“What’s this?” Nate asks, finally noticing my phone and its blue, British telephone box casing.
“The TARDIS. Remember, like the one on my ass now?” I grumble. “If only you were a Whovian,” I tell him, continuing to paw through my things.
“A whatvian?”
“Who, not what. I mentioned it before, it’s a show—” And then I stop dead. Because in my hand, there’s a ball of gauzy white fabric.
Nate furrows his brow and grabs it, holds it up like he’s examining it.
“Why do you have Stacy’s bridal veil?” he asks, puzzling over it. But my heart’s now wedged right in my throat. That makes breathing kind of awkward.
“Stacy’s veil was shorter. And had a tiara. Trust me, romance authors know one wedding veil from the other.”
Is it just me, or is the desert rippling in front of my eyes right now? I expect a mirage any second, a neon sign with flashing lights shimmering, spelling out YOU’RE SCREWED in bold lettering.
“So whose is it?” Nate asks. He’s sounding a little panicked as well; I think he’s putting two and two together.
“Hang on.” I turn on my phone and flip through my photos. I don’t know why I didn’t think to do this before, but I don’t have to look very far.
There we are, sloppily drunk and grinning, with our arms around each other. My veil is hanging kind of askew on my head, and my lipstick is smeared all the way down my cheek. And all over Nate’s face as well. But there’s no mistaking the Elvis Presley impersonator standing behind us, holding up two gold wedding rings and grinning that lopsided King grin.
It can’t. It can’t be.
“Did we get . . . ” Nate chokes on the last word, then manages it. “Married?”
We gaze into each other’s eyes, horror seeming to flood both of us at the exact same time. Good thing, too, because if one was super excited and the other was about to vomit all over everything, it’d be kind of awkward.
“What do we do now?” I whisper.
“We need to stay calm.” He switches right into Lawyer Mode? and puts his hands on my shoulders. Like I’m the one who needs to be soothed right now. “Do you remember what chapel it was?”
Before I can answer that, a white van pulls up directly in front of us, sending a cloud of dust swirling into the air. We both blink at it, neither knowing what to do when the door slides open and three guys in black balaclavas jump out.
Yes. Three guys in balaclavas. I don’t believe it at first, either.
Between the face coverings and the all black clothing, for a second I think a ninja dance party is going to break out. Until one of them rolls across the sand, distracting us, and the other two grab us. One guy pins my arms to my sides, the other seems to put Nate in a headlock. I cry out in horror, kicking backwards, but it’s no use. They drag me toward the van. I start screaming, but a thick, beefy hand covers my mouth.
“What the fuck?” Nate shouts. One of the men walks up to us, his eyes—the only thing I can see of his face—narrowed and calculating.
“You’re coming with us, meester!” he hisses in a thick Russian accent. Then a bag goes over my head, and the sunlit desert gets turned out like a light.
In conclusion: Fuck Vegas. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Vegas in its glittery ass.
13
Nate
I need to stay calm.
Those five words keep repeating over and over in my mind. Julia isn’t shrieking about this any longer, so the quiet has helped me think. I had no idea what lung power she had. There was a good five minutes after they first put us into the van where she screamed something about sparkling ball sacks and dildos without Vaseline shoved into sensitive areas. While I’m not sure I appreciate the imagery, I know she has spirit. I admire that, but she should have realized when the fight became hopeless. As soon as they had us bound, I knew there was no way, in that moment, to fight back. Not without my hands free and my eyes uncovered.
This isn’t to say I’m giving up. Far from it. It just became very clear very quickly that I either wait until they pull the sacks off our heads—by which time it may be too late—or I manage to slip out of my bonds. And since my hands are tied with rope, not handcuffs or plastic zips, I think I have a solid chance.
While I test the knots, I keep asking myself: What did you do, asshole? What did you do last night to cause this?
Around me, the men keep speaking in very, very thick Russian accents.
Shit. If they’re working for the Russian mafia, the police will never find our bodies.
No, fuck asking what I did. What did Julia do last night? Steal their money? Crash their car? Punch one of them in the face? Because I know I would never be drunk enough to get into trouble with the goddamn Russian mob. Even I’m not that much of an idiot.
Julia, though? She’s spirited as hell, but that can be a serious problem sometimes.