“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.”