Wild Card (Vegas Underground 8)

Before I step outside to catch the Lyft, I buy myself a hot chocolate and a muffin. Because eating seems to help with the queasiness.

And I’m ready to puke my guts out.

Chapter 13

Paolo

Fanculo. Where is she?

It’s dark in the apartment. The clock says it’s three in the morning. I don’t even know how I slept without knowing where Caitlin was.

I surge out of bed and stalk through the apartment, checking my phone for messages, throwing on the lights.

Where in the fuck could she be?

I try calling her, but not surprisingly, there’s no answer.

I’m ready to drive over to her brother’s dorm and pull him out of bed, but I hold back. That would be harassment, and Caitlin wouldn’t like it.

I start looking through the place more thoroughly, looking for signs. Her suitcase is still there—flung open but not unpacked from our trip to Vegas. Her computer equipment, but not her laptop. I go to her bathroom. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I look.

And that’s when I see the box for a pregnancy test in the trash can. I pull it out. Below it is the actual test. I fish it out of the trash and look at the results.

Madonna. Cristo. Dio. She’s pregnant!

Is that why she’s not here? Where in the fuck did she go?

I go ice cold. Not because she’s pregnant—I’d welcome that if it’s what she wanted, but because she didn’t turn to me with this knowledge. She ran away.

It chills me to the bone and makes me crazy to find her, to give her whatever she needs to get through this decision. To let her know she’s fully supported no matter what.

I start for the door a dozen times, then sit back down. I want to be here if she comes to the apartment.

I wait until dawn breaks. Until the traffic outside becomes a roar. Until there’s no denying she’s not coming back. Pocketing the pregnancy test, as if keeping that evidence with me will somehow help me find her, I leave and head to her old apartment, to see if she’s holed up there.

She isn’t.

My phone rings at 8:30 a.m. and I see it’s Nico. We don’t chitchat, he and I, so I know it’s business, and because of this thing with Caitlin, I nearly crack the phone I grip it so hard.

“Nico.”

“I got a call from my informant at the FBI.”

I didn’t think it was possible for me to go colder, but I do.

“What is it?”

“They picked up your girl yesterday and brought her in. She stayed about three hours and then they let her go. That’s all I know.”

I want to roar with the pain piercing my chest. Did she betray me? All those questions about what I’d do in different scenarios. Was it because she was already working with the feds? Or because she knew she would?

I force breath through my nostrils.

“She’s fucking MIA, Nico,” I tell him, my entire being cracking in half. “She’s MIA and she’s pregnant with my child.”

Nico curses in Italian.

I slam my forehead against the plaster wall and crack it.

I loved that girl.

I still do.

And she’s pregnant.

“Well, if she’s missing that means she didn’t roll over,” Nico says, thinking faster than I am. “If she rolled, she’d be by your side wearing a fucking wire. She wouldn’t disappear and raise flags. She probably got scared between the pregnancy and pressure from the feds and she ran.”

Away from me? Why?

She’s still scared of me.

This is all my fucking fault. I couldn’t show her enough of myself for her to feel safe. To know I’d never hurt her in a million years.

I keep sucking in my breath, processing Nico’s words. They make sense. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“So you gotta figure out where she would go. What can I do to help?”

Right. I gotta figure this shit out. My shoulders crack as I square them. I will fucking find her. I will find her and let her know she doesn’t have to run.

“Find out what happened while she was with the feds, if you can.”

“Yeah, already on it, but my informant didn’t have clearance. He’s going to try, though.”

“Well, let me know if you find anything. I’m going to go shake down—I mean, have a conversation—with her brother. If anyone knows where she would be, it would be him.”

“Yeah. Go find her. Everything’s gonna be all right.”

I know if Nico is offering me comfort, my cracks are showing. And I don’t give a shit.

“Yeah. Thanks. I’ll keep you posted.”

“Likewise.”

Chapter 14

Caitlin

I made a huge mistake coming here. Like colossal.

For one thing, it looks like someone found the hidden key and made themselves at home sometime in the last two years. That’s how long it’s been since I’ve been here.

It’s suddenly very clear to me I was stupid to keep this place. It was the only thing Trevor and I inherited from our dad when he died. After they declared him dead, the judge ordered for the land to be sold to pay for our care, but it didn’t sell right away.