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It wasn’t until after I came to live here with Lola, and the only way to survive was to depend on someone else, that I accepted a helping hand.
Miriam, my next-door neighbor has become the one person I can rely on. She watches Lola the four evenings I work, and I watch her son during the day while she’s at her job.
But with this bullshit being pulled on me, I’m both letting Miri down, and asking for more from her.
“Do you mind if I make a call?” I ask Nick, Gavin’s personal chauffeur.
I had planned on driving myself, but Gavin shook his head and said simply, “Nick will take you,” leaving no room for argument. Guess he was afraid I’d never come back. I’d be lying if I said the idea didn’t occur to me. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time I ran.
Nick glances at me through the rearview mirror. “Do you need privacy?”
“Is that an option?”
He nods, and before I can say anything else, a tinted partition appears between us, sliding upward until the backseat is obscured from his view.
Even with that, I keep my voice down when I call Miri to tell her everything that’s just happened.
“You should call the cops,” she tells me.
“So they can give me a ride to jail?” I retort.
“He’s the bad guy!”
“He’s also rich, Miri. Shit, he probably owns all of Vegas. And something tells me it’s not just what we can see.”
“What do you mean?”
“The way he talked to me…” I peek at Nick, hoping that he can’t hear my next words. “I think he’s part of the mafia. Which means he probably owns the cops too.”
“Shit,” she gasps. “I just got the chills.”
“You have to help me, Miri. I’ll pay you.”
She remains quiet for a long time. Miri knows as well as I do what men in organized crime families are capable of. “You don’t have to pay me, Andie. I haven’t been able to afford going anywhere anyway, so I have tons of paid time off. I’ll just take the week. Tell them I have that shit that’s goin’ around that everyone’s scared off. They won’t even question it.”
“Thank you so much, Miri. You’re a life saver.”
“You would have done the same for me.”
“Still…” I cut off, choked by the emotion of having someone I can count on. “Thank you.”
“What are you going to tell Lola?”
I’ve been giving that some thought since the moment I left Gavin’s house. “That my boss offered me a bonus to go with him to Reno.”
“Okay. I’ll back your story.”
We pull into the parking lot of my building and the partition goes down. Nick looks at his watch, then at me. “You have about fifteen minutes. Is that enough?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Not exactly.” He shrugs. “The boss doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
“Then, I guess I’ll make it enough.”
Lola and I live on the second floor of a hotel that was renovated and converted into tiny one bedroom apartments. They’re nothing fancy, but the area is quiet, relatively safe and close to good schools. That’s all that mattered to me when I selected our home.
Quietly, I go up the stairs, past Miri’s door, and into my place. Since I don’t ever travel, I don’t own luggage. Luckily, I find a duffel bag stuffed under the bed.
