Whitley and I fell silent, waiting for the incoming bomb to explode.
“Hello, Camden,” Katherine said evenly. As if she were hardly interested in his presence.
But he brushed right past her indifference and took her arm. “We need to grab Court and get you home and safe.”
Her eyes rounded only slightly. “Home? You want me to leave?”
“No, you’re coming with me. Where you belong.”
We all gaped at him. Ever since the party, they’d been living apart. As far as I knew…they weren’t even speaking, except at public events where they would be photographed together. Their secret was out about the arranged marriage and his mistress. So, they kept up appearances to a certain extent. But this was altogether different.
“I don’t understand,” Katherine said softly. Honest confusion in her voice.
“I just got a tip from a detective that I know. He said that if I was at this party, then I needed to get out now,” Camden said. “This place is about to blow up.”
I gasped. “A raid?”
He nodded once, not taking his eyes from Katherine’s face. “I need to get you out of here.”
I could see everything roil through her. He was worried about her. About Katherine and not Fiona. Was this a gimmick? Or real?
We didn’t have time to worry about it. If a police raid was about to hit the party, we needed to get the hell out of here.
“I’m going to get Court,” I gasped.
Fuck, English was going to kill me. This wasn’t supposed to happen while she was a thousand miles across the ocean.
I dashed into the crowd, heading toward the table where Court had planted his ass in front of the entire night. He had a sizable number of chips in front of him. He was not going to like having to move. I could already tell that he was drunk. Just by the set of his shoulders. Sometimes, he was so like Penn that it was scary.
“Court, we have to go,” I said, grabbing his arm.
He didn’t even glance at me. He just brushed me aside with the grin of someone who was beating the odds. “Can’t leave. I’m on a roll.”
“Camden said now,” I growled. “Right now.”
“Camden can fucking shove it,” he said with a lackadaisical attitude.
I got right up in his face, obscuring his view of the cards. “Now, Court.”
“Lark, what’s the big fucking deal?”
I leaned in, speaking softly into his ear, “Camden got a tip that the place is about to be raided. We need to get you out of here now, or we might all get arrested.”
Court reeled back, losing some of his cool. “Fuck. Can I cash my chips in?”
I shook my head, glancing uneasily over my shoulder. I grabbed his arm again and tried to all but drag him out of his seat. “Come on.”
“Fine, fine.” He lovingly stared down at the chips. “I’m out, boys. Duty calls. Free-for-all on my chips.”
The guys laughed, clearly thinking I was dragging him away for nefarious purposes, but I couldn’t even care. We needed to go. The last thing that could happen was Court Kensington getting arrested. It would spell defeat for Leslie and the campaign and me and English…and everything I’d been working toward. I felt suddenly very sober at the prospect.
As soon as Court and I were away from the table, Camden began to lead Katherine and Whitley away. I followed him, guiding an incredibly, stupidly drunk Court toward them. They must have been pumping him full of alcohol for him to barely be able to keep his feet under him. I didn’t know how he’d been fucking winning while he was this intoxicated. Unless the game was stacked in his favor to get him to keep coming back. That sounded like something Thomas would do. Get the big dogs to win a lot on their first night and then start clearing them out.
I shook my head. I’d probably never know. And right now, I had bigger things to deal with.
“Where are we going?” I asked when I finally caught up to the others.
“Camden knows a back way out,” Katherine said.
“How?”
Katherine shrugged one shoulder. “He’s Camden Percy.”
Yeah, that was answer enough, I supposed.
I felt chased by an invisible force. As if, at any moment, the police would burst in through all of the doors and put handcuffs on us. Everything would go down in flames. My stomach was in knots, the buzz I’d had vanished, and I just half-dragged, half-hustled Court toward the alternate exit that Camden was leading us toward.
No one stopped us. No one asked why we were all leaving, where we were all going in the first place. And still, anxiety warred through me.
The anticipation kicking into overdrive.
This wasn’t who I was. Not anymore.
I’d done enough in high school to warrant running away from the cops. We’d snuck out and gotten drunk and high and skinny-dipped and on and on. Enough that was horrible. Enough that was just stupid. I hadn’t missed this feeling. Like I was in a free fall, and soon enough, I would get caught.
Wasn’t this half the reason I’d given up Bad Lark before? I might have come to terms with her today when I was taking down Thomas, but I didn’t want this to be my life. I didn’t want that anxiety of wondering if…when I was going to get caught. It had poisoned my relationship with Sam the first time around. I didn’t want to do it again. And yet, he was doing enough bad all on his own.
I’d been so happy since we’d been together. Jumped the gun and used the L-word, even asked him to move in with me. Stupid.
I should have expected the worst. Should have thought the bottom would fall out. Like it always did.
Because I was the girl who was out of everyone’s league. Who could ever leave me? Except everyone.
Fuck.
My fears were really ramping up as we hurried out of the back exit and into a deserted alley. I couldn’t focus on Sam right now. I just needed to get us away and find a way for us to get home.
That was when I heard the sirens.
“Fuck,” I gasped.
Camden seemed unperturbed. “This way.”
He led us down the alleyway and out onto the main street. I had no idea where we were. I didn’t know this area of town like I did the Upper East or Midtown or even SoHo. I swallowed as our group hurried and yet tried to look casual, moving down the street in cocktail dresses and thousand-dollar suits.
The sirens were getting louder. I glanced over my shoulder once, just once, and saw the cars zooming toward us. I wanted to pick up my pace but worried it’d look suspicious. They were coming for the party, not us.
Camden finally stopped. “This is far enough.”
He gestured at a brightly lit diner with a sign that simply read Waffles. The inside looked like a typical sixties-era diner with red booths along the walls, a diner bar at the back, and cheap tables along the middle. A jukebox played music. I could see a collection of framed photos declaring them the best waffles in the city for the last three years. I wondered who had actually voted in that.
Katherine wrinkled her nose. “You expect me to go in there?”
“This is as good of a place to wait until I can get my driver out of that mess to pick us up,” Camden said. He yanked the door open and held it for her.
To my surprise, Katherine just walked right inside. I’d never seen her in a diner before. She didn’t do food with calories very often.