Now, to find a way out of the impossible chains that bound his wrists together. Vin lifted is arms and began to use the chain to saw back and forth behind his head. The alien metal might not melt, but that didn’t mean the Vegas bed wouldn’t come apart.
Whether it was Bravon, or Earth, or any two-bit fuel dock floating around space, one thing remained true when it came to women. They wanted their man to prove their worth to them. And it wasn’t achieved through some calculated method manipulating the laws of attraction, despite the dating advice Galaxy Brides had given them.
“Greetings, Vin,” Gary said from the door.
Vin stopped sawing his arms.
The Galaxy Brides employee’s hand suit had been repaired, and he again looked like a deformed Earth human. “I brought the injection. This should remove the excess sugar from your system and flush out the Earth toxins. As long as you do not eat—”
“I don’t want it,” Vin dismissed. “I feel fine.”
“Your brother insists that we administer it to you,” Gary stated. He didn’t need to spell it out. The man was more afraid of Sev than of Vin. “This will help you rest.”
“I don’t want to rest.”
When Gary drew the injector close to his thigh, Vin jerked his leg away.
“Listen, Gary, I can’t sleep now. You know that woman? Angela? I really like her. I want to find her. How about you free me so that I may do so? Isn’t that why we are all here? To find women?”
“I will make a notation in your file about Angela.” Gary again leaned over with the injector. Vin tried to kick him away, but the little being was surprisingly strong. He gripped Vin’s thigh and injected him in the butt with the medicine. “You will rest now.”
Vin’s vision blurred. This wasn’t over. If Kal had found love, then Vin could find love.
Angela was worth it. He would prove his worth to her by escaping and going to her. She might very well be the one.
It was by sheer power and force of will that one proved their love for a woman. What better way to begin his pursuit by breaking out of the shackles he was bound by?
His vision continued to blur as he endeavored to stay awake. He had to find Angela. Just as soon as he finished this nap.
Chapter Seven
“Mags?” Vin questioned, pausing on the busy sidewalk as he waited for the response. He was still a little wobbly from the injection, but that didn’t matter. Once he’d regained consciousness, escape had been easy. He doubted the hotel would think too kindly about the destroyed bed, but he couldn’t worry about things like that. He needed to find Angela.
“What?” a surly male voice demanded.
“I need Mags,” Vin insisted into the phone. “Mags answers the phone. Angela lets it ring, so I need Mags so she can get Angela.”
“I don’t know no Mags. This is an emergency line, sir, take your dating life else—”
Vin hung up before dialing the next number on the directory listing for casino security. Heavy chains hung around his neck like a scarf while binding to the cuffs on his wrists. He wore clean clothes—thanks to his brother bothering to change his shirt before he chained him up—and had wiped all traces of dried ice cream off his face. He wanted to look respectable when he found Angela.
No one answered after twenty rings, so he directed the cellular phone to the next number on the list. Portable communication devices were handy. He didn’t care for the radiation waves he saw coming off them, but they were useful.
“You have reached Ma Clary’s Investigations,” a pleasant woman said.
“I need to speak with Mags,” Vin stated.
The woman ignored him and kept talking. “We are not in the office right now.”
“I don’t care where you are right now. I am not in an office,” he said over the voice that kept talking. “I need to find Mags.”
“You know what to do at the beep,” she continued.
“I do not know what to do at the beep,” Vin insisted. “What is the beep?”
A beep sounded. Vin looked at the phone and then around the immediate area. What was he supposed to do?
“Hey, look, it’s the ice cream man!” a teenager yelled, pointing at him. The kid wore a backward cap over his shaggy blond hair.
“Are you what is at the beep?” Vin asked.
“Yeah, I got the beat, ice cream man. You got the beat, ice cream man?” the kid inquired, doing a little dance on the sidewalk. The others with him laughed and clapped their hands.
Vin frowned and glanced around the sidewalk before turning his attention back to the kid. “I do not have a beet. They are indigestible vegetables. I prefer ice cream.”
The teens laughed harder.
“Where you off to, ice cream man?” The girl who spoke gave a small strut as she stood next to the dancing kid. Her short skirt was held up with a giant belt that engulfed her waist. “Want to come hang with us?”
“I do hang up,” he stated. “I cannot connect to Mags’ phone.”
“Cool, cool,” dancing boy said, grinning widely. “Hey, can I take a selfie with you?”
“I do not know what you are saying, or why you are talking to me. This beep is over,” Vin dismissed. Before striding away, he advised, “And you should pull your pants up or else you will trip.”
“Fuck you, too, man. No need to be an ass,” the teen yelled. “Your video wasn’t that funny, anyway.”
Vin didn’t have time to beep with the strange locals. Las Vegas was a big territory, and he needed to find Angela. He again lifted the phone and dialed. Mags had to answer sometime.
“Damn,” Vin shouted up at the man through the open passenger door of the tall vehicle.
Vin hoped this guy liked him enough to give him a ride. The last carload had told him they didn’t give rides to crazy guys, and that he needed to learn to chill out and be cool. The smoke coming from their car smelled funny, and he did not trust the pilot of that vehicle with his bloodshot eyes and giggling nature.
The truck before the smokestack wanted to trade favors, but apparently had no need for Vin’s skills as an ash miner. The man also apparently had eaten too much because he’d unbuttoned his pants while he talked. Before the glutton, there had been a long, black car where one of the girls had thrown something akin to tiny boxer shorts at his head. He dodged them and then threw the clothing back at her, smacking her in the face. She was not pleased. Apparently, Vin did not understand the game and was not let into the vehicle.
“Hoover Dam?” The guy called out from inside the hauling vehicle that had pulled over to the side of the road.
“Damn!” Vin answered to show he was cool, and not crazy. He liked the sound of the word. Locals seemed to use it often as an exclamation of joy or approval. Men said it when they saw an attractive woman or when they came close to winning at the tables. Since he wanted to find Angela, who was damn! he thought it an appropriate time to use it to express his mission.
If he managed to win the favor with the pilot of the large hauling vehicle, then the man could drop him off at a place called Sunny Side. That is where Mags said Angela was.
“Well, you’re in luck. This fertilizer is destined for the same area. If you don’t mind the smell, hop on in,” the man invited. “I wouldn’t mind the company. Been a long haul.”
Vin glanced at the back toward the cargo. The metabolic composition of the load was comparable with what was in the soil on the wheels of the vehicle. The smell was a small inconvenience if this man would take him to Angela. He gave a small hop and then climbed into the truck.
“They call me Skeeter.”
“They call me Flame.”
Skeeter glanced over Vin’s shackles. “Is that what you young generation call Cos-Play?”
“Cos-Play,” Vin muttered to himself. He liked the sound of the game and so he nodded. He briefly wondered if Angela would play it with him.
“Don’t get it myself.” The man put the car into gear and began to drive. “Where are you coming from?
”
“Canada,” Vin said.
“Where are you headed?”
“I’m going to find Angela.”
“Ah, a girl,” the man chuckled. “Ain’t it always about a girl.”
“I cannot answer that. All I know is I need to find Angela.”
“Well, I can drop you off at Boulder City.” Skeeter navigated his vehicle into thicker traffic. “That do?”
“I’m not sure. Is that where Sunny Side is located?”
“I’m not sure what Sunny Side is.”
“Mags said it is a place with lots of crazy, old, ill people.” Vin sighed, saddened at how Earth sometimes appeared to be a highly segregated planet based on wealth, health, and beauty. “But Mags is a little difficult to comprehend.”
“Old, huh?” The man pressed a device on his dashboard, touching several Earth symbols before saying, “Found it. Sunny Side. It’s a nursing facility just five miles from here. It’s not on the way to Boulder City, at least, not really, but for love, I can drop you close to where you need to be.”
“Thank you.” Vin smiled.
“Your girl a nurse there?”
“I am not sure. That is where Mags told me she would be tonight.”
The rest of the short journey was quiet. It gave Vin time to study the atmosphere surrounding Sunny Side. He watched tiny streaks come off the lights, and from the overhead electrical wires.
Skeeter pulled off the busy roadway and eased them along a side street. He gestured out the window. “The building you’re looking for is just down there. I’d take you closer, but it’s a maze of one-way streets, and I need to get back on the interstate.”
Visions of Angela came flooding back as Vin opened the door and slowly stepped out.
“Good luck to you, boy,” Skeeter called.
The door of the truck slammed shut behind him. Vin gave a small jump of surprise and turned to see the vehicle pull away from the curb. Skeeter revved the engine a few times and lifted his hand. Vin returned the gesture as he was left alone on the dark, abandoned street.
Chapter Eight
“Mom?” Angela stepped quietly into her mother’s private room. She’d decorated it as close to her childhood home as she could, but there was no hiding the medical equipment on the walls or the fact the living space consisted of one room and a bathroom. Some days she wondered if her mother even saw the rose painting or the floral curtains. “Are you awake? It’s me, Angela.”
What had started as simple forgetfulness had deteriorated into severe dementia. Her mother’s memory had worsened from forgetting where she parked the car to forgetting her own name, the time they lived in, and the fact she even had a daughter. The doctors had said many things, using many keywords—early onset, rapid decline, reduced ability to perform everyday tasks, doing everything we can. Their statements held no comfort for a daughter alone in the world.
Her mother had always been a night owl, so it was no surprise that she was still awake in her chair. She held her purse on her lap, rocking back and forth as if riding in a car. Angela wished she could crawl inside the woman’s mind and see what she was seeing.
“Hi, Mom,” Angela said. She set her empty coffee cup on an end table. It would have probably been in her best interest to go home and sleep, but instead, she chose to load up on extra shots of espresso and drive to see her mom. Sometimes, a girl just needed her mother. “How are you tonight?”
The woman smiled and nodded as she would any stranger on a small town street. Angela took a seat on the twin size bed to be closer to her.
“I had to see you. I missed you,” Angela tried to sound positive and conversational. Her mother nodded and didn’t make eye contact. This apparently was one of the days she wasn’t speaking too much. “It was another rough day at work. Harris doesn’t trust me to do anything. He rechecks all my paperwork. He wouldn’t even let me talk to any of the people we stopped. It’s frustrating, and the worst part is I know he has every right to doubt my skills.”
Her mother didn’t answer.
“I tried really hard, just like you would have told me to do, and I was doing great. I made that supervised arrest I told you about the other night. I got this man to come with us without force or incident. It was mainly a disorderly conduct call. You know how crazy the strip is, but I handled it.”
Her mother nodded several times. Angela pretended like the woman actually listened. The truth was she had no way of knowing what her mother heard.
“Then everything went wrong. I was left alone to babysit the man in a holding cell, and I lost him.” Angela gave a small, humorless laugh. She’d told this story to her mother before, but she had no one else to talk to as she rehashed the incident. “I lost a man who was locked up in a cage. Can you believe that? It’s not like I was watching a criminal mastermind either. Just some dude who happened to like ice cream a little too much. I freaking lost the ice cream bandit. Some security guard cop trainee I turned out to be. I’ll probably be the reason they stop the pilot program.”
Her mother blinked and briefly looked in her direction. Recognition did not dawn on her frail features.
“I thought I could just keep my head down and put it behind me, but apparently, a bunch of kids with cell phones recorded the incident and posted it all over the Internet. It’s gone viral. The higher-ups are beginning to ask questions. I mean, Harris said in our report that we let the man go with a warning due to the high number of incidences that night, but I feel his irritation every time the subject comes up. He looks at me, and I just know he’s thinking of ways to get me fired.”
“I wonder what time it is,” her mother whispered, as if to herself.
“It’s after ten, Mom,” Angela answered.
Her mother nodded. “Hmm, it’s late again.”
“I promise I’m trying, Mom.” Angela looked around the small room. Her mother had worked so hard her entire life. She deserved more than painted brick walls and a tiny window disguised by oversized curtains. At least Sunny Side was clean. The other facility she could afford had been questionable at best. “I think I have a buyer for that painting grandpa left us. We never really liked it, anyway. Remember how you always said the woman’s face looked like she was half cow? Apparently, she was. I found out it was supposed to be a modern representation of some Egyptian lesser goddess. The money from the sale should be good for a couple of months at the new place. After that, I’ll figure something out. We need to move fast while they have an opening at Memory Meadows. I think you’ll love it there. There will be more space, and I’ll be able to bring some of your stuff out of storage.”
“Are you hungry, dear?” her mother asked, the gentle voice both familiar and distant. “You look awfully thin. How long since you ate something? There is a soup kitchen just two blocks East. I volunteer there sometimes. Tell them Connie sent you. They’ll make sure you have a safe place to rest and a warm meal. You look like you need a rest.”
“Thank you, Connie, I’ll do that,” Angela answered.
Her mother nodded and smiled, happy with the response. “That’s good.”
“I saw an alien.” Angela wondered how it would sound saying the sentence out loud for the first time as if verbalizing it would make it either true or false. “Several aliens. And not illegal ones coming over the border for work but real aliens from outer space. He was really handsome. I mean, daydream handsome. I can’t stop thinking about him. That has to be some kind of alien chemical drugging effect, right? I just want to see him again to prove he’s real. Not that I would date someone who I had to help arrest, or an alien, or an escapee, but he was something. I don’t feel crazy, but I couldn’t have seen that, right? I mean, if I can’t function who is going to take care of things? And if I’m not crazy that means there are aliens in Las Vegas. I could use your advice, Mom. I’m not doing so well.”
Angela tried to take her mother’s hand, but the woman gave her a strange look and pulled her purse closer to her stomach.
“How a
bout we read a little?” Angela opened the nightstand to take out a book and settled back on the bed. “Your favorite. Pride and Prejudice.”
“I cannot hear her speak. How do you know what she answers?”
Angela gasped, sitting up on the bed as she dropped the book to her side. “Vin?”
Vin stepped into the room. Angela instantly went to stand in front of her mother, blocking her from the alien’s view.
“What are you doing here?” Angela demanded. How much did he hear? “You can’t be in here. This is a private facility. How did you find me?”
“Mags,” Vin answered. “And Skeeter.”
“Mags and Skeeter? I don’t understand. Who is Skeeter?”
“Skeeter gave me a ride with his fertilizer load. I told him about you, and he found this place for me so I could see you. Before that, I called security offices listed in Las Vegas and explained that I needed to talk to Mags because she answers the phone. You let the phone ring, so I needed her to get you for me. When I was finally able to speak to her, Mags told me where to find you. She said you always come here after a hard day. Was today a hard day?” He smiled, as if he expected her to think being stalked by an alien was normal.
“Mags should not be giving out my information. It is not appropriate for you to be here.” Angela had a few choice words she’d like to say to the receptionist. “You need to leave.”
“Why was it a hard day?” he asked.
Angela’s eyes opened wide as she stared at him. “Are you kidding me?”
“I do not believe so. I’m trying to talk to you so you’ll date me. I can’t stop thinking about you.” The words were guileless in their delivery. He looked at her with the same, open expression he’d had while walking toward the holding cell.
“It was hard because aliens came to my work this week and freed the man I was supposed to be guarding. Try explaining how a cell door is unlocked without force, the security cameras didn’t record any footage, a prisoner escapes a holding cell, and I don’t have a scratch on me. I looked like an idiot to my supervisor. He probably thinks I just let you go. Each time I try to get past it something else happens. Today I learned that we’ve evidently gone viral. I tanked any chance I had at a promotion to a new liaison officer position, and, oh yeah, thanks to that my mother is probably going to remain in this overcrowded place without access to the therapy treatments she desperately needs. It’s all I can do to afford her a private room here. The only saving grace is that the staff is kind, but even they are overworked.”
Flame: Galaxy Alien Mail Order Brides (Intergalactic Dating Agency) Page 5