Shooting Scars: The Artists Trilogy 2 (12 page)

Javier stood at the end of the hall, white pants, white shirt, looking like the devil in a snowbank. “Angel, this is Mexico. And you’re an American. They wouldn’t even look at your ID. I, on the other hand … well I’m pretty sure it won’t be so easy.”

“So we’re crossing the Rio Grande against the flow?”

“That’s messy,” he said. He took a step forward to take the bag from me, but I held on tightly and yanked it out of his reach. He glared ever so slightly, then turned on his heel and went down the stairs.

“We’ll be crossing over in style,” he tossed over his shoulder and headed out the front door, held open by the burly man who I think was called Carl or Carrell. It was hard to tell with his accent sometimes.

I followed, the bag dragging behind me. Outside the air was bright and airy, like it wanted to fool me again with that whole vacation feeling. Palm trees and live oak waved in the breeze, a very picturesque scene that people never thought could happen in Mississippi. Even though my years in the state were full of emotional turmoil, there was a beauty here than most people overlooked. For me, the beauty had turned a shade deadly.

The SUV was roaring in the driveway with Javier climbing in the back seat. Oh joy, I was going to be trapped with him again. That peculiar kind of fear, the one that made me wince with disgust, came trickling down my neck. Or maybe that was sweat. The temperature was unseasonably hot.

Raul took the bag from me and tossed it in the trunk, then held the back door open like he was the perfect gentleman. I suppose I could have been thankful that it was Javier I had to sit with, not Raul, but a creep is a creep.

I hopped in, buckled my seatbelt lest Javier try and do it for me, and leaned against the armrest on the door. Every part of me was crammed up away from him. He wasn’t trying to get close but the scene from the kitchen earlier was still fresh in my mind. I did not want to feel his breath on me ever again. The memories and the reality did not jive.

After we were driving for a few minutes and notably not taking the highway, I had to ask, “Isn’t Mexico in the other direction?”

“Patience, my angel,” he said, his eyes glued to the front of the car, a small smile on his face.

I didn’t have fucking patience, especially when he kept calling me
that
name but I had to remind myself the more I gave, the more he wanted. I bit down on my lip to keep quiet and brought my cardigan around me, for modesty’s sake and to ward off the Arctic air-conditioning.

Ten minutes later we were pulling up to yet another familiar place. The marina where Javier used to keep his sailboat. Another disturbing trip down memory fucking lane.

I suppressed a shudder, knowing Javier was watching me like some science experiment. How much of our past can I torture her with? Am I breaking down her defenses? And other such thoughts.

“You remember this place?” he asked delicately.

I ignored him and spoke to the window as the SUV pulled into a loading zone lined with wheelbarrows. “I don’t have amnesia. Why the hell are we here?”

He made a tsking sound, the type that made me look at him just to see how disappointed he looked. “Ellie, really.”

I looked back at the marina. The panic started somewhere below my gut. He couldn’t be serious. He wasn’t that delusional was he?

“We’re not going to Mexico on your boat,” I said, more of a statement than a question. Even if I was jumping the gun a bit, at least it was out there.

He gave me that sly smile again. “Would that be a problem for you?”

My mouth opened and closed like a fish, no words coming out. I knew that Javier probably had to lie low as we traveled across the country, but this seemed a bit extreme.

“It’s not the same boat, don’t worry,” he said. He opened his door and hopped out just as Raul opened mine.

Javier’s old sailboat was a sleek, gorgeous thing that held far too many moments for us. It was big enough to sail anywhere, really, but that wasn’t the point. I could barely handle being in the same vehicle as Javier, let alone a boat.

I guess I must have stood there shaking my head or something crazy like that, because Raul’s cold fingers clamped around my forearm and yanked me forward.

“Let’s go,” he growled.

“Don’t touch me,” I growled back, yanking my arm away from him.

Javier gave both of us an amused look as he walked off toward the docks. “This trip will be easier if the two of you learn to play nice.”

“Fuck you,” I yelled after him. A family decked in nautical gear were unloading their car nearby and gave me an odd look. In fact they gave all of us an odd look and I couldn’t blame them. Big bald driver was hauling our bags out of the back of the black SUV, while the devil in white led the way for one henchmen and the damsel in distress. I wondered if we appeared suspicious enough for them to report us. Technically we weren’t doing anything illegal but if I had seen a similar scene, my radar would be going wild.

But, what would happen if I mouthed to the father, with his wary eyes and nervous twitch, to “help me.” What would he do? And would he really help? What would I even say? Could I get away and still ensure that Camden would go untouched? Or was my freedom always going to be joined to him in that fate?

I didn’t say anything. I was used to being the one trying to get away, not the one wanting to be caught. I just walked toward the docks, feeling like oxygen was slowly being leached from me, that the further we got away from solid ground, the less chance I had. For life, for liberty, for love, maybe for everything. My situation kept changing from day to day, moment to moment, and I wasn’t quick enough to keep up.

Just when I thought my legs were turning to jelly, we stopped on the furthest dock in front of what I first thought were a bunch of sailboats all tied together in a row. I was wrong.

“This is my new masterpiece,” Javier said with a too-wide smile, his arms spread wide, as if he built the boat himself.

He wasn’t kidding when he said it wasn’t the same boat. I didn’t even think you could call it a boat, it was more like a floating apartment complex, a hotel on the sea, a mothership. This boat, this yacht, this monster had to be almost 200-feet long and one of the largest
things
I had ever seen. It had two masts that seemed to stretch into the hazy heavens, it sparkled in the sunlight, glossy navy and white paint and teak accents, and boasted a crew of four people, all men in their twenties, who stood in a row on the deck sides like subjects greeting the King. There were less obvious ways of jetting off to Mexico but this wasn’t one of them. Javier was nothing if not obvious sometimes.

He’d been waiting for my reaction, for me to say something, but I couldn’t do it. He wanted me to be impressed when all I could think about, despite the size of the sea beast, was that I was going to be stuck on that ship for quite some time, with no way off except a watery grave.

“Come on, let’s get you introduced to the crew and settled,” he said, waving at the driver to bring the bags on board. I peered at the boat’s name as everyone shuffled around me. It was called Beatriz, which happened to be the name of his oldest sister. I wondered why it was named after her, if something happened, when I realized I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. Men like Javier used sympathy as a fuel.

“Are you having second thoughts?” Javier asked from up above, holding his hand out for me. “Because you don’t have to come with us, you know this.”

I didn’t know if he was saying it for the benefit of the crew, who were all facing forward, stony yet eager expressions on their faces, dressed in black shorts and black polo shirts.

I watched them carefully as I said, “If I don’t come with you, you’ll kill Camden McQueen. It’s not a hard choice to make.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Javier sneer, but none of the boys even blinked. They couldn’t have been much younger than me by a few years, but apparently they were already jaded and hardened to this life. Javier’s empire was a lot larger, and went a lot younger, than I had thought. It made me wonder what lives they must had led to get dragged into this kind of mess. Super yacht or not, I could only hope Javier paid them well.

“Then you’ve made your choice,” Javier said calmly, though I could see his temples going red. “So take my hand and come aboard.”

I ignored his hand and walked up the stairs to the deck.

The boat, as Javier soon explained, was a 187 ft, 550 tonne Royal Huisman Mega Ketch. Everything else went over my head as I got the grand tour. All I could gather was that it must have cost tens of millions of dollars, all filthy, bloody drug money. It had a flybridge in the middle of the boat, like a raised deck complete with outdoor dining, sofas and a damn barbeque. There was a private sitting area at the very back with a spiral staircase that led down to an office and Javier’s gigantic owner’s bedroom. There were three levels in total, with dining and living rooms, a theatre deck for movies, a copious amount of bedrooms and spacious bathrooms, and the rear of the boat even folded open with the hiss and whir of hydraulics to provide a sunbathing and diving platform. It was to be my prison for the next six days until we reached the city of Veracruz.

“What do you think?” Javier asked as my bags were placed in the room that was to be mine, conveniently right next door to his.

I looked him squarely in the eye. “I liked your other boat better.”

His lips twitched in amusement. “You always had simple tastes, Ellie. Except, perhaps, for me.”

He spun around and started to shut the door before he paused and said, “We set sail in an hour. You might want to get one last look at land. You won’t be seeing it for a while.”

The door closed with a sleek click, leaving me alone in my cabin. It was spacious enough but I could already feel the walls starting to come closer.

It turned out I missed the big farewell. After I’d unpacked a few items, I lay down on the bed to ponder my fate when exhaustion had taken over. The next thing I knew, I was very slowly rolling out of the bed and coming face to face with the upholstered cabin wall.

I sat up and blinked at the light that was streaming through what I thought was a shuttered window but was actually a well-disguised panel of lights meant to mimic daytime. I got up, finding my sea legs, and started fiddling with the lights, turning them from morning brightness to night. But they always sprung back, pre-programmed. The fact that Javier could even control the way his crew perceived the days was chilling.

I made my way out of the cabin and went down a narrow hallway lined with handrails. The boat was no longer heeling over, making walking seem painless. Aside from water making gentle sloshing sounds along the length of the boat, you couldn’t even tell you were on a ship. It was that big, like being on an airbus compared to a seaplane.

The hallway led me past three more cabin doors, all closed, before I came to a small set of stairs, flooded with natural light. The area I was in ended about mid-ship, which meant the crew’s quarters were at the front of the ship and had a separate entrance. I cautiously climbed the stairs until I recognized I was on the second deck, the main living area. The back was open, not fully enclosed, the sea breeze fluttering through. Past the elaborate dining table set-up, teak table and white high-backed chairs that could easily rival any house, I could see Raul and another man I hadn’t seen before sitting lazily on the couch, drinks in their hands, the wind ruffling their hair. They both looked at me sharply, unkindly, before turning back to each other, talking in Spanish. Behind them I could see the lower deck, all smooth wood, Javier’s private cockpit and the stern of the ship, the American flag waving in the breeze. The water here was green and a few islands dotted the horizon, slowly disappearing in our wake.

I went up another flight of stairs, holding onto the rail in case the boat decided to pitch and came up to the top deck, half covered like a pilothouse. Javier was there, sitting in a leather captain’s chair, hands on one of the two steering wheels, eyes focused ahead through the wide, tinted windshield. A large sail had billowed out from the mast, an immense noise that reminded me of happier times, but that didn’t make any sense to my brain, since the only time I’d ever been on a sailboat would have been with Javier.

“You’re up,” he said without turning to face me. His hair was waving slightly against the nape of his neck. I found it annoying how his longer hair still suited him. It shouldn’t have, it should have made him look more like a cheesy drug lord but instead it didn’t. My stomach twisted.

I turned my attention to the large cockpit, at the military-esque row of the glowing radar screens, GPS and weather charting systems at his fingertips, at the sofa and chairs in the open area behind me, another fantastic viewpoint. I took it all in yet it didn’t seem to stick. Nothing in this situation seemed to be real.

“I passed right out,” I said when I recovered my thoughts. “Did you drug me again?”

He let out a small laugh. “I promise I won’t drug you anymore.”

I didn’t find it particularly amusing but I was glad he at least promised it.

“Here, take a seat,” he said, gesturing to the co-pilot chair. “Can I get you a drink?”

I shook my head but sat down next to him. There was a pleasing amount of space between us and having another wheel at my fingertips was exciting in a novel way.

“What happens if I start steering?” I asked, closing my fingers around the suede covering.

“I’ll counter-steer,” he said. “And I will override you.”

I pressed my lips together and watched as the water flew past the boat, delicate white sea spray that matched the fluffy clouds. In the distance were ghostly shapes, oil rigs obscured by the haze.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been this far out before.”

“Soon it will be blue water,” he said, shaking the glass in his hand, the ice cubes rattling. Gin and tonic. “And then there will be no land in sight.” He finally turned to look at me. “Does that scare you?”

Actually, it did. And so did he.

Instead, I gave him a shrug and turned my attention back to the sea, to the dizzying heights of the mast. It was only then that I noticed a crow’s nest about halfway and one of the crew members up there.