Shooting Scars: The Artists Trilogy 2 (18 page)

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” he asked, his eyes fastened on the horizon along with mine.

“Yeah. Hypnotic.”

“It doesn’t belong.”

“You think?”

“We’re free out here. Don’t you feel that?”

I gave him a quick, curious glance. “You sound like a true sailor.”

He nodded subtly. “It’s why men everywhere head for the sea, all these years. Here, you can be you. And that is it.”

“Who are you out here?”

He squinted. “I don’t know. But I think I’m happier.”

I rubbed my lips together, spreading the last remnants of lip balm. “Then why are we going there? Why don’t we sail forever?”

He turned his head to me sharply, brows raised. “You would like that? To be sailing with me?”

That wasn’t exactly what I had said. “I’d be happier if we turned the boat around and went back the way we came.”

He looked disappointed at the answer and brought his attention to the horizon again. “Is that so?”

Now was as good a time as any to bite the bullet. Even though the boat was turning slightly to run parallel to the coast, the land was still in sight, within reach, just beyond the haze.

“Javier,” I began slowly, “do you want me to kill Travis? Do you want me to pull the trigger?”

He sucked in a breath through his teeth and tapped his fingers against his leg a few times. “Ellie, I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“Yes you do. I don’t want to do any of this. I want to go home.”

“But you don’t have a home. You don’t have a family. You have nothing. You don’t even have Camden.”

I tried not to wince. “I don’t need any of those things.” That was a lie of course, because I did need Camden. I needed him to be good. But the further we sailed, the more I knew I couldn’t have him. The more he’d be enveloped by his own past, just as I was slowly getting sucked into mine.

“You need to let it go.” He placed his hand on the deck and leaned on it, his watch gleaming enough for me to look away. “Let go of what you thought was going to happen. Things changed. You chose this path and this is the one you are on. We’ll be anchoring off a beach north of Los Tuxtlas. We’ll take a car to a place near Veracruz. You will find Travis and you will … get to know him. This is where your path is going, Ellie, and this is the only way now.”

I swallowed hard. “And what then? I get to know him, which I still think is ridiculous since he’ll know who I am.”

“I told you, he won’t.”

“He
will.
”

“Do you think I’d set you up to fail?” he asked so sharply that I had to look at him. The sun had browned his face even more over the last few days and by contrast his eyes seemed lighter than ever. I wished he was wearing sunglasses.

“I don’t know what I think,” I finally responded.

“You will get to know him. You will lead him to me. I will kill him.”

“And not me?”

“Only if you wanted to. Only if you think you’re strong enough.”

“Killing people has nothing to do with being strong.”

He dipped his chin, locking me in his gaze which was becoming harder by the second. “It does when it’s someone who deserves it. Who needs it. Do you not remember what he’s done to us?”

My head jerked. “To us?”

His nostrils flared and he quickly got to his feet. He walked down the length of the boat toward the twin anchors, his loose pants billowing in the breeze like a flag.

I don’t know why but I got up, placing the speakers on top of the towel so it wouldn’t blow away into the ocean, and followed him. We were motoring today, the jib and mainsail furled tightly, the ship easy to walk on.

He stopped at the front and leaned one arm against the jib mast. I stood a foot back, feeling the weird energy that was rolling off of him. I waited for him to speak which seemed like hours.

“Once I found out that Travis wanted to cozy up to them, to Los Zetas, I knew in my heart of all hearts that things would end badly. Travis switched sides, even knowing what had happened to my father and my mother. He knew I would never make nice with them, that I would always fight them, that I would always try to bury them. Travis did it anyway, I think, to get away from me. Because I was threatening to him, you see? He knew everyone liked me better, that I was younger, smarter, faster. I was better than him in every way and he wanted me out of the picture. What better way to …
hurt
me … than to join them. Almost brilliant, right?”

I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. He sighed and went on. “We split. It got ugly. Then it got uglier. We were alike so he wanted to make the same points that I tended to make. But he is a brutal man. You may think the same of me too, but you don’t know him.”

“I kind of know what he’s capable of,” I said quietly.

At that he turned around and his eyes drifted down to my leg before turning around and facing the horizon. “Yes, yes you do. And so Travis, Mr. Raines, he went and took something very dear to me.”

It all clicked together. The ship rolling beneath my feet. “Beatriz.” I breathed out.

“Yes, my oldest sister. The one who was in charge of the younger ones. My closest friend, really. He found her. He raped her, forcing her husband to watch. Then he killed her. Killed him. Killed their children. Cut off their heads and put them in front of a busy hotel, just outside the lobby. Burned the bodies nearby. Took a lot of pictures.”

I gasped. I’d actually seen this on the news.

He acknowledged my expression. “So you know. You’ve seen it. He made his point and was sure the whole world saw it, made sure I’d see it no matter where I was. My sister and her family were an example of what Mexican drug violence was becoming. No one would ever forget what happened. And of course, he made sure I knew what was coming next. That no one I loved would ever be safe.”

I wiped my palms on my pants. “Are your other sisters safe?”

“For now,” he said, before turning to face me. “That’s one of the reasons I am going to Mexico. Even when Travis is dead, I can’t count on someone else not coming after them. We are like those zombies you see on TV, you know. We never really die. Someone else pops up in our place that looks like us and talks like us. We’re all interchangeable.”

“You’re not like—” I began and then cut myself off because I was going to say he was not like Travis when I knew he was. He wasn’t as depraved as Travis but he was still something else. Something bad and deadly and deplorable.

“I am,” he said with a small smile. “And because I know I am, I know when we’re safe and we aren’t safe. Not while he’s still alive. We have to kill him. Do you see now?”

I nodded, finding it crazy that I was understanding his logic. Once upon a time I’d wanted to throw acid in the man’s face and watch as his skin melted away, as I took his freedom away. I never did it – Javier got in the way. And now he was in my way again, this time to end it once and for all.

I did want Travis dead. I knew it now. But whether that made me strong or not wasn’t part of the equation. I would do this for myself, for Javier’s sister, for her children, for the countless others who died or were tortured at his hands. For everyone that ever suffered because of drugs and money and guns and crime and everything I had once cloaked myself with.

“So,” I said, feeling the landmass change in front of my eyes, turning from fear to something I wanted to embrace, “tell me everything I need to know.”

A grin slowly spread across his face.

The next morning I awoke to a deep rumbling and excited cries. I got up quickly, feeling the excitement and slid on a dress that reached down to the floor. It was one I’d picked up during an outing to Miami with Javier back in the day, a bright green and yellow floral thing that managed to look both fashionable and hide my scars at the same time.

Of course, my scars were beautiful now that Camden transformed them. But I guess old habits still died hard.

I ran up to the first deck and peered off the side. To our left was the huge expanse of a sandy beach flanked by rich green cliffs and lush forest further inland. The land was so massive that it literally took my breath away.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Javier’s voice came soaring from the bridge. I shielded my eyes to look up at him. At the front of the ship, the anchors dropped in, the mechanics whirring until they made contact with the soft sea floor.

I looked back at the land. We were here. Mexico.

I stood at the railing for some time as everyone strutted purposefully around me, getting prepared. The beach seemed to go on forever and looked deserted at first, with no sign of civilization. But when my eyes adjusted to the glitter of the water and the haze of the morning sun, I could see a couple of bright tents set up on the beach, nestled into some palm trees and a fishing boat dragged onto shore. It wasn’t the white sand beach I expected to see but something more earthy and wild.

A hand was at my elbow. I knew who it was without looking.

“Are you all packed?” Javier asked.

I nodded. “What beach is this again?”

“Playa Escondida. Hidden beach.” His hand dropped away and I could feel his eyes slicing down my back. “I loved you in this dress.”

Then he walked away, barking orders in Spanish at the crew as they prepared the zodiac to be lowered into the water. I chewed on my lip for a few seconds, my mind quieted, my insides tumbling.

Soon me, Javier, Raul, Peter and one of the crew boys, Oscar, were taking careful steps down the ladder and into the zodiac. A wave flowed past and pitched the boat away from me as I climbed in. I lost my footing momentarily, but Javier was there, both hands wrapped around my arms, holding me in place.

“Are you okay?” he asked, holding me too close to him.

I nodded anxiously, wanting him to step away. But he held on, leading me over to my seat. Oscar followed after me and lowered the rest of the bags onto the boat. Then one of the crew boys threw the rope back in the boat and we were puttering backward. It felt like we were all moving as slow as the waves, rolling up and down, the ship, his beautiful Beatriz, growing smaller and smaller as we headed toward the shore.

Javier told us that landing on the beach might be a bit tricky since we’d have to surf the zodiac in. It wasn’t exactly the most graceful or classy way of getting to shore, but a ship like Javier’s would have to be as inconspicuous as possible. There was no way we could dock it at the marina without drawing attention to ourselves. Here, at Escondida, we really were hidden. There were no resorts, no restaurants, no roads. Just surf, sand and jungle.

Luckily, Javier was just as skilled at maneuvering the zodiac as he was at killing people. We crashed onto the shore only getting mildly wet and soon the men had jumped out of the boat and were quickly hauling it further inland.

Javier came over to help me but I climbed out of the boat before he had a chance to touch me again. For someone who said he’d never touch me, he’d been doing a lot more of it lately. Once all of our gear was on the beach, my duffel bag plus a few leather satchels for the rest, Javier nodded at Oscar to return to the vessel.

“I’ll be in touch,” he told him. “You keep her out there, she’ll be good even in the biggest storm. If I call you and tell you to leave, you do it. Take her to the resort near Campeche, to the marina. I have a space reserved there just in case. Wait there until I get in touch with you. That ship, she is your biggest priority.”

Oscar nodded eagerly, happy to have this responsibility on his hands. I wondered how trustworthy he was then thought trust would never be an issue with Javier in charge. The consequences would always be too vile.

The four of us stood on the beach, our ankles soaked from the sea, and watched as Oscar fought the zodiac back through the waves. There were a few times when it looked like it was going to flip over but he managed to power through and soon he was tendered to Beatriz, the ship gleaming in the distance.

We all looked at each other, and for the first time since landing, I felt the real gravity of land beneath my feet. The way it held me there. What it meant to be ashore.

Javier read my face and waved his arm. “Come on, we have to get moving.”

He turned and headed off toward a stream that snaked out of the jungle, a tributary that almost made it to the sea. We walked along the sand, my eyes drawn to the campers down the beach. They looked like a Mexican family, lighting a campfire, kids running around. I wonder what they thought of the yacht perched off shore, of our arrival, or if they thought anything about it at all.

Once we were in the forest, the temperature spiked. We were all sweating in seconds as the overhanging trees and dense vegetation seemed to hold the heat in. We came across a narrow dirt path and took that for a few minutes, all of us silent, thinking and wary.

The smell of horse shit assaulted my nose, as did a beam of sun that suddenly broke through the trees and illuminated the spot in front of us. There was a clearing with a small paddock and a shanty. Six bony looking horses stood there listlessly swatting flies with their tails.

“Hola?” Javier called out. We waited, hearing a commotion in the shanty and the door flew open. An old Mexican man with long grey hair half tucked up under a baseball cap came out, a book in his hands. He looked as bony as the horses in his care.

Javier spoke rapid fire Spanish to him, too fast for me to pick up. From what I gathered this was to be our transportation for a while. I eyed the horses nervously. I personally loved horses and had always been comfortable on one, but heading through the Mexican jungle in who the fuck knows where with a cartel was something different.

Finally the man nodded and clapped his hands together enthusiastically before heading back to his shanty.

Javier jerked a thumb in his direction. “That’s Burt Reynolds.”

“Burt Reynolds?”

He shrugged gracefully. “That’s what he calls himself. Doesn’t speak English, so don’t bother trying. He’s taking us to Montepio. Only way in or out of here is by horseback.”

“Or boat,” I mused and watched as Burt Reynolds came back out of the shanty with a bunch of bridles and packs. He moved spritely for an old, withered-looking man and in no time the horses were ready. He gestured for us to come over and started yammering in Spanish to me about a small buckskin mare.