Chapter 6 Nova
NOVA
Mistake.
Huge, massive mistake.
What the hell was I thinking, going to his casino? Then again, what was the alternative? Texting him everything and risking the messages being intercepted?
It wasn’t like I had anything but suspicions. Paranoia, probably. At least, that was what I tried to convince myself I was wrestling with as I fled yet another casino. This was what my life had evolved into. What a joke.
I had no proof, either. No way of showing Vaughn or anyone what was happening.
It had started Sunday night in my group chat with the girls.
Monica, Laura, and Holly had been my best friends since high school, and the three of them had moved on to colleges closer to home while I went out to Columbia and beyond to Oxford.
Our group chat was how we had kept in touch, like a lifeline I often used to keep myself tethered. Grounded.
Never, in all the years we had been exchanging text messages in that chat, had any of our messages disappeared.
Yet when I had scrolled back up to the messages we exchanged Saturday night, before we went out, one thing had been glaringly obvious—the messages I sent were gone.
Like I had never typed them out. Like I didn’t exist.
It was as though somebody hacked my phone somehow or at least my messages. The girls couldn’t have done it. Only I or somebody digging around in my account could have.
That was why, instead of sending the text to Vaughn, I had thought twice before hitting the button. Was it possible Nico or one of the goons he was associated with had been able to break into my phone? Was he already concocting the narrative of my whereabouts Saturday?
As far as I knew, only Vaughn and I were aware of my activities that night. Nico couldn’t know about me hiding out at that reception, losing myself in the crowd so he wouldn’t find me. There was no way… or was there?
That was why, instead of texting any specifics to Vaughn, I had chosen an in-person meeting on the off chance he would be around.
That was why I sat waiting for him all that time before I finally gave up hope.
I felt safer outside his office than I had in the last few days, even if being in the man’s presence felt anything but safe sometimes.
Just the sight of his lips and the muskiness of his cologne were almost enough to make me lose my mind.
It’s a good thing he had to make a lame joke, or else I might have kissed the arrogant jerk.
The Planet Hollywood casino was up ahead and across the street, which meant being able to get lost in the mall inside.
It would mean a relief from the heat, but there was more to the idea than my comfort.
I might have been paranoid about the missing messages, but the sense of being followed had nothing to do with paranoia.
That was more a result of having working eyes and a functioning brain.
Somebody was watching me, a man dressed in black, his light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail.
I had seen him more than once this morning when I went for coffee, for instance, and spotted him sitting at a corner table with a newspaper covering part of his face.
I would have sworn he’d been trailing me on my way inside the Eastman Casino, part of the reason I had stuck around waiting for Vaughn as long as I had, hoping he would get bored and leave.
He hadn’t gotten bored. I saw him in there, standing near the pit, his hands folded in front of him while he scanned the casino floor. This was not an idle sort of look, either, like he was observing, enjoying himself. No, the man was hunting.
What else could I do but run? Sticking around would’ve meant dragging Vaughn into things, and while he had a skill for rubbing me the wrong way, it didn’t mean I wanted to leave. I would have much rather stuck it out, gone another few rounds of sparring, but then I spotted that dark ponytail.
Not only had I fled a casino yet again, but I was now looking for a place to hide.
This was ridiculous. There I was, making fun of Vaughn for jumping to conclusions, and what was I doing?
Running to the mall, hoping to hide again.
The last thing I wanted to do was lead someone back to my apartment, after all.
It seemed like the safest bet for the time being.
The air-conditioned space was a small miracle unto itself.
Two years spent in England had made me more sensitive to the desert heat.
I was all too glad for the thin sheen of sweat on my forehead and the back of my neck to cool in the almost icy air while I wasted no time ducking into a brightly-lit makeup store.
“Can I help you?” An employee practically thrust a shopping basket into my hand before I knew it was happening. “We’re having a sale today. Two for the price of one on select eyeshadow palettes.”
“Thank you. I’m going to look around.” I took my time, strolling slowly like a girl without a care in the world, examining serums and concealers, moisturizers, and not really paying attention to labels.
At every opportunity, I glanced toward the glass walls separating the store from the mall, where shoppers wandered while eating soft pretzels and drinking sodas.
So far, no sign of my ponytailed admirer.
What could I do? Because even if I lost the guy who may or may not have been trailing me, there would always be tomorrow. I couldn’t spend the rest of my life running from this guy.
Eventually, I had to leave the store. There was only so long I could spend being watched like a hawk, not by a stalker but by a sales clerk.
I left the empty basket along with a stack of others and exited the store, ignoring the irritated glare of the girl who thought she was making a sale.
Some things were more important than making sure a stranger earned a commission.
What mattered at the moment was checking to see if the man with the ponytail had spotted me with Vaughn and followed me.
I didn’t think he’d noticed our conversation, but he might have caught me rushing out.
Silly me. If I knew I was getting stalked today, I wouldn’t have worn yellow. Why not wear a flashing sign too?
To think I was so looking forward to coming home after two years abroad. And what did I have to show for myself so far? Married to a stranger, speed walking through the mall, haunted by the always present memory of a terrified girl silently begging for help.
Human Trafficking Ring Suspected in California, Arizona, Nevada.
I had gone down the rabbit hole big time, starting when I woke up from a nightmare Sunday afternoon.
I was just short of screaming by the time my eyes opened because, in my dream, the girl begging for help hadn’t made it onto the bus.
She had been shot, instead, turned into an example in plain view of the other girls.
And then the man with the rifle had turned to me—a man with my father’s face.
Fueled by that, I spent the rest of the day researching, digging through articles, blog posts, even discussion threads on Reddit.
Stories of girls transported from other countries, given fake work papers for the sake of evading the authorities, then shipped off to other places.
There were wealthy, powerful people who paid a lot of money for these girls—people who did not like to be denied.
Dad couldn’t be involved with that. Not a man like him. He was too good a father to ship anybody else’s daughter off to terrible, evil people who held human life in such low esteem.
But Nico, on the other hand? I would put nothing past him.
Since Sunday, I had become more certain Nico had talked Dad into it or tricked him somehow.
There hadn’t been an opportunity to see Dad face-to-face.
The fact was, I hadn’t tried very hard, either.
Spending the better part of three days holed up in my apartment sort of made visiting a challenge.
When the alternative was showing my face to the outside world and possibly running into that threatening, terrifying man in the wild, staying behind a locked door seemed like the much better alternative.
Of course, Vaughn was the curveball I couldn’t have prepared for.
Texting, pestering me about the annulment.
He was somebody I couldn’t ignore forever, and he would only become more determined to reach me the longer I left him dangling.
I had finally gotten up the nerve to leave my apartment for the sake of placating him and look what had happened.
I ended up jogging through the mall, looking over my shoulder every few steps.
“Watch it!” An old man in a motorized scooter cut the wheel to the left, barely avoiding mowing me down. I mumbled something that sounded like an apology before moving on with no idea where I planned to go or how long it would take before I felt safe.
“Slow down. Take a breath. One thing at a time.” My mother’s voice whispered in the back of my mind, advising me to stop before I spiraled.
A voice I hadn’t heard in fourteen years without the help of old videos.
She was always reminding me to slow down, calling me the most intense ten-year-old she’d ever known. “You take life too seriously, my love.”
I had no choice but to take this seriously, but I could at least pump the brakes before I went completely over the edge. Catching a glimpse of myself in the windows of a jewelry store, I almost flinched away from my reflection—wild-eyed, flushed, unhinged.
The sparkling gems in the window drew my attention, distracting me for a moment, allowing me to catch my breath.
The diamond engagement rings were especially interesting, considering I’d sort of skipped that step with Vaughn.
The arrogant dick, thinking he had the first clue what I needed.
He couldn’t help me, yet a single drunken night together gave him the idea he was my new savior.