“So what happened?” he asked as he overtook another limo.
I rubbed my lips together, unsure how to even piece together what had just happened. It was my deepest nightmare come to life.
“I saw Javier.”
Camden went silent. “Shit.”
“Yeah. It was.”
“Fuck you!” He leaned on the horn when a cab cut us off. “How did you get away?”
“I got security involved. They nabbed him, plus Raul and Alex.”
“Do you think there are others?”
“Yes. I can bet there are.”
“Do you think it’s that white Mustang way back there?” he asked, his eyes flitting to the rear view mirror. “He just ran a red light and he’s been gaining on us.”
I couldn’t see anything out of my mirror so I turned in my seat to look out the back. Way behind in the distance was a white sports car. It was getting closer and closer, weaving in and out of traffic and clipping cars as it did so. This wasn’t a drunk driver. This was a beast coming for us.
I buckled myself in tight. “Get us out of here. Now.”
“I’ll do my best,” he growled and stepped on the gas.
Jose jolted forward, nearly rear ending the cab in front of us. Camden deftly wheeled the car around it in the nick of time and I grabbed onto the dashboard to keep myself from bouncing around. From car to car, lane to lane, we jetted in and out of the traffic. He never once let us drop speed, never once hesitated. At first I was worried that Camden wouldn’t be able to handle the car, but from the utterly determined draw to his mouth and controlled grip on the wheel, I had no doubt he knew what he was doing. The Vegas lights reflected on his glasses as we flew under the mammoth, glittering buildings.
“Do you think you can lose him?” I asked, looking over my shoulder. The car was still gaining and pulling all the same moves that we did.
“If we can get to the highway first, we can,” he told me. The lights in between Treasure Island and the Palazzo went from yellow to red and we were cars away from the intersection.
Camden grinned and gunned it. We were going for it. I covered my eyes with my hands and let out a scream as Jose shot across the intersection, running the red. I could hear horns honking, tires squealing, and the car careening over to the left. By the time I opened my eyes we were pointed straight again, leaving behind a bunch of disgruntled drivers whom we nearly collided with.
He whipped us left onto Spring Mountain Way, and with our hands clean of the Strip, the highway loomed in front of us. We were almost there.
“Motherfuckers!” Camden yelled at the rear view.
I looked behind me to see the Mustang speeding around the turn, nearly taking out a man on a motorcycle. He was still in hot pursuit and now with less traffic around us, his pursuit was growing hotter.
“I hope you weren’t kidding about that whole ‘getting to the highway first’ kind of thing,” I squeaked out. My hands were digging into my seatbelt.
“I hope I wasn’t too,” he said. We ran through another red and then rocketed up the on-ramp and onto the highway heading northeast. It was the opposite way than we needed to go but all we needed to do was focus on being alive.
Once on the highway, Camden switched gears and accelerated even more. I was thrown back, never having driven the car over one hundred miles before. Jose took the speed with ease; in fact, the car seemed to thrive on it. We were fast, going so fast. Our saving grace was that the highway had barely any cars on it.
Unfortunately this meant the mustang wasn’t far behind either.
“How are we going to lose him?” I asked. Were we just going to speed forever until the city turned to desert? Then what?
“Don’t worry about it,” he said determinedly. The car went faster.
Then we saw it. Late night construction was looming up ahead, just after the intersection with I-515.
“Shit, shit, shiiiiit,” I swore. There was no way we could run over a bunch of construction workers. The Mustang was now the closest car behind us. I wondered if they’d be stupid enough to start shooting, then I remembered I had my gun in the back and wondered if I’d be stupid enough to start shooting back.
“Ellie,” Camden said, his hand hovering over the gearshift, his polished cufflinks glinting in the city lights. “Hold on. And don’t scream.”
My eyes went wide.
He slammed on the brakes suddenly and we immediately went into a spin over the burning smell of rubber. Round and round we went as the car spun toward the edge of the highway.
I screamed.
Somehow, before we hit the concrete barricade and flipped over to our fiery deaths, the car jammed to a stop and shot forward. I nearly hit my head on the dash and gripped it for dear life as the world still spun inside my head.