didi would kill Remmi if she found out her teenager had stowed away in the car.
Well, actually, Remmi hadn’t intended to stow away at all. She’d been hiding. From her mom.
And it had backfired.
Big-time.
Cautiously, Remmi peered through a small slit between the cargo area and the back seat, a tiny peephole Didi had installed.
The scent of cigarette smoke reached her nostrils, and she heard music from the radio.
The twins, her half siblings, were silent for once, not crying, but Remmi couldn’t see them.
From her vantage point, she saw little more than the back of her mother’s head, Didi’s blond “Marilyn” wig securely in place.
Why the costume?
Remmi hazarded a quick glance toward the wide rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of her mom’s face, sunglasses over the bridge of her nose, lips pouty and colored a glossy pink, even a signature mole drawn near the corner of her mouth.
Oh, Mom, what’re you doing?
Remmi wished to high heaven that she hadn’t decided at the last possible second to hide in the cargo space.
She’d thought Didi was working, and Seneca, the twins’ nanny, had retired to her room for the night as the babies had fallen asleep in their shared crib.
Remmi, whose room was part of the converted garage on the far end of the house, had thought she was safe, that no one would check on her until her mother returned sometime after her last show, usually after 2:00 AM.
She’d planned to sneak out her bedroom window, and with the keys she’d already lifted out of the drawer in the kitchen, she’d intended to drive her mother’s crappy old Toyota into the night.
The windows of her room were mounted high, slanted panes near the apex of the sloped ceiling, accessible by climbing onto the headboard of her bed and scrambling over, impossible to reach from the outside without a ladder.
But she’d done it.