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Grim almost laughed but held it back.When we get out of here.So the kid had a pipe dream. Or he didn’t get what this was about. The chances of them escaping this were close to nil. He turned his head and then nodded to the candies sitting in the corner of Cedro’s cage. “You didn’t eat your peppermints.”
Cedro shrugged. “I’m saving them.”
“For what?”
Before the kid could answer, the door slid open, both of them turning toward the same man who’d come into the room the daybefore. Only this time, he headed straight for Grim’s cage. “You’ve been rented.”
Fuck.Fuck.“Fuck you.”
The man barked out a laugh. “You have a choice of course.”
“Fuck you,” Grim repeated. This time the man didn’t laugh.
“Come with me, or I take his tongue.”
His tongue.He didn’t look at Cedro. He didn’t want to see the look on the kid’s face. “Show me the way,” he said to the man. The man looked vaguely disappointed but took the key from his pocket and opened the lock on the top of Grim’s cage, inaccessible and blocked by a square piece of metal. The front folded down, and Grim walked out, half hunched over. He came to his full height once he’d exited, stretching his back.
The man waited for Grim to walk in front of him, holding the Taser, ready to shoot Grim should he make any sudden moves. He didn’t glance at Cedro as he shuffled past his cage.
“Open the door,” the man told Grim once they’d walked along a long hallway and turned down another, eventually ending up at a door.
Grim’s mouth was dry, his heart beating swiftly. He opened the door, his breath stalling at what he saw, his brain attempting to make sense of what this was.
It was a treadmill.
Atreadmill.
And behind it and on each side were wide pits of burning coals, surrounded by what looked like electric fencing.
“One hour,” the man said, barely suppressed glee in his tone. “You run for one hour.”
Onehour? Grim stared in mute horror. He’d just spent the week puking up his guts and then sitting or lying in a cage. He didn’t think he could run for ten minutes, much less an hour. And when he fell off, he’d fall into ... a pit of fire with no escape.
“There’s still time to change your mind,” the guard offered. “His tongue, or you run.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Noelle shut the heavy drapes in her room and fell asleep for a good two hours before waking up and taking a long, hot shower. She dressed in the outfit she’d brought to go to dinner, a black minidress with slightly puffed sleeves and some lace detailing on the body. It was sort of casual and sort of not, and she’d bought it for a cocktail party at Sweetgrass three years before and hadn’t worn it since. She really had no idea why she’d packed it to go to Reno other than that she didn’t know exactly what their investigation would entail and she wanted to be prepared. Little did she know she’d be wearing it on what was essentially a date with Evan in Vegas. Not aromanticdate but a date between business associates who needed to clear their minds for a few hours with some bright-light distraction. What had he said? Put your mind on search. She didn’t know if there was some specific process to that, so she simply whispered the wordSearchand went about getting ready.
Evan knocked on her door when he said he would, giving her a sweeping glance, appreciation in his gaze that she didn’t want to admit thrilled her. They ate dinner at a steak house on the strip, a dim restaurant with red velvet booths and black-and-white photographs on the walls of all the celebrities and sports stars and politicians who had once dined there. Noelle ordered some fruity drink on the menu that camein a gargantuan glass with maraschino cherries and plastic swords and paper umbrellas and a wedge of pineapple at the top. It made Evan laugh when she picked up the heavy goblet and took a sip, and he shot a picture with his cell phone to send Callie.
And, God, it felt good, and it felt weird. And maybe every interaction she ever had with this man from now until the end would feel slightly surreal, because they’d been trapped in cages together, for Christ’s sake, and now they were sitting in a restaurant, laughing and drinking cocktails as big as their heads.
How could those two worlds both exist simultaneously on one planet?
And yet ... they did.
After dinner, they walked along the strip to another, larger casino, Noelle dazzled by all the lights and the sounds. She’d grown up in a casino town, but that had never been part of her world. Having lived in a working-class neighborhood, she’d never done the touristy things, and later ... never had the opportunity to party. She’d never felt safe enough. She’d lost so much by such a young age, and the only thing she could focus on was surviving week by week. Sometimes day by day. And then finding out she was pregnant ... well, that changed everything.
A cocktail waitress brought them watered-down drinks as they sat at the slot machines and fed them tokens and came within a few dollars of losing every cent they’d set aside to gamble with, which wasn’t much. But she considered it money well spent, and she could tell by the smile on his face that he did too. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so much fun. She’d needed it, and she hadn’t even known. She allowed herself to feel young and dauntless, just for a little while. She looked at Evan sitting on the short stool next to her, casually putting their last few tokens into the machine. “Thanks for tonight,” she said.
He looked over, and her breath halted. He was so gorgeous, and he looked so happy too. So ...carefree. The lights behind him flashed and blinked, creating a colorful halo, startling her. She’d gotten a smallglimpse of his unreserved happiness when he’d been flying a kite with Callie, but it hadn’t looked like this. Because he hadn’t been fully uninhibited then. It was as if he’d been testing his fatherhood status, overcome by the shock of it, nervous perhaps, about what the future looked like.
Maybe before they’d been locked in those cages, unlike Noelle, he’d often been carefree. He’d come from a wealthy family with status, he’d been popular all his life, guys had wanted to be him, and girls had swarmed him in school. Yes, she supposed he’d lived many happy days, but she’d never been a party to it, not like she was now, and she felt frozen in the ray of his joy.Beautiful.His eyes softened as he stared at her. “My pleasure,” he said.
He pulled the lever, and they lost the last bit of their money, both doubling over and laughing. She wasn’t sure what was funny exactly. It just was. Maybe it was that their luck had apparently run out. She was okay with that, though, if running out of luck in this instance meant they weren’t going to be tycoons. Once, they’d received all the luck they needed just when they needed it, and that’s why they were here now, laughing in the face of loss. Because theycould. What a wonderful thing to lose and be able to sayno big deal.
They walked through the casino, people-watching. Noelle’s thoughts swirled, the lights and the sounds and the competing noise causing her to go deeper into her own mind. Everywhere gamblers were betting. Some winning, most not. What was the draw that so many had to taking a risk, by pulling a lever, or tossing a pair of dice, or laying down a hand of cards? Was it that brief moment of soaring hope that was so addictive, even if it was almost guaranteed to crash?
