Enjoy today's installment!
CHAPTER 19 -DAY 13-
Tori's POV
I now rested peacefully in a Vegas hospital, thanks to Jade.
Yep, Jade West, the girl that supposedly hates my guts, was the first person in the helicopter to find me, and because of that, she actually saved my life. I always knew that the 'tough chick' attitude was just an act.
My dad would stay for the next few days, seeing that we only had two more in Vegas. As terrifying as some of these past experiences have been, I actually thought that they all helped us come closer as friends.
It was about four in the morning here in the hospital, but the doctor had said I should be well enough to do the broadcast, if too much work wasn't involved. I had been severely dehydrated, but there's nothing a few IVs can't fix.
André had not left my side after they brought me in, not once. The others were either hanging outside the room or at the hotel, I assumed. The air was clean in the hospital, and I could hear the quiet dripping of liquids heading down the tubes into my body.
I lay back and tried to relax as best as I could, trying to think of the future, and not the past.
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I saw the helicopter, blades whirring and sand flying everywhere. I tried to stand up, but the winds were too strong and I fell over again. I was horribly thirsty and I might've passed out a couple times, but I could barely remember anymore. All I knew was that something was up in the sky, and I think they were looking for me.
I stood up again, waving my arms before being pushed down.
The copter got louder and louder, and through the haze I saw André's face in one of the windows. He was pounding on the glass, and Beck appeared in the corner, grabbing André and pulling him away in case he broke it.
And then I saw Jade, looking extremely panicked for some reason. The helicopter stirred in the wind, and I went face-first into the sand. I no longer had the energy to get back up and remained there, grains slipping into my eyes and mouth, blinding me and keeping me from calling out.
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I wasn't sure exactly what happened in the next few minutes. I could see, hear, and touch things, but my brain wasn't registering any of it.
I looked up and saw Jade clinging to a rope ladder that was descending slowly out of a trapdoor in the helicopter's bottom. She looked back at the helicopter, screaming loudly at the boys inside.
"I don't have a license for this, Mr. Vega! Isn't this illegal?"
Mr. Vega…the name sounded familiar. Hmm, I wonder why.
"Just suck it up and go get her, Jade!" That was Beck's voice.
I slowly lifted my head, unable to see clearly with the sand digging into my eyes. But I could just barely make out the form of a girl wearing black (why she would be wearing black in the desert I had no idea) and she had touched off at the ground thirty feet away.
"Hey, Vega!" Jade yelled as she ran towards me. "Are you okay?"
I tried to respond but my lips were so dry I could only make funny grating noises. I lifted up one of my arms and tried to wave back, but I was too weak.
Suddenly I felt something grab my shoulder and roll my body over. I found myself staring up at dark sky, and then the figure leaned over, blocking most the blinking stars.
"Wow, Tori, you look like a mess." I'm not sure if she was being sarcastic or not.
I made another garbled noise. Jade looked away into the distance and shouted almost in my ear, "Over here! You guys better hurry up your butts!"
And then I heard André's voice, and my heart started beating, at least letting me know that I was still alive and not just dreaming. Beck was right behind him, looking extremely concerned for some reason. And then the man who looked just like my father hurried up.
So that's why Mr. Vega sounded familiar…boy, was I out of it today.
"Tori, baby, how are you feeling?" he asked, trying to prop my head up in his lap. "Beck, can you go into the cockpit and grab the walkie-talkie and tell the others that we found her?" he commanded, remaining calm. Beck got up and ran, leaving André and Jade to stand there and stare down at my body.
"Do you need anything?" André asked, digging through a red medical bag he was holding.
Water, I wanted to say, but "Ggrrgghh" came out.
I heard Jade snort, and André turned on her, the smile disappearing almost instantly.
"Okay, we'll take you to the hospital and you'll be fine, all right, Tor? How long have you been out here? Less than twenty-four hours, I'd guess," my dad said, picking me up, an arm underneath my shoulders and knees. He never gave me a chance to answer any of his questions. "Let's go, you guys."
And that was the last thing I remembered before passing out again.
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André sat in the corner of the room, his head bowed against his chest, snoring softly. I was feeling so much better than yesterday, and the dull noises of whirring machines calmed me. Not to mention the fact that I now had a proper amount of water in my body.
"Hey, look, Tori's awake!"
I looked up and saw Cat and Robbie smiling at me from the little window in the door. I smiled back and motioned for them to come in. Cat opened the door quietly and stepped in; she held a big teddy bear, and Robbie held one too. After they both entered, Beck appeared, a small smile on his face while he was towed Jade along.
"How are you feeling?" Beck asked, shoving his hands into his pockets.
"We brought you a teddy bear," Robbie interrupted, holding his bear towards me. I grinned awkwardly and accepted it. He nodded, stepping back closer to Cat, who leaned her head on his arm and held her own bear close to her body.
And then my father came in, looking quite tired but pleased. My friends immediately sat down on chairs nearby.
André woke up at the commotion, looking alarmed, but relaxed when he saw that I was awake and his friends surrounded him.
"It's good to see you awake, baby," my father said, kneeling down by my bed. He held a wooden clipboard and pen in his hands. "You are feeling better, right? Because I need to ask you some very important questions."
"Okay," I responded, quickly glancing at my friends. Jade attempted to snuggle up with Beck, but he looked distracted. Robbie and Cat held hands, and André was the only one who seemed to be paying attention to what I was doing.
"Do you want to tell us what exactly happened to you when you went to the bathroom at the restaurant?" André perked up upon hearing my dad ask this, and I beamed in his direction.
I took a deep breath and began my account of the kidnapping.
"When I was trying to leave the bathroom, two men appeared out of nowhere and stopped me. They took me into the guy's room and tied me up with duct tape. They also took my purse and threw me out one of the windows. After that, one of the men, I think his name was Nicolas Right, went through my stuff while the other guy held a gun to my face.
"Nicolas—or Mr. Right, as his partner kept calling him, finally found my Royale hotel card, and that's how he kind of figured out that I was part of the Vegas 777 program. That and he'd actually seen me on the show, except he kept calling me 'Jade Vega.'" I looked over at Jade, who scrunched up her face like that was the worst thing in the world. I continued.
"After that they brought me to their black van and we drove over to the hotel. We parked in a back alley, and there was a hidden staircase that we were going to take. Earlier I had told Mr. Right what the room number was, because I was afraid he was going to shoot me." I wiped my eyes, not realizing how emotional this actually was. At least I hadn't been shot in the end. My dad's pen kept going at the paper.
"They wanted me to climb up all the way to the thirtieth floor, but I got too tired and then the other guy, Walter Lowes, or, I guess we called him Mr. Lowes, had to carry—"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Did you say Mr. Lowes?" Beck interrupted all of a sudden.
I nodded.
Beck glanced at Cat, worry filling his eyes for once. My dad looked at them both, obviously seeing that something was going on.
"What is it, Beck?" my dad asked him, but I could tell from the tone of his voice that he already had it figured out.
"It's just that, when the studio was ambushed several days ago," Beck said, his fingers twitching in his hands, "the man who was chasing me and Cat…his name was Mr. Lowes, and the woman with him also called him Walter."
My dad said nothing, his face blank.
"Was he pretty big?" I asked. "And, uh, kind of stupid?"
"Big, yes. And yeah, I guess you could say he was a little bit stupid," Beck answered, smiling at the thought.
"All right, Tori, just keep going," my dad instructed without saying anything about what we were discussing. "We can piece things together at the end."
"Okay," I nodded. "So after we reached the thirtieth floor, Mr. Lowes, who had gone ahead of Mr. Right and me, let us into the room using my key. He said something about seeing a bald man just exiting the room. I think he might've been talking about Sikowitz."
"Probably," André nodded, joining in on the conversation. "'Cause Sikowitz went up to look for you, and you weren't there. But after we spent a while wandering around the hotel, Cat went up to your room and found it trashed."
"Yep," I replied. Everything was making sense now, like puzzle pieces fitting together. "Then the men went through all of my and Cat's stuff, and—"
"They killed Mr. Teddy," Cat sniffled suddenly.
"What?" I paused.
"My teddy bear I've had for as long as I can remember. When I came into the room, I found him with his head ripped off. But Jade and Robbie got me a new one, so it's okay." She rubbed her cheek against the bear's and I snuck a look at Jade and Robbie. Robbie was beaming, and Jade actually perked up a bit.
"As I was saying," I tried to continue along with the flow of the story, "when they went through Cat's stuff, they found three hundred dollars worth of cash, and—
"They took it, didn't they?" Cat interrupted again. I tried not to sigh.
"Well, yes, the men took it and I'm not sure what they did with it. But after that we went back down the stairs and to the van. They told me that they weren't going to kill me, because then that would be too obvious, but they were going to bring me somewhere that I wouldn't be able to tell anyone anyway.
"So we drove for a very long time, but I didn't know where we were going because they had knocked me out previously. But once I woke up, they took me out of the van, and I realized we were in a desert.
"Mr. Right kicked me away from the road they were driving on and I fell down a slope, and after I had gotten all of my tape restraints off, I realized I couldn't climb back up. So I had to just walk around to maybe find my way back, which I obviously didn't."
"You went in the complete wrong direction," Jade pointed out.
"Yes, I noticed," I retorted. Jade gave me that annoying smile that drove me nuts and I rolled my eyes. "So yeah. That's exactly what happened."
"Okay, thank you for that, Tor," my dad said, finishing up a last sentence on the clipboard. "I'll need to go and file this report right away." He stood up, making his way towards the door. "Well, you guys have a broadcast to do in about three and a half hours, so make the best of it." My dad winked before leaving the room.
Everyone stared at me as the door shut. Jade looked like she was falling asleep in Beck's arms, whose chin was resting on top of her head. Robbie was watching Cat cuddle with her bear intently, and André had leaned over and was holding my taped up hand in his own.
And that was the last thing I remembered before falling asleep.
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Beck's POV
We arrived at the studio about forty-five minutes ago, and I was very glad to see that Tori was doing a lot better. It was the first time in a while that the entire gang was here to do the broadcast, and Mr. Highes wanted to take as much advantage of it as possible.
My girl and me were going to be the anchors, Robbie and André were the field reporters, Cat was doing sports, and Tori was the weather woman. I was even more excited than usual, and I'm pretty sure Jade was too.
We both sat on the main stage, all dressed up and snazzy-looking when Mr. Highes, oddly calm, approached us. There was a slight bounce in his step, and his black tie was swinging back and forth.
"Okay, kiddies," he said, his voice full of new authority as he thudded his hands on the desk in front of us, "I understand that you two are…together…and I am perfectly fine with that, it's just that I don't want to see too much PDA on the broadcast, understood?"
Public displays of affection? I almost laughed at the way he was acting. But I could tell that he was serious, so I nodded, and Jade did too.
"All right, excellent. That is all I wanted to talk to you about." He bounded away, looking suddenly immensely pleased like a weight had been lifted off of his chest. He approached Tori, who leaned on the green screen behind her for support, but a small grin was spread across her lips, so I knew she was doing okay.
Jade tried to climb off of her chair into my lap, but just as she had reached me, Mr. Highes had turned around and stared right at us. I grinned sheepishly, but made no move to get my girlfriend off of my lap. Jade waved flirtatiously at him, and he frowned. Finally, she got off and sat down in her own chair, smoothing out her skirt, and he smiled again, giving us a thumbs-up.
"Hey, anchors! You've got sixty seconds until show time!" the main cameraman yelled at us. I nodded, running a hand through my hair and turning to Jade.
"Do I look okay?" I asked.
"As handsome as always," she replied without hesitation, although she still reached over and adjusted the tie underneath my collar. I pecked her on the cheek, and saw Mr. Highes rolling his eyes in the corner of the room.
"And we're on in five, four…"
I placed my hands in a professional posture on top of the wooden oak desk. Jade did the same.
"Three, two…"
Jade took a deep breath, putting on that smile that I loved to see so much. I smiled along with her as a natural reaction, and she turned to face the blinking camera.
"Hello and welcome to LV: Daily Reports…"
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Mr. Lowes's POV
"You know, I...I feel kind of bad for leaving the girl out there," I said to my partner, Nicolas Right. We drove through the roads of Las Vegas, in search of a casino to spend the stolen money at. "What happens if she never got out and dies or something? We'll have a murder on our hands!" I shuddered at the thought. It had barely been a day since we left Jade Vega in the desert, and I was feeling guilty ever since.
"Relax, Walter," Nic repeated for the thousandth time, "If she gets out, she can report us to the police if she wants, but remember, we used our fake names, so it's not like we can be tracked down anyway."
"Right, right," I answered, remembering. "How about our fingerprints, though, Nic? We touched her and the stuff in that hotel room."
"Walter, remember your initiation process?" Nic asked.
"No, not really," I replied truthfully.
Nic sighed. "Look at your hands, you doofus."
I did.
And saw nothing out of the ordinary. My hands were larger than normal, obviously, since I was bigger than the average man. They had regular creases that looked like a cool pattern of crossing, intersecting lines. But they I noticed my fingertips. Instead of the unique swirly designs you'd normally see, they were completely flat and smooth, like someone had taken an eraser and erased the lines.
"Oh yeah!" I exclaimed. "They burned off our fingerprints a long time ago, so now we don't leave any marks to be traced!" I never really understood how helpful that was until now.
"Precisely. Now shut up and let me drive, we've got three hundred dollars to blow off, okay?"
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We ended up arriving at my favorite casino, Chips and Dicks. I loved it because it had everything I could possibly want and more: great food and lots of gambling. Nic liked it for the girls, which I wasn't really into so much.
Nic held Jade Vega's three hundred dollars in cash when we entered. He handed me a hundred, shoving it deep into my fingerprint-less hands.
"Go have some fun, partner. You don't need to mention this to the boss when we get back, okay?"
"Sure thing, Nic."
"Go win us some money. And don't forget to use your real name, okay?" Nic started to walk away.
The dollars crumpled in my hand, and I bounded towards the first raffle booth I could find. The prize of the day was fifty grand. That was a lot of money.
I tossed the whole wad of cash towards the pretty lady taking the orders.
"Name please, sir."
"Walter Lowes," I replied, not even thinking of what Nic had said to me just minutes ago.
"Walter Lowes?" she asked, color fading in her face.
"Yes ma'am."
"Okay, here you go." She stood up straight and handed me my ticket. "The drawing will begin in about an hour or so, so you can just wait and do some other things in the meantime, Mr. Lowes." I winked and walked away, pocketing the ticket.
Since I had no more money and had no idea where Nic went, I sat down in the area where the drawing was going to take place. An hour passed, and the chair around me filled up with chattering people, hoping that the odds were in their favor.
A man with a very fancy gold tux came up to the front of the stage, followed by two ladies wheeling a cart holding a big goldfish bowl with hundreds of scraps of paper.
"Whose ever number and name I call, please come up here and receive your prize!" the man instructed. He stuck his hand in the container, mixing around the tickets. The tension in the air cranked up a notch.
Finally he chose a piece and held it up to his eyes.
"45-67-0-82," he called out. "Mister…Walter Lowes!"
I looked at my paper, my eyes widening, not believing what I was hearing. The people around me groaned when they realized they had lost, but that only fueled me on to stand up and start gloating.
"I WON!" I screamed, jumping up and down. I raced towards the stage, running up the steps and standing by the well-dressed man. I looked down and scanned the audience, spotting Nic, his mouth hanging wide open. "I won," I mouthed at him gleefully.
Nic didn't move. I motioned for him to come up here with me, but he stared at me blankly. All of a sudden his face lit up, and he mouthed something I didn't catch and ran.
He ran towards the nearest exit, obviously trying to be discreet about it, but after he knocked aside several people, I'm pretty sure someone might've noticed.
I was confused, tuning out the man telling everyone what my prize was. Why did Nic run?
And in that exact same second, I realized why he had done what he did, and what he had mouthed at me was probably "Run!"
At that exact second, the Las Vegas police burst into the building.
Oh wow...so there's only one more chapter left...amazing.
Also, I do realize that a real-life raffle/drawing/lottery thing is absolutely nothing like that, but hey, I've never been in any casinos or gambling clubs before, and I didn't want to make things too complicated. I also know that the odds of winning are very slim, but this is a fictional story...so...