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“This is Nevada. You’re allowed to carry guns. You have a gun.”
“Not with me. Not my style to bring weapons to restaurants.”
Already I saw on the car’s touchscreen that I had a text from Betsy. I clicked on it, and the automated, female voice read:
What in the world are you doing? Come back. You wanted to have lunch. So do I. These are my new friends, and if you don’t want them to join us, they won’t. Just you and me and Nigel, okay? We can eat right here.
“Don’t turn around,” Nigel said. “Let’s see her at the casino.”
“I don’t want her at the casino. All this pressure from Futurium. And I have no idea what she’s doing with this Diana masquerade. You must have noticed the shirt and her new hairdo.”
“The casino is safer.”
“Because you think we won’t get kidnapped there at gunpoint?”
“Hell of a lot harder.”
“Let’s find a neutral ground. Someplace where my head won’t explode because someone thinks my sister is me and asks for an autograph.”
“Fine. Saturday. We’ll all parley—isn’t that the gangster word?—the day after tomorrow.”
“What about her daughter? Betsy and I can’t hash this out if Marisa is present.”
“Isn’t the child thirteen?”
“Yes. But I doubt even Betsy would want to leave her alone on the weekend. They just moved here.”
He sighed. “Lunchtime. Let’s go to that water park off Tropicana. Marisa can hang out at the pool with the bonkers water slides. We’ll sit on chaises in the sun, surrounded by lots of people, and your niece can go wild.”
I took Nigel’s advice, and Betsy and I texted back and forth using voice commands, and she agreed to meet me at the water park two days later at one. She promised it would only be her and Marisa, and I promised it would only be Nigel and me.
“Can I ask you a question?” I murmured, a little distracted, as we arrived at the strip and traffic came almost to a halt.
“Sure.”
“Actually, two questions. First, why do you think Betsy was wearing that Diana T-shirt and colored her hair like mine?”
“I suppose to get under your skin. Next?”
“That’s it?”
“Maybe there’s more to it than that. Damned if I know.”
“Well, then: do you think she’s in danger?”
“The idea did cross my mind.”
“What kind of danger?”
“I have no idea.”
“God, now I feel guilty.”
“Talk to Betsy about that on Saturday. About her new friends and why they carry guns. Have your heart-to-heart with her about what she’s doing. But let’s you and I also ask her whether she needs some sort of intervention.”
I nodded. That was a good idea.
As we inched along the strip, I tried to dial down both my suspicions and my anger. I failed. She was with Futurium, and Futurium wanted my casino. A month ago, a continent had separated my sister and me; now it was miles. And that was an insufficient buffer to keep at bay all the sadness and hurt that made us who we were.
