Shooting Scars: The Artists Trilogy 2 (16 page)

I hadn’t spent any time at his cockpit before, a round depression that led down to his office and quarters below, two curved couches on either side, plus a bar that popped up with the touch of a button.

I sat down on one couch, spreading my legs out, hoping that would deter him from sitting near me. It worked though I had a feeling he was going to sit opposite from me anyway.

“I think this is the best part of the ship,” I said. I put my head back and looked up at the stars. I still felt the weight of the universe on my shoulders.

“It’s my favorite too. It reminds me of the old boat.”

My mind jumped back to the first time I stepped foot on his old boat. The first time we made love on it. He wanted to stain me. And he did, just not in the way he had hoped.

I knew I shouldn’t have been thinking of it – it was the booze, plus Raul’s words that had implanted the seeds there. But I was thinking it and before I knew it, I was saying it.

“Why did you cheat on me?” I kept my eyes on the stars, feeling the dark bruise-colored sky lift a bit.

Javier was silent. Stunned or formulating an excuse. Maybe preparing to tell the truth. I didn’t know what I hoped to gain out of this aside from having a weight lifted. Unanswered questions can stay with you a long time, riding on your shoulders, wearing you down.

I heard him take a sip of his drink and place it on the side table. The sounds were all louder now, the drone of the engine since we weren’t under sail, the water as it crashed behind the stern of the boat.

“I cheated on you more than once,” he said cautiously, as if he was waiting for me to spring up and kill him. I didn’t. It hurt my pride just a tad but the anger was on the way out.

I cleared my throat, feeling stupid despite the circumstances. “I see. It figures.”

“Why?”

“That I would be the one with the wool pulled over my eyes. The whole time I thought I was keeping a secret from you and you were the one keeping it from me.”

“Ellie, it wasn’t exactly like-”

“I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Forget I asked.”

“I can’t forget you asked. What if I asked why you lied to me all that time?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I repeated.

“It does matter,” he said loud enough to make me jerk to attention. He was gripping his glass, eyes blazing. “I was a different man then, just a boy, but I did love you and I never would have done anything to intentionally hurt you.”

“Love and respect don’t have to go hand in hand,” I retorted, recalling what a wise woman had once told me. And they say you never meet anyone worthwhile at roadside bars. I still had that woman, Marda’s, driver’s license in my scrapbook.

“That can be true,” he conceded. “I had reasons for being unfaithful. It went beyond sex and love.”

“You loved her?” I exclaimed, feeling sick despite myself. I could blame the wine and the boat all I wanted.

“No, I didn’t. But I had revenge. You of all people should know how far you are willing to go for it.”

“What does revenge have to do with sleeping with someone else?”

“What does revenge have to do with loving me?” he said, his voice collapsing over the last two words so they spun out in a hush.

I slowly sat up, feeling dizzy. “It shouldn’t matter but I did love you.”

“You broke me,” he replied. His eyes went to steel.

I didn’t want to hear any of this anymore. “Why did you cheat on me? And don’t give me that revenge shit. If it was this revenge, this
thing
, then tell me exactly how it was.”

“Her name was Patricia,” he said.

Oh, so she had a name. A dumb one at that.

He continued, looking down into his glass, “She was a nice girl. Nice enough. Pretty. She liked me. That’s all I needed. She was the sister of Enrique Morrow.”

“Who is Enrique Morrow?”

“Enrique was one of the higher ups in the Los Zetas. Patricia lived in New Orleans, he was in Nuevo Laredo. I got to know her, I suppose in the same way you got to know me. I used her to get to him.”

I stared at him. “And did you get to him? Did it work?”

He nodded and shook the ice in his glass. “Yes.”

“What happened to them?”

He eyed me briefly. “They are both dead. I killed them. Killed her first, in front of him, to prove a point. Held her down and took her hand. Then slit her throat. And made him watch. Then, when I thought he’d suffered enough, I cut off his head. Seemed fitting, considering the Los Zetas practically think they invented the act.”

My mouth dropped open. I needed to shut it. To say I was horrified was an understatement. “You … you did that to the woman you were cheating on me with?” A memory flashed in my head, the one of when I found them together, that terrible act of intimacy, him calling her pet names as they lay beside each other on the bed – my bed – laughing. They looked so … in love. So in touch with each other. That’s what had hurt me the most, more than the sex.

“How could you do that to her?” I said softly. “You … that you were capable of that when I was with you … I …”

He finished his drink then filled up my own glass with more. I was too stunned to wave him off. “This happened a few months after you left.”

“You were just a young kid,” I said, unable to accept it. Seeing him kill his best friend in our kitchen was one thing. But knowing that just a few months after I left him he was the kind of man who was capable of murdering a woman he was sleeping with, pretending to be in love with, in such a brutal way, to prove an awful point was … I didn’t even know what it was.

“Everything changed after you left,” he said, watching me closely. “Everything.”

A burst of indignation flared up inside my chest. “Don’t you dare blame this on me. Don’t you dare!”

“You left without even a note …”

“You fucked another woman, in
our
bed!”

“I told you, it meant nothing.”

I nearly crushed the glass with my hand. “I didn’t know that at the time! I didn’t know how little she meant to you. How obviously little human life means to you! You did what you did and you never had to do it. Your so-called excuse only makes things worse. Fuck, Javier! All of this for nothing. Just so you could have your fucking revenge and kill people. You’re nothing but a beast, a cold-hearted monster, not even fit to have two legs. Not even worth that heart beating in your chest.”

He was staring at me like he hadn’t even heard a word I said, so I added, with as much venom as I could muster. “You
disgust
me.”

He blinked a few times, then put his arm around the back of the couch and eyed his watch and the
wish
tattoo it was covering up. “Well, at least disgust is still something.”

I shook my head, words and sentences trying to come together inside but nothing fit. Nothing made any sense. I downed the rest of my drink in one go.

“You said we ruined each other,” he went on, his voice lower now. “Both of us wouldn’t be here now if we hadn’t.”

I wiped my mouth. “And what makes you think I like where I am?”

He crossed his ankle on his knee, a flash of dark gold skin between his Topside shoes and navy pants. No socks.

“Because I introduced you to your true self. I made you see the world as you were born to see it. You’re not good, Ellie.”

I scowled at him. “You sound like Raul now.”

“No, I am nothing like Raul. I only see the truth. I opened you up to the life you were born to live. You came from … you only knew this growing up. It is in your blood just as it is in my blood. We lead the lives we were meant to, lives that are exciting and dangerous and full of power. We are strong. We are so alike, so very alike, that sometimes I wish you had told me back then who you really were.”

“You would have killed me if you found out,” I said. I feared it then but I knew it now. My hand would have been tossed into the sea, like that angel doll.

He seemed to consider that, angling his head. “Maybe I would have. I loved you so much, so much.”

“Loving someone enough to kill them?”

He smiled caustically. “It’s the romantic in me.”

Suddenly he reached forward and put his hand on my knee. I flinched, my heart exploding in my chest, my eyes frozen wide.

“I’m glad you are afraid of me, my dear,” he said, his fingers tightening on my knee ever so slightly. “I’m glad I disgust you. The more you feel these things so strongly, the more you’ll realize how right I am. That you and I are the same. That I can help you get what I have—the power, the pride, the respect. I can make you my queen. And you’ll give up on trying to be good, to be better. You are better now.”

I felt as if something was lodged in my throat. “I sacrificed my life in order to save Camden and his family. I
am
good.”

He leaned forward, his lips going to my ear. I held absolutely still, watching the dark waves roll past beyond his shoulder.

“You sacrificed nothing and gained everything. You chose to be with me. Now own it.” His breath tickled hot, even when he pulled away.

After placing his drink on the side table, he began to descend the stairs into his quarters, his silhouette stark against the glow of the cabin. His voice called out, “Sleep well, angel,” and was carried away by the night wind on the Gulf. Even then, I still felt his breath on my neck. The lingering heat. Those damaging words that were oh so slowly getting under my skin.

O
ne moment I was backing away from the guy slowly, hands in the air in a show of peace. In the next a gunshot rang out from somewhere inside the house. I froze in place, forgetting what Gus had told me, which was to run and get the hell out of there. Instead I acted on instinct.

As the man whipped around in surprise to stare back into the house, I grabbed the gun out of my waistband. I was smart to do so because in the next second, before he even turned back around to see me, to see the pistol, he was going for the gun he had on him.

Unfortunately for him, I beat him to it. I held the gun steady in my hand, pointed right at his head and said calmly, “Don’t you fucking move.”

The man raised his hands slowly and a stupid smile was plastered on his face. “Hey man, we don’t want no trouble.”

“Gus!” I yelled at the house, coming closer until I was a foot away, gun still aimed and ready. “Ellie!”

“Oh,” the man said in surprise. “You are here for the bitch.”

Without thinking, I whipped the neck of the gun on his temple, right on his injury.

The man cried out and grabbed his head, dropping to the ground but I grabbed him by his shirt collar and pulled him back up. I flung him against the door, his head rattling against it and shoved the gun underneath his chin.

“Listen to me you piece of shit,” I said, my voice breaking with rage. “Where is she? You tell me where she is.
Tell me!
”

The man didn’t look scared at all. The blackness settled in, stoking the fire, and made me drive the end of the gun further into his throat, until I was sure I could feel his pulse riding down the barrel.

“Tell me!” I screamed, not caring if I was attracting attention. If that gunshot was for Ellie … so help me God. I’d burn the entire house down with everyone in it.

He clamped his lips shut, as if daring me to shoot him. I knocked him in the temple again, the blood running harder down his face and then dragged him inside the house. It was dark on the first floor but the upstairs led to rooms bathed in the sunset.

“Gus!” I yelled again.

“Up here,” he said from the second floor. He sounded fine.

“Where is she? I’ve got someone but he won’t talk.”

“Mine won’t either.”

I went up the stairs, dragging the man up until the polo shirt began to rip. I dug one hand into his arm and kept the gun firmly pressed against his ribs. He kept stumbling over the steps thanks to the blood in his eyes but I didn’t care.

I walked into a small sitting area and a kitchen that faced a porch through two French doors. One of the doors was open, a salty breeze coming through. This is where Ellie would have had her dinners. Had she cooked for him? Did they have morning coffees together?

“I’m here,” said Gus and I followed his voice down a hallway to an open door at the end, ignoring the cramp in my hand from holding the gun so tightly. I peered inside the room and saw Gus standing at the foot of an unmade bed, a bullet hole in the wall. On the floor was a large bald guy, shot in the shoulder, a gun a foot from his open hand. Blood was soaking the carpet beneath him.

I know what I’d just done to the man in my hands, but the sight still took my breath away.

“Is he dead?” I asked.

Gus nodded, eyes still on him, as if he was expecting the guy to jump up from the grave. “Unfortunately I had to shoot first, then ask the questions.” He looked to me, noticing the guy for the first time. “Who is that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He answered the door. He knows about Ellie.”

Gus shook his head. “She’s not here.”

“How do you know?”

He shrugged and kicked the guy’s leg. “I just do. They’re gone, Javier and her. Raul. His bodyguards. These guys are sloppy. They’re the ones who get left behind to water the plants.”

The man in my hands grunted, as if insulted by that remark.

“Well I guess we should try and get him to talk,” Gus said coming closer. He peered at the man, then shot me a look I could have taken as impressed on any other day. “Re-injuring an injury. Smart boy.” He pointed at the bed. “Here, set him down. We’ve both got guns, he’s not going anywhere.”

I yanked him forward and then pushed him so he went flying. Blood sprayed on the sheets. It was only then that I realized what I was seeing. Ellie and Javier’s bedroom.

I almost joined the man on the bed, if only to smell the pillow. I needed to know that she had slept here, that she was alive, just to remember what she smelled like. But I kept it together. Instead I noticed a pile of clothes leading into the bathroom. I went over, confident that Gus was watching Javier’s house sitter and picked it up. Ellie’s jeans. Her tank top. The very ones she was wearing the day she went with him.