He came running down, waving his arms. The girl’s parents were quick with excuses, ‘We couldn’t find a baby-sitter,’ the mother said, ‘we told her to wait in the car.’ They yelled at the girl but it wasn’t enough for Travis. He helped the girl to her feet, grasping her unkindly around the wrist, and he looked down at her hand. He saw the combination to the safe written on top. It was all over.”

Camden sucked in his breath and I had no choice but to power through the story. It was easier pretending it happened to someone else.

“Travis grew very quiet. For a few seconds there, he didn’t say anything. The girl had never been so terrified. The silence choked them all. Finally, he grabbed the girl by her arm, twisting it behind her back until she cried out in pain. Her parents started running down the stairs to stop him but Travis picked up a container from the shelves behind him. The girl didn’t know what it was, except that it had one of those warning labels on it. All the shelves had similar bottles, different colors, shapes and sizes. The girl had fallen into a sterile, cold basement. It almost looked like a lab but not quite. The man, Travis, threatened her parents. He said that if they told him the truth of what the girl was doing there, he’d let her go. But if they lied, he’d throw the bottle in her face.

Her parents told him the truth. The mother said she set it all up with the daughter because they were going to rob him. Because Travis deserved it. Because it was only fair. The mother didn’t say much more than that. It was enough. Travis smiled, and it looked like he was going to let the girl go. But he didn’t. Not at first. Instead he held the girl in place, and while smiling at her parents and telling them ‘thank you for your honesty’, he poured the contents of the bottle on the girl’s leg, where it ran down from her knee to the bottom of her foot. She was wearing sandals and shorts at the time. She’d never wear shorts again.”

I trailed off, realizing I had a life before all of that happened. That I had been so free and happy once. That I knew what it was like to walk down the street and not have people stare at you. I had so much potential back then and I never appreciated any of it. I never appreciated my future until it was ripped away from me.

“They never found out what chemicals were in the poison,” I told Camden before he could comment. “The doctors said it looked like battery acid or methylene chloride, which made them immediately suspicious. To them, it sounded like the girl’s parents were operating a meth lab. It made them sic Social Services on them. They asked the same questions about the accident over and over again. And over and over again, the girl had to remember her lie. That she was playing in the dump near her house, searching for car parts for her dad when she accidently kicked over a bottle of unmarked liquid and it spilled on her. The girl didn’t understand why she had to keep lying, why she couldn’t tell them the truth. It was Travis’ fault. He’s the one who did it. Why were they protecting him? But her parents just said, ‘no darling, it’s our fault.’ And so the girl would spend the rest of her life blaming all of them. She’d blame them until she died.”

The story was punctuated by an overwhelming silence. It filled the room to the brim, heavy with the truth and about to run over. Finally, after what seemed like forever, Camden sighed.

“What is it?” I asked, almost annoyed at his response.

“I don’t know what to say, Ellie,” he said sadly, “and I wish I did. I wish I had the words to take it all away. I am so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” I lied. “I’m used to it.”

“Did you ever see Travis again?” he asked.

I hesitated. But there was no point in lying anymore.

“Yes. I did. That’s why I went back to Mississippi.”

“And Javier?”

“He worked for him.”

Camden took that information and I could hear him rolling over the bed with it. He exhaled. “So now it’s all making sense. You fell in love with one of the bad guys.”

“Don’t forget though, I’m one of the bad guys too.”

He didn’t say anything, perhaps lost in thought. I settled into my bed and pressed my head into the pillow. My eyes closed, ready for sleep. As I was drifting off, I heard Camden say, soft as air, “You’re not bad, Ellie. The world is bad and you’re just trying to survive in it.”

Or maybe it was a dream.

***

When the phone rang, jarring me out of my sleep, it took me a few moments to figure out where I was. I sat up in the bed and saw Camden stirring; the sun was just starting to rise somewhere in the east. I snatched up the phone from the table between our beds, remembering I’d asked for a wake-up call.

I eyed the clock as I said, “Hello?” It was seven a.m. I thought I asked for a wake-up call at eight.

There was no one on the line, just a faint humming sound. Then a click.

“Hello?” I asked again. A tiny seed of dread was blooming in my stomach.

“Who was it?” Camden asked groggily as he turned over. He looked over at me, blinking slowly. Without his glasses he looked different. He looked good.

“I thought it was the wake-up call,’’ I said as I put the phone back on the receiver. “But they were supposed to wake us at eight.”

“Jerks,” he mumbled and rolled over. The light in the room was dim but I could see all the beautiful tattoos down his back. There was so much of him that I had yet to see and explore.

“Yeah,” I said absently. I shook my attention off of him. “Jerks.”

Still. Something had me on edge. I picked up the phone and dialed the operator.

“Yes, hello,” I said when a way too chipper woman answered. “I had a call just now to our room, room 416, and I was wondering if that was the wake-up call that I had ordered.”

She told me to wait while she tapped on her computer. “No,” she said, “we still have you here for eight a.m.”

“Uh, is there any way you can find out who just called me? Did you handle the call?”

“Just a moment,” she told me. Seconds later a man’s voice was on the phone.

“Hello?” he said.

“Yeah hi, I just had someone call my room but they hung up. I was wondering if you could tell me who it was.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “He just asked if there was an Ellie Watt there. I said yes and then he asked how long you were staying. I said two nights and then he asked to be connected.”

Oh shit.

“Is there a problem?” said the man on the line.

“Sorry, can you tell me what he sounded like?”

By now Camden was sitting up, the blanket gathered around his waist, watching me anxiously.

“He had an accent. Very faint. Maybe Mexican?”

“Thanks,” I choked out into the phone before dropping it on the table. My hands fell limp to my sides. Camden reached over, one hand keeping the blanket around his middle, and hung up the phone for me.

“Javier?” he asked.

I nodded vigorously. “Sounds like it. Yup.”

“Time to go?”

“Time to fucking go.”

We threw all our stuff together, slipped on our clothes, and ran out of our room. We took the stairs that would deposit us at the side of the building since we wanted to avoid the front desk. They had told Javier I’d be there for two nights and I wanted it to look that way for as long as it could.

The air outside was cool and clear in the early morning, and by the time we trudged across the never-ending parking lot and reached the car, the sun was above the Arizona mountains on the opposite side of the river. We piled our stuff in and sped off as quickly as we could without drawing suspicion.

“How do you think he found us?” he asked. It sounded like an innocent enough question, but it made my eyes narrow impulsively. I wanted to trust Camden, I really did.

I shook my head, bringing the car up onto the Needles Highway. “I have no idea. He has his ways.”

“So how do you know they aren’t tracking us right now with satellites and shit?” he asked. He was gripping the dashboard, his voice on edge, like he was seconds from losing it.

I tried not to laugh. “I’m not Jason Bourne. He has his ways, meaning, he has a lot of men who do his work for him. They aren’t that high tech; they don’t work for the government. He probably just figured I’d be cleaning the money this way and started calling all the casinos in the area.”

“That’s a lot of casinos.”

“He has a lot of men. That’s why next time, we’re staying under Connor Malloy’s name.”

“Next time? Where are we going?”

“Vegas, baby.”

He sat back in his chair, adjusting his glasses. “Sin City. Seems appropriate.”

We left Laughlin in a cloud of dust.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It wasn’t too long until we reached the congested Las Vegas Strip. The car ride there had been somber and quiet. Both of us were tied up in our own heads, pondering our fate. I tried to ignore the fear that Javier was out there, hunting me like a hound dog, and instead focused on our next set of actions. We needed to do this right this time. We had to pretend we were high rollers. We’d stay at a fancy hotel, we’d frequent the casinos like the Venetian, the Wynn, the Monte Carlo. We’d gamble, lose money, and laugh about it over cocktails. We’d play the perfect, rich to our tits couple. And then we’d leave.

It was crowded, glaringly sunny and warm. Everyone on the Strip was drunk and wearing clothing far too skimpy and bright for before noon. To tell you the truth, I envied them. I don’t think I’d ever gone on a vacation my whole life. I was always working, always on. It was a full-time job pretending to be someone else.

I selected where we were going to stay and pulled into the entrance of the Aria hotel. Camden craned his head to look at the tall, shiny building.

“Impressive,” he said. “I’m going to assume Connor Malloy has some money.”

“Yes, he does,” I said, parking the car at the valet. “Both of us do. We’re rich and we have a lot of money to spend here. A lot of money to win.”

He nodded in nervous agreement. We got out and I slipped the valet $500, telling him my car was a coveted collectible and needed to have extra special attention away from prying eyes. The valet enthusiastically agreed and told us he’d keep it out of sight. Good.

Once inside, we got a room under his new ID. He obviously couldn’t use his real credit card, so I decided to be Ellen Waits and slipped them my (well, her) credit card to hold the room. I thought there was no space on that card but it still went through fine.

Our room was on the seventeenth floor and beautiful. I pressed a button for the light-blocking, automatic blinds and they withdrew, leaving us a view of the pool area and the impossibly glassy hotel next door. We flopped our stuff onto the beds.

“What’s our first step?” he asked, stretching his arms behind his head. Once again, I tried to not look at the tattoos around his abs. Once again, I failed.

“Well, we’ll need to go out and get some nice clothing. I mean, really nice. High roller kind of nice. You’re going to look like James Bond.”