‘We?’ Ivy asked. ‘No. I’m going alone. If you want to leave here then do it yourself, tomorrow, Mauri will send a car and—‘
‘I came here because I wanted to get to know Dax. You said it yourself that you can be an ally. I want to show you that I can be trusted. If you leave here now, then you might not come back and… I’ll lose Dax all over again.’
‘Ok,’ Ivy sighed, she didn’t have the time to fight anyway. ‘Come if you want, but you have to do what I say.’
‘I will,’ Carina said, picking up her bag from the floor. ‘How do you plan to get there?’
Opening the front door, she clocked the single car in the driveway: the security guys’ vehicle. Making a beeline for it, Ivy opened the door and climbed in, happy to find the keys in the ignition. Pulling her case over herself she got it into the back seat at the same time that Carina got into the passenger seat holding her luggage.
‘This isn’t your car,’ Carina said.
‘Mauri’s men won’t call the cops,’ Ivy said, turning on the engine but keeping the lights off as she reversed and started to drive away from the house. ‘Keep your head down.’
The security men wandered around on the property and only checked in at the house periodically. She hadn’t seen anyone for a while; Trystan may have called them off so that he could stage his little escape with Rosie.
‘How did you know the keys would be in the car?’ Carina asked.
‘If someone came onto the property Mauri’s men would want to be able to chase them away, and then chase them down, so they’d want quick access,’ Ivy said. ‘They all arrived together, so this is a Stark company vehicle.’
‘I don’t understand why Mauri sent security, do you think that crime is a problem out here?’
‘Kidnap at least,’ Ivy said, switching on the lights when they got onto the road. But even if security saw them leave, they had no vehicle to follow. ‘Mauri isn’t worried about crime.’
‘So why—‘
‘There’s a bounty on my head,’ Ivy said, thinking that maybe she should have told Carina that before the woman got into a car with her.
‘A what?’
‘It’s why there’s security at the house and why Dax has been gone all day, he’s trying to find out who wants me dead.’
‘That’s awful… But why…? Why would someone want you to be killed?’
‘That’s sort of what we’re trying to figure out,’ Ivy said.
‘You have a full life,’ Carina said, hugging her bag closer to her chest. ‘You and Dax must have quite the adventures.’
‘Not really, it depends what coast we’re on,’ Ivy said. ‘We prefer to keep to ourselves. But when we’re out here the trouble seems to seek us out.’
‘Are you afraid?’
‘No,’ Ivy smiled. ‘No one will be looking for me in Vegas, and I have friends out there who can help us. Rosie doesn’t have much of a head start, and Trystan Stark won’t be hard to find in Vegas. He’s a creature of habit, and he likes to make an impression. As I said, I have friends who should be able to help us locate him. I just hope we can before Rosie does something stupid.’
‘Like what? Marry him?’
‘Oh, God,’ Ivy groaned. She hadn’t thought about that, Mauri did want Trystan married and maybe if he got high enough he would be up for it. Rosie would probably say yes because her sister believed that any action taken in the name of a good time was justified. ‘Yes, like that.’
‘Weren’t you supposed to call Dax? Will he worry when you don’t phone him?’
‘I’ll phone him when we get there,’ Ivy said. ‘I’m more concerned about the welfare of the person who tells him we’re not at the beach house anymore… I was supposed to be there laying low.’
‘So he’ll worry for your safety,’ Carina said. ‘Maybe you should call him now.’
‘Wait until we’ve crossed state lines, that way we’ll be too far away for him to drag me back by my hair.’ Carina said nothing, so Ivy glanced over at the woman’s wide-eyed expression. ‘He’s a worrier… when it comes to me.’
Dax would be furious with her, but she hadn’t been thinking about that when she packed to go after Rosie. No one would find her in Vegas, the friends that she had would protect her if they had to. All she wanted to do was find Rosie, and once her sister was away from Trystan Stark, they would all return to the beach house. That was Ivy’s plan, and she’d do everything in her power to make it happen as quickly as possible.
Daylight was breaking by the time they got to Vegas. Ivy had tried to call her sister, but Rosie never picked up and after the tenth time of trying the phone started to go straight to voicemail without ringing first. Either Rosie had turned off her phone or the battery had died, and there was still a chance that Rosie had left her cell at the beach house meaning that calling was pointless anyway.
Rosie and Trystan would be at the GoldSpring Hotel because that was where the Starks always stayed when they were in Vegas. Ivy wanted to drive straight there to snatch her sister up, except she’d need a key-card or an invitation, neither of which she had. To get a key-card, Ivy would need to book a room, which would require a credit card. She couldn’t risk using her credit card or being seen in the hotel because anyone who might have tailed them from LA would find her in no time.
Trying to consider the bounty and be sensible about not walking into danger, Ivy drove to the next safest place, Saul’s house. Pulling into his driveway, she ran her fingers through her hair and checked to make sure her eyes weren’t too bloodshot in the rear-view mirror; the last thing Ivy wanted to do was scare the guy she was about to ask for help. Satisfied that her appearance passed muster, she reached for the door release.
‘Stay here,’ Ivy said to Carina and got out of the car.
She had to knock on the door a dozen times before Saul answered, but this was Vegas, the party had probably only ended for him a couple of hours ago. His hair was a mess, and he was wearing only boxer shorts. Ivy grinned when he opened the door, trying to act as though this was just a cordial visit.
‘Hey,’ she said.
‘Ivy…’ he said and cleared his throat a few times. ‘I thought you were… I didn’t know you were… didn’t you leave?’
‘I did,’ Ivy said, patting his chest and edging him aside. ‘I have a helluva story to tell you, can I come in?’
She was already inching around him, so he backed off while nodding. It was good to get him while he was still in a daze because it took him longer to realise that this was an inconvenient intrusion.
Working her way through the house to the kitchen at the back of the property, Ivy started making coffee to offer the pick-me-up as an olive branch. She was a good half-minute into the task before Saul came through to join her. Seating himself at his breakfast bar, he finger-combed his hair and coughed.
‘What’s going on? Why are you here so early?’ he asked.
‘I just got in,’ Ivy said, scooping more coffee than usual into the machine. ‘I just drove in from LA.’
‘Why? And where is Harrow?’
‘Still in LA,’ she said, closing the coffee machine and spinning around to smile at him again. ‘I sort of need a place to stay, just for a day.’
‘A day?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I was staying in LA with my sister and she did something crazy… She took off with this guy, who is bad news, and came here to Vegas.’
‘Your sister?’ he asked. ‘You never talked about her.’
He kept blinking and yawning, following the conversation must be difficult when you were still half asleep. ‘No, because I haven’t seen her for a while.’
‘Then why do you care about what she does?’
‘This particular guy could get her into a lot of trouble, and I just can’t let that happen. So I had to come here and stop it.’
‘Why didn’t you go to a hotel? You did that last time you showed up.’
‘That’s the thing,’ she said, creeping across the kitchen. ‘There’s a bounty on my head.’
His eyes landed on her, the yawning and blinking stopped. Ivy smiled, hoping to encourage his understanding, but it still took a few seconds for him to react.