It’s only a second. Sunglasses, lipstick, that profile. It looks like her. It feels like her. The man’s hand tightens,and he pivots, angling his body between us and her. A black limo yawns open at the curb like a mouth.
“Cammie!” I call again. The name catches air and breaks.
The man steers her—no, drags her—inside. The door thumps shut. Tinted glass eats her whole.
“Cammie?” Izzy asks, breathless. “Where?—?”
“There.” My finger is already up, pointing at the car easing into traffic.
“Got it,” Lexy announces, satisfied. She’s already moving, one knee on the planter for height, phone up, shutter staccato. “Plate, side camera, front cam. We’ll figure it out.” She drops back down. “I’ll give it to Leo.”
“Are you sure it was her?” Gigi asks, scanning the street like she can summon the car back with will alone.
“It did look like Cammie,” Izzy says, softer. “But—it was so far. I can’t be sure.”
I don’t take my eyes off the departing limo. I know the way my friend moves. The tilt of her head when she’s calculating. The way she holds her purse strap when she’s pretending she isn’t hurt. Even through glass, even across a river of tourists, my bones know her.
“It was her,” I say. My voice doesn’t shake.
The car fades into the glare and is gone.
“Let’s go, ladies,” one of the guards says, hand inside his suit jacket, the other tapping his earpiece twice. The formation tightens without feeling crowded. “We’re moving.”
“Eyes up,” the second adds, scanning rooftops, reflections, shadows under the awnings. Their bodies sayno one gets cute on our watch.
I force myself to breathe. In for four. Out for four. The Strip returns in pieces—the hiss of the Bellagio fountains, the clatter of souvenir keychains, a woman laughing three octaves too high. It all feels wrong now. Tilted.
Lexy is already swiping on her screen. “Plate’s clean—too clean. Rental with a shell owner. I'm sending it to Leo anyway.” She fires off the text and pockets the phone. Her eyes slide to me. “We’ll get something. We always do.”
Violet squeezes my fingers. “We’ll find her,” she says. There’s steel under the softness; I believe her.
Gigi blows out a breath, like she’s trying to push the image out of her lungs. “If that was Cammie,” she says, “we'll get her back.”
The guards herd us forward, not rushing, just insisting. People are still staring at us, more than before, after the spectacle we made. The boulevard swallows us the way it swallows everything—noise on noise. I look back once and see nothing but heat and chrome.
On another day, we’d keep shopping and call it therapy. Not today. Today, a shadow reached across the sun and laid a hand on the girl who used to be my friend.
“Lexy,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“If it was her… he grabbed her like she was his.”
Lexy’s mouth goes thin. “Then he made a mistake in front of the wrong women.”
We cut off the Strip into cooler air—hotel marble, conditioned wind, the faint smell of lilies. The guards fan at the thresholds, a human hive, and we move through.
Gigi bumps my shoulder. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I say, and manage a smile that doesn’t quite fit. “I’m okay.”
“I know,” she says. “I just hate the way the world keeps trying to prove it isn’t.”
Violet leans on the rail for a heartbeat, catching her breath, color returning. Izzy adjusts her bag; Cat is staring off. She has no love for Cammie, who tormented her for years, just for the fun of it. Or so she thinks.
"It wasn't always what you thought," I start.
"Look, I get it. You were all friends." There is no accusation in her voice. "But honestly, whatever happened to Cammie, she deserves it." Now I hear a hint of venom.
