Dawn cracked open Emily's head like a hammer. She cursed herself for not having the foresight to close the blinds last night. No, not last night: a few hours ago. It must have been four in the morning when they stumbled into the room.

They.

Where the hell was Nikki? The gun was gone too.

Shit.

Emily was on her feet much too quickly for her shaky constitution to handle. She pitched forward and rested her forehead against the mattress. It was soft and cool. She realized how ridiculous she must look bent over, knees jutting out in different directions, supported by her head, but it felt good to rest there until her stomach stopped reeling and the fissure in her head made some attempt to seal itself.

I am never drinking again.  

Once she felt fully transitioned from inanimate corpse to zombie, it was time to assess the situation and see if the car was still outside.

Emily made a wobbly beeline for the window, walking across her discarded clothes. Something sharp and metallic was hidden in the pile of fabric and it jabbed into the exact center of her sole. She hissed while bouncing up and down on her good foot. The rocking motion filled her gut with seasickness forcing her to stop and place her foot tenderly back down despite the pain.

At least she'd found the pistol. One mystery was solved. Now she just had to catch up with Nikki. She took a tentative step to the door and stopped as the sound of dry heaving came from the bathroom.

Emily went over and knocked on the door, "You all right in there?"

The only answer she got was a noise somewhere between a wretch and a sob.

Emily felt all the energy desert her muscles now the alarm was over. She plopped down on Nikki's bed not even having the will to make it back to her own. Her bladder was complaining and part of her felt that she should demand some bathroom time, but she just imagined that she would end up holding her Nikki's hair while she puked out final remnants of last night. It was better here.

Last night had come back to bite both of them in the ass it seemed.

Damn though, the woman really looked like she could hold her liquor, at the time. Nikki had joked it was part of her chef's training and nearly had put Emily under the table before midnight. Emily had switched to diet-cola but the damage was done. Flickering memories attacked the periphery of her consciousness. Line dancing with some oil field workers. Lukewarm mystery meat empanadas sold off the back of a pickup—that were so, so good. A karaoke duet of Stand by Your Man—somehow accomplished without a karaoke machine.

A crushing weight of embarrassment settled across her. She was definitely never drinking again.

At least when it came to regrets, Emily always had far worse things in her past than some drunken escapades. She could draw on those deeper more horrifying ones to make this recent mistake look trivial.

I'm just blessed that way, she thought bitterly.

Her mind was pulled back to that night in the hotel room on the central California coast, her skin ice cold, frantic with panic, blood everywhere. Then she drifted further back to the beginning and the racetrack. She could almost feel herself taking laps around the rain slick course. Or maybe that was just the room spinning.

After Lauren had rescued her from The Music Box by having a couple of murderous thugs kidnap her, they had gone to Salinas, California, where she was looking to fleece some millionaire attending an off-books tournament.

The mark was everything Lauren loved: young, foreign, and filthy rich. They had to be rich for obvious reasons but Lauren hunted the men young because they tended to be arrogant and believe they could not be fooled. Or as she put it: they had more testosterone than brains. Foreign because the police were less likely to pursue a fraud after the victim had left the country. And because once they went home, the patsy was less likely to devote time to seeking revenge. Although that rule didn't always work as Emily had found out with Benicio when he kidnapped Aaron.

The scam was almost a repeat of one they had pulled in New Jersey back in 2010. It seemed like Lauren just dusted off the old plans and changed the names, except for Emily's. She was still supposed to pose as one of the racers, even though after six years the term rusty was an understatement. Even at the top of her game, there wasn't a chance in hell she could win against the professionals. But that wasn't the point. She just had to be good enough on a bike not to humiliate herself during the heats, so she looked like she belonged there. It was about being at the track, the garages, and most importantly, the parties. She was their inside-man. While Lauren and the crew worked the mark for the cash, Emily would cozy up to him.

She had to find ways to bump in into him. Flirt. Get him to show an interest. The important thing was to spend time with him so she could do recon. She was to gather information and feed it back to Lauren. And most important of all, Emily had to get inside his hotel room.

The track was wet and the morning air was thick with winter damp on the day she first made contact with Nicholai. The pictures Lauren had of him didn't do the playboy justice. They didn't capture the way flecks of gold glinted in the deep brown of his eyes, even on a cloudy day. Or the way the slight breeze played with the strands of dark hair sweeping over his forehead. Or how his lip curled into a seductive snarl when he smiled. They also didn't capture his natural charm and that when he spoke, it felt as though he had forgotten everyone else in the world existed but Emily

Likewise, the photos didn't reveal the raging psychopath hidden behind those eyes.

Emily only discovered that for herself three days later in his hotel room. But on that first day, he seemed the perfect prince.

Nicholai approached her as she was heading off the track. It was one of those moments when Emily was convinced Lauren was a genius.

"Just forget about him and do your thing. Trust me," she had said when Emily asked about making contact. And sure enough there he was waiting for her, casually leaning against the railing with his snarling smile.

"That was some nice riding," he said, his accent moving like oil over the words.

He was lying. Emily only made it through to the next round because the Yamaha six lengths in front of her crapped out on the final lap due to a faulty carburetor.

"Thanks." Emily smiled. Her inclination was to correct him and enumerate all the things she had done wrong out there.

Too timid to pass on the second lap. Sloppy cornering in the third. And plain slow as shit compared to the other riders.

But instead, she kept it perky. That was his type: perky, blonde, and a total lack of self-awareness. And leather. He was a sucker for a girl in tight racing leathers. At least those were the things Lauren's research had said about him.

"I've seen you around," she said when he kept silent. "You're an owner, aren't you?"

"More like an investor."

She glanced away, pretending to be distracted by the pace car zipping behind her, while she blinked out the dryness of her contacts. They were allowing her to see without her glasses but they also made her irises a dazzling aqua color. And itched like hell.

"Have you been doing it long?" she asked him when she looked back.

"A few years. But this is my first American team."

"Lucky them. How does a girl go about getting...invested?"

He snapped away from the railing, alert. His muscular body at the ready like a predator who has just scented prey on the wind. "I would be happy to discuss it over dinner."

The ease of it scared her. Not in a paranoid way. He wasn't on to her and Lauren. He didn't have a fucking clue. It was scary because of how predictable it all was.

This was why the life had been so comfortable, so easy to fall into. You dangle bait and fish bite. When else was dealing with people so simple? There were no worries about what they really thought. No confusion over your own feeling. You didn't even have to be yourself. You could bury all of that deep down and not be mired  in all the things you were.

Emily twirled a few strands of her bleached hair and pretended to hesitate before saying with as much sugar as she could force, "Sure. I'd like that."

At least unlike some of her other marks this one was nice to look at. It made the flirting easier. It made her want to believe in the fantasy as much as this sap, Nicholai, was. Not that part of her still wished she was home with Max.

The unexpected memory fragment was like a bucket of ice water being poured over her. Emily's eyes snapped open and she saw the cracked plaster of the motel ceiling, heard some coughing and spitting coming from Nikki in the bathroom.

They needed to stop Maxwell from getting to Amy.

Emily crawled across the bed like a soldier through the mud and grabbed her phone. She'd set it up with Nikki's app to keep tabs on R.J.

Please let R.J. still be in town.

Fuck.

She got out of the bed and slammed the ball of her fist against the bathroom door. "Hey, sunshine. Time to wrap it up. Your boyfriend is on the move."

Emily was disappointed in herself for the harsh way she spoke. Partly because it probably had just erased the good will and friendship she had built with Nikki the night before, but mostly because she sounded exactly like Barbara Gracie when she had said boyfriend.

That was always the trouble with pretending to be someone else: you had to be careful about who you might become.    

***

Author's Note: I'm not really sure about this scene. I realized that the book is more than halfway through and for some characters, like Emily, I haven't given more than tiny hints at those lost four years since Book One. But is it too late?  Does it feel jammed in? Or do people still care what she was up to with Lauren?