Chapter 5

ALEXA

I woke up in a strange bed, with strange smells and strange noises. Not the smell of wet soil and farm house noises I was used to. I was the noise of honking cars and the odor of too many people packed into too little space. I turned around on the silk sheet and saw the indentation on the pillow beside mine and the entire events of the previous night came flooding back to my head. It was a night of many firsts, My twenty-first, my first real trip out of our lazy, country town, my first time at a club and first shot. I smiled at the memory of my friends and our wild night. I felt a wetness between my legs and the events of my blackout revealed itself to me. The broody man, his friends and how we made eyes at each other all night long. We did more than that I remember now. How the girls teased me about him, encouraging me to down the shots so I could talk to him and so I could lose my virginity in sin city. I smelt him all over him and where he spent the night. He wasn't there now. He probably left after he realized I was a virgin until I met him and he couldn't face me. I heard these things scared men. I wonder how I ended up in his room and how blissful the night was. I was transfixed on the bed thinking of the warmth of his lips against mine. His nips at my nipples, oh how they became taut and bright under the schooling of this tongue, the way his fingers played at my clit turning me to a pleading putty in his hands. How I begged for relief at his teasing. How I went on my knees begging him to fuck me. When I cried from pleasure when he thrust his cock in me, my moans when he slammed into me. His balls were slapping me. When we were spent from our pleasure and then going at each other again. Then we went at it again and again, each time making sure he came to me. Going again until we couldn't go any longer and we went to bed content.

I rose from the bed, wrapping the white sheets around me, careful not to let the splotches of blood touch me. I went to the bathroom hoping to spend time in a warm bath with a lavender soap so I could wash the activities of the night off of me. Before I face my friends, a new woman, to get a Plan B packet from a pharmacy. That shouldn’t be hard. I heard they handed them to people willy-nilly here since it's Sin City and things like this were expected of you. After my bath and a quick breakfast at the cafe beside this motel, my friends and I would go back home on the greyhound.

I went to the bathroom with this hoping to extend my stay in this musty room where I had my first with a mesmerizing stranger who was pleasing to look at as he was to spend the night with.  After my shower, I took an inventory of myself in the mirror. The raw pinkness of my nipples, my swollen lips from his hungry mouth and the hot trails of hickeys along my neck. It took my back to the previous night and I found myself rubbing myself again. Trying to recall his face clearly burned in my mind despite my drunkenness. When I was done after a second shower, I picked up my clothes from where they were discarded on the ground. I faced the room one again so I could take it in and remember it sometime in the future. Then went down back to the club’s dancefloor.

When I got down the spiral staircase, my friends were sitting at the guy's table from last night. All of them except Hazel. That wasn’t a surprise, she was probably with her boyfriend not expecting to leave today. I walked to them and they were absorbed in a hushed, heated conversation that immediately stopped when Sophia noticed me. “Alexandra!” she exclaimed “Oh, thank holy hannah, you’re safe. We thought we lost you too.” She wraps her arms around me.

“Me too?” I asked, confused.

“Hazel is not with her!” Ava declares like it was the worst thing to ever happen. This took the others happiness at reuniting with and further deepened my confusion.

“What’s going on guys?” I stammered, already suspecting the answer to my question.

“Did Hazel tell you where she was going last night?” Emma queried

“No, she did not but remember her boyfriend lives here, she’s been here before, she probably went to see him.”, I said trying to use reason to assuage the fear that was rising in me and already on their faces.

“You think we don't know that? It's not only you she tells things, Alexandra,” She yells her voice breaking with anger.

“Girls, let's calm down. It's Hazel. She always finds her way. She will be fine. Right, guys?” Ava says.

I took a seat beside her, as realization dawned on me. Hazel was missing and there was no way we could find her. She might have been to this city once or twice but it's still bound to be too much for her. She grew up in a small quiet town not this busy city bustling with people and skyscrapers. We already picked our tickets and we had to go back to the city today.

“Have you called her number?” I asked the girls.

“What do you think Sherlock, wanna spend more time in your mind palace?” Emma asks.

“No need to snap at her, Sophia, she just woke up.” Sophia says. She turned to me, “We found her phone in the garbage lot behind the building, that's when it started calling. We tried and tried opening it but it was locked, you know how Hazel can be with her phone.”

“It wasn't until Ava,  here, she pointed to her, lying her head on the bar table looking lost, guessed a random code right and opened the phone. We searched her contacts and messages for signs of her man but found nothing at all. It was like her phone was scrubbed clean.”

“Weird,” I muttered. Why would her phone just have no data? That was very weird for  Hazel.

I thought about all this information and how my close friend was alone, in a dark alleyway in a concrete jungle, not knowing where to turn and no friendly face for miles.

“Have you called the cops?” I was getting desperate and I was grasping at straws out in the country when someone got lost. We didn't bother calling any cops. Those who turned up missing more often than not ran away on their own will or were usually lost in their own corn maze. This was a new city. It's necessary that we call the cops even if it's not 24hrs yet. We could still report a missing person.

“You need to spend more time in that mind palace, Sherlock!” Emma screamed.  

“Cut it, Em! I’m only trying to help here.” I screamed back.

Our shouting match earned us weary looks from the day workers at the club and a few stragglers from last night's revelry.

Ava sighed, “We have, they came here, we made a statement and gave them pictures of her and our contact in case she turns up. They were helpful but they said in Las Vegas if someone turns up missing three things could've happened to her; she eloped with a lover and married in a drive thru registry, she fell into trouble with some gangs and is probably being trafficked as we speak or we wandered too far out the city limit and now she’s out in the open desert dying of heat exhaustion.”

Sophia continued after Ava ran out of breath, “The officers said the first was the most likely in this place and if she didn't make up in a week to a month, we should make another report this time reporting her dead.”

We sat in silence, each contemplating what was supposed to be a fun night of drunken fun when so off course as to have a friend up missing in a party of four. I sat wishing I had just spent my twenty first in our town. I don’t know if I let myself be talked into traveling across the country for a birthday party. A celebration that has ended in disaster. I prayed and hoped that Hazel was safe and this was a big misunderstanding on her part.

Sophia’s alarm rang, jousting us out of our thoughts and back to present. It was the thirty minute warning she set before the bus took off.  Sophia, ever the most grounded of us, hurried us to our bag to get ready for the trip back home without Hazel. When we finished, a taxi was already waiting for us at the club’s entrance. Which was just as good because the bar owner was clearly readying himself to throw us out.

A while later we got to the bus park and started the tortuous journey back home, with Hazel’s seat beside Sophia ominously empty. We were prepared to spend the whole twelve hour ride back home in silence but the driver wasn't going to have that. He put on the radio to fill the silence of the bus as we took off and news of a cyber attack to one J.D Tech firm streamed to our ears. The attack was so thorough that the company’s valuation seemed to flow down the drain in the blink of an eye.

‘Everything about it is suspicious, the timing so Derrick wasn't around when it happened, how the criminals got the access codes, and how quick the entire operation was. As of this morning the spokesman of the J.D Tech has refused to give any statements, all attempts to reach Mr Derrick Johnson have proved  futile. Stay tuned for more updates as the situation develops. This is 73.3 FM, The Pulse of Sin City,’ the spectral voice of the reporter says before being cut off by the annoying tune of the radio station.

“Seems like weren't the only ones having a bad day,” Sophia joked. On cue we all burst out into nervous laughter including Emma. Refusing to make eye contact as we did. After the sputtering of laughter we all feel back into an uneasy silence dreading the homecoming.