Sins & Needles (The Artists Trilogy #1) (27 page)

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 s
unny 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.”

“Does James Bond wear glasses?”

“If he does, they’re probably x-ray vision. You’ll have to pretend.”

He grinned,
the first smile I’d seen on him in a while. “I don’t need x-ray vision. Now that I’ve seen you naked, I can picture it real well.”

I rolled my eyes and started going through the bags and sorting stuff. Yep, I’d have to get a whole new wardrobe. And my boots would definitely not do.

Camden walked over to the window and gazed out of it. His broad shoulders and narrow torso made quite a compelling silhouette. “Isn’t it a bit early in the day to go gambling?”

“We’ll go tonight.”

“What are we going to do until then?” He turned his head and looked at me.

I shrugged. “There’s a lot to we have to do.”

“We’re going to the pool,” he said, and walked away from the window, brushing past me.

“What? We can’t go to the pool!”

He fished out a wad of cash from his suitcase and put it in his wallet. “Why not?”

“Because. This isn’t a vacation, Camden.”

He folded his arms. “I know it’s not. But we don’t have much else to do and I’m not sitting in the hotel room. Come on, I’m tired and I probably stink. I want a shower, I know you do too. I want to go to the pool for an hour and relax. What’s wrong with that?”

“Uh, everything,” I told him. “We don’t get to relax. We’re on the run.”

“You’ve been on the run practically your whole life,” he said, stepping closer to me.

“Yeah, so?”

“So, I think you need to rethink the way you’re doing things. It’s just an hour.”

Now it was my
turn to cross my arms. We did have the time. I did feel gross from the day’s journey. It would probably do me good to just try to relax and clear my mind. But, aside from the fact that there’s no way I could relax knowing Javier was out there…I hated swimming pools. It sounds dumb, but when you’ve tried your hardest not to show your deformity in public, you tend to avoid situations where your pants are off. Other than as a child, I’d never even owned a bathing suit.

I looked at the clock on the wall. “Ok
ay, you go down and I’ll join you soon.”

He pursed his lips in suspicion. “You promise?”

I nodded. He snapped his key off the desk and strolled out of the room. Once he was gone, I fell back onto the bed for a few minutes. I didn’t understand how Camden could be so relaxed about everything. Lying by the pool? How the hell could you lie by the pool when you knew there were men looking for you? I mean, they weren’t looking for him specifically, but still.

I started to get anxious again. What if he
was acting all cool because he was setting me up? What if he asked me to go to the pool on purpose? He knew about my scars. He knew I wouldn’t do it. He knew I wouldn’t come down. What if he was planning something with Javier right now? I’d be a sitting fucking duck.

“I’ll show you,” I said out loud. I grabbed my purse and everything I needed to run then headed out the door. After the elevator and walking through half the hotel, I found the level for the pool and stormed out into the overbearing sunshine. It was so damn white I felt like I was in my own hell disguised as heaven. The waitresses were in white, the towels were white, the chairs were white. The pool was such a pale blue that even it seemed white. My eyes were burning until I slipped on my shades.

It was a big area with lots of pools to choose from. I had no idea where Camden could be or if he was even there, but it was worth checking first. I stayed along the wall where the change rooms were, observing everyone—buff frat boys, fat tourists, screaming children, bachelorette parties. Finally I spotted him on the opposite side of the largest pool. He was alone and reading a book, although a few chairs down there were a bunch of bodacious blondes who were tanning their oiled asses. He kept sneaking glances at them and I choked back the streak of bitterness that zipped through me. Now I was jealous of any girl Camden looked at? I was officially going insane.

I decided to chance it. I walked around the pool, as casually as possible, as if most women in Vegas wore combat boots, jeans and a slightly dirty tank top to go sun
-tanning.

I stopped in front of his chair, unabashedly admiring his physique under the security of my sunglasses. Fuck, damn. He looked good. And those bikini babes he kept glancing at, well they were certainly checking him out, too. When they saw me, they glared a little. I glared right back. Too bad they couldn’t see it.

“Hey,” I said to him.

He slowly tore his eyes from his book, a new hardcover of Neil Gaiman’s latest
, and broke into a grin when he looked up. I nearly melted. It was hot out.

“I hoped you
would come,” he said, patting the chair beside him. I smiled a bit too smugly for the other girls’ benefit, and with that same smile, did a quick sweep of my surroundings. So far, so good. No one walking toward me like T-1000.

I hovered for a second, watching a bead of sweat travel down the ridge of his abs before sitting down. He picked up a plastic shopping bag and placed it in my lap.

“That’s for you,” he said.

I peered inside. ”What is it?”

“Take it out and look.”

If it was a bomb, I was going to
be very upset.

“I bought myself some swim shorts since I forgot to pack any. I knew you probably didn’t own
a swimsuit.”

I held it in my hands like it was a baby (and, just for reference, I hold babies like they are snakes). It was a bikini, pale yellow with adjustable triangles. Not the most modest-looking thing but it had more coverage than the bikini babes. I’d never wear it in a million years.

I smiled tightly, trying to coax out some appreciation. “It’s lovely, Camden. But I don’t think I’m going to go swimming.”

I began to put it back in the bag but he suddenly reached over and grabbed my wrist. Hard. I’d been fearing the bikini when I should have been fearing him.

“You can’t just sit here in your jeans and boots, Ellie,” he said. He was startlingly serious.

“Yes I can,” I told him. My eyes darted around. His tone was making me more nervous.

His grip tightened and I tried to pull back but he held me in place. He leaned over and pulled down his sunglasses. “You’re wearing the bathing suit. There’s no reason for you not to.”

I frowned at his hand over my wrist. “Yes
, there is a very good reason,” I hissed, “and you know exactly what it is. You tried with the mini-skirt, and this definitely isn’t any better.”

“You need to get over your fears. You need to stop caring what people think,” he said.

“I don’t have to do a single thing you say,” I shot back.

He jerked me toward him and I let out a gasp.
He didn’t hurt me but he was acting irrational. I looked around to see if anyone had seen. The bikini babes were sitting up and watching us with concern. I might need their help after all.

He leaned into my face and peered at me, searching for something and being angered by what he found. “You have to do everything I say. I don’t care if it was your idea to leave Palm Valley, your idea to come here, your ex-boyfriend who is coming after you. You keep forgetting that you’re really here because of me. You keep forgetting that I own you.”