You know that feeling you get when you're running up the stairs, and you trip once? You think you're recovered, but then you trip again and again and again all the way up the stairs until you crash at the top? That's how it felt after all of the work I put in, and everything I had been through to see Ava being taken away in the ornate, black car.

I watched as the car screeched out of the gas station's parking lot, my gun dangling in my hand, my other hand resting on my head as I stared on in disbelief. The muffled voices behind me were just troublesome white noise. My ears were still ringing from the sound of the obstreperous guns.

Brams suddenly yanked my shoulder and turned me around. I stared wide eyed into his as he looked into mine. His lips were pursed into a tight line as his brows threatened at his eyelids. He stared at me as though he had said something and was expecting an answer. I had not heard him say anything, so how could I possibly have given him one?

"Let's go!" he screamed angrily at me.

I blinked, and it was as though, all of a sudden, my mind bounced back from wherever it was before to where it now needed to be.

My nostrils flaring with asperity, I lowered my head and let my eyes stay stationary so my lids touched my brow bones. I was, to say the least, furious. Once again, I felt out of control. Just as things were finally going my way again, a third party just had to come in and interrupt. How rude.

I turned around with certainty as I dashed towards Gomez's sloppy looking car, Brams close on my heels. Gomez already had the engine running, Jack and Dennis in their seats ready to chase the bastards that took Ava. Brams and I practically dove into the car as Gomez peeled out of the gas station, hardly giving us enough time to shut the door behind us.

"What the hell just happened?" Gomez screamed from the driver's seat as he looked at Brams and me in disbelief in the rearview mirror.

"It was Sean!" I screamed, applying pressure to my arm where I had landed on after I thrust myself into the car. "I'm pretty sure RJ was in there with him."

Gomez began muttering Spanish curses under his breath, as he usually did when he was agitated and frustrated, his eyes moving rapidly as he looked down into his lap. His mind was going at a million miles a minute, his violent eye movement a key factor to that. He was thinking as quickly and as rationally as he could without losing time.

"We lost them!" Dennis exclaimed from the front seat, throwing his hands up in anger. I leaned to the left and looked out the windshield. The maniac was right; the black car had disappeared into the distance.

"Not now, Dennis!" Brams scolded, rubbing his ears. They must still have been ringing from the violent gun fire that had just ensued.

"Is this not the way that we were originally headed?" Jack asked from the backseat, sitting all the way to the left on the driver's side. I turned my head to look at him, his milky eye staring straight ahead. He was a little too calm for my taste, a little too rational. His zen seemed to get on my nerves. What was this guy, a murdering, Buddhist Magician?

Gomez looked up from his lap, swerving to the side of the road, for he had been drifting slightly, jerking us all back with him. Probably not the smartest thing to do in a car full of diagnosed psychopaths. We all glared at him coldly, but he continued to look ahead at the road.

"Yes, this was the way we were going."

"Where even were we headed to?" I asked incredulously. I had a habit of blindly following Gomez wherever he took me. Last time I did that, Ava got taken from us. And it was happening again. Almost as if it were a pattern...

"Gomez, where are we going?" I repeated, harsher this time, hardly even waiting for an answer the first time.

"Sin City," he answered, looking behind his shoulder at me to toss a glare at my impatience. "We're going to Las Vegas."

The four of us psychos looked at each other in slight confusion. "Vegas?" Brams asked with an eyebrow lift, taking Gomez's answer as a joke. "You're kidding me, right?"

"No," Gomez answered, leaving the rest of us silent in shock. "No, I'm not kidding. My hermana and abuelo are living there, in a quiet neighborhood a little ways out of the city. It will be a good hide out until we can figure out where they took Ava and go in to rescue her."

"How do you know that they won't just track us down?" Brams asked. "They probably have a hidden agenda. They were obviously after Ava before, as we know from yesterday's incident, but don't the two of you have beef with these guys?" He gestured toward me and Gomez.

"Yeah," I answered. "If, in the likely event that RJ isn't dead, I'm sure he would want to get back at me for almost killing him." I looked up sharply. "But what if that means he'll hurt Ava to, in turn, hurt me?"

"Oh, so you do still care about Ava?" Gomez asked in a bratty tone.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked, my volume rising with each word, torso straightening.

"You've treated her like shit since we've gotten her back, as far as I can tell," he answered.

"That's not true! I love her!" I shouted, angry that Gomez would challenge my infatuation for the fair girl.

"The meth you've been taking has already started taking its toll on your mind," Gomez muttered. "As if your mental state wasn't unstable enough..."

I shrunk back in my seat as I realized he was right. I had treated Ava poorly. She probably thought I hated her.

"Well, now we just have to get her back, so that I can apologize and we can move on with our lives."

"That's...the plan..." Gomez replied, confused as to why I had just stated the obvious.

I kept leaning in my seat but straightened my back a bit as I let out a sigh of relief. A strange sense of confidence took over my nerves, calming me down. For the first time that day, I let my eyes shut, for I knew that I would wake up more exhilarated than ever to find the girl that I loved.

~*~*~*~*

YOOOOOO ITS BEEN SO FUCKING LONGGGGG

I wanted to update today in honor of the 1 year anniversary of Outlier being online! And I've barely even made a godamn dent in it and I'm so fucking sorry for that! Looking back, I finished Outlawry in like 4 months and that was a huge accomplishment and it just makes me sad that in a year I've only gotten 18 chapters done for the sequel.

I have not forgotten about the series, I am working on a notebook full of character development and a timeline, I'm already planning new characters for the final book, and how I want the prequel to go. I am rewriting the first book so that the writing is up to par and hopefully extending the length of the book itself by about 10-20 pages.

My life has been crazy, I'm doing part time school at the HS and part time at the university in my town and it's extremely stressful. I am, however, now president of our school's creative writing club so I will hopefully have more time to brainstorm about where I want this book to go!

Thank you so much for your patience, I'm sorry this long waited update was so short! I'm inspired to write this story again and will be updating very soon. See u all soon!