Page 41 of Vegas Daddies

“Room zero-fifty-two,” I tell her. “The receptionist will show you the way.”

I hang up the call and throw the device onto the bed, allowing myself to fall back onto the mattress for a moment. Working at the hospitalandriding for the Venom Vultures doesn’t do any favors to the body. When you reach your early forties, you’re supposed to cut back and start doing less physical things so yourretired self will thank you later. Judging by my state, though, I’ll be buried six feet under in my first week of retirement before I can hop on a plane, travel the world, and achieve all my goals before the curse of old age arrives.

But I’d have this life no other way. The adrenaline of not knowing what’s around the corner. The satisfying sound of the grumbling Harley. Desert air at my back, propelling me down roads I’ve never traveled before.

Action and three hours sleep is the way I’ve been living my life, even before my driver’s license came through. Adventure was put into my bones the second they were formed. Ask Peter Dyson. The instinct to throw myself into anything was the only reason I was somewhat liked during school. I was a fast runner because adrenaline always surged through me at the starting line. Was I going to win or lose? The unpredictability pumped something exciting inside of me. Something that made the trees look extra green, and the desert sand appear even more orange. My love of not-knowing-what’s-around-the-corner is why I became a doctor in the ER, and why I applied to Venom Vultures as soon as I heard whispers of it among college peers.

If all this action and constant charging around sends me to an early death, so what?

The door bursts open and Alice falls in.

Sandra, holding the door open, raises her suspicious eyebrows at me, but Alice’s arrival scrambles my head. For once in my life, I’m struggling for a quick-witted comeback.

“Thanks, Sandra,” are the only words to come out.

The door closes, and Alice runs into my arms.

“It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“I know,” she says, pulling away from me to look into my eyes. Redness rings around hers. “I’m fine. Just surprised, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting anything like that to happen.”

“Did you get anything? Any facial features?”

She shakes her head.

“A car registration?”

Another headshake.

The door bursts open again, and Brander and Match stride in.

“What’s going on?” Match folds his arms over his chest. The gesture conceals many things, but unfortunately for Match,notthe concern imprinted across his face. He looks terrified.

I stand from the bed so she can sit. “Alice was attacked.”

“Attacked?” Anger wobbles Brander’s brow. “By who?”

I turn to Alice, hoping for her to step in and give us some information.

She just shrugs her slender shoulders.

“They were wearing a mask,” she says. “I was more concerned with trying to get out of the choke hold than assessingwhothe choker was.”

“Choked?!” Brander and Match say in unison.

“Fucking hell,” Match adds. He strokes an unsteady hand through his curtains of hair. “We need to find this guy, and fast, before he comes back to perform attempt number two.”

“Slow down,” I say. Normally it’s Match speaking these words. “We need to think this through properly.”

Brander furls his brow. “What do you mean?”

“It can’t be some random attack, can it?”

“Why not?” Alice says. “Stuff like this happens all the time in Vegas. It happened to my mom when I was younger. I was just ten years old when I received the news that she’d been jumped and killed on the street.”

A pin-drop silence stretches between us all.

I hear sharp intakes of breath from the other two.

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