by Karina Halle
I raised a brow and unclenched my fist. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.” Still, she walked off toward the store, Ben’s head on her shoulder.
I sat back in the car and rested my head on the steering wheel. I needed to think and think fast.
I had two problems. Sophia and Ellie. Both seemed impossible to fix, to make right, but it didn’t matter. I had Sophia in my hands and that was the one I’d have to fix first.
Sophia was turned over to Javier by her brothers in exchange for the money I stole from them. It didn’t really surprise me, not really. They’d always been the types to throw each other under a bus if it meant coming out on top. Her whole family was fucked up that way, rotten to the core. Ellie had theories that they were tied to the Mafia but they weren’t Sicilian, just Italian. They were tied to something big and bad, that’s all I knew.
Now, obviously Sophia couldn’t go back to them. She wasn’t living with her brothers. Last I knew they were at least in LA, near her in Silverlake. They were too close for comfort and I was pretty sure if they ever saw my head popping up in their neighborhood, they’d shoot it clean off. I had to convince Sophia to leave LA with Ben. I had to get them somewhere far away and safe. At the depth of mud I was sunk in, I couldn’t take things to the police, not without going to jail myself. Fuck, if I really thought about it, there was a grocery list of felonies I’d committed in the last week alone.
Once I got Sophia away, maybe even in another state, Oregon, who knows where, I’d contact Gus, the guy Ellie vouched for. We could get Sophia a new name. We had money. We could start again.
It sounded all too familiar.
What about Ellie?
What about Ellie?
What about Ellie?
What happened to her? Every day I was apart from her was a day she was farther and farther away. Three lives were at stake here and I couldn’t save all of them at the same time.
I exhaled loudly feeling nothing but hopeless and my eyes fell to the passenger side. The briefcase was gone. I sat up and craned my neck to look at the store. I couldn’t see Sophia inside. No …
Panic rose inside me. She wouldn’t take the money and leave me here? She didn’t hate me that much. She couldn’t …
I didn’t know her at all, did I?
I quickly got out of the car, my footsteps sounding hard on the asphalt in a rare moment of quiet from the highway. The store looked empty for all I could see and we were the only car on the lot.
I opened the door, the bell jangling too loud for my liking. A double-chinned man with fuzzy grey hair was looking at a crossword puzzle. The store was empty.
“Excuse me,” I said trying to hide the anxiety in my voice. The clerk didn’t even look up. I walked over and leaned over the counter, getting between him and the puzzle. Finally his tired, red eyes met mine. I knew those eyes, they were desert eyes, dried out from too much sun and too little joy.
“Can I help you?” the man asked. I could sense he was about to reach under the counter for the alarm so I backed off.
“Did you see a woman and a young boy come in here?” I asked.
He frowned then relaxed a bit. “I saw a woman. Can’t say I saw a boy.”
“Was she petite, you know, short, dark hair, Italian looking?”
He rubbed his lips together in thought. I didn’t have time for him to ponder this shit. I needed to find out if Sophia left me and fast.
“Think!” I barked, losing control for a moment. “Was she here?”
The man froze, taken aback. At the same time, I heard a door slam behind me. I turned to see Sophia coming out of the restroom with Ben at her side. Her eyes were drawn thin, eyeing me suspiciously.
“There you are,” I said, turning and giving Ben the most genuine smile I could muster. Relief never felt as soothing as it did just then.
“Where did you think I went?” she asked. I nodded at the briefcase. She shook her head and quickly pushed the door open. “Come on, sweetie,” she crooned to Ben.
I followed her out to the car, trying to burn away the guilty feeling. My first thought was that Sophia had taken the money and run. I wondered when I’d ever trust anyone again.
“Sorry,” I mumbled to her after I got in the car and pulled it back on the highway. The sun was sliding low in the sky, casting a warm golden light that made you feel warm and safe, like your mind was flipping through photographs of summers long ago. It was nostalgic and good and terribly misleading. I hated this time of day.
She was silent, mulling over my distrust.
“Sorry,” I said again, passing the road-side dinosaurs of Cabazon. “I thought you’d left.”
“You would think that,” she said.
“Mama, I’m tired,” Ben finally spoke, tugging on her sleeve as she held him. His voice brought tears to my eyes. I’d never heard him speak before. My mouth was torn between a gap and a smile. In another life, this would have been ordinary and I would have brought the car around and shown Ben the dinosaurs. In another life, he would see me as his father. In another life I wouldn’t be trying to find a new one for us all.
“Watch the road,” Sophia said, tapping her hand on the dashboard and I looked up in time to see I was crossing over the dividing line. I corrected myself, my heart racing loud, and rubbed my forehead until I could feel. I needed to hold it all together, if only for a little while longer.
I swallowed hard and let out a long, calm breath. “Sophia, we need to think about the next steps. You can’t go home again.” As eloquently and non-invasive as I could, I explained what we needed to do. To my amazement, she didn’t put up a fight, even when I said she’d have to change her name and cut off all contact with her old life. Perhaps she knew that Ben’s well-being was worth every sacrifice.
“I understand,” she said as she smoothed back Ben’s thick, beautiful hair. My god, he was going to be a lady-killer one day. “But I can’t just up and leave like that.” She snapped her fingers. “We have to go back to the apartment so I can get my stuff.”
“Your brothers—”
“Aren’t even in town anymore. They’re in Fresno.”
“How do you know?”
She shot me a dirty look. “They might have sold me out, but I’m their sister. I knew their plans for the week before any of this happened.”
I flipped down the visor, squinting at the sun which was spearing the I-10 with golden flames. “Sophia …”
“What?”
I shook my head. “Aren’t you … surprised? Upset? You are their sister and they sold you out.”
She sat back in her seat, silence blanketing us. “Yes. I am surprised and I am upset. I don’t know what to tell you, Camden. One minute I was at home feeding Ben, the next …”
She sniffed and her whole body started shaking.
“It’s okay,” I soothed her. “We don’t have to talk about it. We’ll get you home tonight but in the morning, we’re gone. For good. You understand what’s happening?”
Sophia nodded. “I hope I don’t see LA again.”
I hoped, for all our sakes, that she was right.
CHAPTER THREE
ELLIE
I woke up in hell.
At first, I couldn’t see anything but flashing lights and moving shapes. That alone did not make it hell. Neither did the increasing urge to vomit and the pounding blood in my head that made me wince painfully with each breath.
What made it hell was when my eyes opened enough to focus on the flashing lights. It was the soft, baby-new glow of morning being scattered by an azure blue curtain that waved back and forth by an open window. Despite the bars that created zebra shadows on the carpeted floor, the window was familiar.
The curtain was too. I’d picked out that curtain from Bed, Bath & Beyond, thinking the blue matched the surf outside. I’d hung that curtain myself.
Six years ago.
I sat up, limbs and head heavy with a tincture of chemicals, panic and total disgust. I was ba
ck in our old bedroom, the one I used to share with Javier. I was back.
And the slippery son of a bitch had drugged me.
I got out of bed and nearly fell flat on my face, my legs tangled in the sheets. The room had stayed the same. Save for the security bars on the window, everything looked exactly as it had before. For six years, it had stayed the same while the man who slept there grew something terrible in his heart. I could see it in his eyes, the coldness, the games. Or maybe I could see now what I couldn’t see then.
There was no use dwelling on it. He wanted me to swim in this past, that’s why I was here. He wanted the past to drown me. I wouldn’t let it. I wouldn’t let him win. I was Ellie Watt, not Eden White, and I was stronger than this.
I had no past. There was only now.
I took the next step – as unsteady as I was – and tried the door. It wasn’t locked.
I peered out into the hallway and fought the memory that wanted to intrude, that time I discovered Javier slitting the throat of one of his friends. I shot down the memory, threw fresh dirt over it. I moved on and moved down the hall, my feet bare and sticking to the hardwood floor.
Sunlight dazzled the kitchen, streaming in through the large windows that overlooked the dune grass, sand and ocean. Javier was sitting at the table, drinking orange juice and flipping through the Los Angeles Times, eyes darting from page to page.
It could have been a Norman Rockwell painting. I was about to throw red paint on it.
“The fuck is going on?” I asked, one hand leaning against the wall.
He finished flipping to the end of the paper – agonizing seconds of paper flipping through his deft fingers – before he laid it down and looked up at me.
“Good morning,” he said, looking amused without smiling. “Did you sleep well?”
It took all of my self-control to keep from tackling him across the table and clawing his eyes out. I knew we weren’t alone though. I knew there were people, somewhere, watching us, making sure I was following the straight and narrow. I knew I had to keep everything inside as much as I could.
“Why the hell am I here?” I asked, my jaw clenched.
“Because I live here,” he said simply.
“Still?”
He smiled, just a twitch at the corner of his snake-like mouth. “Painful memories?”
“Fuck you,” I said. I instantly regretted it when his grin broadened.
“I see. So they are.”
I brushed my hair back behind my ears, as if that would help me think. “Why am I here? Why am I here where you live?” I mimicked his accent.
He folded his hands in front of me and the damn watch started glinting like a gold spark in the sun stream. “I brought you here because this is our first task.”
“First task?” I asked dumbly.
“Sit down,” he said, gesturing to the seat across from him. Where I always used to sit. Same damn seat. “Please.”
“No.” I crossed my arms across my chest. His eyes briefly lasered in on my cleavage. “I want you to tell me what the task is. I want to know why I’m here.”
He leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “So impatient, my angel.”
I shot to the opposite side of the table and shoved my finger in his face. My razor blade necklace swung like a pendulum. “Talk. You owe me that much, you piece of shit.”
He eyed my finger and had the courtesy to wipe the smile from his face. “Okay.”
I backed off, my nerves firing in all directions. I waited, shoving my itching hands in my back pockets.
He breathed in delicately through his nose and folded up the newspaper as he spoke. “The task, why I brought you here, why I sought you, finally, is this … I know what you’ve been doing for the last however many years.”
“Six. You know it’s been six.”
He raised his brow. “Time flies.”
“Keep talking.”
He sighed. “Alright. You’ve been a thief.”
“Just like my parents,” I filled in, knowing what else he’d throw in there.
His smile wavered for a second. “Yes. Just like them. Anyway, I’m not judging.”
Wouldn’t that be rich.
“So,” he continued. “You’ve been doing that. Being generally immoral, such a far cry from the Eden White I loved.”
The way he said loved creeped me out. It was like watching the devil say it himself. The word didn’t belong on his tongue.
“And while you’ve been Ellie Watt, I’ve been … making adjustments. Making money. Going places. Moving up.”
“If that’s moving up, then I’m moving out,” I muttered under my breath, making sure he could hear me.
“No more Dire Straits?” he asked. “Billy Joel now?”
“Get to the point.”
“The point is, I know about you. I know why you were with me, at least for some of it. I know the truth about your scars. I know the truth about Travis.”
I swallowed hard, the hairs standing up on my arms and prickling along my neck like tiny ants. Of course he knew. I remembered what Jim had told me about Javier already.
Jim.
My uncle Jim. My only real family. The memory of him hit me like a brick. But it wasn’t anything nice. It wasn’t the good times. It wasn’t something fucking normal. It was when he was dead. The bullet in his head, his shocked expression as he hit the floor in that motel room.
And I was staring, just feet away, at the man who killed him.
“Something wrong?” Javier asked.
What would be the point in bringing it up? Jim didn’t deserve to be mentioned in his presence. Another memory to bury deep inside.
“So you know the truth,” I said with a shrug. “Must have been enlightening for you.”
He nodded gravely. “It was. Ellie … if I had known what Travis had done. If I had known then …”
Right. If he had known that I sought him out under false pretences, pretending to be interested in him in order to get closer to Travis, I’m sure things would have been just peachy between us. I could only imagine what Javier would have done if he discovered at the time that our whole relationship was based on a lie.
“I don’t care. What do you want?”
“It’s one and the same, don’t you see? I no longer work for Travis. I went my own way a year ago.”
“A regular Stevie Nicks,” I said, masking the sorrow that picked at me. Uncle Jim. His memory kept floating to the surface.
He went on, “Travis … I grew more powerful than him.”
“You must be very proud.”
He tilted his head in agreement, not receiving my sarcasm. “There were too many traitors in his organization. He’d gone mad with power. Things were unraveling. He began consorting with our rivals, Los Zetas. The very people who killed my parents. If I hadn’t split, I might have died.”
What a shame, I thought.
“I had Raul and Alex. I had a few others. I had the means and the connections. I left here and headed to Florida. I made a good life for myself.” He noticed my expression. “Yes, maybe running drugs isn’t a noble life. But neither is conning.”
“What,” I said through grinding teeth, “Is. The. Task?”
“Travis hurt you, Ellie. He was the reason you found me those years ago. You wanted revenge for your scars, for your life, for what he’d done to you. I’m handing you the gun. Together, we can get your revenge. And I can get mine.”
Despite everything sounding absolutely ridiculous, I had to ask, “What’s your revenge? What did he do to you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, his eyes drifting to the LA Times again. Why he was reading the LA paper when we were in Ocean Springs, Mississippi was beyond me. Everything was beyond me. “What matters is that I said I would kill any man that hurt you. Now, you have seen that I keep my word. I keep my promises. Travis hurt you, maybe more than anyone else. I want him dead from the barrel of my gun.”
I swallowe
d uneasily. “Maybe you oughta turn the gun on yourself then.” Because you hurt me, too, is what I didn’t say.
He blinked warmly. “Maybe I will. But first, this is the task. We kill him. Together. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Promises are promises.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was raining down on me in slick fragments that I just couldn’t grasp. One minute Camden and I were heading for a new life together. In the next I was with Javier, who wanted me to kill the drug lord that ruined my life. As much as I believed in revenge, I couldn’t muster up the rage that blinded me enough to do such a thing. I couldn’t do much of anything except try and get my brain up to speed.
“I’m a con artist,” I stated. “Not a killer for hire.”
“I know,” he said softly. He got up, pushing his chair back and leaning on the table. “Unfortunately, you don’t have much of a choice.”
My breath hitched. I would not let fear set in. Fear made me weak. Fear had drugged me.
“I always have a choice.” I grimaced at my warbling voice.
“Not always,” he said, walking around the table. His wing-tipped shoes echoed in the kitchen. “The choice you did have – to stay with Camden or turn yourself over to me – you took. Now you have to live with the consequences. It’s time for you to own your decision.
His eyes were getting to be too much. I looked to the floor. “Why do you need me to do this? Why can’t you kill him yourself?”
“Because we are enemies now, my dear. Because he knows to look out for me. Because I have tried before and yes, I failed. I am not perfect.”
“No one ever said you were,” I muttered. My heart was threatening to beat out of my chest but as long as I kept my eyes on the floor and my head clear, I was going to be okay. No fear. I had to play it cool, play it safe and have no fear. The minute my mind started focusing on the what ifs was the moment I lost it.
I was very close to losing it.
“You,” he said coming up to me. My body seized with his just inches away. I concentrated on his black shoes, expensive leather with scuffed tips. Tailored suit pants. It didn’t go. His shoes should have been shiny and as black as oil. “You. You can get to him. You can get close. You don’t even have to pull the trigger.” He said trigger like it was a new sexual position.