Shooting Scars: The Artists Trilogy 2 (36 page)

I kicked mine angrily, as did Gus, guns clattering across the cracked pavement.

“Now,” Javier said, walking toward me, moving like a snake. I half expected his tongue to come shooting out, forked at the end. “I am going to frisk you for the rest of your weapons.” He stopped right in front of me, lips pressed together in a tight smile. “Try not to enjoy it too much.”

I closed my eyes, breathing in deeply through my nose, trying to dispel the anger that was punching me in the gut, in my lungs, in my chest. That rage would come in handy right about now, but rage acted without thought and I needed to play this next part so damn well or Ellie would be lost to me forever.

I almost controlled it but when Javier’s hands got to my family jewels and he groped around them and said, “I can see why Ellie chose me. My balls are bigger,” I let that rage out for just one second.

I spat right in his face. Well, since I was a lot taller, it kind of went on his forehead and trickled down into his eyes. I grinned at him, enjoying the look of revulsion and fury that flashed through him.

“Fucking pansy,” he sniped and then took his gun and jabbed the butt of it right into the bullet hole on my shoulder.

Everything went fuzzy and black and I could barely keep my lunch down. I collapsed to my knees and spat out bile, the pain overtaking me, ruling me.

Then Javier kicked me in the shoulder, same spot, and I rolled over onto my back, the waves of pain being comforted by swells of unconsciousness. Then I remembered Gus standing beside me, and Ellie and I knew I had to do what I could to stay awake and stay alive, pain or no pain.

I remained on my back breathing hard until he reached down and ripped me back up until I was on my feet, swaying unsteadily.

“Hey now,” he said, lightly slapping my face until my eyes were open. “Hey Camden, hey Camden, you better stay awake. I am just getting started here with you both.”

Javier glared at Gus while Raul started scooping up the guns they found on us. They hadn’t found the one in my sling. I wanted to look at Gus to see if he had noticed but I wasn’t about to give anything away.

“I didn’t think I’d see you ever again,” Javier said to him, frowning and seeming a bit uneasy. “You’re one of the few good ones left in her life.”

I raised my brows and swallowed away the residue of pain. “You two know each other?” I tried to hide the surprise in my voice but I couldn’t hide much of anything, except my gun.

Gus was watching Javier, not me. The old man never looked so angry.

“No,” Javier said slowly, carefully. “I’d only heard about him. You’re a famous man in the Watt circle.”

“And so are you,” Gus grunted.

Javier tapped his gun against his leg, seeming to think. “I suppose it’s better they think something of me than nothing at all. They are here, you know. Her
parents
.”

That was news to me but it wasn’t the news I wanted. “Where is Ellie?”

Just then another man came around the corner, someone I didn’t recognize, holding a gun to his side.

Javier glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “What is it, Peter?” he asked testily.

Peter glanced at Gus and I, then said to Javier, “Travis Raines is having a dinner party tonight.”

Javier’s brow scrunched up. “What?”

“At his house,” Peter added for effect. “Ellie isn’t going out for dinner, she’s going there. To his house. To the compound.”

Whatever this meant to Javier, this was bad news. And if it was bad news for Javier, it was probably bad news for Ellie too. I looked at Gus who had an enlightened yet miserable expression on his face.

“Oh shit,” Gus grumbled.

Javier’s eyes were wild, thoughts spinning, and he nodded ever so slightly at Gus, as if he understood what Gus was realizing.

“What the fuck is going?” I said, wanting an explanation.

Javier shot me a look and swallowed hard, worry furrowing his face. A look I’d never seen on him. The look was gone quickly.

“Ellie,” he said slowly, looking back to Gus, “will be at Travis’s tonight. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to get in there without a fight. The place will have heightened security who, I’m sure, could possibly find the cyanide capsule on her necklace.”

Her necklace. Of course. Javier had given her one and taken the razor blade with the tracking device. Cyanide. He was getting her to kill him tonight.

“Her parents are there. They work for Travis now.” Javier looked up at the sky and rubbed the side of his face. “They’ll see Ellie. And her cover will be blown.” He brought his head back down to face me. “She’s as good as dead.”

And you put her in her grave
, was all I could think.
You set her up to fail from the beginning.

“So what the fuck are you going to do now?” I asked, spitting out the words. “You’re just going to leave her there?”

Javier narrowed his eyes into reptilian slits. “I don’t know what choice I have. We can hope for the best.”

“And to think, you thought you were good enough for her,” Gus said, shaking his head at Javier with disappointment.

Javier whipped his head around and shoved his gun in Gus’s face, right up under his chin. “You don’t know anything, old man,” he sneered. “You don’t get a chance to interfere in her life, you gave that up. I don’t want to kill you because I know what you are and how much you mean to her, so don’t you fucking piss me off!”

My eyes were drawn to Javier and Gus, wondering what the fuck Javier was talking about, so I barely had time to realize what was going on. Raul now had his gun raised at Javier’s head and Peter was reaching for his own gun, perhaps to protect him. But the movement from Peter was enough to bring Raul’s gun to him. Raul pulled the trigger, blasting Peter in the head. The sound brought out the well-honed reflexes in Javier. He spun around, his arm suddenly around Gus, using him as a shield, his gun drawn.

Raul fired and ended up shooting Gus right in the gut.

I was screaming. Running for them. Javier pulled the trigger and shot Raul before he could fire again, and a bloody Gus slipped through Javier’s arms.

Javier pulled the gun around to me but I was too fast. I was already there. I was already the black beast.

I tackled Javier, my bad shoulder down, not caring about the pain. I dove right into his chest, throwing him back into the concrete wall of the building, his head smashing against it, leaving a bloody smear that was diluted by the rain.

Even with one arm in a sling, I was able to beat the fuck out of him. I punched him over and over again, relishing the feeling of my bleeding knuckles, the blood from his face, the feeling of breaking cartilage.

He tried, several times, to get up, to fight back. He put up a good, dirty fight, my shoulder being his number one target. But I was beyond the pain now. I was something else. I was rage and I was wrath and I was twenty-six years of hell.

I brought out my gun from the sling and held it right against Javier’s temple, spitting in his face one more time, watching the spit mix with blood and rain. “You can’t give me a single fucking reason why I shouldn’t pull the trigger.”

He looked up at me, eyes golden against the mask of blood on his face. He licked his broken and bleeding lips, slowly, sickly, and said, “No. I can’t. So kill me. And let this all be over with.”

I pressed the gun further into his head, the anger shaking me from my bones. “No. This won’t be over because Ellie is still out there. She’s going to Travis’s and there’s a chance she’s not coming back. You better fucking hope that she poisons him and does it well because that’s the only way she’ll get out of there.”

“Camden,” I heard Gus groan from behind me. I kept the gun at Javier’s head and looked at him. He was lying back and holding onto his stomach, blood running from his mouth.

“Stay cool, Gus, I’ll get an ambulance,” I told him.

“You go get Ellie,” he said, barely getting out the words. “I’ll be fine.”

I turned and looked at Javier, hoping I could burn him alive with my eyes. “I’m going to go after Ellie. I’m only letting you live so you can get Gus to the hospital. If he dies, it’s on you. And I’m going to be sure that Ellie knows about it.”

He swallowed hard and for a second I worried that Javier might die before Gus. A strange thing to worry about. I decided to call the ambulance on my way to Travis’s, just to be sure. I couldn’t trust this man for anything, not even to stay alive when I needed him to.

I got to my feet. “Do you understand?”

He nodded, breathing hard, his nostrils flaring.

“On second thought.” I pointed the gun at him and for once he looked like I might pull the trigger. He was actually afraid of me. “I could just kill you now and be done with you and call an ambulance myself.”

I held it there for a few moments, pointed at him with all the fire inside me, before I lowered the gun and walked over to Gus, kneeling down beside him. His face was white, his eyes dull but he was alert and looking at me. I patted him on the arm and gave it a good squeeze.

“You’re going to be fine, Gus.” I pulled the cell phone out of his pocket and eyed Javier who was still lying there, propped up against the wall like a rag doll. I nodded at him. “Tell me where Travis lives, Javier.”

He seemed to grapple with the information, as if he wasn’t going to give it to me and for a second I thought maybe he really would let Ellie go on this suicide mission. But he motioned for me to bring the cell over.

I handed it to him and with a bloody hand he began to enter an address into the GPS. He handed it back to me as the new coordinates began triangulating. A flashing red dot.

“You go in there like this, you’re going to get yourself killed before you even step foot on the property,” he sneered. “You can’t do this alone.”

“You let me worry about me,” I said. I got up, loomed over him. “And if I ever see your face again, I will kill you. You won’t know when it will happen, but it will happen.”

We stared at each other for a few tense seconds, his yellow, poisonous eyes hating every inch of me. I was sure my look was no different.

I tore my eyes away and glanced over at Gus. I swallowed hard, praying this wasn’t the last time I’d see him.

“I’ll see you in a bit, Gus,” I told him. Then I turned on my heel and started running for the GTO. Running for Ellie.

O
nce I went back to the hotel and saw that Enrico wasn’t at the desk, I went upstairs and started going down the hallway, calling out for Gus and Camden, hoping they were in one of the hotel rooms. I needed to warn them, to get to them before Javier did. But they weren’t anywhere and when I went back downstairs and asked the front desk lady if she could call them for me, there was no answer on their end.

They would have seen the device going off with Javier and thought it was me, deviating from the plan. Now there was a whole new plan, one that Gus and Camden were walking straight into. I hoped to god that Javier would keep his word and only kill Camden if I didn’t go through with the assassination. I should have made him promise it.

That was the only thing that kept me going, kept me putting one foot in front of the other, the fact that if I did everything I was told, they could be saved. And Gus, dear sweet old Gus, he wasn’t an idiot – he was a trained cop and a hell of a lot of other things. He was the wildcard, someone that Javier wouldn’t be expecting when Camden turned up.

I got out of the shower, trying to calm my breath and keep my limbs from shaking, trying to go ahead and do the things I needed to do to survive and get out of this. I picked out a dress from the closet, the place where Camden had hidden, watching out for me, never obvious but always there. The dress was long, green and glittery like mermaid scales which would have made me feel absolutely beautiful if I was wearing it at any other time but now it was just a cloak for my murder, a means to an end.

I pinned my hair up and made my makeup look sweet and sexy. I’d definitely act the part tonight. I was no longer afraid. I was determined to carry this out. I would get rid of him and then figure out a way to get myself out of there and back to Camden and Gus somehow. Through hell and high water, they found me. I could find them. I’d been through worse.

I eyed the necklace hoping it would hold together and keep my secrets hidden. Those dirty angel wings. So Javier thought I was rotten too. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, he’d been telling me how bad I was all this time.

At five thirty I went out to the lobby where Enrico was still nowhere to be found. Funny how he disappeared all of a sudden. I wondered if that was because Travis was coming here or perhaps Javier had called all of his troops to deal with Camden and Gus.

I swallowed hard and started sliding the pendant up and down the chain. No fear. I could do this. This would be done.

A white limousine pulled up outside and the driver came into the lobby, elegantly dressed with a jaunty cap and dark glasses. He called out, “Eleanor Willis.”

I paused, waiting a moment, letting the fake name sink on me, before I stood up and gathered my black shawl around me. “That’s me.”

The driver showed the way to the limo. It had been raining on and off all day and it was just starting to sputter again, the wind driving it into my face. I had put on waterproof mascara, insurance against the weather and against any tears I knew I’d be shedding for whatever reason. I wouldn’t get out of this day without tears or blood.

The driver pointed to the heavy, dark sky and said, “It will be sunny tomorrow.”

I gave him a sad smile. I doubted tomorrow would be anything but sunny. I got in the back of the spacious limo, somewhat surprised that Travis wasn’t in the back.

“Are we meeting Mr. Raines at the restaurant?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Mr. Raines is having dinner at his house. He is there already tending to his guests. He is having a dinner party.”

I sat back, stunned. A dinner party? How the fuck was I going to escape from a dinner party? How was Javier going to get me, let alone anyone else?

And just like that, I’d let the fear back in. Maybe this really was a suicide mission. Maybe it was always planned this way. Ellie Watt, the sacrifice that everyone loved to make.