Shooting Scars: The Artists Trilogy 2

by Karina Halle

  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.”

  “You did what?” I screeched, looking at Camden wildly. “Why the fuck did you leave him, he was shot!?”

  “I had to come get you,” Camden said angrily. “We didn’t know that you were going to be having dinner at his house. If we’d known that, I would have never let you leave today.”

  “So where the fuck is Gus, Javier?” I asked, my eyes slicing into him.

  He rubbed nervously at the dried blood that was smeared all over his forehead. “He’s gone.”

  “Dead?!”

  He smoothed his hair behind his ears. “No. They have him.”

  “Who the fuck is they?”

  He looked at me like I was an idiot. “Who do you think? Los Zetas.”

  “How the hell did they get him?” I looked between the both of them and slammed my hands down on the dashboard. “The fuck!” I screamed.

  Javier sighed and looked away. I was so close to clocking him upside the head and reopening a few wounds, I didn’t give a shit if he came and got me and Camden out of there. I knew him rescuing us couldn’t have been because he had a change of heart. He licked his lips and gave me an apologetic glance. “After Camden left, I waited until I could hear the ambulance. I left Gus there and went into the building. I knew the cops would show up soon after, Zetas cops, once the medics discovered Peter and Raul’s bodies and that I’d be as good as dead. I went upstairs to hide. I watched the ambulance come. He was alive. They put an oxygen mask on him. They took him away. They got to the end of the street. Then a black car came out of nowhere, stopped the ambulance. Shot the driver. Opened up the back. Took Gus out, shot everyone else. They put Gus in the car. And then they drove off.”

  My mouth was open. It took effort to close it. “And that was Travis? He was at the party …”

  “I guess Raul orchestrated this. We won’t know because I shot him. And he, by the way, is the one who shot Gus, not me.” Javier cast a furtive glance over at Camden and continued, “I’m guessing they mean to take you, Ellie.”

  Camden cleared his throat. “They would have taken Ellie at the party. I was watching Travis’s face, he was truly shocked when he found out about Ellie and her mother.
”

  “He was probably planning on taking Ellie later, for vengeance, without knowing who Ellie really was. Now, he probably has Gus. And this whole fucking thing is far from over. Now, Travis knows everything.” He scratched at his chin thoughtfully, “Your parents won’t be around for much longer either.”

  That was enough. I took my elbow and smashed Javier right in his already broken nose. Then I crawled over Camden and jumped from the Jeep, running down the road until I tripped over a pothole and went flying to the ground.

  Camden was soon at my side, helping me back up. I waved him away, just wanted to lie there, let the rain wash me away.

  “Ellie, come on,” he said softly, bringing me up to me feet. My dress was all dirty from the mud, as dirty as I felt.

  I blinked back the tears and stared up at him, the side of his face illuminated by the headlights. “What do we do now?”

  He cocked his head at me and smiled, just a bit. “We do what we’ve always done. The right thing. We go get him back.”

  I shook my head. I was so damn afraid. “I can’t do this again. Javier’s right, Travis knows me now. Everything has been blown wide open … my parents … it’s what that asshole wanted.” I glared at the Jeep but was only blinded.

  “That asshole isn’t going to get what he wants much longer, Ellie. We don’t need him. You and I, we will get Gus back.”

  “You wouldn’t last a day.” Javier was suddenly behind us. My God he could be sneaky.

  “Oh fuck off,” Camden said, “you should be grateful your brains aren’t spilled all over the wall.”

  “You didn’t have the guts,” he answered, stepping right up to him. As much as this spelled disaster, as sticky as this all was, Javier kind of had a point. We wouldn’t get that far. Camden got to me with the help of Gus and his contacts. Together, we had nothing.

  “You still want your sisters safe, don’t you?” I asked Javier.

  He nodded, and I saw the first flash of pain come across his brow. “I have to get to Mexico City. That’s where Violetta is. She’s the closest to him now, the easiest one for him to go after. I have people here who can help me, who will help me. I just don’t know if it’s enough. Now that Travis knows I am here …”

  He didn’t have to finish the sentence. We all knew far too well what he would do.

  “Okay,” I said, looking between them, “Javier we’ll help protect your sister if you help us get Gus back. And my parents, if we can.”

  “How the fuck can you protect my sister?” he asked angrily.

  “Javier,” I said. “Who else do you have right now? Who else is here with you? Peter? Raul? You can’t do this alone just as we can’t.”

  “I have my people.”

  “Those same people turned on you. What makes you think they’ll stay loyal now?”

  “Raul, I knew …”

  “And yet look what happened. Who knows who else Travis has won over? At least you know where you stand with us.”

  I don’t know why I was pressing so hard for Javier’s help, especially when he’d just threatened to deliver Camden’s head at my doorstep, but there it was.

  He shook his head back and forth but walked back to the car. “I don’t like this.”

  “None of us like this!” I yelled at him. I looked up at Camden, pleading a bit with my eyes. “I don’t think we have much of a choice.”

  His eyes cut into Javier as he got back into the Jeep. “You always have a choice, Ellie. Always. This will have to be ours.” We turned and headed back toward the Jeep. Camden leaned into me and whispered, “At the first legitimate excuse, Javier is gone. I’ll kill him if I have to.”

  I would have chalked that up to Camden being overprotective. But I recognized the dark gleam in his eyes, the absence of guilt, and I realized he would.

  Camden had changed. We all had changed. The past was behind us. And I had no idea what our future was.

  Don’t miss Book One in The Artists Trilogy

  Read on for an electrifying extract …

  PROLOGUE

  This will be the last time.

  I’ve said that before. I’ve said it a lot. I’ve said it while talking to myself in a mirror like some Tarantino cliché. But I’ve never said it while having a pool cue pressed against my throat by a crazed Ukrainian man who was hell bent on making me his wife.

  It’s nice to know there’s still a first time for everything.

  Luckily, as the edges of my vision turned a sick shade of grey and my feet dangled from the floor, I had enough fight left in me to get out of this alive. Though it meant a few seconds of agony as the cue pressed into my windpipe, I pried my hands off of it and reached out. Sergei, my future fake husband, wasn’t short, but I had long arms and as I pushed aside his gut, I found his balls.

  With one swift movement, I made a tight, nails-first fist around them and tugged.

  Hard.

  Sergei screamed, dropping me and the pool cue to the sticky floor. I hopped up to my feet, grabbed the stick, and swung it against the side of his head as he was doubled over. When I was a child, I was never in a town long enough to get enrolled in the softball team, which was a shame because as the cue cracked against the side of his bald head, I realized it could have been a second career.

  Hell, it could even be a first career. I was quitting the grifting game anyway.

  Sergei made some grumbling, moaning noise like a disgruntled cow giving birth, and though I had done some damage, I only bought myself a few seconds. I grabbed the eight ball from the pool table and chucked it at his head where it bounced off his forehead with a thwack that made my toes curl.

  For all the games I played, I’d always been a bit squeamish with violence. That said, I’d never been busted by one of the men I’d conned with my virgin bride scam. I chalked this up to “kill or be killed.” Self defense. Hopefully it would be the last time for that, too.

  Not that I was doing any killing here. After the pool ball made contact with his head and caused him to drop to his knees with a screech, I turned on my heels and booked it into the ladies’ washroom. I knew there were two angry-looking men stationed outside of the door to the pool room, and they definitely wouldn’t let me pass while their friend was on the floor hoping his testicles were still attached.

  The ladies’ room smelled rank, like mold and cold pipes, and I wondered how long it had been since it was cleaned. The Frontier wasn’t the sort of bar that women hung out at, and that should have been my first tip that something was awry. The second was that no one even looked my way when I walked in the place. It’s like they were expecting me, and when a dodgy bar in Cincinnati is expecting you, you know you’re on someone else’s turf. Third thing that should have tipped me off was the pool room was in a basement and there were an awful lot of locks on that door.

  But, as I balanced my boots on the rust-stained sink, I found there were no locks on the rectangular window. I slammed it open and stuck my arms out into the warm August air, finding soggy dirt under my hands as the rain came down in heavy sheets. Just perfect. I was going to become Mud Woman in a few seconds.

  Mud Woman was still preferable to Dead Woman, however, and I pulled myself through the narrow window and onto the muddy ground, the cold, wet dirt seeping into my shirt and down the front of my jeans. I heard Sergei yelling his head off and pounding on the bathroom door.

  This had been a close one. Way too close.

  I scrambled to my feet and quickly looked around to see if anyone had noticed. So far the bar looked quiet, the red lights from inside spilling through the falling rain. The street was equally quiet and lined with Audis and Mercedes that stuck out like gaudy jewelry among the decrepit meat-packing buildings. My own car, which I reluctantly called Jóse, was parked two blocks away. I may have underestimated the situation but I was glad I still had my wits about me. When an old friend emails you out of the blue and asks you to meet him at a sketchy bar late at night, you do take some precautions. It’s too bad I hadn’
t clued in that it wasn’t an old lover of mine but Sergei, out for revenge.

  I took advantage of not being seen and ran as fast as I could down the street, my footsteps echoing coldly. By the time I rounded the corner and saw the dark green 1970 GTO sitting on the empty street, the rain had washed the mud clean off of me.

  I wiped my wet hair from my eyes and stared at the glistening Ohio license plate. It was time for that to come off, and I mentally flipped through the spare plates I had inside. I knew I’d never set foot in Cincinnati again after this, and now that I knew this had been a set-up, I couldn’t be sure they hadn’t noticed my car. I had a wad of Sergei’s money—which I’d been keeping strapped to the bottom of the driver’s seat—and apparently he was the type who’d follow up on that kind of thing. He was the type that would hunt me down. I should have figured that from our email exchanges. This wouldn’t even be about the money anymore, but the fact that I pulled a fast one on him. But what do you expect when you’re trolling for virgin brides on OKCupid?

  Men and their stupid pride.

  I supposed he could try and hunt me down. He could try and follow me from state to state. But I knew as soon as I got in Jóse, he wouldn’t be able to find me. I’d been hunted before and for a lot more than money.

  And they still hadn’t found me.

  Yet.

  Hearing distant but irate voices filling the air, I quickly opened the door and hopped in. My instincts told me to just drive and never look back, and unfortunately I knew I had to listen. I had to leave my pretty apartment, my safe coffee shop job, and my yoga-infused roommate Carlee behind. It was a shame, too. After living with Carlee for six months, the flexible little thing had actually grown on me.

  I’ll mail her something nice, I told myself and gunned the engine. Jóse purred to life and we shot down the street, away from the bar and from Sergei and his buddies who were now probably scouring the streets looking for me.

  It didn’t matter. I was used to running and always kept a spare life in the trunk. Spare clothes, spare driver’s licenses, spare Social Security Numbers, and a spare tire. As soon as I felt like I was a comfortable distance away, I’d pull into a motel under a new name. I’d change the plates on my car. Yes, Jóse wasn’t the most inconspicuous of vehicles, but I was sentimental about the car. After all, it wasn’t even mine.