Escaping Vegas (The Inheritance Book 1) (3 page)

“We?” she parroted.

“Unless I’m mistaken, you’re in a fix and need help. I’m offering.”

“You don’t even know me. Why would you want to help?”

“Why haven’t you gotten out of the car yet?” he countered. “Why haven’t you told me to pull over before now?”

Madalina’s mouth opened, then closed. No words came out. Not at first. Why
hadn’t
she gotten out of the car? They were parked right outside a busy restaurant with a ton of people nearby. She could disappear in the throng and part ways anytime she wished. But she hadn’t and, upon closer examination of her feelings, decided she didn’t want to. At least not here, in the parking lot of a restaurant. Cole, she convinced herself, was the only thing standing between her and her pursuers.

He leaned an inch closer. “I’ll tell you why. Because you need me to help get you home.”

“Once I get on a plane, I’m sure all this will go away. You can take me to the airport.” Madalina studied his eyes, picking out the flecks of fool’s gold that were more mesmerizing up close than she remembered.

“You can’t get on a plane.”

“Why not?”

“They’ll find you before you ever get on board. Going to the airport right now is suicide.”

“I didn’t drive, you know, and it’s a four-and-a-half-hour trip back to Los Angeles.”

“It’s a good thing you’ve got me, right?” He glanced out the back window, then clenched his jaw and threw the car into reverse. “Hold on.”

“What, what?” Ripped out of the moment, she gasped as the Jaguar’s tires barked against the pavement. The car shot forward.

Cole said, “They’re here.”

Cole sped onto the street, glancing in the rearview mirror. He watched a sedan bounce out of the parking lot, hot on their tail. Although he hadn’t mentioned it to Madalina, the restaurant diversion had served one purpose: to bait the Asian men, see how long it took them to make a move. Not long. Long enough, however, for him to learn a little more about the woman clutching her purse for all she was worth. Madalina, with her luxurious dark hair and pale blue eyes, feisty comebacks, and unexpected cleverness in evading the enemy, surprised him on more than one level. He’d pegged her as one of those prissy, picky women who fussed over wet nail polish like it was a matter of life or death and put diamond collars on tiny, tuck-under-the-arm kind of dogs that some people carried everywhere, even on planes. Maybe she
did
own one of those miniature pets, and perhaps she fussed over her nail polish, but she’d also proven that she could take advantage of the situation when it came to escape. It suggested she wasn’t as gullible as she seemed, nor as fragile. That she was still in his car, putting a sliver of trust in him, indicated that she took her almost-abduction as seriously as she should.

He gunned it through a yellow light and made a hard left turn, taking them farther from the Las Vegas Strip. Smaller businesses—Laundromats, bookstores, take-out pizza, barbershops—dotted the landscape away from the glamour of billion-dollar casinos. The businesses thinned, and residential areas cropped up. Nice tract homes with tall palm trees, stucco exteriors, and manicured lawns. He aimed for I-15 South, tearing up the on-ramp and onto the freeway.

Madalina turned in her seat to stare out the back window.

“Yes, they’re still back there,” he said.

“How are we going to get away? We should have stayed in town.”

“Then the police would have gotten wind, and that might have been a disaster.”

“Why? These men wouldn’t be brazen enough to attack me in front of the cops, would they?”

“They tried to abduct you right out of a casino, Madalina. What do you think?” He switched lanes, keeping a few cars between him and the pursuers. This close to the city limits, he forced himself to maintain a steady speed. Behind, he tracked the black sedan as it wove between lanes and vehicles, closing the distance little by little. After several moments of careful thought, he added, “In all honesty, I wouldn’t go to the police until we know for sure that these men don’t have inside connections. You need to stay off
everyone’s
radar until we know more.”

“That sounds like an extreme measure.”

“Trying to abduct you from a very public venue was an extreme measure, too.”

“Yes. Yes, it was,” she said quietly. A length of silence followed.

“Unless I’m mistaken, these men are agents. They’re working for
someone
—I just don’t know who. Professionals of this magnitude make it their business to have inroads to the police, politicians, and other members of society—both legal and illegal. We have to assume the worst, assume that these men can use local resources to help find you.” He gauged Madalina’s reaction to the news. Confusion and angst riddled her features.

“You all right?” he asked when she didn’t respond.

“I feel sick.”

Cole snapped another look sidelong, assessing whether she meant literally or figuratively. She had her head propped in a hand, her elbow braced on the door.

“Throw up in your purse. I don’t have a bag in here.”

“How thoughtful,” she countered in a dour voice.

“If you throw up in the car, the smell will just keep making you sick.”

“And if I throw up in my purse, it’ll stink worse, because I’m not tossing it out the window.”

“You can’t be that attached to the purse.” Maybe she
was
the prissy type.

“No, but I don’t have anywhere else to put my license and money and credit cards. And my phone, notepad—and other things.”

“No pocket in your skirt?”

“No.”

“Slide some of it into your boot.” He met her withering glance and almost laughed. Almost.

“Because that’ll be comfortable.”

“Comfort doesn’t matter. Puking in the car does.”

“I didn’t mean literally puking anyway. I mean . . . I feel sick over the whole situation. How did this happen?” she asked in a “why me” tone.

“You mentioned that nothing interesting has happened to you in a while. Now it has.”

“This is hardly interesting,” she retorted. “Horrifying, yes. Interesting? No.”

Cole tracked the sedan again as it moved a car length closer. Only two vehicles separated the Asians and the Jaguar now. He switched lanes and sped up, anxious to leave the city behind. The traffic began to thin out as the road snaked into the desert toward the state line.

“We’re going to speed up here in a minute. You buckled in?”

“Speed up? Yes.”

“We can’t lose them on this highway, so we’ll have to outrun them.”

“How did you learn to do this? Get away from pursuers, fight off attackers?” she asked, her features outlined by the glow the radio cast into the interior.

“It’s part of my day job,” he said, accelerating until the sedan fell back, the headlights growing smaller in the rearview mirror.

“Your job? What do you do? Are
you
a cop?”

He snorted. “No. I’m a personal bodyguard. It’s necessary to know how to drive well and defend yourself.”

“A
bodyguard
? Are you serious? Like for famous people?”

“More like the superrich. The ones who don’t always prefer the spotlight. Famous people are too much of a pain to deal with.”

“I’ve never met a bodyguard before.” After a moment, she asked, “Am I going to have to pay you for this? Is that why you’re helping me?”

He laughed again, a low rumble that didn’t last. “No. I’m helping you because you don’t deserve what’s happening, and because you need it. Remember?”

“I guess.”

“You don’t drink much, do you?”

“Every other Saturday night,” she said. “Just one drink, though, because I hate hangovers.”

“That makes two of us. Why every other Saturday night? Why not every weekend? Going out, I mean.” He distracted her with nonsensical details while he put more distance between them and the sedan. When they came out of a bend, he couldn’t see the sedan’s headlights at all. The speedometer read ninety-five.

“Honestly, Cole, it’s because as much as I like to go out, I wind up realizing how hard it is to find someone you really click with. Someone you can actually talk to, who doesn’t automatically want anything in return. I admit—I was doing that in Vegas. I didn’t want anything more than someone to wile away the time with while I played another round of roulette. Back home, though, it’s different. When you’re not wanting the fly-by-night boys you’ll never see again, it seems that’s
all
you attract.” She peered into the side mirror, then took a deep breath.

Cole caught her expression and the exhale in quick glimpses. He didn’t want to take his eyes off the road too long. Driving into a ditch was a real possibility here.

Not expecting Madalina to be so honest and up front, Cole considered her reply. He wasn’t the talk-to type. Cole avoided the harder truths about himself both because it was necessary and because he wasn’t looking for a long-term commitment. Finding women who didn’t want that, ultimately, was both easy and hard. He’d been burned by what he considered the fake-out—the girl who swore she was a one-night stander, no strings attached, only to sob and beg when he didn’t call back after the third night. He didn’t want to settle down, didn’t look farther into the future than tonight and tomorrow.

“I know what you mean,” he said, and it wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t how he lived his life. He was the type who wanted one thing and one thing only. If he hadn’t been so set on getting her back to California, Cole wouldn’t have hesitated to take her to bed. But he wouldn’t be drawn into deep discussions on life, children, and whether or not to purchase a house with a white picket fence.

Isn’t that what you’re doing?
He grunted at the internal thought. Yes, he was picking into her personal life, into her past.
Because he had to.

Headlights flared across the rearview mirror, drawing his attention. He glanced and glanced again, frowning when he realized the car was gaining.

The Jaguar surged, the speedometer climbing to one hundred.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

M
adalina could tell by Cole’s hesitant, cautious reply that he wasn’t the type to get deep. He wasn’t the guy to delve too far into a woman’s wants and needs, wasn’t interested in anything other than how loud he might make her scream. She had no doubt he could do exactly that, too, and chided herself for the carnal thoughts that continued to plague her. He’d offered his help, and right now, she was grateful for his intervention at the hotel. Otherwise, she might be
. . .
God knows where. What Cole did in his personal life didn’t matter one whit.

She’d had one long-term relationship, a year of heaven and hell, a year of falling hard for “the One,” only to walk in on him with another girl three days after their anniversary. Madalina had taken it hard and measured every man she went out with to the One, looking for similar traits so she could run away as fast as her legs could carry her. The problem had been that many men were adept at making her believe they wanted a serious relationship, when most only wanted easy sex until the next babe came along. Maybe she was more jaded than she realized. Maybe, too, she needed to stop looking for Mr. Right. She might be happier with men like Cole. Take the sex, the “relationship lite,” and concentrate on other things that made her happy.

“Alcohol makes me so melancholy. I hate it.” It wasn’t until Cole rumbled a laugh that Madalina realized she’d spoken out loud.

“That’s probably closer to the real reason you don’t get bombed on the weekends, huh?” he asked.

Discomfited by the turn in conversation, Madalina directed her attention to the dark landscape. The Jaguar provided such a smooth ride that it wasn’t obvious at first they were doing 105 miles per hour.

A flicker in her side mirror prompted Madalina to glance out the back window. The glare of headlights less than a quarter mile off their bumper gave her a good excuse to ignore his question. “They’re catching up!”

“That car is probably pegged out, and we’re not even close to being pegged out yet. Don’t worry. They won’t catch up. I’m just waiting until we pass the state line to really open it up.”

“You sound confident.”

“I
am
confident.”

“You must be one hell of a bodyguard.”

“I serve my purpose well enough.”

Madalina spent several moments chasing away another bout of dizziness. She might not be smashingly drunk, but the two drinks had definitely left their mark—in more than one way. The pressure on her bladder grew increasingly uncomfortable, causing her to shift in her seat and bounce a knee in distraction. Aware that there were long stretches of road beyond the state line without services of any kind, she started to fret, twisting the strap of her purse between her fingers. After a few minutes of tentative hesitation, she said, “I hate to even say this—”

“Then don’t.” He shot her a concerned frown.

“I have to use the restroom.”

“Can’t you hold it? We need to keep going.”

“I really can’t. I’m sorry.” Madalina checked the distance of the sedan, which seemed to have fallen back a few lengths, then glanced at Cole. The strong outline of his profile was pleasing to look at, she decided, not for the first time. He had a certain ruggedness about him that vied with his natural
GQ
attributes. She thought he probably looked as appealing in construction gear as he did in a tuxedo. Some men were like that, able to wear many hats and look good doing it.

Cole tapped his thumb on the top of the steering wheel. He glanced in the rearview mirror, then looked back to the road.

“Cole? I really can’t wait.”

“I heard you.”

“Can we lose them if we get off at the state line?” Madalina knew that several casinos sat on each side of the freeway, and although they weren’t nearly as glamorous as the ones in Vegas, they would suit her purpose. She understood that getting off the freeway right now would probably be risky. But her body insisted she do it—or else.

“We’re going to have to.” He shot her an impatient look and sped up. The speedometer inched toward 110, then 115.

Madalina clutched her purse with one hand and the armrest with the other. Although the Jaguar glided along as if on a current of air, there was no denying the sense that they were hurtling forward ever faster. The gloomy dunes and cliffs of the desert, jagged silhouettes in the night, blurred past the window.

“This is what we’re going to do. I’ll try to put a few cars between us so that when we get off the freeway, maybe the men in the sedan will be too far back to notice. I doubt it, but we don’t have any other choice. I’ll go to Buffalo Bill’s, because it’s across the highway on our left, and I’m hoping that if they do realize we diverted, they’ll waste time looking in the casinos on the right. I’ll drop you at the doors and find somewhere out of sight to park and wait.”

“Isn’t it a bad idea to split up?” Madalina suffered a sudden bout of angst at the thought of being parted from Cole. He might be a little abrasive and somewhat abrupt, but she
did
feel safe with him. Safer than if he dumped her off at the state line to fend for herself. Ahead, glittering lights disrupted the endless dark of the desert. The casinos were less than a mile away.

“What else do you suggest we do? We can’t waltz in there like we don’t have a care in the world. If they see us leaving the freeway, it’s going to be hell evading them anyway. I won’t have time to park and escort you in and out. We’ll be lucky if they don’t see me drop you off at the doors—which would be a nightmare, I don’t mind saying.”

Madalina closed her eyes. She’d never driven this fast in any car. If the ride hadn’t been butter smooth, she might have begged him to slow down. No longer did she want to glance at the speedometer, too afraid of what she might see. “I’ll hurry.”

“Attagirl.” He passed a car. And another. Their exit came up, and Cole swerved off the interstate.

Madalina pushed her feet into the floorboards when he didn’t slow down. “Cole . . . Cole . . .
Cole!
” They were going to flip over. There was no way he could make the left turn coming up, no way to avoid the mild flow of cross traffic at the red light. They were going to get hit broadside and wind up end over end, a ball of wreckage under the overpass.

Her pessimist tendencies obliterated the glowing optimism she’d arrived in Vegas with. So much for
Positive Thinking: The Power of Optimism
.

“Shh, shh,” he murmured.

“You can’t make this turn! Slow down!” Madalina’s heart thumped wildly in her chest—in her throat—as they flew toward the red light. Cole seemed intent but in control, as if he took kamikaze left turns at eighty miles an hour on a regular basis. She yelped in terror as he hit the brakes and yanked the wheel. The Jaguar slid into the intersection, back end swinging wide, tires barking on asphalt. The angry blare of a horn alerted her to a near miss. By some miracle, after a frantic fishtail that Cole pulled out of, the Jaguar shot forward, no longer in danger of smashing into the overpass wall. Madalina clapped a hand to her chest with relief, then shot a hot glare across the car.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said without glancing over. “I’m not the one who has to take a piss.”

“Don’t be so crass.”

“Would you rather I dress it up in fancy terms? I’m not the one who has to use the ladies’ room. Is that better?” His words dripped with sarcasm. He checked the mirrors, then sped into the Buffalo Bill’s parking lot. An enormous roller coaster spanned a good portion of the entrance, winding past trees toward the towering casino, where it appeared to arch higher than the roof. Painted a deep shade of red and designed with a western theme in mind, Buffalo Bill’s proved to be as busy as any other Vegas casino. Pedestrians walked to and fro like ants, anxious to spend their hard-earned cash. Three cars sat in front of the entrance under a broad breezeway, with room for more vehicular traffic. Cole slipped the Jaguar into the small queue, relentlessly scanning the mirrors.

“You’re going to have to find a restroom at some point during the four and a half hours it’ll take us to get home,” Madalina countered. She twined the strap of her purse around her wrist, impatiently waiting for the car ahead to pull forward.

“I’ll have lost them for sure by the time we hit Baker.”

“Do you think we’ve lost them now?” Madalina bit back a few sharp comments in favor of learning whether or not the Chinese men might be following her inside the casino.

“I think so. I don’t see the sedan anywhere back there. It’s not a sure bet, though. If they think we got off, they’ll circle back and search the area. We don’t want to be here when they do.”

“All right.” She brushed a loose lock of hair off her forehead and exited the Jaguar when Cole pulled abreast of the front doors. Feeling like she had a target on her back, Madalina entered the casino and paused briefly to get her bearings. On impulse, before she could take in too much detail, she glanced back; the Jaguar and Cole were already gone. A fissure of apprehension skittered across her shoulders, sending a swarm of goose bumps down her arms. It was a bad idea to split up. She just knew it.

The air inside the casino caressed her skin in gentle waves that blew down from unseen vents, cooling the sweat that popped up on her brow. Slot machines lined the walls and stood in majestic rows in the middle of the floor, the incessant chirp of spinning reels indicating there was no lack of serious players. Trees decorated with tiny white lights added a whimsical flair to the otherwise western theme. Spotting a sign for the ladies’ room, she cut through foot traffic and pushed inside with a sigh of relief. Despite the fact that he was a veritable stranger, Madalina couldn’t wait to be done and find Cole. The separation, only minutes old, was already straining her nerves.

She realized that she didn’t know where he lived or if he was married.
Did it matter?
There
were
people in the world who took it upon themselves to help others, those who sacrificed their time and energy, people with vast amounts of compassion and a healthy moral code.

Even grouches.

Cole didn’t
have
to drive her all the way to Los Angeles. He was doing it, in his words, because she needed and deserved help. There was something totally selfless about the act that overrode his cranky tendencies.

Washing her hands after she used the facilities and relieved her screaming bladder, Madalina yanked a few towels from the dispenser and stared at her wide-eyed reflection in the mirror. She thought she
looked
different, although she couldn’t pinpoint how. Her cheeks were flushed, but that might have been from the drinks. But it was more than that—something wizened in her expression that hadn’t been there before, a deeper layer uncovered by a life-altering event. One more notch of innocence chipped away.

Exiting the restroom, feeling as conspicuous as if a spotlight marked her trek toward the doors, she cast furtive glances at the crowd and remained alert for suspicious activity. She chided herself for not making specific, last-second plans with Cole before getting out of the car. Would he be waiting at the curb? Or was he hiding out of sight, timing his reappearance to some inner clock that let him know how long it took a woman to do her business?

A gust of arid desert heat pricked her skin the second she stepped outside. Two SUVs sat at the curb while valets unloaded luggage, and another sedan—tan, not black—pulled in behind them.

She didn’t see the Jaguar anywhere.

Madalina paced the concrete in front of the doors, anxiously surveying which sections of the parking lot she could see from her vantage point. Despite the endless flash of neon lights and the glow from a fat midsummer moon, it wasn’t easy to pick out a black car among rows and rows of vehicles.

Five minutes ticked by. Madalina didn’t know whether to retreat inside or wait there for Cole. She had an intense desire to see him again, to sink herself into the security of his presence. It was amazing, she thought, that she didn’t realize how much he’d affected her until he was gone.

What would she do if he’d abandoned her here? Left her to find her own way home, decided she was too much trouble to deal with? She had no car, no easy transportation to the airport back in Las Vegas. There were probably shuttles and taxis, although the latter would cost a small fortune. Her mother and father were traveling half a world away, and poor Lianne was sick as a dog. She didn’t want to involve them anyway until she knew what was going on. Knew how much danger she might be in. Perhaps this madness was a case of mistaken identity. The Asians had the wrong girl. Uncharacteristically, she nibbled the edge of a fingernail and darted equally hopeful and fearful looks toward every vehicle that cruised to the curb.

Fidgety and restless, she considered the idea that her assailants had found Cole and attacked him as he was getting out of the car. Crept up from behind, knocked him unconscious before he had time to defend himself. Maybe he hadn’t seen them coming.

Another minute went by. And another.

Still no sign of Cole.

Madalina worried that the unthinkable had come true.