Page 92 of The Fast Lane
“In a city he doesn’t know.”
“Yes.”
“With a strange woman he doesn’t know.”
He shrugged. “She seemed pretty nice.”
“Theo!”
“Right.”
“Mimi might not even be her real name. She could be planning to harvest his organs.” I stopped in front of Theo and grabbed his shirt with two fists. “We have to find him.”
He covered my hands. “Ali. I’m not going to say a word about how you sound like your mother right now.”
“That’s what you got out of all this?”
“We’ll find him.” He gently pried my hands from his shirt.
“How?” I threw myself on the nearest bed. “He could be anywhere.”
My phone pinged. It was a text from Mack. I gasped, my jaw going slack.
“What?”
I handed Theo the phone to show him the photo my grandfather had sent. It was of Mimi and him, both wearing huge smiles. Mack had on a t-shirt that said, “What Happens in Vegas is Awesome”, and Mimi had a “Vegas, Baby!” hat on. But that wasn’t the part that made me gasp. Oh, no. It was that they were standing in front of a sign which read 24-HOUR WEDDING CHAPEL.
“He wouldn’t, would he?” I asked for probably the fiftieth time as we left what might have been the fiftieth twenty-four-hour wedding chapel in this city. Turned out that twenty-four-hour sign was not unique. They were everywhere. Like the Vegas version of lawn flamingos.
“I’m sure it was a joke.”
“I’m not laughing.”
Theo threw an arm around my shoulders as we walked down the block. “You’ll laugh about this later.”
“No, I don’t think I will.”
The next chapel boasted that a couple could be married by Elvis, Britney Spears, or Michael Jackson. The lobby was clean and white with a long counter. Behind it, a large sign hung on the wall, which outlined their wedding packages starting at the “Sign and Go” for a mere seventy bucks, and going up to $2,300 for the “Grand Ultimate” package, which included all the bells and whistles, a hotel room, and a borrowed wedding dress. But wait, you could make your own package, too—à la carte style. It was like a fast-food menu but for matrimony.
“This is… classy.”
A middle-aged woman in a pale-pink dress stabbed out a cigarette and shot us a practiced smile. “Hello, lovelies. Can I help you with anything?” She pulled a thick binder from under the counter. “You can flip through this to see our selection of flowers, wedding dresses and tuxes.”
“We’re not here to get married.” With a yawn, I held out my phone with the photo of Mack and Mimi. “Have you seen these two tonight?”
She grinned. “Oh, yeah. They were the cutest. Sometimes you get some real idiots up here but these two were sweet.”
My heart seemed to freeze mid-beat. “They were here.”
Theo put his hands on my shoulders. “Do you have any idea where they went?”
“I think they said they were going to Casa Nostra, that Italian restaurant down the block, to celebrate.”
“To celebrate,” I repeated. Mack had done it. He’d gotten married to a woman he’d met all of eight hours ago.
“Thank you,” Theo said after getting directions to the restaurant. He turned me and gently frog-marched me out of the chapel.
Somehow, we made it Casa Nostra without me realizing we’d even been walking. The restaurant was busy despite it being closer to four in the morning. We scoured the entire restaurant and when we found nothing, I pulled a chair out from the nearest table and sat.