Captured for the Alien Bride Lottery (Khanavai Warrior Bride Games #2) - Margo Bond Collins Page 0,2
on my choices, but the tall woman behind the counter barely even glanced at the items as she scanned them.
I was practically running by the time I got back to my hotel room, and my hands were shaking as I dumped everything out onto the counter in the bathroom.
What I was about to do was as illegal as it gets. And I was sure there would be physical and mental repercussions, as well. But at that moment, I didn’t care.
I’m a doctor. I can do this, even to myself.
Taking a deep breath, I counted to ten as I exhaled. I was a surgeon, and I’d done plenty of minor excisions similar to this. My hands stopped trembling, and I reached up to make the first incision about an inch behind my ear, hissing sharply as the pain hit. But I breathed past it and kept going. I’d have to stay steady to cut the wires that led into my brain.
Less than ten minutes later, I dropped my biochip into the toilet and flushed it away. With any luck, authorities would try to chase it down as it washed through the Las Vegas sewers, giving me time to get away.
I stitched up the wound I’d created with the needle and thread. I’d rinsed it all in isopropyl alcohol first, but I’d still need to keep an eye on it for any infection. Luckily, the conference had been rife with pharmaceutical reps handing out sample meds like they were candy. There were bound to be a few antibiotics in there if I needed them.
After I’d taped a bandage over the whole grisly mess, I glanced around the bathroom. It looked like a crime scene with blood smeared across the counter. With a shrug, I moved into the bedroom, trying to decide what to take.
My computer? Phone? God, they’d be able to trace me with those.
Better get a burner phone.
I grabbed the biggest shoulder bag in the room—one with a pharmaceutical company’s logo on it, a conference-attendee gift—and threw two changes of clothes into it, along with all the sample packages of meds, including more than one antibiotic, and my drugstore purchases.
The television was still playing in the background, and Vos had just drawn another name. “Amelia Rivers,” he announced.
I turned around as if in a trance. There it was. My face on the screen behind him.
Shit. Time to go.
No time to dye my hair, either. Maybe I could duck into a casino bathroom for that. Or better yet, find a way to do it at the airport—assuming I got that far.
But before I left the room, there was one last thing I needed to do. Moving in front of the bathroom mirror, I lifted my long, blonde ponytail. Then I used the nail scissors to snip it off. I shook my remaining hair out. It was a shaggy mess, but at least I looked a little less like myself than usual.
I carried the ponytail out of the room and dropped it in a trashcan as I bypassed the elevators and opened the stairwell door.
“Here goes nothing,” I whispered to myself as I headed down.
The heavy door closed behind me with a final-sounding click as I walked away from everything I’d ever known.
I marched down the Strip, moving as quickly as possible. The farther away from my own hotel I got, the better it would be for me. I swung into a casino hotel, one of the smaller ones, and hid in a bathroom stall, dying my hair a dark burgundy red.
Yet another blood-red scene I’m leaving behind.
No one came in while I rinsed out the excess dye in a sink, and at the last minute, I stripped off my white button-down shirt, balled it up, and ran it through the dyed water, just in case anyone at the conference remembered what I’d been wearing that day.
When I squeezed the excess water out, the shirt was a weird shade of pink with darker burgundy streaks running through it. I pulled a t-shirt out of my bag to wear and held the now-pink shirt under the hand dryer.
I blotted my hair and dried it, at least a little, under the air-blower for hands. I surveyed the results in the mirror.
I definitely didn’t look like myself any longer. I looked exactly like the rebel I had never been, not once in my entire life.
Now I have to get out of Las Vegas.
I had already abandoned my plan to head to the airport. I couldn’t fly—they