Sins & Needles(71)

“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.”