Shooting Scars: The Artists Trilogy 2 (7 page)

She held Ben close to her side and gave me a look of Oscar-worthy revulsion. “Over my dead body!” The neighbor, a round Latino woman, was watching our exchange with horror no doubt for the poor, ex-wife. That poor, poor double-crossing bitch.

“We’ll see,” I said to myself, though I wondered if it was loud enough to hear, if it would come back to haunt me. I wondered if I meant it.

I popped the car in reverse and peeled back out of the parking lot as Vincent came staggering out of the apartment, waving his gun around like he had a chance of hitting me.

I was already gone before he could steady his hand. The GTO roared down the quiet sunny streets of suburban Los Angeles, and I wondered when the fuck I’d stop being a chump and if I’d ever get to see my son again.

If I’d ever get my life back and take charge.

But I had to.

I
wanted
to.

I was going to find Gus.

And then I was going to find Ellie.

And nothing, absolutely nothing, would get in my way.

M
y escape artist skills had grown rusty. Which wasn’t really all that surprising since I’d apparently turned into quite the shit trickster as well. Whether I’d grown too confident and too cocky by driving that damn, damn car around or I was doing it, as Javier had suggested, because I wanted to get caught, I was obviously losing my touch. I decided that I’d become too cocky, because wanting the vile Mexican to actually find me was a whole other can of worms that I wasn’t about to dive into.

Besides, I had bigger problems. Like getting caught right after I made a break for it.

You couldn’t really blame a girl for trying.

After Javier had left me in that rotten house to whatever business he did (strangling puppies was my guess), I spent the rest of the day devising a plan to escape. It probably would have been time better spent if I had thought about what Javier had propositioned me with but I was so certain I could get out of it that I didn’t even have to think about the “what ifs.”

Another reason why I was losing my touch: a good con artist always examines all the scenarios, the “what ifs,” the multiple ways the game can play out. But I did none of that. Instead I observed the burly man on the other side of the front door and the smaller man in the black suit who was stationed by the French doors in the kitchen, guarding the way to the balcony like some bored bouncer at a club. I decided I’d fake out the smaller guard, maybe hit him over the head with something (he was smaller after all and the kitchen was full of blunt objects, even if all the knives were conveniently gone) and make a run for it. Once on the beach, I could book it down to one of the neighbors, providing he hadn’t paid off everyone on the sandy strip. There was a chance that he did. Javier didn’t just split from Travis without being extremely thorough.

I should have mulled on that observation a little bit longer. At around five in the evening, when the sun was low in the West and the shore looked fuzzy with light, I had knocked on the kitchen door. Through the glass, I could see the short man ignoring me so I rapped again and stared at him impatiently until he turned to look.

I made the motion for him to open the door, all while keeping a heavy pestle from a pestle and mortar set nestled in my hidden hand like a police club. Finally he opened the door and gave me an expectant look.

“Hi,” I told him, all smiles. “I don’t know if you realize this but I’ve effectively been kidnapped.”

His face remained frozen except for one brow that rose.

“And, well, I was wondering if you had it in your heart to let me go,” I went on. This was a long shot, playing to a man’s sense of decency and morality. As if he’d chose that over going against Javier’s orders.

As I expected he shook his head ever so slightly. His focus was at least on me. I chose that moment to scratch behind my ear with my free hand and let go of a quarter I’d kept hidden in my fingers. It was like a magic trick gone wrong, but the point was that he wasn’t expecting a shiny quarter to fall out from behind my ear and clank down on the floor. His eyes followed it and before they had a chance to look back up at me, I’d raised the pestle and smashed it down into his temple. The sweet spot.

He cried out, much louder than I was expecting and grabbed his head. I saw a flash of red but didn’t have time to dwell on it. I pushed him down and to the side and then jumped up onto the balcony railing. Without hesitating I leaped down, falling a whole story but landing with a
clump
onto the soft sand below. A sharp pang shot up from my left ankle, my weakest one, but I ignored it and started running.

At first it felt like quicksand, like one of those horrible dreams where you’re trying to run but can’t. Only this was no dream. I made it as far as the property edge where a row of flax separated Javier’s property from the neighbors, flax I’d once planted because it looked tropical and pretty, when I was tackled from behind.

I face-planted into the sand as arms went around my legs and brought me down. I kicked out, trying to hit the assailant but it was too late. The person was now straddling me across my waist, preventing me from flipping over or fighting. I bucked, I tried, but they were too strong.

I violently turned my head, cheek burning against the grains of sand and peered up. His face was in shadows caused by the setting sun behind him, but I knew it was Javier. … and he was smiling. I could always see that flash of white teeth.

“Get the fuck off me,” I said, sand coating my lips as I spoke against it.

“I don’t think so.” He sounded smug in his simplicity.

“What were you doing, waiting for me to run?”

“Yes,” he said with a cock of his head. “I wanted to see if you’d learned anything.”

I tried to move again, to throw him off with surprise, but his legs were like steel.

“I learned that your chances of escaping diminishes quickly after the first twenty-four hours of kidnapping,” I told him with a grunt.

“I heard what you said to Felipe. You think this is kidnapping?”

I glared at him with the one eye. “You are so fucking delusional.”

“Oh, I believe you are the delusional one, my angel. I never threatened you with force. You didn’t have to come with me into the car. You chose me, Ellie. You chose to leave him and his lovely family. This was your choice.”

“Then let me go,” I spat out. “You don’t need me.”

“Of course I need you. Please tell me you didn’t spend the whole day trying to think of silly little ways of escaping instead of giving me an answer.”

I ignored him and his mind-reading ways. “Let me go, Javier. If you’re not keeping me here by force, then you’ll get the fuck up and let me walk away.” My voice shook a little.

He grew silent and I could hear nothing except the waves and hushed Spanish in the distance. It sounded like his henchmen, somewhere nearby watching the scene, keeping an eye on their boss to see what he was going to do next.

What he did do next surprised me if not them. He cleared his throat and said, “Fine.”

Then he got to his feet and stepped away, dusting the front of his pant legs and adjusting his suit jacket. Same scuffed wingtips as earlier. He waved out his arm toward the street, as if highlighting the way to go.

“You are free to go, Ellie Watt. I cannot keep you here if you don’t want to be here. I thought you were someone else. I suppose I was mistaken. Even I can make mistakes.”

I wasn’t sure what the hell he was doing but I wasn’t going to waste an opportunity. I snapped up to my feet as quickly as I could and stood across from him, a little unsteady.

He pointed at me, letting his finger trail up and down my body. “You’re wearing a lot of sand.”

I glanced down. I looked like icing powder exploded all over my jeans and t-shirt. I didn’t care.

“So I can just go,” I said warily. This stunk to high heaven.

He nodded gravely. “I brought you here because I thought I was doing you a favor.”

“You thought I was going to do
you
a favor,” I corrected him.

His eyes relaxed. “This is something we both want. You know you want it, need it, crave it.”

No, I wouldn’t start bargaining. I wouldn’t examine what my revenge meant to me now. Being with Camden had taught me that revenge wasn’t the be all and end all of my existence anymore, that I could go legit like I had once planned and going legit, going moral meant not throwing it all to shit and killing a man, no matter how evil that man was.

The man who ruined your entire life, your entire family, your soul
, something whispered from some deep dark place inside me. It used to be a familiar voice and that alone made me realize that I’d changed over the last little bit. It once was familiar and now was strange and buried.

“What are you thinking?” Javier asked with false politeness. I could see his eyes burning gold and green with curiosity.

“Go to hell,” I said, “is what I’m thinking. Now, I’m going to walk and pretend I never saw you. You’re going to pretend you never saw me. You can go onto kill Travis if it makes you happy. I won’t condemn you for it though I can’t say the same for everything else.”

“That sounds fair,” he said, clasping his hands together like he was about to teach a sermon on the beach. “
Adiós
, my dear angel. I’m sorry we couldn’t work this out.”

I watched him for a few beats, my peripheral vision picking up his henchmen who were far out of reach, watching, perhaps as confused as I was. Something was up, obviously, I wasn’t that much of an idiot. But I figured I should probably run for my life while I could.

I’d turned on my heel and was about to sprint away to the road when he cleared his throat. Here it came. The catch.

“Of course,” he said, “there will be consequences for your lack of loyalty.”

My jaw came a tiny bit unhinged. I froze in my tracks for a second, then slowly turned to face him. “Loyalty?”

He twisted his lips in agreement. “Yes. I thought you would have stayed loyal but you’re no different from the rest of them. Remember Miguel? When I found out how disloyal he’d been. He was a traitor.”

My face was making expressions that I couldn’t control. Disbelief and a flood of impatience lay thickly on my tongue. “I don’t … I don’t even know what to say. Are you saying that I’m disloyal to
you
? Javier …” I burst out laughing and leaned forward, hands on my knees. “Javier, you really have lost it haven’t you? You fucking need to be loyal before you can be disloyal.”

His expression was stone. “You were loyal.”

“I was loyal and then I caught you in bed screwing some fucking chick. How is that for loyal?!” I was yelling the last bit, hoping that his henchmen had picked up on it. Not that it mattered to them but somehow it mattered to me that they knew how fucking delusional this man was.

He frowned and took a step forward. “I’m sorry, Angel. I didn’t realize that it had such an impact on you, to affect you all these years later.”

My eyes narrowed, pushing all my ire into them and I jabbed my finger into the air. “No. I know what you’re doing. You’re sick, you know that?” Not only was he trying to make it seem like I was some hung-up ex-girlfriend, he was quasi-threatening me. Slit my throat for not going along with some fucked-up plan? Is that what he was seriously suggesting?

My heart was beginning to beat loudly in my head, throwing me off a bit. Was I panicking? Or just getting a major mind fuck?

Run
, my gut screamed at me.

And so I did. I didn’t have time to get sucked into whatever trap he had planned. He seemed to think I’d be too caught up on old feelings and sentiment to go anywhere but that bitch was wrong. Javier’s betrayal was a learning experience. It taught me to never let my guard down. To never trust men like him.

I ran across the sand, along the flax and to the path that led between his house and the next. The road was almost at my feet. I had no car but I had memory and I knew if I ran fast enough, long enough, I’d hit up a payphone by the fried chicken joint and then I’d be calling Gus for one big favor.

Before I could hit the pavement, I hit someone else.

I shrieked and leaped back. I’d run right into Raul, who was raising his hands like he didn’t mean me any harm though his eyes said otherwise. Pinched and vulture-like, he made my blood curdle.

“Raul, you’re back,” Javier’s voice came from behind me. Fuck he was fast, my eyes darting to the side of Raul, where freedom lay. I could still run. Raul wouldn’t stop me if Javier wouldn’t.

“I had to make sure Camden got away in good faith,” he answered, his scars stretching as he talked.

And the mention of Camden’s name filled my limbs with gravity.

My jaw clenched. “How is Camden?” I asked, taking the risk, the bait, the whatever.

Raul looked over my head at Javier, trading a look I couldn’t read. “Oh, he’s fine.”

I was about to get him to elaborate when Javier spoke. “Fine for now.” His words were laced with grease.

I turned to face him. That smug son-of-a-bitch look was back on his face.

“What do you mean, fine for now?”

Raul walked over to Javier and stood beside him. There was a difference in him now, something that wasn’t there six years ago. Raul had become Javier and Javier had become Travis.

Javier smiled diplomatically. “Well, you do know our score hasn’t been settled, Ellie. That’s why I gave you the chance to redeem yourself.”

My head jerked back. “Score?”

“You stole money of mine. I never saw that money again. In fact, I paid a lot to bring you here. You’ve put me about a hundred grand in the hole.”

My skin was starting to prickle in hot flashes. “I don’t have a hundred grand. You know this.”

“You have some money, I saw you in Vegas, pretending to gamble. Lucky for you, I don’t need your money. It’s the principle of the whole thing. You may not feel loyal to me anymore but you should at least feel like you owe me something. Don’t you have some kind of code, or are you just that immoral now?”

“You’re a fucking pathetic human being,” I jeered, surprised I was even able to form words when my blood was pumping outrage. How dare he insinuate that I was the one with the skewed morals when he was a cold-blooded killer and womanizing, drugging, manhandling bastard.