Bold Tricks (The Artists Trilogy 3)

I screamed bloody murder.

He fell down flat, legs sticking out of the door, motionless.

Javier.

Shot.

Dead.

No.

No.

Not yet.

His legs twitched and he managed to pull himself into the pool house until I couldn’t see him anymore.

“Ellie Watt!” a cold voice bellowed from across the lawn. I could barely tear my eyes away from where Javier had disappeared, fighting back a range of emotions I couldn’t even pin down but I managed to turn my head. The voice had reached into me, holding me tight with an icy fist.

Travis was standing on the lawn where it met the edge of his patio, gun in hand.

In front of him was my mother and Camden on their knees with their hands behind their heads.

No.

Not this.

Not now.

My heart couldn’t take any more of this. Every part of me was shattered from leg to soul.

“What do you want from me?!” I screamed at him. I grabbed my gun out of my boot and staggered to my feet, crying softly from the pain as I touched my right leg to the ground.

“Come closer and we’ll talk,” Travis yelled back. “You might want to keep your gun down, though. You know you can’t save both of them.”

I sobbed in pain and anger and started limping toward him, practically dragging my bloodied leg behind me, gun at my side. Each step I took riddled with more pain, more sorrow, more hate toward this man who had taken everything away from me.

I wouldn’t let him take Camden.

I wondered if he knew that would be my decision. He figured I came all this way for my mother when that wasn’t the case at all. He was betting on me picking her, saving her.

I remembered when Derek had asked me what I would do if I had to save my mother, how I said I’d have to let the situation dictate my choice.

I knew my choice back then and I knew it now.

I stopped a few yards away and looked at Camden, at his beautiful soul in those blue eyes. We stared at each other locked, in our gaze, locked in love. He wouldn’t want me to make this choice either. I could only hope he wouldn’t make it for me.

“You don’t look as lovely as you did when you were Eleanor Willis,” Travis said, smiling like the devil, his gun in the middle of the two of them but leaning more toward my mother.

“You don’t look so hot either,” I retorted. His normally neat dark grey hair was messed up with pieces of plaster in it, his slick Italian suit covered in blood and tears, his terrible eyes red. “Your age is showing.”

He kept smiling and nodded at me. “Sorry about your leg. Hope it doesn’t leave a scar.”

I swallowed hard, overtaken by the anger and the pain and the determination to walk out of there with the love of my life. I chose love over everything.

Love over gold.

I raised my gun straight up in the air and pointed it at him. “I hoped this doesn’t either.”

“You kill me, Ellie,” he said quickly, a rare tremor coming through, “your mother dies.” He trained the gun to the back of her head.

“You wouldn’t kill her,” I said and though I wished it weren’t true, I had to wish it was true. “You love her, don’t you?”

His eyes narrowed. “She loved me enough to make up for it. You can’t love in this business, Ellie. Sooner or later everyone dies.”

Javier had said that to me. Now I didn’t even know if he was alive or not.

“Then why are we standing here like this,” I said, hiding the weakness in my voice. “Do you want me to come join you, is that it? Do you want me to be like my mother? The only reason she was with you is because she wanted to get revenge for what you did to me.” I didn’t even know if that was true but maybe it could knock his ego down a few.

He pressed his thin lips together and smiled. “You’re here because I’m humoring you. I’ve got a sniper trained on your head right now. None of you are walking out of this alive. I just wanted you to see what love gets you in this world, in the real world. Death. You can escape love but you can’t escape death. Not here. Not anywhere. And not right now.”

This wouldn’t be our fate.

“And neither can you,” I said, pulling the trigger.

It all happened so fast and so terrible.

The bullet went straight into Travis’s forehead but not before he had the chance to pull the trigger on his own gun. My mother leaned to the side in anticipation and the bullet ended up striking her neck instead of her head. I immediately dropped to the ground as the sniper’s bullets came out, Camden doing the same. I rolled over, getting as close to him as possible, not even feeling my leg anymore and aimed in the direction of the bullets.

There were two men on the roof now. One with the gun.

The other going behind him and snapping the man’s neck with a quick twist of his hands.

The man fell down dead. The other man waved at us, just once, then started running down the roof until he was able to slip inside an open window on the second floor.

Derek.

“Ellie,” Camden said, crawling to me, taking me into his arms. “Are you okay?”

I shook my head, words not coming, and immediately tried to get to my feet. I fell back down and then crawled over to my mother who was lying on the ground, making gurgling sounds from her throat.

“Mommy,” I whimpered, trying to turn her over. Blood poured freely from the hole in the crook of her neck, soaking my hands. She was still breathing, weak and shallow. Her brown eyes blinked at the sun then slowly looked over at me, softening when she saw my face.

I couldn’t stop the tears. I bawled, chest burning for air, and she reached for my hand and held it as strongly as she could. “I’m sorry,” I gasped. “I’m so sorry.”

“Ellie, sweetheart,” she tried to say but could only cough.

“I am so sorry,” I cried again, shaking uncontrollably. “I love you mommy, and I’m sorry I’m so sorry I did this.”

She shook her head slightly. “You did nothing wrong,” she croaked, her lips turning white. “I’m sorry. For everything I did to you.”

Her lungs wheezed and she coughed again and I could feel Camden crouched beside me, a hand on my arm. He was going to tell me to go, that we had to leave but I couldn’t leave her here, not dying like this.

She swallowed, a stream of blood coming out of the side of her mouth. “I love you Ellie. Remember that.”

In that moment I forgave her for everything. I only hoped she could forgive me. And that I could forgive myself.

And then, as I kissed her forehead, I heard her take in her last breath of air. My tears spilled onto her head and I slowly pulled away. She was lifeless, frozen, hopefully taken away somewhere where she could finally find happiness.

“Ellie,” Camden said softly, sticking his shoulder under my arms and pulling me up to my feet. “The game is still in play and you’re shot. We have to get out of here.”

My heart was a stone, a brick, a mountain, weighing me to the ground. I looked at my mom, then over at the pool house, and I wondered how things went so wrong, so fast. They weren’t the constants in my life and they weren’t the good, but at least they weren’t always the bad. Like me, they were grey and they shaded every step I’d taken.

I moved like I was in a dream, the pain in my leg overshadowed by my sorrow. Camden helped me limp a few steps before he bent down and scooped me up into his arms, instructing me to put my hands around his neck. He ran forward but I stared backward until the bodies were further away.

“You two okay?” Derek’s voice broke through.

Camden stopped and I raised my head to look. Derek was standing at the corner of the house, a large gash across his face but otherwise all right. I wasn’t sure if we could trust him but he did just take out the sniper for us. Then again, he was wearing a bulletproof vest.

“She’s been shot,” Camden said, his voice on the verge of panicking. “In her leg.”

Derek gave it a quick glance and then looked at us gravely. In his vest, ammo and weapons, piercing blue eyes and shaved head, he looked like he was in his element. Nothing fazed him. This was routine.

“I can help you,” he said. “If you pay me.”

“What?” Camden exclaimed and his grip around me tightened.

Derek was motionless. “I know where Gus is. I needed to know how much he meant to you, what you are willing to give, Ellie. I can take you to him. I can fix you. But you have to name your price.”

“Fifty thousand,” I said, knowing how much Javier had given Camden for me. I was sure, even in death, Javier wouldn’t mind if it went to save my life. “Give or take.”

“I’ll give you a break and let’s call it thirty,” Derek said. “It’s still more than what Javier paid me to stick around and help take over this place.”

The words were stuck in my throat but they managed to come out. “He’s shot, you know. He’s in the pool house.”

He nodded. “I saw. I took out the original sniper as well. But whether he’s alive or dead, he owns the Zetas now and they’re coming. I did my job for him, now I want out.”

“And how are we getting out of here?” Camden asked.

The tiniest hint of a smile appeared on Derek’s lips. “I learned to fly a few choppers in Afghany.”

He jerked his head toward the landing pad.

“Shouldn’t we … shouldn’t we make sure Javier is okay,” I said, knowing it wasn’t the popular opinion.

Derek shook his head. “We don’t have time. You have no idea what that man is capable of, do you.”

“She knows,” Camden said quickly. “She just has a big heart.”

“A big heart will get you killed. If Javier’s alive, he’s at the top of the food chain now. And we’re all just chum.”

I let that sink in and tried to forget the guilt. He had left me behind to die. I would have to try and do the same to him. And hope that if he did pull through, that he wouldn’t come after me again.

Soon we were in the helicopter, Derek at the controls, Camden beside me in the back, ripping apart a first aid kit for pain medicine. I stared out the window as we rose from the ground and took off toward the horizon. We left my past, my broken, and sometimes beautiful, past behind me.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Ellie, we’re here.”

I moaned and opened my eyes and saw a repeating shadow crossing above my head. Chopper blades. I had that one sweet moment between sleep and waking when you think everything is fine.

Then I was slammed with unbearable pain. In my leg, where the bullet went in. And in my heart, where my mom and possibly Javier had died. Grief for people who perhaps didn’t deserve grief but I was drowning in it all the same.

Camden was at my side, gently pressing his lips to my cheekbone.

I reached out and grabbed his strong face, needing to feel him, that he was here, alive. I had him. He had me.

“Where are we?” I whispered, my voice dry.

He put his arm under my shoulder and gently lifted me up. He quickly unscrewed a bottle of water and poured some of it in my parched mouth. I was sitting in a field right beside the chopper. In the distance was the barn we had parked at and the black Escalade was coming out of it.