The latter still haunted her, in ways she’d never anticipated.
As the hours slowly passed, Holly tossed and turned in her bed, moaning and whimpering as her own dreams, and possibly nightmares, plagued her. The few times she did wake up Nicole made her drink gulps of cool water to help flush the alcohol and drugs out of her system, though Nicole had a strong feeling the young girl was going to feel like crap come morning. By then, the narcotics would have worn off and Holly would be forced to deal in the real world with nothing to dull her anxiety, emotional pain, and the reality of her situation.
She heard Caleb’s and Nathan’s voices drifting in from the other room, along with an occasional comment from Valerie, and knew they were discussing details of the case, gathering information on Holly, and getting in touch with all the pertinent agencies to take Sloane down.
By dawn, Nicole’s heavy eyelids drooped and she snuggled into the blanket wrapped around her and nodded off. When she woke up half an hour later, she found Holly awake, curled up on her side, her vacant gaze staring at the wall behind Nicole. The girl’s makeup was smeared, showing her pale complexion, and her hair was a disheveled mess around her face. She looked so empty and alone, and much older than her fifteen years. Her innocence and childhood were gone, stolen by a man who had no regard for the lives he destroyed in his quest for his own sick pleasures.
Nicole sat up in her chair so she was closer to the side of the bed. Holly didn’t even acknowledge that she was there, though she knew the girl was well aware of her presence. Most likely, she was still pissed off at Nicole for taking her away from Sloane.
“How are you feeling?” Nicole asked softly.
Holly didn’t respond, clearly ignoring her.
Sighing, but by no means defeated, Nicole tried again. “Would you like some breakfast? I can make you some eggs or toast.” Eventually the girl would need to put something in her stomach-other than drugs and alcohol.
“I don’t want anything from you,” Holly finally said, her voice flat and spiritless. “Just go away.”
Okay, she was talking. At least that was a start. “Do you remember where you are?” Nicole asked, unsure what the girl recalled from last night. “That I took you away from Preston’s estate and brought you somewhere safe?”
Her gaze finally met Nicole’s, a spark of renewed animosity flashing in her eyes as last night’s events came back to her. “You had no right to take me!”
“We did have the right to take you,” Nicole said gently, trying to keep the girl calm. “You’re only fifteen, Holly. You’re an underage runaway who was kidnapped and taken to Preston’s place in Summerlin.”
Holly’s brows snapped into a frown. “Who told you that?”
So, she didn’t remember her conversation with Valerie. “Last night, you talked to one of the other women who is here. You told her you ran away from home a year ago, when you were fourteen, and that Gwen brought you to Vegas from California.”
“I wouldn’t tell anyone that!” she said, her tone panicked. “I’m eighteen and I want to be with Preston.”
Both Sloane and Gwen had done an excellent job in brainwashing the young girl. “What Preston did, what Gwen did, was against the law.” Wanting to offer Holly comfort, Nicole reached out to grab the girl’s hand.
Holly yanked her arm away, sat up in bed, and glared at Nicole. “I don’t care. I’ll do anything to be with Preston, to make him happy. He’ll find me and he’ll come for me. I know he will!”
“He’s not coming for you,” Nicole said, not wanting Holly to be under any illusions. “As soon as your parents are located, you’ll be reunited with them, and they’ll take you back home.”
Holly shook her head wildly, and tears brimmed in her eyes. “I don’t want to go back. My mother doesn’t want me. She’s never wanted me.”
It didn’t escape Nicole’s notice that Holly only mentioned the one parent, and it seemed like the relationship hadn’t been a good one. It was hard to imagine that a mother would discard a child so easily, and she wondered if Holly’s perception of what it had been like at home was somehow skewed after her time with Sloane.
“Why do you think your mother doesn’t want you?” Nicole asked. Her own parents would have come for her in a heartbeat, just as Angela’s had.
Tears ran down the girl’s cheek as memories of her past seemed to overwhelm her. “My mother was always too busy with her boyfriend of the week, and most of them were creeps. She left me alone all the time while she and whatever guy she was dating went out and partied. Sometimes, she didn’t even come home until the morning. I wanted to live with my dad, but my mom wouldn’t let me.”
“Where’s your dad?” Nicole asked, curious to know why her father hadn’t been a direct part of her life.
“He’s in the army,” she said, and swiped away the wet tears from her face. “He’s stationed in Germany. I miss him so much.”
Oh, hell. It sounded as though Holly’s home life had been a heart-wrenchingly dysfunctional one. Most likely she’d rebelled in various ways in the hope of getting just a fraction of the attention her mother gave to her boyfriends. When her attempts hadn’t worked, she’d decided to run away. And then Sloane had come along and had given her what she craved the most-attention, affection, and gifts to make her feel loved.
“I want Preston.” Holly lay back down on the bed, facing away from Nicole this time. “He loves me, I know he does,” she said, and Nicole knew Holly believed her own words.
“If Preston loved you, why was he asking you to be with other men?” Nicole asked, hoping the question would break through the girl’s stubborn mind-set. It was the same question she’d asked herself over and over, while fighting an internal struggle over Mark’s request to sleep with another man.
Holly stiffened. “Go away,” she said, choosing not to answer, probably because there was no justification for what Sloane had done to her. “I want to be alone.”
There was so much more Nicole could say to Holly to point out all of Sloane’s immoral flaws, but in the girl’s current mental state, Preston was her hero, the man who’d taken her in and had given her nice things and a false sense of security and love. Never mind that he’d also exploited her and had already started passing her around to other men. Nicole had no doubt that he would have eventually sold her off to his Russian connections for an even worse life, with no chance of ever going home again.
There was no reasoning with Holly in her current frame of mind, and it would be a waste of Nicole’s breath to continue trying. The girl required the kind of professional help that Nicole wasn’t equipped to provide, and she’d talk to Caleb to make sure she received some kind of counseling to heal her damaged emotions.
But in the meantime, she wanted to be sure the girl had someone to talk to if she needed support. She looked through the nightstand and found a pen and a notepad, then jotted down her name and her cell phone number. She ripped off the piece of paper, came around the bed and tucked it beneath Holly’s hand, then gently touched her hair, wishing there was some easy way to make all this go away for Holly. Unfortunately, there was nothing simple or easy about what the girl had been through.
Holly didn’t move or acknowledge her touch or the note she’d given her. “If you ever need someone to talk to, that’s my cell number. You can call me anytime .”
Again, Holly didn’t respond, but neither did she crumple up her phone number and toss it aside, which Nicole took as a positive sign.