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A familiar chime marked our arrival at the gate. The sound unleashed a rising rumpus of seat belts being unfastened, luggage being handled, and phones being restored to full service with a cacophony of alerts and rings.
The flight attendant retrieved my suitcase from the overhead bin and set it down gently, extending its handle. “There you go, ma’am,” he said in a quiet, almost intimate voice. “Welcome to Las Vegas.” He had a nice smile that touched his hazel eyes.
“Thank you,” I said, walking past him and the two other crew members lined up by the door to greet deplaning passengers. I passed a group of four slot machines next to the gate service desk and smiled to myself. Only in Vegas.
I kept my pace brisk until I reached a mobile phone store and walked in. A few minutes later, I walked out with a new phone in my pocket, loaded with prepaid minutes and a Las Vegas area code.
On my way to the terminal exit, I stopped at a restroom.
After locking the stall door, I pulled out my old phone, powered off since I’d left Seattle, and took it apart.
The old SIM card, wrapped in a wad of toilet paper, got flushed.
The phone got crushed under the heel of my boot, then wrapped in tissue paper and slipped into the sanitary-products disposal bin. No one goes through that kind of trash.
I should’ve done all that in Seattle, but the Avery incident hadn’t left me enough time.
I’d almost reached the baggage claim area when I noticed two uniformed officers walking briskly toward me, about forty feet away. One of them looked in my direction, talking into the radio clipped onto his epaulet. They both sped up.
My heart started beating fast, and I nearly tripped on my spinner, but I recovered and continued walking straight toward them, thinking through my options.
Had that son of a bitch Avery Sinclair told the Seattle cops a little too much?
I had no way of knowing, but I knew I didn’t want to walk past them, just in case they had a picture of me on a BOLO.
Instead, when I was about twenty feet away, I veered right and casually took a seat.
I pulled my new phone out of my pocket, crossed my legs, and started configuring it.
As the two cops approached, I held my breath, willing myself steady and keeping my head lowered.
“—white female, twenty-five to thirty, five seven, a buck-twenty or so,” one of the cops was saying to the other, giving a description dangerously close to my appearance.
I held my breath.
“Red hair, thick-rimmed glasses,” the cop continued.
I breathed. It wasn’t me they were looking for.
They walked right past. The sense of relief flushing through me felt like a crashing wave, overwhelming and dizzying.
I hated feeling so afraid. Vulnerable. Hunted, even if only by the monsters lurking in the corners of my overactive mind. It had to stop. Vegas had to be the last time I did this.
Or so I told myself, over and over, repeating the decision like a newly acquired mantra and willing it to burn into the fabric of my mind.
Before leaving my seat, I finished setting up my new phone. As I entered the profile information, I hesitated before typing in my name.
Olivia R. Taylor.
“Welcome to Las Vegas, Olivia,” I said to myself, then continued in my thoughts. Let’s make your stay something to remember. Something to tell your grandkids about. I typed in my encrypted email address and chuckled. Well, maybe not the grandkids. Probably not anyone. Ever.
On my way to the terminal exit, I didn’t stop at the baggage claim area.
There was no luggage to pick up. I always traveled light; the spinner with my laptop, my jewelry, and a few personal items amounted to everything I owned worth taking from one place to the next.
If I wanted to belong to my new home, to look and feel like I’d lived there my entire life, I wanted to dress like the locals, wearing clothes they’d seen in the windows of local stores.
Shoes they’d seen worn in restaurants and casinos they visited.
Jewelry they recognized from familiar retailer names.
And based on what I was noticing at the airport, those names were quite numerous and distinguished. I had plenty of options to choose from.
Living here is going to be fun, I thought, stepping out into the desert heat in front of the airport terminal.
I filled my lungs with the dry air, taking in the scents of the city, and smiled.
I’d never been to Las Vegas before, but in the past few weeks, I’d studied it in detail.
I’d “roamed” its streets with Google Earth.
Looked at thousands of pictures taken by other people, both tourists and locals, who’d experienced it firsthand.
I’d read about it, seen movies about it, and heard stories.
But nothing had prepared me for the experience of being there.
It was high noon when I climbed into a cab and instructed the driver to take me to ARIA, where I’d made a painfully expensive reservation.
The drive was short but fascinating. The lights, the colors, and the sounds of Sin City were perfectly devised to lift spirits, to instill in tourists the idea that anything is possible.
To make them believe they could touch the sky, standing right there on the Strip by the fountains, and live a little.
Eat too much. Drink themselves stupid. Gamble their last dime.
And still, somehow, feel great about it.
No, I’d never been to Vegas before, but it felt like home. The people there were no strangers to me.
I’m Olivia R. Taylor, and Las Vegas is my home.
It rang true.
My smile widened as the words took root in my mind.
The R in my name was my anchor to the past, and the only one I’d kept.
It didn’t stand for Rose or Rachel or Grandma’s middle name.
No . . . It stood for Rogue, a name inspired by a movie I’d seen.
That Rogue, the character in the movie, was a survivor.
A fighter. Someone who couldn’t get close enough to others to love but yearned for it nevertheless.
The R was always there so that I’d never forget the fateful night when I’d run away from my father’s farm—a wretched, barren eighty acres of misery on the southern outskirts of Abilene.
As I got out of the cab and waited for the driver to retrieve my spinner from the trunk, I breathed in the hot midday air.
It smelled a little like Texas in the summer, and the familiar scent unfurled a sense of unease in my gut that chilled my blood.
An overwhelming foreboding darkened my view of the city for a brief moment, until I willed it gone. Damned into oblivion forever.
For better or worse, I was home.
District Attorney Mitchell: What can you tell us about the moment you discovered the body?
Camilla Reyes: I knocked twice, and there was no answer. I said, “Housekeeping,” then used my card to enter the suite. Dios mío, he was lying there . . . Blood was smeared all over the floor. Blood from his eyes, senor!
District Attorney Mitchell: Was he dead when you found him?
Camilla Reyes: Sí, senor. I still have nightmares. Someone must’ve—
Defense Attorney Blake: Objection, Your Honor. Speculation.
Judge Thomas Antunez: Sustained.