The New Syllabus Ch 13

Baja Bound

The cool night air did little to soothe the racing pulse in Kelly Taylor’s chest. She and Colin Robbins stood at the far edge of the dim, asphalt parking lot, the distant hum of the freeway cutting through the silence. Outside, her life was a smoldering ruin. Her dealership was destroyed, her old friends like Brandon were writing articles defending the very people terrorizing her, and she was being hunted as a corporate saboteur just for speaking her mind.

"Everyone is against us, Kel," Colin whispered, his eyes burning with that familiar, intense desperation as he reached out to hold her trembling hand. "Brandon is protecting Jasper. The whole world wants to blame you for this campus war. Let's just go. Leave the contracts, leave the fights, leave Beverly Hills behind."

Kelly looked at her hand in his, her heart fracturing in her chest. She clutched her purse tighter against her side, her thumb brushing against the phone in her pocket. "Colin, I can't. My husband... I can't just leave him. He doesn't deserve this."

"He isn't the one standing in the line of fire right now, Kelly. You are," Colin urged, his voice dropping to a fierce, protective whisper as he looked around the exposed parking lot. "They are coming for you. Beverly Hills will chew you up and spit you out to protect their own interests. Just come with me. For a little while. Just to breathe."

Kelly looked around the empty, dark asphalt, his words echoing in her mind. The constant pressure, the corporate intimidation, the endless cycle of Beverly Hills drama, and the feeling of being utterly abandoned by the people she grew up with—she was completely done with it.

"You know what? Screw the world," Kelly said, her voice shifting into a hard, defiant register. She gripped her purse tightly, ensuring her phone was secure, and looked directly into his eyes. "Let's go, Colin. Right now."

They climbed into his car, the engine roaring to life, and slammed the doors shut. Within seconds, they tore out of the parking lot, vanishing into the night.

By midnight, the fallout in Los Angeles had reached a fever pitch.

At the Walsh house, Brandon’s phone rang off the hook. It was Kelly’s husband, completely frantic, his voice cracking with panic as he explained that Kelly had never come home and her car was still parked at the vandalized Van Nuys lot. Brandon tried calling Kelly directly, but it went straight to voicemail—she had completely powered it down the second they hit the interstate. Brandon immediately dialed Steve Sanders, who was currently sitting at his kitchen table, enduring the absolute ice-cold fury of his wife.

Janet hadn't left, but she was completely pissed. She paced the kitchen floor, throwing a stack of the Hunter Oil corporate contracts onto the counter, her eyes shooting daggers at Steve, who sat sweating profusely in his gold-and-black studio tracksuit.

"Steve, Kelly’s missing," Brandon barked over the line, his political instincts completely overridden by panic. "Her husband is losing his mind. Have you heard from her?"

Steve looked up at a glaring Janet, his voice shaking with exhaustion. "Brandon... it's a mess. Noah Hunter just called me. He told me his people spotted Kelly earlier tonight. Brandon, she wasn't alone. She was with Colin Robbins."

"Colin?" Brandon's jaw dropped. He didn't ask how Noah knew, and he had no idea Ray Pruit had been the one to tip Noah off. All Brandon knew was that Kelly was with a volatile piece of her past.

Fueled by his old investigative instincts, Brandon didn't sleep. He bypassed the police, spending the next three hours pulling favors, digging into transit logs, and monitoring highway traffic cameras heading south toward the border. By 4:00 AM, the ugly truth flashed across his computer monitor. A black sedan registered to Colin Robbins had officially cleared the San Ysidro border crossing hours ago.

They had bailed to Mexico.

Three hundred miles south, the chaotic noise of California University felt a lifetime away. Inside a sprawling, high-end luxury resort villa overlooking the Pacific in Baja, the sound of crashing waves echoed off pristine white walls.

On the marble nightstand, Kelly's designer purse sat next to her darkened, powered-off phone. On the massive king-sized mattress, Kelly and Colin lay completely passed out, their arms tangled together in a messy, destructive embrace. Kelly's eyes were closed, her face finally free of the rigid tension that had suffocated her back home. She had escaped the Vances, she had escaped the toxic campus politics, and she had run away from her marriage. She was completely off the grid, hidden away in a paradise coastal town with the most dangerous man from her past.

Back in Los Angeles, the powered-down phone remained silent in the dark, leaving a fractured family behind.