Shooting Scars: The Artists Trilogy 2

by Karina Halle

  Another thought I didn’t need.

  He took another slow step forward. I sucked in my stomach.

  His voice lowered till it was rough and smooth like ice in a milkshake. “You can get your revenge. The revenge you couldn’t get with me.”

  “Maybe I don’t need revenge anymore.”

  “Maybe you’re lying to yourself.”

  I dared myself to look him in the eye. I raised my chin defiantly, pretending I was suited in armor. “Maybe lying is what I do best.”

  He gazed at my lips and let out a small laugh. “Aren’t you tired of searching for that something to put your demons to rest?”

  I ignored him. “Aren’t you tired of pretending you know me when you don’t know shit? You didn’t even know I was Ellie Watt.”

  “I knew enough,” he said vaguely. “And I know you’ll help me.”

  “I’d like to prove you wrong.”

  “Ellie, he doesn’t know who you are. You can get in. You can get close.”

  I jerked my head in disbelief. “Like hell he doesn’t know who I am. Javier. I was your … I was here. I lived with you for a fucking year. Travis knew about me, you told me he did. He saw pictures of us, of me.”

  “He never met you.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “You look completely different.”

  “He’ll know.” I started shaking my head up and down and back and forth. “Oh, he’ll know. How can he not?”

  Javier frowned and rubbed at his chin. I could almost see puzzle pieces coming together behind those eyes. “Because he didn’t know you when you were a child. And he didn’t know you when you were with me. And he doesn’t know you now.” His head dipped. “Angel, you were nothing to him. Unmemorable. He probably doesn’t even remember pouring that acid down your leg. You’re nothing special. Not to him.”

  I felt like I’d been slapped in the face and it took my fingers digging into my pockets like desperate claws to keep from slapping him in the face. Lord knows he deserved it and more. But now wasn’t the time. Because as much as it hurt for Javier to say it, I knew he was right. I had always thought that Travis was watching out for me in the way that I watched out for him. But who was I to him? Just a ten-year-old girl with stupid, reckless, selfish parents. He got his money back. He probably never gave a second thought to what he did to me. He was the be all and end all in the back of my mind, my heart, my spine, my soul. His actions piloted every moment until now. And they would probably affect the next. I knew he hadn’t given me more thought than just that moment, when he scarred me. It was as natural as wiping his ass. He probably woke up the next day and forgot all about what he did to me. I wasn’t special. I was a mere second to him yet he’d become my Moby Dick. In some way, he’d become my everything. Too many monsters had inserted themselves into my life.

  “You see,” Javier whispered. Sugar sweet. Poison. “He ruined your life and it didn’t mean a thing. He’ll do that to you. That’s how he got so far. That’s why we’re going to take him down.”

  “I’m not doing anything with you,” I snarled, finding violence in my veins.

  That smirk of his. “You’ll change your mind. You did before.”

  Then he moved away from me in one swift moment. He plucked the orange juice off the table, drank it empty and slammed it down. “I have some business to attend to. I’ll be back, you’ll be delighted to know. In the meantime, make yourself … at home.”

  He gave me a wink and then ran down the stairs to the front door. It opened before he even got there, a burly man on the other side of it. The door closed, sealing me in the prison of my past.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CAMDEN

  I dreamed about Ellie.

  We were walking together between the rows of date palms on her Uncle Jim’s farm. As usual, my dreams were vivid. I could smell the dates as they squished beneath our feet, the earthiness of sun and soil. Me, in my high school gear: long black trench coat which was never as hot as it looked, vinyl pants that were as hot as they looked, black doc martens that I’d drawn on with a silver Sharpie. Ellie was wearing the same boots, albeit smaller. I had decorated hers with gold scribbles. She was dressed in jeans and a strappy top, her uniform. Jackasses made fun of her for wearing pants in the California desert, even in the heart of summer, but I loved her in that. The jeans adapted to her body as she developed over the years, from lean and lanky to lean and curvy.

  We’d always been the only kids in Palm Valley who wouldn’t be caught dead in shorts.

  We walked along the rows, the sun dappling through the leaves making me feel happy. It was always a peculiar feeling but I was used to it when I was around her. Being around Ellie gave me peace and acceptance. Real life only settled in when she left.

  In the dream, I reached for her hand and pulled her towards a date palm. A ladder had been left there after harvesting.

  “I want to show you something,” I told her.

  She shook her head, her brow wearing a faint sign of panic. She looked so fucking cute, it was always so damn hard not to kiss her. I remember always wanting to and never working up the nerve. She had let me be so true and free (as free as a teenager can be) but that was the one thing I could never let on – how much I wanted her, needed her. It was puppy love at its dirtiest.

  “Come on,” I had said to her. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights.”

  Her fourteen-year-old face grew hard with stark determination. I knew that would work on her.

  “I’m not afraid of anything,” she said. She grabbed the ladder and began to speed up it.

  “Careful!” I called after her and followed.

  We seemed to climb on and on, forever and forever, the palm tree stretching from twenty feet to thirty feet to fifty feet to a hundred. We finally reached the top, crawling through the thick fronds like kittens in a jungle. I took every opportunity to touch Ellie, my hand on her arm, her back, her thigh.

  “Oh my god,” Ellie said as she settled in. Her eyes were fastened to the horizon.

  In the distance you could see the San Jacinto Mountains looming like lions. They were on fire, the peaks flickering with flames that edged their way down the mountainsides and toward the towns below. The fire spread like a blanket of lava over the valley, faster and thicker until it reached her uncle’s farm. Date palms disappeared in front of our eyes, going down like blackened matchsticks, leaving tiny puffs of smoke floating above a sea of red.

  Ellie looked at me, young and scared. She reached for my hand as the hiss and pop of the fire gathered at the base of our tree.

  “Will you burn with me?” she asked. “Or will you go free?”

  I grabbed her face as the heat pressed in. “I’ll burn with you.”

  My lips touched hers for one second. Our screams covered us in the next.

  “Camden,” a voice came shuddering through the dark. “Camden, wake up.”

  Soft hands on my arm, shaking me awake.

  I opened my eyes. Instead of seeing Ellie’s face in a sea of flames I saw Sophia’s, peering at me with something a little less than concern. Her hands were still shaking me but she was keeping her distance, clutching her mauve robe to her chest. I blinked and tried to sit up.

  I was on her couch in her tiny, toy-strewn living room. There was a fuzzy darkness that came with dawn. Light was taking its time outside her windows.

  “What’s wrong?” I groaned while pinching the bridge of my nose. I’d fallen asleep with my glasses on, ensuring that the frames felt permanently pressed into my skin. We’d gotten to her apartment as night was falling. After scoping out the joint and peering through the blinds every five minutes, watching for her brothers or anything suspicious, I stayed up for as long as I could. It was a second story unit with views of the street, easy pickings. Sophia didn’t seem as worried as I thought she would be. Perhaps her focus was on Ben. He may have been young but he was observant and knew something bad was happening. Sophia did what she could to make sure
he was calm and happy before putting him to bed.

  I had watched from the doorway. It was as close as I could get without intruding. My heart pinched as she sang him a nursery song, the same one that she sang to him since he was a baby. When I was around. In those days, she’d pick him up during his midnight cries and whisper it, so soft and so sweet. Sometimes I’d take over, just to give her a break. I could never hit her high notes – I wasn’t much of a singer. But Ben would stop crying, just like that.

  Later, when Sophia started pulling out of the marriage, out of life in general, I sang that song all the time. After a while, it stopped working. He missed his mother. I did too. And no matter how soothing I tried to sound, I couldn’t stop Ben’s tears. Things crumbled beyond repair.

  Ben was a year old when I last saw him, days before the divorce was final. Though I was now looking at the face of an older boy all curled up in his bed, in some ways it was like I never left. I knew him, deep inside, and everything on the surface was slowly catching up.

  He was almost asleep, round face, my beautiful boy, when he opened his eyes and stared right at me from across the room.

  “Mama, who is that?” he asked, as if seeing me for the first time. It felt like I turned a tattoo machine on my heart.

  She brushed back his hair. “No one you need to worry about. Sleep well, my Ben.”

  Any other time, I would have said something. The words, the anger, were fighting their way out of my chest and up my throat. To be brushed aside like that. I was his motherfucking father. But now wasn’t the time for my own insecurities, for the tragedy of our family. As long as Sophia and Ben were around her traitorous brothers, they were in danger. I needed to save them first.

  The technicalities could come after.

  And that’s how I ended up falling asleep on the couch. Sophia retired to her room, something I had no interest in being a part of, even if the offer was on the table (which it wasn’t). I lay down on the couch and waited. Waited for people who never came. Waited for the reason to run.

  “You were yelling,” Sophia said, straightening up. She started tugging at her dark hair, something she did when she was nervous. “I thought you were in pain.”

  “It was a dream,” I reassured her.

  “A bad dream. You cried out for that woman. For Ellie.”

  It was weird to hear her say Ellie’s name. She didn’t say it with venom though, just curiosity. I couldn’t blame her. Ellie and I had quite the story and she hadn’t heard any of it. There was no point in explaining, not when the wound was still raw.

  “Did I wake Ben?” I asked, suddenly worried. My eyes darted to the hallway where his door was open. His room was still dark and quiet.

  She shook her head and smiled. It was a sad smile. “He sleeps in. And he sleeps through everything. Just like his father.”

  I watched her face carefully for telltale signs of insincerity. There wasn’t any.

  I carefully smiled back. “I’ve gotten better. I get up at nine now.”

  She smirked. “Oh, nine. Must be nice being a tattoo artist, your clients are probably all hung over anyway and stumbling in at noon.”

  That wasn’t exactly true but of course that was the stereotype of people with tattoos. Despite the popularity of shitty yet hot tattoo artist chicks and the locust swarm of hipsters, people still had the wrong idea about tattoos and the artists that gave them. They were untrustworthy, dirty, trashy and dishonest as a whole. Yet I’d tattooed valedictorians and soccer moms. I’d inked businessmen and actors. Reverends and teeny boppers. Tattoos were self-expression at its rawest and most permanent form. They weren’t for one set of people or another.

  Despite the facts, I was used to the stereotype. It wouldn’t die but then neither would I as long as I ignored it. Even Sophia, who met me because she got a fucking tattoo, clung on to it like it was the only way to describe me.

  Of course, the fact that I turned into a money launderer didn’t really help my case. I’d never much cared for what people thought of me.

  “I don’t care when they stumble in, as long as they let me use their body as a canvas.” Then I would continue to be immortal. My ink, my work, my self, would live on. I didn’t say that to her though ’cause that would definitely add another bar to the my ex-husband is a nutjob scale.

  Her features drew together. “So what are you going to do now?”

  “Now?”

  “Will you keep being a tattoo artist? Or will you try something else?”

  The way she said “something else” reminded me of the way my dad often talked about my choice of career.

  “One step at a time, Sophia,” I reminded her, easing myself to my feet. Sleeping on a thin couch never did my back any good and I had a strange feeling that I needed to be agile today.

  “Do you want me to make you coffee?” I asked, my head starting to ache for it.

  She studied for a moment before shaking her head. “Where are my manners? You stay. I’ll make it.”

  She swept herself into her tiny kitchen. “My father gave me one of those Keurig coffee makers for Christmas last year. I love it.”

  Her father. My eyes did another sweep of the room and even in the fuzzy dawn I noted things I hadn’t the night before. Flatscreen TV, not new though nothing to scoff at. Ikea couch that I’d slept on. Ben didn’t have an obscene amount of toys, but from the ones that I saw, they looked new. Despite Sophia telling me that her dickhead brothers never passed on a dime of my child support, she seemed to be doing well enough for herself. This could have been her father – always Mr. Madano to me – or her job (she was an aesthetician) or the government. It should have made me feel good inside, to know she was doing okay without my money going through, yet for some reason it made me more mad. It highlighted the money that was wasted. It made me feel like a fucking chump.

  The coffee machine whirred and spurted from the kitchen and in minutes I had a steaming cup of coffee in my hands. The mug had a picture of Ben on it, smiling, wearing reindeer antlers on his head.

  “You still take it black?” she asked.

  “Some thing’s don’t change,” I said with a nod, taking a sip. It tasted good. Not as good as I made it, but good enough. The way I did it took patience, as do all the best things in life.

  “You’re wearing glasses now,” she noted.

  I smiled and took them off, slipping them into my pocket. “I was just trying something. I’m putting my contacts back in.”

  I pulled out my cell and glanced at the time. 630AM. No calls or texts. I wasn’t really surprised.

  I cleared my throat as I sat down on the couch and Sophia hovered above me like a nervous bird, darting her head down for a quick sip.

  “How fast do you think you can get yourself packed up?” I asked, feeling like the neck of the hourglass was starting to widen. “I’ll help of course.”

  “Oh,” she said and shrugged, her face noncommittal. “Not long.”

  I squinted at her. “Not long? You’re packing up your whole life, Sophia.”

  I was getting the impression that the severity of what we were taking on wasn’t sinking in. I leaned forward, elbows on knees and tried to rein her in. “I know this isn’t easy. I know this doesn’t even feel real. But, Sophia, you know what your brothers did to you. What makes you think they wouldn’t do it again? What makes you think you’d ever be safe if you kept going on like you are? What about Ben?”

  I know I reached her. A pain expression flashed across her eyes, then it was gone. She smiled politely. “I know what I have to do, Camden, and I will do it. Whether I’m calm about it or freaking out, it doesn’t matter, because it must be done. I’d rather do it now and worry about it later. Give me until 11AM. I’ll be ready to go.”

  It was a specific time, but I liked that about her. After our coffees were done, the sun was up, trying aimlessly to cut through the Los Angeles fog that covered the city like parchment paper. I helped Sophia gather most of the important stuff – clothes, bo
oks, documents – while Ben slept. She was trying to keep his distress to a minimum, she said. I wondered how well a three and a half year old can adjust to a new life. If he was anything like his father, I figured pretty well.

  After he’d had his breakfast of banana Cheerios, as Sophia was trying to clean him up, I asked her where the briefcase was.

  “Why?” she asked, sounding strangely cagey.

  “Well I don’t think it’s very safe to have fifty thousand dollars just sitting around in a briefcase, do you? I’m going to deposit some of it at the bank.”

  She shook her head and patted Ben on the butt. “Ben, go to your room and get your Bubby.”

  Ben nodded and ran off to his bedroom. I looked back at her. She was tugging at her hair.

  “Look, you can come with me,” I told her. “It’s smart if we deposit it.”

  “You can’t. We can’t. We’ll set an alarm off if we deposit more than ten thousand,” she said.

  I chewed on my lip for a second, watching her. “I know that. We aren’t going to get dinged. The money technically isn’t dirty anyway. I can deposit nine thousand in my bank account and nine in yours. That gives us eighteen grand that we know will be safe. We can repeat this tomorrow. And then the next day.”

  “No …” She kept shaking her head.

  “Sophia, what is wrong with you?”

  I watched her throat move as she swallowed hard. “You can’t do that.”

  I threw up my hands. “What’s the fucking difference? Look, we don’t have time to squabble over money here. As much as I hate it, the money is ours. We need it.”

  “Don’t you have the money that you and Ellie stole?”

  I cocked my head. “What makes you say that?”

  She shrugged, trying to be casual and totally failing. “You and Ellie stole my brothers’ money. You have that money in your bank account already, don’t you?”

  “No,” I said slowly. “It’s …” The money we laundered. The checks from the casinos. Ellie had them. Either they were still on her or they were in the car somewhere. With the trauma of the last day, I’d forgotten all about it.