Bold Tricks (The Artists Trilogy 3)

“True but–”

“No!” Javier’s scream cut through us. We snapped our heads to look. He was running across the street toward us, screaming and waving his hands frantically. “No!”

I looked to Violetta, where he was headed. She had just gotten in the car.

She adjusted her seat.

She started the car.

Jose made a strange grinding sound.

My lungs, heart, soul collapsed.

And Jose exploded.

One minute I saw Violetta’s dark hair through the back window, Javier running across the street for her, a look of absolute horror on his face, a look I’d never seen before and a look I’d never forget.

The next minute, there was a fireball, hotter than hell, larger than life and I was flying backwards, blown into the wall by the fist of heat.

I slammed into the wall and fell to the ground, heat taking over my body, my brain humming with blood and echoes of the blast. I lay there for a few seconds, trying to figure out what had happened. Where was I? Why was the world on fire?

Violetta.

I lifted up my head and saw the flames that licked high into the sky, Jose a burning carcass of memories. Violetta. She’d been inside.

I had given her the keys.

She was dead.

Burning alive.

A messy, anguished sob came out of my mouth. Even though the heat was searing my eyeballs, I couldn’t look away from the flaming wreckage, the cries around me muffled, like my ears were plugged with cotton balls.

I felt hands wrap around my shoulders and pull me up to my feet. A strong arm went around my waist and I was turned away from the inferno and brought into a room.

My hotel room. It seemed like a cave now with the fire raging outside. Violetta was dead. Jose was gone.

“Ellie?” Camden said softly, running his hands down my face. “Fuck, you’re hurt.”

I looked up at him, seeing him but not seeing him. He gently touched my temple and I saw blood on his fingers. “Come on, we’ll get you cleaned up.”

Cleaned up? Who cared about being cleaned up? What the fuck just happened?

“Violetta!” I cried out suddenly, tears rushing to my face. I tried to run back outside but he held me in place.

“No,” he said roughly. “There’s nothing we can do for her.”

I looked at him with wild eyes and he brought me closer to him. “I gave her the keys.”

He shook his head. “You couldn’t have known there was a bomb in the car.”

“Javier!” I cried out. “Javier knew! He was running and yelling and … oh my god, Camden, what happened to him?”

His dark brows came together and he bit his lip, his eyes searching me. “Ellie …”

I shook my head and pushed him out of the way. “No!” I ran out of the room and back to the scene of the crime.

People from the hotel were gathered around the blaze, some with fire extinguishers, trying to put it out with futile sprays of foam. I didn’t see Javier anywhere.

I swallowed the bile that was coming up my throat. Had Javier been swallowed up by the same blast that was currently consuming his sister? Was he there now, a charred skeleton amid the flames?

I promptly leaned over and threw up on the ground.

Camden’s hand was on my back in seconds. “Come on, come back inside.”

I made a pitiful noise, wanting nothing more than to scream, cry, run.

“Please, Ellie, you’re hurt.” I felt him reach for my head. I moved out of his grasp getting hit with dizziness instead. I staggered a bit then froze when I saw Dom coming out of the crowd of people, heading toward us, a gun noticeable in his waistband as the breeze lifted back his slick suit jacket.

We needed to run. But I couldn’t even move.

Dom stopped right in front of us, a sympathetic smile on his lips. “You two need to come with me.”

“Why?” Camden asked, his voice strong and steady.

Dom glanced at the burning wreckage, at the people who were now stealing glances at us.

“Because we have to go,” he said simply. “You don’t want to be here when the police get here. And the men who did this? They’re still out there.”

“Where’s Javier?” I asked him, not quite certain that he wasn’t one of the men who had tried to take our heads off and blew up my beloved car and Javier’s beloved sister. And possibly Javier.

He looked over my shoulder into the room and said, “Just grab your stuff and go. I’m parked around the corner.” Then he took off toward the bar. I watched until he disappeared around the building.

“What do you think?” Camden asked. “We don’t have to go with him. We can go out on our own. It could be a death trap in that car.”

I couldn’t even think. I didn’t even care.

Camden sighed and brought me to him, wrapping his arms around me and holding me tight. I could feel his heart beating against mine. I closed my eyes, feeling waves of darkness trying to swallow me whole. This was all too much and my brain couldn’t even take it in. It was spitting it all out, rejecting reality, leaving me with a numbness I welcomed too much.

“You tell me what to do,” I whispered into his chest. “I can’t.”

I don’t remember much after that, maybe it’s because I had a concussion and pieces of Jose still in my hair or maybe because my head was protecting me from the brutality of the truth. It was all like a dream. Camden brought me inside and we gathered up the rest of my stuff, everything that had been in Jose. Then we hurried along the row of rooms toward the bar. I could hear the cries of people behind us, as if we were the bad guys and we were getting away. But no one came after us as we rounded the corner and saw a shiny black Escalade at the curbside, its engine running.

It was all a dream until I got into the car.

Este was sitting by the door in the back to make room for me.

And Javier was sitting in the front seat.

Alive.

My heart churned like a cement mixer, a million competing emotions running through me. Relief he was alive. And fear because he wasn’t dead.

I climbed into the middle seat, still dazed but feeling everything sparking back to life, like I went from black and white back to Technicolor.

Javier didn’t turn around to acknowledge me. In fact, as Camden closed the door and Dom drove the Escalade down the street, no one said anything. The five of us were silent though apologies were dancing on my tongue. I wanted to tell Javier I was sorry about Violetta. I wanted to tell him it was all my fault. I wanted to beg for forgiveness.

But I didn’t. Because it wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t bring her back. It wouldn’t make anyone feel better. Not even me.

Camden reached for my hand and held onto it tight. His skin was warm, firm and soft all at once. I raised my eyes to his. He was here with me, a simple fact in an unsimple world.

We stared at each other for a few beats, my thoughts lost in those baby blues, in the hardness that surrounded them, and the soulfulness deep inside. Violetta’s words from last night swirled around in my head. Her wish for love, to love and to be loved.

I couldn’t be sure I had the latter. I certainly didn’t deserve it. But I had the former. I loved this man who was sitting next me, who had been by my side, on my side, from the beginning. I had to hold onto that. I had something that Violetta died without – knowing that someone completely owns your heart. Camden owned my heart and the blood it pumped through me. He owned every atom and inch of my body, every crevice and dark shadow of my soul. From now on, he would possess it freely, easily. I was his. And if I blew up the next day, if I met my death trying to get back Gus and my mother, at least then I could die knowing my heart was put to good use. It wasn’t wasted. And if it wasn’t wasted then perhaps I wasn’t wasted either.

I squeezed his hand back, silent thanks for his comfort and devotion. Then I carefully leaned my head on his shoulder and tried to forget about the pain that the morning had brought me. The lives it had changed.

We sped south in a car full of love and death.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Hold still,” Camden instructed.

He had an alcohol soaked cloth poised at the corner of my head, ready to sting the shit out of me. The pain that came with healing.

We were in a gas station bathroom, the floor sticky with unknown fluids, the walls crawling with winged creepy crawlies that would occasionally make a go for the bare light bulb before falling to the floor. I was sitting up on the sink and Camden was trying to treat my wounds while he had the chance.

We had driven pretty much nonstop all the way from Aguascalientes until just outside of the border to Guatemala, 12 hours in one stretch. During the drive, Javier hadn’t said a single word, only stared out the window as the landscape of his country rushed past us. Dom and Este did all the talking, telling us the plan for the next few days as we went into the jungle. Apparently we were meeting another “friend” of theirs in Guatemala City who’d be joining us.

No one talked about what happened to Violetta or who was shooting at us. I assumed it was Travis and I guess from their silence the assumption was right. There was nothing to say, I suppose, except that his people wanted us dead and they were a lot more clever than I had given them credit for.

“Ow,” I moaned as Camden gently pressed the cloth to my head.

“Sorry,” he said, eyes soft as he gazed at me.

I watched him as he did this, wincing through the pain. He dabbed it on my cheekbone where I had another large gash that hurt if I smiled. Luckily, there wasn’t much to smile about.

“How are your eyes?” I asked him.

He paused, cloth in hand, and peered at me inquisitively. “What do you mean?”

“Can you see me?”

He went back to stinging the wounds. “I told you I can see you clearly from up close.”

I swallowed hard and swung my legs up and down, suddenly very aware that as I sat on the edge of the sink, I was pretty much straddling him. “Do you like what you see?” I asked quietly. My words sat in a fine haze over the room, my chest constricting from the silence.

His mouth dropped open, lower lip full and inviting, his pink tongue moving in his mouth, trying to make words that would not come.

“Am I still beautiful to you?” I whispered, feeling my heart slowly leak open. I was raw and wounded and in his hands.

His face crumpled, such vulnerability in its strength. The cloth dropped out of his hands and into the sink and he sucked in his breath before saying, “Ellie Watt, you’re more beautiful than you’ve ever been.”

And then his lips, his soft, full, warm lips were on mine, sending sparks up my face, to the back of my head, trailing down my back like brushes from angel wings. His mouth was greedy and mine wanted, needed, craved more. He made a fist in the back of my hair and I grabbed onto his, tugging it until he moaned, the intoxicating sound of his lust filling my mouth, my throat, my lungs. I couldn’t get enough, I was afraid I’d never get it again.

It was wrong, it was wrong, it was wrong to be doing this with him, in here, when the whole world was dying out there, but I didn’t care. I loved him and I needed him more than I ever needed anyone. I loved him and love had to be good in this life full of bad.