Bold Tricks (The Artists Trilogy 3)

Done.

Then I looked around me. More fighting was going on behind the jetliners, giving me a moment of clarity. A moment of quiet. I may have still been an easy target, but I had to take it. I had to take this moment and make it mine.

I staggered over to Camden, my legs growing weaker and weaker with every step I took until I finally collapsed to my knees and crawled the rest of the way, dragging myself over the sand.

I grabbed for his hand, his still-warm hand, and held onto it as the tears unleashed. I sobbed, beside myself in the agony, in the grief, knowing I had to somehow pull through in life without him, to take care of Ben. But it shouldn’t have been this way.

The hero doesn’t die.

And Camden McQueen was a hero unlike any other.

Selfless, brave, protective.

Good.

So fucking good.

I moved another inch and tried to see through my tears to his flawless face, to take it in one last time. I placed my shaking hand to his lips.

He kissed it.

His eyes flew open and he looked at me.

I almost screamed. I jerked, startled, scared.

“Hey,” he said.

I couldn’t even form words. My chest was about to explode from sheer and utter joy. How could this be?

I looked down at his wound. He was shot, wasn’t he? I put my hand there, feeling along the denim, expecting it to come away with blood. There was nothing. His chest was stiff, harder than normal. With my mouth agape, I unbuttoned the first few buttons of his shirt and saw the bulletproof vest underneath.

“What the …” I was unable to finish the sentence.

I laughed, confused, elated and looked at him, my hands flying for his face. “You’re not dead.”

He smiled and kissed my palm. “No, thankfully. Feels like I got slammed with a brick though.” He tried to sit up and looked around him. “I think we need to get out of here.”

I put my hand behind his back and helped him sit straight. “I still don’t understand. Why do you have a vest? Who gave you a bulletproof vest?”

He cocked his head to the side, dust falling off his black hair. “Javier.”

I shook my head, unable to comprehend any of this.

He was alive!

He was alive!

“Why would Javier give you a bulletproof vest?”

“I smooth-talked him.”

I raised my brows and got to my feet, helping him up. “How the hell did you smooth-talk Javier?”

He shook out his arms and ripped open the rest of shirt to get a better look at the vest. The crunched bullet fell to the ground. “Well, I didn’t know if it would work but I used you. I told him the truth, that you might be pregnant with my child, and that if he really, truly cared about you, he wouldn’t take me away from you. So he had a change of heart and gave me the vest. He’s wearing one too. He did when he got shot at Travis’s as well. Playing dead worked well for him, so … ”

“A change of heart?” I exclaimed. “He still handed you over to Vincent! What if Vincent shot you in the head?!”

“Ellie, he doesn’t have a very big heart.” He gave me a pointed look. “But I’m sure in his fucked-up mind, he was being noble.”

“I’m going to fucking kill him,” I sneered. I got my other gun out of my boot and started looking around wildly, wanting to find him and get rid of him for good. The firefight had stopped. There were no more sounds coming out from behind the planes. We were alone. Javier was gone. Escaped into the desert.

I didn’t want to live in fear anymore.

“I have to find him,” I growled and started running toward the way we came in, my eyes searching high and low for him and only seeing other bodies instead. Camden ran after me, our footsteps echoing in the boneyard.

Suddenly Javier stepped out from behind a jet engine.

His hands above his head.

And Gus behind him, a gun in each hand, aimed at Javier’s head.

Just like me.

Like father, like daughter.

I had no idea how he found us but I was sure as hell glad he did.

Javier, to his credit, did seem scared as he looked between the two of us, four guns trained on him. And this time, my hands were as steady as the rocks around us.

Still, Javier nodded at Camden and said, “You made it. That was lucky.”

“Shut up,” I sneered. “Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t kill you for good.”

“Or why I shouldn’t,” Gus spoke up.

Javier eyed Camden, who only crossed his arms on his chest and shrugged. “A fifth gun would be overkill,” Camden remarked.

“Speaking of,” I said, looking over Javier’s shoulder at Gus, “shoot for the head. He’s wearing a vest.”

Javier looked at me in shock.

I waved my guns at him and in the direction of the fence. “Walk,” I commanded. “Keep your hands above your head.”

I nodded for Gus to lower his weapons, to leave us alone. This was between Javier and I.

Javier slowly turned around, his brow furrowed in confusion and now I got to jab my gun into his back.

“Keep going,” I said. “All the way to the fence. Stay turned around.”

“Angel,” Javier said, fear breaking in his voice. “I saved your Camden for you. I did it for you.”

I walked over to him, until I was right behind him. I could hear Gus and Camden hovering nervously in the distance, but to their credit they didn’t say anything and they stayed where they were.

“I know you did,” I told him, right into his ear, the back of his hair tickling my face. “And that’s what makes you and I so tragic. Don’t you think?”

“Angel,” he pleaded.

I pressed the gun into the back of his neck.

“You won’t ever call me angel again. Because I am not your angel. And my wings aren’t dirty.”

I pulled my mouth away from his ear. “And I don’t have your soul. But if it’s out there, you might want to find it, before it’s too late.”

I quickly bent down and pulled the pair of handcuffs out of my boot, the same ones he’d used on me last night. I flicked a cuff open, his eyes widening in surprise, his body shaking slightly.

“Don’t get any wrong ideas,” I said. “That kinky shit is over.”

I snapped one cuff over his wrist and snapped the other to the chain-link fence, his hand held slightly above his head. He turned and stared at me absolutely flabbergasted.

I stepped back and grinned happily at him. “I really hope you’ve been bribing the DEA agents well, Javier Bernal. Because you are going to need a lot of help to get out of this one.”

He shook his head. “You can’t leave me here.”

“Just be glad you’re intact enough to leave behind,” I said. “Puta conya,” I swore in Spanish, spitting at his feet.

Then I turned to look at Camden and Gus who were staring at me with a mix of awe and surprise. My men. My wonderful men. I blinked back a few tears, then walked over to them.

“Time to get the hell out of here?” I asked.

They nodded in unison. Camden grabbed my hand. And together we ran out through the hole in the fence and across the desert floor.

I didn’t look back at Javier.

Gus had parked his car right where I had left the Mini.

“How did you find us?” I asked, wiping the dust and sweat off my brow. In the distance I could hear helicopters, probably the DEA and the feds. They were going to have a field day once they got their hands on Javier. The leader of Los Zetas, caught right in their own backyard.

Gus looked at me like I was an idiot. “Tracking device. Haven’t you learned anything, Ellie girl?”

Camden’s head snapped up. “Where’s Ben?”

“He’s fine,” Gus said. “My friend has him. You guys get in and follow me.” He eyed the sky, hearing the choppers too. “We’re going to have to be quick about this.”

Camden got behind the steering wheel and I climbed in the passenger side as Gus got into his car and roared out of the desert.

“You okay to drive?” I asked him, knowing he could have a cracked rib even if the bullet didn’t go through.

He gave me a cocky smile. “Baby, I’m Camden McQueen.”

I grinned back. “Okay, then let’s make this fast.”

“I’m good at that,” he said, winking at me as he floored the Coop forward, growling after Gus’s trail. “Remember? Best five minutes of your life?”

I put my hand over his. “Let’s make it the best fifty years of my life. And then some.”

“It’ll be the best of everything.”

Calexico’s “Fortune Teller” came on the radio, bringing back a million memories, all of them rising up with the sand around us, flying forever into the atmosphere. I looked though the sunroof up at the impossibly blue sky, the color of Camden’s eyes, and smiled to myself.

He was alive.

I was alive.

We had our lives left to live.

New paths.

New journeys.

New hope.

“Let’s go say hi to Ben,” I whispered.

We left the desert behind us in a cloud of dust.

EPILOGUE

“That’s a beautiful tattoo,” the barista behind the counter said, looking down at the woman’s leg.

The woman looked down at herself. She’d taken to wearing shorter skirts lately, even though the wind off the Pacific was known to flip them up at a moment’s notice and flash the world your underwear. The woman didn’t care though. Her legs were now a work of art.

“Thank you,” the woman said with a gracious smile. She was a stunning woman in her early thirties, high cheekbones, dark brown eyes and long blonde hair that cascaded down her back. Her face was tanned from days spent outside, sunscreen no match for the Californian sun.

“I love cherry blossoms,” the barista commented, handing the woman her massive café mocha. “And I love that moon in the middle of it all.”

The woman smiled to herself, not wanting to share the whole story with the barista. There wasn’t many people she could tell the truth to, that the tattoo of the moon was not only for the man who inked it there but to cover up the scars of a bullet wound. The coast north of San Francisco wasn’t exactly known for high crime, unless you counted Eureka, but no one ever counted that.

“Where did you get the tattoos done?”

“I know a guy,” she said slyly. “Has a shop in Gualala. Only works part time though.”

“I love Gualala,” the barista exclaimed. “They have an amazing barbeque joint there. Really quiet though. You live near there?”

The woman nodded, eager to get away from the Chatty Kathy. “I do. But I work up and down the coast. Makes driving down to Bodega Bay worth it just to get Starbucks.”

She then thanked the barista and left before she had to start talking about her job. Not that she minded, but it always made her feel a bit edgy when people asked too many questions about her.

She got in her car, a sexy black 1973 Dodge Challenger that she drove way too fast up and down Highway 1, and looked over her shoulder to the back seat to make sure her photography equipment was still there. Satisfied, she gunned the car, taking it north. Today’s photography session was a pretty simple one, engagement photos on the beach, a happy young couple in love.