When they were halfway through their meal, I asked during a lull in the conversation, “What in the world was I doing out in Vegas helping you take that target down in the first place?”

They exchanged a quick look. Olivia asked, “Does she …”

“Told her from the point she’d been taken until we took her here,” Bai answered.

“Well?” I asked when they didn’t answer after a minute. “Nothing in my memory has anything remotely as … um … adventurous as that story, for sure. So I know that I have never been one to be willingly caught in the middle of something like that, Bai.”

Olivia swallowed from the bottle of organic iced-tea lemonade she’d gotten to drink, and then answered quietly, “Unless you had a good reason, right?”

I had to agree with that.

“Okay, unless I had a good reason. But I cannot … for the life of me … know what that could be. Because I don’t know anyone in Vegas, or who’s from there, or ….”

Again they exchanged glances.

I was getting impatient.

“Why do you two keep looking at each other? There’s nothing in my family history that’s remotely tied to anything in Vegas or the west coast, for that matter,” I added.

Come to think of it …

“What the hell am I doing in LA, by the way?!”

“Aerin,” Bai started to answer.

But I was working myself up now, like my emotions were careening downward in a rollercoaster, gathering speed. “I know I don’t have any clients here! Although I do have friends here. But I’ve never come to LA to visit them, so it makes no sense that I’d do so … this doesn’t make any sense!!”

“Calm down, Aerin,” Bai tried to mollify me again.

“I won’t fucking calm down until I get an answer to why the fuck I got myself in the midst of a fucking gun battle in the middle of a godforsaken desert thousands of miles from my home!!!” I shouted, unreasonably, I know, but I couldn’t keep my panic in check.

They both stood up suddenly and dropped their food, each taking a side next to me.

The beeps got louder.

“Try not to stress out Aerin,” Olivia said quietly as they each stroked my arms, and alternated stroking my forehead. “We’ll tell you as much as we know, we promise, but you’ve got to calm down. It won’t be good for you to freak out like this. You could be very fragile …”