Page 70 of A Vegas Crush Collection #3

you like saving people

Mikhail

It’s Friday, and I was supposed to have dinner with Reagan tonight. We were going to celebrate success or drink away failure after her job interview. That was the plan.

The plan was not for me to be sitting in a Las Vegas morgue, waiting to identify her dead body.

“Mr. Zelenka?” an older man in a lab coat says from a secure doorway.

I snap to. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Come this way, please.”

I follow him down a long, sterile hallway, walking in silence.

When we enter the morgue, I guess it’s about like anything I’ve ever seen on television.

It’s cold enough to make the hairs on my arms raise.

Smells weird. Several metal tables are scattered throughout the middle of the room.

A wall of small, square doors make gridlines from floor to ceiling.

Behind each one, the space to hold a corpse.

Please don’t let Reagan be one of them.

He opens one and slides out a long drawer. There’s a body on it, under a sheet. Please don’t let that be her.

“Are you ready?” he asks, his hand taking hold of the edge of the sheet.

I frown deeply but nod at him. Fuck you, sir, but no, I’m not ready. The fuck is anybody ever ready for this? Please don’t let it be Reagan.

I have something like an out-of-body experience when he pulls back the sheet to reveal a young woman with a single bullet hole to the middle of her forehead.

I lose my shit. Tears fall from my eyes when I see someone I don’t know.

“That’s not her.” I breathe shakily, bent over with my hands braced above my knees to keep from collapsing to the floor. “Thank fuck, it’s not her.”

“This is not Reagan Marlowe?” he asks to confirm.

“No. No. No.” My head goes back and forth. “Not Reagan.”

“Do you recognize this woman?”

I shake my head, wiping away my stupid tears with the sleeve of my flannel. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t.”

He writes something down inside the shiny metal chart holder, draws the sheet over the dead woman who is definitely not Reagan, pushes the drawer back into the wall, and closes the metal door latch with a clink. He walks me back down the hall, thanks me for coming in, and sends me on my way.

I sit on a bench outside for a long time, trying to pull myself together. That was rough. Could’ve been a lot worse though. I am relieved, to say the least, but my worry remains. Where the fuck is she?

Back at my apartment, I pace. I can’t help it—I just walk back and forth, probably scuffing the crap out of the flooring with my boots.

I try sitting, watching television, but I can’t concentrate.

I get back up and pace some more. The local news starts breaking with a story of a raid on Henri Sodorov’s remote Las Vegas mansion complex.

Details are sketchy at first as it’s just developing, but some information comes through, along with images of very young women being led out of there among cop cars and emergency vehicles surrounding a ritzy looking walled compound.

A sex trafficking bust at the Russian crime lord’s crib, perhaps?

Looks a lot like it.

Could Reagan be mixed up in that fresh hell?

Why won’t she answer her phone?

Probably because she doesn’t have her phone.

I must finally succumb to emotional exhaustion because when I hear a knock at the door, I’m lifting my head from the kitchen table. I jump up and run to the door, flinging it wide open.

There’s a police officer. But there is also Reagan.

Reagan, wrapped in a blanket, hair a mess of dust and debris. Reagan, with a blooming bruise on her temple and angry, red marks on her neck. Reagan, who cries as soon as she sees me, stepping into my arms, sobbing into my chest as I pull her close.

“She wanted to come here first instead of her place,” Officer McNabb explains. “You her boyfriend?”

I look down at her. We haven’t had this discussion yet. I don’t want to do this without her consent, but I still answer, “Yes,” because that’s what I want to be.

“We’re going to have more questions for her,” he says, handing me a business card.

“Whenever she’s ready, just have her come down to the precinct and ask for Detective Stone.

There are still a lot of pieces to put together, but there were other women at the compound.

All locked in rooms. And we think Sodorov is connected to the recent casino murder. ”

I feel sick at the memory. Thinking that was Reagan. I just nod and thank him. He tells me to have a good night and heads off.

I hold her there, just inside the doorway, for a long time. Finally, though, I detach from her, set the business card he gave me on the entry table, and lead her into the bathroom. “Let’s get you in the shower.”

Reagan is running on empty, barely able to hold herself up.

I pull off her sweatshirt and sweatpants, her underwear and bra.

When the water is warm, I take off my own clothes and help her into the shower.

She immediately slides to the floor, sobbing.

The only thing I can think of is to wash her.

So, I lather her hair, carefully inspecting the tender injury on the side of her head.

With the soap, I lightly wash her body, scrub her dirt-caked and bloody fingernails, and take note of the bruises on her arms. Her feet are covered in scratches that the paramedics obviously didn’t deem a problem, although given the bandages, there are more that were.

Fuck. What happened to her? I massage her shoulders, and she relaxes enough to lean back against me, her head against my chest, her eyes closed.

After a long time, she lets out a strange little laugh and says, “I guess I didn’t get the job with the wedding planner. You know, on account of not showing up to the interview.”

“There will be other interviews. Other opportunities.” I kiss the top of her head.

She doesn’t answer. I know she must be in terrible shock, but she needs to go to bed and rest.

I stand and help her to her feet, turning off the water. Wrapping her in an oversized towel, I pick her up and carry her to my bedroom. We crawl under the covers together, still a little damp, and I pull her to me, wrapping my arms around her tightly.

“I was so worried about you,” I whisper against her neck. “I went to the morgue.” A long, tense pause feels very loud in the strange silence between us. “Cried like a baby when I saw it wasn’t you.”

“I’m so sorry you had to experience that, but it could’ve been me,” she says after a long moment, sounding very detached and weirdly calm. “I haven’t eaten since they took me. They never brought me any food, and I had to get water from the bathroom sink. I think they might have meant to kill me.”

“Let me get you something. I’ll be right back and then you can tell me what happened to you.”

One vanilla protein bar, Vitamin Water, and a few Advil later, she starts talking. Her voice is clear, but the weight of the world weighs heavy on her, I can tell.

It nearly breaks my heart to hear her talk about her ordeal, but I sense that she has to tell me as much as I have to hear every horrible word of her story.

“Henri was at the casino, eyeballing me all Tuesday night. His minions were there including the one you beat up. Peter was there. I asked Raul to move me, to protect me, and he refused. I changed in the locker room, thinking I could sneak out after my shift without being recognized. I took the front way, grabbed a cab, but one of them slid in with me, put a gun to my ribs. I was just starting to text you when he hopped into the cab with me.”

I growl at this image. Literally, growl like an animal. I wish you would’ve called me when they first showed up. I don’t say this to her out loud, of course, she’s a wreck right now, but I sure as fuck think it. Why didn’t she call me from inside the casino?

“We rolled up to this mansion out of town. I tried to run, but they pistol-whipped me. Knocked me out. When I came to, I was in a bedroom and Peter was there. It wasn’t…

good. He was threatening and mean and even choked me to scare me into breaking, but he wasn’t s-successful,” she says with a shaky voice, like she’s remembering more than what she’s telling me about her encounter with Peter.

That shit-stain motherfucker is so done bothering you. Again, I keep it to myself and just press my lips to the side of her hair to keep her talking.

“When he left, I tried escaping through the vents, but I couldn’t find a way out of the maze.

It brought me right back to the room where I was being held, but the door was left open like they’d been in there and found me gone.

So, I just ran. I ended up hiding in a laundry basket in the pool house and by some dumb luck, one of the guards dropped his cell phone.

I used it to call nine-one-one. The operator told me to leave the line open and stay hidden in the pool house laundry basket, so that’s what I did. ”

“You’re a hero.” I kiss her head again. “You got out of there. And saved other women, as well. I saw it on the news. They were bringing so many women out of that house tonight.”

“I don’t feel like a hero, but I’m glad they have something on Sodorov now.”

“What happens next?” I ask carefully.

She sighs. “They arrested Sodorov and some of his guys, but I doubt they’ll stay behind bars for long.

He’ll post bail or some overpaid attorney will get him off.

He’ll get out someday and I’ll always have a target on my back because I was the one who put him there.

And quite frankly, I still owe him money.

On top of what he thinks I stole from him. ”

“I don’t think that’s true anymore. They know you didn’t steal from them.

And they know that because a petite young woman with short dark hair was murdered in the alley behind your casino last night.

I went to the morgue to ID her. She stole the money.

And they figured out it was her and then they killed her. You told me she looked like you.”