CHAPTER 6
“Holy shit, Nay, what the hell happened to you? I’ve been blowing up your phone for the past twelve hours.”
Michael rolled his wheelchair back to make room for her to enter the small 1950s bungalow located in a residential neighborhood northeast of the Strip. As she stepped inside, he peered around her, frowning when he spotted the unfamiliar pickup truck in the short driveway.
“Where’d you get the jalopy? Or do I even want to know?”
“Probably not.” She closed the door behind her and unzipped her hoodie as she walked past him, peeling away the bulk of her ill-fitting clothes until all she wore was a black tank top and baggy jeans. The house was quiet for elevenA.M., especially considering there were five kids currently living there at last count. “Everyone still asleep?”
“Yeah.” Michael gave her his typical mother-hen look. “We all had a long night, mainly because I was rattling around until sometime after four o’clock. You know they can sense when something’s wrong or either of us is upset.”
She bent and dropped a chaste kiss to the top of his sandy blond hair. “I know. I’m sorry I made you worry.”
Michael’s small home had been an unofficial safe house for street kids since he’d bought it five years ago, using the bulk of the insurance settlement he was awarded two years after being hit by a drunk driver who’d plowed through a crosswalk on Flamingo Road. The depression he’d suffered over his inability to ever walk again had taken him to some dark places. It hadn’t helped that his long-term boyfriend had abruptly decided Michael’s months-long hospitalization was a good time for them to “take a break and see other people”.
Naomi’s friend had lost so much so suddenly, but it was the dream of helping other kids like him—kids like Naomi and him both—who’d been dealt shitty hands in the life lottery and had no family of their own that pulled Michael through and gave him new purpose.
It had given her purpose too. Seeing him through the year of intense therapies, all of the ups and downs that followed his accident and the long road to recovery, had galvanized their friendship and their commitment to the kids they wanted to help.
They’d been roomies ever since. In addition to the bedroom with its pair of twin beds that she and Michael shared like brother and sister, two other rooms had been outfitted with bunkbeds and space for six kids each, eight if they had to make do for the short-term. One room was reserved for boys, the other for girls.
The house wasn’t a palace by any stretch, but it was comfortable and it was home. And when the city’s shelters and flophouses were full, it meant a safe place for any kid under eighteen to lay their heads and get three squares with no fear of judgment or payback.
Anything was better than ending up a ward of the state. Naomi knew that firsthand. A system that expected kids who’d already had their trust dragged over broken glass a thousand times before to put that same trust in a bunch of bureaucrats who didn’t know them, and didn’t give a shit about them, aside from checking off their little forms and passing the buck to the next person in line? It wasn’t any wonder most kids slipped through the cracks or became so desperate for a sense of normalcy they’d accept even the most dubious offer of kindness from anyone who gave them a second glance.
If she and Michael had anything to say about it, no kid would ever feel they had nowhere to go or no one to trust.
This dream of theirs, as humble as it was, meant everything to her. More than that, it was the one good thing she’d done with her life that she knew would have made her mother proud.
But there was no question she’d pushed the limits last night and it almost cost her life.
It would have, if not for Asher.
God. Asher.
Talk about dubious offers of kindness. His had come with strings attached, too, evidently. Or, rather, a locked cage.
She flopped down on the living room sectional and let out a groan, clutching her skull.
“Good lord, look at you.” Michael parked his wheelchair in front of her. Although his round face was pinched with worry, even anger, he kept his voice at nearly a whisper. “You’ve got bruises all over you, Nay. What the fuck happened last night after you texted that you were in the clear and on your way home?”
“Everything kind of went to hell at that point,” she admitted, then relayed the highlights of how she’d been intercepted by Casino Moda security and knocked out cold for a ride down the I-15 to the middle of the Mojave. “They dragged me out of the car and walked me out onto the sand at gunpoint.”
Michael sucked in a breath. “Sweet Jesus, Joseph, and Mary.” Slapping a hand to his chest, he closed his eyes for a long moment, then exhaled slowly. When he looked at her again, his hazel gaze was filled with a mix of horror and relief. “Okay. You’re obviously alive, so chalk one up to your uncanny ability to land on your feet no matter the predicament. But dammit, Naomi. This shit is getting serious. You know Leo Slater doesn’t mess around.”
“I know.” She knew that better than most people. And last night she’d gotten a pretty hefty reminder. “But like you said, I’m obviously alive.”
He frowned. “Right. Andhowexactly did you manage that?”
“I had some . . . help.”
“Unless you’re going to tell me that a unit of Special Forces soldiers dropped from the sky to save you from three of Slater’s henchmen—three heavily armed henchmen—then I can’t even imagine what kind of help it took to get you out of this fix, Nay. And that doesn’t do anything to explain the rusted-out heap that’s parked in the driveway.”
She smirked in spite of the gravity of what happened to her—both last night in the desert and this morning at Asher’s house. Michael always had the ability to diffuse even the worst situation and make her feel that everything was going to be all right.
“It wasn’t a Special Forces unit, and nobody dropped from the sky to save me.” She glanced at him, knowing he was going to find the actual truth even harder to swallow. “It was a massive Breed male. He drove up in that old pickup truck and calmly took out all three of Slater’s goons in about a minute flat.”
“A Breed male?” Michael gaped at her. “Please don’t tell me you ended up being a vampire’s midnight snack on top of everything else last night.”
