“I don’t care. What do you want?”
“It’s one and the same, don’t you see? I no longer work for Travis. I went my own way a year ago.”
“A regular Stevie Nicks,” I said, masking the sorrow that picked at me. Uncle Jim. His memory kept floating to the surface.
He went on, “Travis … I grew more powerful than him.”
“You must be very proud.”
He tilted his head in agreement, not receiving my sarcasm. “There were too many traitors in his organization. He’d gone mad with power. Things were unraveling. He began consorting with our rivals, Los Zetas. The very people who killed my parents. If I hadn’t split, I might have died.”
What a shame, I thought.
“I had Raul and Alex. I had a few others. I had the means and the connections. I left here and headed to Florida. I made a good life for myself.” He noticed my expression. “Yes, maybe running drugs isn’t a noble life. But neither is conning.”
“What,” I said through grinding teeth, “Is. The. Task?”
“Travis hurt you, Ellie. He was the reason you found me those years ago. You wanted revenge for your scars, for your life, for what he’d done to you. I’m handing you the gun. Together, we can get your revenge. And I can get mine.”
Despite everything sounding absolutely ridiculous, I had to ask, “What’s your revenge? What did he do to you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, his eyes drifting to the LA Times again. Why he was reading the LA paper when we were in Ocean Springs, Mississippi was beyond me. Everything was beyond me. “What matters is that I said I would kill any man that hurt you. Now, you have seen that I keep my word. I keep my promises. Travis hurt you, maybe more than anyone else. I want him dead from the barrel of my gun.”
I swallowed uneasily. “Maybe you oughta turn the gun on yourself then.” Because you hurt me, too, is what I didn’t say.
He blinked warmly. “Maybe I will. But first, this is the task. We kill him. Together. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Promises are promises.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was raining down on me in slick fragments that I just couldn’t grasp. One minute Camden and I were heading for a new life together. In the next I was with Javier, who wanted me to kill the drug lord that ruined my life. As much as I believed in revenge, I couldn’t muster up the rage that blinded me enough to do such a thing. I couldn’t do much of anything except try and get my brain up to speed.
“I’m a con artist,” I stated. “Not a killer for hire.”
“I know,” he said softly. He got up, pushing his chair back and leaning on the table. “Unfortunately, you don’t have much of a choice.”
My breath hitched. I would not let fear set in. Fear made me weak. Fear had drugged me.
“I always have a choice.” I grimaced at my warbling voice.
“Not always,” he said, walking around the table. His wing-tipped shoes echoed in the kitchen. “The choice you did have – to stay with Camden or turn yourself over to me – you took. Now you have to live with the consequences. It’s time for you to own your decision.
His eyes were getting to be too much. I looked to the floor. “Why do you need me to do this? Why can’t you kill him yourself?”
“Because we are enemies now, my dear. Because he knows to look out for me. Because I have tried before and yes, I failed. I am not perfect.”
“No one ever said you were,” I muttered. My heart was threatening to beat out of my chest but as long as I kept my eyes on the floor and my head clear, I was going to be okay. No fear. I had to play it cool, play it safe and have no fear. The minute my mind started focusing on the what ifs was the moment I lost it.
I was very close to losing it.
“You,” he said coming up to me. My body seized with his just inches away. I concentrated on his black shoes, expensive leather with scuffed tips. Tailored suit pants. It didn’t go. His shoes should have been shiny and as black as oil. “You. You can get to him. You can get close. You don’t even have to pull the trigger.” He said trigger like it was a new sexual position.
Another thought I didn’t need.
He took another slow step forward. I sucked in my stomach.
His voice lowered till it was rough and smooth like ice in a milkshake. “You can get your revenge. The revenge you couldn’t get with me.”
“Maybe I don’t need revenge anymore.”
“Maybe you’re lying to yourself.”
I dared myself to look him in the eye. I raised my chin defiantly, pretending I was suited in armor. “Maybe lying is what I do best.”
He gazed at my lips and let out a small laugh. “Aren’t you tired of searching for that something to put your demons to rest?”
I ignored him. “Aren’t you tired of pretending you know me when you don’t know shit? You didn’t even know I was Ellie Watt.”
“I knew enough,” he said vaguely. “And I know you’ll help me.”
“I’d like to prove you wrong.”
“Ellie, he doesn’t know who you are. You can get in. You can get close.”
I jerked my head in disbelief. “Like hell he doesn’t know who I am. Javier. I was your … I was here. I lived with you for a fucking year. Travis knew about me, you told me he did. He saw pictures of us, of me.”
“He never met you.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“You look completely different.”
“He’ll know.” I started shaking my head up and down and back and forth. “Oh, he’ll know. How can he not?”
Javier frowned and rubbed at his chin. I could almost see puzzle pieces coming together behind those eyes. “Because he didn’t know you when you were a child. And he didn’t know you when you were with me. And he doesn’t know you now.” His head dipped. “Angel, you were nothing to him. Unmemorable. He probably doesn’t even remember pouring that acid down your leg. You’re nothing special. Not to him.”
I felt like I’d been slapped in the face and it took my fingers digging into my pockets like desperate claws to keep from slapping him in the face. Lord knows he deserved it and more. But now wasn’t the time. Because as much as it hurt for Javier to say it, I knew he was right. I had always thought that Travis was watching out for me in the way that I watched out for him. But who was I to him? Just a ten-year-old girl with stupid, reckless, selfish parents. He got his money back. He probably never gave a second thought to what he did to me. He was the be all and end all in the back of my mind, my heart, my spine, my soul. His actions piloted every moment until now. And they would probably affect the next. I knew he hadn’t given me more thought than just that moment, when he scarred me. It was as natural as wiping his ass. He probably woke up the next day and forgot all about what he did to me. I wasn’t special. I was a mere second to him yet he’d become my Moby Dick. In some way, he’d become my everything. Too many monsters had inserted themselves into my life.
“You see,” Javier whispered. Sugar sweet. Poison. “He ruined your life and it didn’t mean a thing. He’ll do that to you. That’s how he got so far. That’s why we’re going to take him down.”
“I’m not doing anything with you,” I snarled, finding violence in my veins.
That smirk of his. “You’ll change your mind. You did before.”
Then he moved away from me in one swift moment. He plucked the orange juice off the table, drank it empty and slammed it down. “I have some business to attend to. I’ll be back, you’ll be delighted to know. In the meantime, make yourself … at home.”
He gave me a wink and then ran down the stairs to the front door. It opened before he even got there, a burly man on the other side of it. The door closed, sealing me in the prison of my past.
CHAPTER FOUR
CAMDEN
I dreamed about Ellie.
We were walking together between the rows of date palms on her Uncle Jim’s farm. As usual, my dreams were vivid. I could smell the dates as they squished beneath our feet, the earthiness of sun and soil. Me, in my high school gear: long black trench coat which was never as hot as it looked, vinyl pants that were as hot as they looked, black doc martens that I’d drawn on with a silver Sharpie. Ellie was wearing the same boots, albeit smaller. I had decorated hers with gold scribbles. She was dressed in jeans and a strappy top, her uniform. Jackasses made fun of her for wearing pants in the California desert, even in the heart of summer, but I loved her in that. The jeans adapted to her body as she developed over the years, from lean and lanky to lean and curvy.
We’d always been the only kids in Palm Valley who wouldn’t be caught dead in shorts.
We walked along the rows, the sun dappling through the leaves making me feel happy. It was always a peculiar feeling but I was used to it when I was around her. Being around Ellie gave me peace and acceptance. Real life only settled in when she left.
In the dream, I reached for her hand and pulled her towards a date palm. A ladder had been left there after harvesting.
“I want to show you something,” I told her.
She shook her head, her brow wearing a faint sign of panic. She looked so fucking cute, it was always so damn hard not to kiss her. I remember always wanting to and never working up the nerve. She had let me be so true and free (as free as a teenager can be) but that was the one thing I could never let on – how much I wanted her, needed her. It was puppy love at its dirtiest.
“Come on,” I had said to her. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights.”
Her fourteen-year-old face grew hard with stark determination. I knew that would work on her.
“I’m not afraid of anything,” she said. She grabbed the ladder and began to speed up it.
“Careful!” I called after her and followed.
We seemed to climb on and on, forever and forever, the palm tree stretching from twenty feet to thirty feet to fifty feet to a hundred. We finally reached the top, crawling through the thick fronds like kittens in a jungle. I took every opportunity to touch Ellie, my hand on her arm, her back, her thigh.
“Oh my god,” Ellie said as she settled in. Her eyes were fastened to the horizon.
In the distance you could see the San Jacinto Mountains looming like lions. They were on fire, the peaks flickering with flames that edged their way down the mountainsides and toward the towns below. The fire spread like a blanket of lava over the valley, faster and thicker until it reached her uncle’s farm. Date palms disappeared in front of our eyes, going down like blackened matchsticks, leaving tiny puffs of smoke floating above a sea of red.
Ellie looked at me, young and scared. She reached for my hand as the hiss and pop of the fire gathered at the base of our tree.
“Will you burn with me?” she asked. “Or will you go free?”
I grabbed her face as the heat pressed in. “I’ll burn with you.”
My lips touched hers for one second. Our screams covered us in the next.