He smiled at me and raised his arms to showcase the house. “You came, Miss Eleanor Willis. What do you think of my house? Isn’t it the loveliest house you’ve ever seen?”
I pasted a smile on my lips and the next thing I said wasn’t a lie, “Yes, it’s the nicest house I’ve ever seen.”
“Good, good,” he said and clapped his hands together. “Since you are new here, let me show you around and introduce you to the guests.”
It was the most terrifying and boring hour of my life. He introduced me to literally everyone, saying my name “Miss Eleanor Willis” to every single person there. And there were a lot of people. I estimated at least eighty, milling about and looking pretty.
The whole time I kept thinking about the necklace, I kept thinking about how I was going to do it and when. How would I get his food, what if I slipped up and he caught me? How long did the poison take to work? Would I have time to give it to him and then excuse myself to the bathroom? Would anyone suspect me? Did I have to sit there and watch him eat it and die? Because for all the terrible things he’d done, for the devil that he was, I didn’t know if I could do that. My heart would take no pleasure in murdering him, in seeing him die before my eyes. I always thought I might, that I would swim in it, but now that I was here and it was a reality, poison at my neck, I knew it would haunt me. Just because someone deserved to die didn’t mean I was the person to do it.
But for tonight, for here, I had to. I was the angel of death, walking arm in arm with Lucifer.
We paused by the open doors to the veranda where many people were sitting about on brightly colored deckchairs, watching the thunder and lightning storm off in the distance. From here you had the vantage point of looking down the large grassy sweep of finely cut lawn and garden that was illuminated by various lights. In flashes of lightning I could see the lawn went beyond the lights and disappeared into jungle. It looked like acres and acres and it was all his.
Travis was beside me, talking to someone that he introduced as the senator of something. But I wasn’t listening to a word they were saying. My eyes were caught on someone across the room, a striking man in an ill-fitting suit and an arm in a sling.
Camden. He was here, somehow. Just standing by the wall, his eyes on me, sending me signals. Trying to say something. But what? He was here, he was alive. He was alive. I looked around, trying not to be too obvious about it, to see if Javier was too, if it was a trap. Or maybe a dream, maybe a nightmare. But I didn’t see him, not Gus, not anyone. Only Camden. He jerked his head toward the hallway, motioning for me to go out that way, to meet him there.
I told him I would with my eyes, and was about to tell Travis I needed to use the bathroom when a woman stepped in front of me with a tray of champagne.
“Would you like some champagne,” she asked me and I nearly burst into tears at the sound of her voice. This woman. She was looking at the men, a phony smile pasted on her lips, one that lingered on Travis a little too long. Then she looked at me and for one second I could have been another pretty girl on the arm of the man she had once loved.
Then there was a flash of recognition, recognition that messed with her features, making her look less like a thin, middle-aged woman with highlighted brown hair and tall Estonian cheekbones, and more like a woman having the fright of her life. Because this, this was absolutely as frightening as it was fucked up.
She dropped the tray, it falling in slow motion, the champagne flutes tipping and the fizzing liquid spilling everywhere.
“Ellie!” she exclaimed. And that’s when I knew it wasn’t a daydream of mine. It wasn’t something I’d imagined over and over again because what I’d imagined didn’t have my mother working for Travis Raines.
My mother.
This was my mother.
Mom.
She was here, standing in front of me. After all these years, she was here with me.
And in that moment, that cry that escaped from her red lips, she and I both knew what was happening. That Travis was looking between the two of us and putting two and two and eleven and twenty-six together.
I had, maybe, a few seconds. My eyes flitted over my mother’s shoulder to Camden in one second. He was already running toward me, a plastic bottle in his hand. He knew, he’d seen this was coming.
In the next second, I spun around and ran like hell. I ran as fast as I could, grateful, for once, that I was never able to wear high heels, and shoved people out the way, leaping onto the veranda. I don’t know what happened behind me, I could only focus on the lawn in front, the lights, the darkness behind it all. Suddenly there was a small explosion, a burst of something going off, though there was no heat and no light, but there was screaming and coughing and there was gunfire and suddenly Camden was at my side, running alongside me.
There was no time, no space in my lungs to talk, no way to figure out what had just happened and how that could have been my mother, my mom, who had left me in California all those years ago. The one who made me a freak, who left me as one. How could she be here? How could she be with that man, the one who ruined me before everyone else did? How could she do this to me?
My vision was getting blurry and the rainclouds burst open again, in time to hide my tears. I kept running, Camden at my side, limbs pumping up and down, bullets whizzing past us and I had no idea how we were going to get out of this alive.
I should have killed Travis the first chance I got. Now the necklace was still around my neck and it was useless.
A machine gun went off in the distance, the rattle of bullets. We were heading for the jungle, for the darkness and depth that promised shelter and shade. We moved just inside the first trees, where a wide but overgrown path had cut through, when we were suddenly illuminated with light. A row of them went on a few yards in front of us, lights that belonged to a Jeep or a utility vehicle. Someone appeared at the top of the vehicle, standing on the seat, gun propped up over the windshield and aimed right at us.
Camden made the move to go in front of me, to block me from the gun. The gun went off, the single shot ringing throughout the forest. I screamed and gripped Camden as he became a shield, feeling for where the bullet would have gone into him. I felt like my heart had been shot too.
Camden gripped my arm right back and said, “I’m okay,” as the man with the gun fell from the Jeep and landed on the hood. The fuck?
The bushes rustled to the left of the Jeep and another man stepped out into the lights. I couldn’t see his face, only his silhouette but I’d always recognize him.
“If I were you two, I’d get the fuck in this car, or this would have been a big waste of my time,” Javier said.
I exchanged a glance with Camden, not understanding any of this. He didn’t look at ease but he glanced behind us at the Jeeps that were rolling over the lawn and coming for us, the gunfire in the distance that wouldn’t stop until we were hunted down. It was either go with Javier or die here. It wasn’t an easy choice but I’d gotten pretty good at making hard decisions.
“Come on,” Camden said, squeezing my arm and running me over to the Jeep. Javier had already hopped into the driver’s seat and I climbed in right beside him. Camden was barely inside before the Jeep started speeding backward along the rough path, our bodies knocking against each other from the bumps and dips. When the clearing opened a bit, Javier brought the Jeep around in a quick spin and we went off following it through, the way lit by the headlights.
I had so many questions but why Javier was here wasn’t one. I didn’t want to dwell on that, not now, not when we had to focus on getting out of there.
“What’s your plan?” I asked him.
He glared at me and I realized how fucked up his face had gotten. From the cutting look that he briefly shot Camden, I could tell he was the source of all the blood and bruises.
“Before I kill your Clark Kent over there, my plan is to get us the fuck out of here.”
“How?”
“Let me show you how Mexicans drive.”
Once bullets started flying at the Jeep and we were lit up from behind, Travis’s men entering the path, Javier turned the lights off on the Jeep and quickly turned to the right. Against the flashes of lightning, we could see the bushes and trees lighting up in front of us. Another flash of lightning and we were seconds from colliding with a tree. Javier yanked the wheel just in time and we went bounding out of the jungle and back to the smoothness of Travis’s groomed lawn. The house glowed in the distance, people running in all directions, guns going off but who knows where or at what because at the moment they weren’t after us.
That moment lasted about a minute, until people could hear the roar of the Jeep and we drove onto the area that was lit. Then guns were going off at us. People taking aim from all directions. There wasn’t enough time to shoot, we were swerving radically and bounced down around to the front yard where people were fleeing the mansion in a convoy of fancy cars and limos. The gates were open, trying to let them out.
“Hold on,” Javier yelled and he sounded like he was smiling when he said it, like this was all a fucking game. A gun shot came from the side and hit the door of the Jeep as Javier aimed the vehicle at a red sports car that was trying to leave through the gates. I held onto Camden for dear life, he held onto the roll bar and Javier held onto the wheel as we all braced for impact when we rear ended the red car, sending it flying off, crashing into the guard’s booth. We were stalled for just a second, enough time for the guard to get out his gun and aim it at us but Javier was faster and shot him in the head first. Then he violently thrust the car into gear and slammed his foot on the gas. We rocketed forward and raced down the street. There seemed to be a light at the end of this tunnel when you were facing the other way.
We sped through the streets, not slowing, not stopping, weaving in and out of the Sunday evening drivers until Javier thought we were far enough away. He pulled the Jeep down a lonely road and parked it with a lurch.
A heavy minute passed as the rain started falling again. With no roof above our heads, all three of us were soaked thoroughly. We sat there breathing, me between them, trying to find some sense in this ever growing mess.
“What happened?” I asked. “My mother … why was my mother there?”
I looked at Camden who was looking at Javier. I turned to look at Javier.
“Why was she there? You wanted me to kill my parents? I don’t understand.”
He stared right back at me and I realized how many secrets the man had been keeping from me. “Your parents were never any good.”
I felt the sting even though I knew the truth. “I still don’t understand.”
“Your parents used to work for Javier. And then they switched and went to Travis,” Camden filled in over my head.
“Fuck you, you pansy,” Javier sneered. “What the fuck do you know about anything?”
“I know this pansy beat your fucking ass, American style,” he shot back.
Shit, there was going to be more bloodshed if I didn’t stop this.
“You guys!” I yelled. “Where is Gus?”
“I left him with Javier,” Camden said, his face falling. “He was shot. He was alive when I left him.”