Page 42 of The Scenic Route
After taking a sip of her drink, Felicity rotated on her stool to survey the crowd again. After her earlier thoughts, she felt guilty enough to redirect her attention to their original goal—bringing in Dino. People were thick by the bar, though, and her seated position made it even harder to see over everyone’s heads. Customers crowded in on both sides and even behind her, trying to get the bartender’s attention. Even more grateful for the buffer of Bennett, she leaned into his enveloping warmth.
In turn, he placed an arm around her, tucking her closer to him. Giving up on looking for Dino and Clint for a moment, she allowed herself to enjoy his closeness, closing her eyes and tipping her head against a chest that was too hard to be comfortable, but she still didn’t ever want to move.
Shouting made Bennett tense, and Felicity lifted her head, scanning the crowd as well as she could until her gaze landed on the source. A fight had broken out at the end of the bar,four guys who were pounding on one another in an apparently indiscriminate way.
“I don’t get it,” Felicity said, craning her neck to see better. “Who’s on whose side? Or are they all on their own sides?”
“Think they’re too drunk to know whose side they’re on.” Bennett shifted so his body was between her and the fight. When she raised an eyebrow at him, he pretended he didn’t see it.
“Unless they have go-go-gadget arms, I’m not getting hit by a stray punch all the way over here.”
He set his jaw, although a flush crept up to his cheekbones. “Someone might throw something or pull a weapon.”
“That’s true, I suppose.” The bouncer hadn’t even looked at their IDs, much less checked them for weapons. A good chunk of the crowd had to be packing.
She leaned around Bennett so she could see the fight. Two bouncers fought their way through the gawking crowd, and each grabbed two of the men by the backs of their necks or their shirts, pulling them away from each other. Once separated, the men were quickly marched toward the exit.
“That was a Vegas bar fight?” Felicity asked, slightly disappointed as she turned back to her drink. “I’ve seen worse at the grocery store in Langston when they’re having a sale on avocados.”
Bennett’s chest shook with laughter, and she leaned into him again, idly people watching as she finished her drink. Although she’d always kept an eye out for Dino, the people within her view had stayed blessedly skip-free. The fight, as pathetic as it’d been, had been the most excitement she was going to get, andthe crowd provided little entertainment. Glancing at Bennett’s glass, she saw his water was gone. Time to get back to work. With a sigh, she made herself slide off her barstool.
“Better get to it…oh.” Her feet hit the ground, and her knees folded, wanting to drop her on the sticky floor. Stiffening her legs, she grabbed the edge of the bar with one hand and Bennett’s arm with the other. She looked up at him, and he matched her grim expression with one of his own. Her eyes darted back to where their empty glasses had sat just a second ago, but they’d already been swept away by a bar back. “You too?”
Bennett dipped his head in a short nod. “Let’s go.”
The sibilant sound of hisswas drawn out an extra fraction of a second, and her heart began to beat faster. They’d both been drugged, and things could get really bad, really fast. She released her grip on the bar and his arm, instead taking his hand. Although she’d just been daydreaming about having some drinks with Bennett, that was some vague time in the future, when everything was wrapped up and they’d be safe. Now was not the time to be vulnerable.
She looked over at the bartender, her number one suspect, but a woman had taken his place serving drinks. Felicity’s suspicions increased, but Bennett tugged at her hand, reminding her that they had other priorities right now. Bringing whoever spiked their drinks to justice could wait until the drug had made its way out of her and Bennett’s systems and their brains and bodies were working normally again.
The floor felt wavy under her feet, but she gritted her teeth and charged through the crowd. When she stumbled, Bennetttook the lead, and that was easier. She moved in his wake as he barged through the crowd, using his body like a snowplow to make a path through the mass of people. It felt like forever before the door loomed before them.
Felicity felt the back of her neck prickle, and she turned her head to look behind her while clinging to Bennett’s hand to keep her balance. In the shifting crowd, a familiar face smirked at her.
“Dino,” she said as Bennett pulled her through the doorway into the blessedly cool outside air. “B, we need to go back. Dino’s right there.”
“Can’t get him now.” Bennett looked furious, but she knew it wasn’t directed at her.
The logic of what he’d said took a few seconds to sink in, but when it did, a burst of fear detonated in her chest. She and Bennett had turned from the hunters to the hunted after being dosed. “We have to get out of here.”
The bouncer watched them leave, sneering, and her paranoid drugged mind wondered if he was in on it. Then his face blurred, and she doubted everything she was seeing, not sure what was imagination and what was reality. Bennett tugged on her hand, and she hurried to keep up, fighting to keep her too-soft knees from folding underneath her and dumping her on asphalt that smelled of pee, gasoline, and vomit.
It wasn’t until they reached her car that their predicament really dawned on her. There was no way either of them could drive right now. They’d kill someone—and themselves. Felicity pulled out her phone with numb fingers. “I’ll get a Lyft.”
“No time.”
Felicity followed his gaze, trying to turn her head but forgetting how, so she ended up rotating her whole body. Once her spinning vision settled slightly, she saw Dino emerging from the bar with Clint close behind him. “We should run, shouldn’t we? Yes, let’s run.” Without waiting for a response, she took off as fast as her rubbery knees would carry her.
She was still holding Bennett’s hand—or maybe she’d never let him go—and she was glad for the connection. Her balance felt precarious, so she didn’t want to try to turn her head to look at him. Instead, she relied on the firm press of his fingers to let her know he was right there with her.
Behind them, she heard a shout, and she knew they were being pursued. The cars on the road flew by in blinding streaks of headlights, and Felicity had enough presence of mind to not attempt to cross the road in her current state. Instead, she locked her eyes on the neon sign a few buildings down on the same side of the street as the bar they’d just left. The curly letters readDinner—no,Diner, she corrected herself. Clutching Bennett’s hand, she ran with everything she had.
There was acrackjust as a line of fire burned across the side of her calf. A mental image of Dino’s gun flashed in her mind, and Felicity dodged sideways, crashing through a sand sagebrush into a laundromat’s parking lot. She wasn’t sure if she’d dragged Bennett through the shrub or if he pulled her, but it didn’t matter. They were both still upright and running and alive…for now.
Bennett pulled out in front of her, and she was vaguelyoffended by that.It’s the roofie, she told herself, even as her brain was screaming at her to stop obsessing about their relative running speeds and focus on getting away. The competitive part of her mind wouldn’t shut up though. Once she was no longer drugged, she decided, she’d challenge him to a trail race.Let’s see who’s faster in my territory, she thought smugly, just before her toe caught on the pavement and she headed for the ground, face-first.
Somehow, the running-while-roofied gods were with her, and she managed to get her feet under her again before she ate asphalt. Once she regained her sprinting rhythm, she looked up to find the neon sign again and discovered it was right above their heads.
Bennett must’ve had the same plan as she did, because he yanked her right through the front door of the diner. The brightly lit interior made her squint a little, but she was happy to see that more than half of the red and white booths were filled, as were a handful of the shiny Formica tables. Surely their pursuers wouldn’t walk barefaced into a place with dozens of witnesses and almost as many cell phone cameras to continue shooting at them.
