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“Hey. Wake up. We’re almost there,” Noah said.
Remmi blinked and couldn’t believe that she’d dozed. They were in her Subaru. Noah was driving, and she was in the passenger seat, her head resting against the window.
Yawning, she blinked and saw by the clock on the dash that it was nearly 5:00 in the afternoon. Twilight had descended on the desert, the stars glittering in a lavender sky. Far in the distance, rising like a spangled phoenix from the desert floor, the lights of Las Vegas loomed.
They’d been on the road for nearly nine hours. Once the police had allowed them to leave, they’d each grabbed a bag, Remmi with a quick change in a shoulder bag, Noah snagging his backpack from his truck.
Remmi had insisted she wanted to see her siblings, and rather than argue, Noah had agreed. They’d loaded into her Subaru and, avoiding the crowd of gawking neighbors and reporters with microphones and rapid-fire questions, had driven past the police barriers in the waning storm, where light bars had strobed the morning gloom, reflecting on the wet streets.
Noah had gassed up at the first open station they’d found, then hit the freeway.
During the first hundred miles, they’d talked about the arrest, how Settler and Martinez had shown up with backup and EMTs. Milo had been driven to the hospital in one ambulance, while the dead man found in the back of the Kris Kringle Christmas Lights van, another of Milo’s victims, had been whisked away in another.
Remmi tried not to think about Milo Gibbs. She was still numb inside at the thought that he—Uncle Milo—was her father. That horrid fact explained so much—why Didi had fled Missouri, why she would never reveal his name, why there was a deep rift between Didi and her family, why Remmi had felt so much resentment from Aunt Vera while she lived with them, and why Milo had been so distant. But her stomach turned sour that a killer, and most likely an assassin for hire, had been the man who had sired her. Even more devastating was the sorry fact that Milo, knowing full well that she was his daughter, would have murdered her without thinking twice.
A stone-cold killer.
Now he would spend the rest of his life in prison.
The police had evidence. His rifle. Vera’s and Jensen’s statements. Both of which would become testimony at a trial.
Vera, too, was probably going to spend some time behind bars. She had to have known what Milo was doing—and if not known, then at least suspected. And yet she’d stayed married to the prick. It was hard to imagine.
Didi had been right: Remmi had been better off not knowing the identity of her father.
However, now that she did, she wasn’t going to let the fact that he’d sired her taint her life any more than it had. She wanted to meet her siblings and then finally, finally, once the chains of the past had been broken, get on with her life.
That which does not kill us only makes us stronger. She hoped to God that Nietzsche was onto something.
As they closed in on Las Vegas, she put in a call to Settler, at Noah’s insistence, but the detective’s voice mail picked up, so Remmi left a message. She and Noah had already decided they would stay out of the heart of the city, find as quiet a place as Las Vegas could offer.
“Is this good?” he asked, motioning to a two-story motel on a side street at least two miles out of town. The area was undergoing a renovation, it seemed; most of the surrounding buildings were empty or being reconstructed. “According to the motel’s reader board, it comes with a pool and a twenty-four-hour restaurant.”
“What more could we want?”
He pulled into the dusty lot of the Western Oasis with its illuminated sign of a cowboy in a Stetson riding a camel.
Within twenty minutes, they’d checked in, left their bags locked in the room, and were being seated in a faux-leather booth near the windows of the restaurant. The view was of the access road, but it didn’t matter. Not much did. After the waitress, an impossibly tiny woman with hair teased high enough to give her another three inches, took their orders, Remmi’s phone buzzed.
Dani Settler was on the other end of the connection. “Don’t try to meet with Hedges,” she ordered. “Not with any of them. We’re still figuring this out, and until we do, it’s just not safe.”
“That’s why I called you. I want to see my sister and brother.”
“Just wait. Please. Martinez and I are already in the air. We’ll be landing in about an hour. I’m serious about this, okay? I understand why you want to see the kids, but just hang tight. One more day is all it will take, maybe less, for us to wrap this up.”
Her heart dropped.
As if she expected Remmi to argue, Settler went on, “Remember what happened last night. So, go into town. Gamble. See a show. Whatever. But do not confront the Hedgeses.”
Remmi hesitated.
“You hear me, Ms. Storm? We don’t want you in harm’s way, and we don’t want our investigation compromised.”
“I get it. We’ll wait.” Remmi was frustrated as hell.
“Good. Where are you staying?”
&nbs
