Shooting Scars: The Artists Trilogy 2

by Karina Halle

  Javier read my face and waved his arm. “Come on, we have to get moving.”

  He turned and headed off toward a stream that snaked out of the jungle, a tributary that almost made it to the sea. We walked along the sand, my eyes drawn to the campers down the beach. They looked like a Mexican family, lighting a campfire, kids running around. I wonder what they thought of the yacht perched off shore, of our arrival, or if they thought anything about it at all.

  Once we were in the forest, the temperature spiked. We were all sweating in seconds as the overhanging trees and dense vegetation seemed to hold the heat in. We came across a narrow dirt path and took that for a few minutes, all of us silent, thinking and wary.

  The smell of horse shit assaulted my nose, as did a beam of sun that suddenly broke through the trees and illuminated the spot in front of us. There was a clearing with a small paddock and a shanty. Six bony looking horses stood there listlessly swatting flies with their tails.

  “Hola?” Javier called out. We waited, hearing a commotion in the shanty and the door flew open. An old Mexican man with long grey hair half tucked up under a baseball cap came out, a book in his hands. He looked as bony as the horses in his care.

  Javier spoke rapid fire Spanish to him, too fast for me to pick up. From what I gathered this was to be our transportation for a while. I eyed the horses nervously. I personally loved horses and had always been comfortable on one, but heading through the Mexican jungle in who the fuck knows where with a cartel was something different.

  Finally the man nodded and clapped his hands together enthusiastically before heading back to his shanty.

  Javier jerked a thumb in his direction. “That’s Burt Reynolds.”

  “Burt Reynolds?”

  He shrugged gracefully. “That’s what he calls himself. Doesn’t speak English, so don’t bother trying. He’s taking us to Montepio. Only way in or out of here is by horseback.”

  “Or boat,” I mused and watched as Burt Reynolds came back out of the shanty with a bunch of bridles and packs. He moved spritely for an old, withered-looking man and in no time the horses were ready. He gestured for us to come over and started yammering in Spanish to me about a small buckskin mare.

  “Her name is Churro,” Javier leaned in to me. “Try not to eat her.”

  I grimaced at his bad joke and introduced myself to the horse by letting her smell my hand. She was entirely disinterested.

  There was no saddle, just straps and packs wrapped around the withers and chest, where my duffel bag was now secured.

  “If I’d known I’d be getting on a horse today, I would have worn jeans,” I said under my breath.

  Burt Reynolds came over to me, giving me the signal for a leg up, complete with a toothy grin. I shook my head, having no interest in giving the man a peep show, no matter how badly he looked like he needed it.

  Suddenly Javier’s hands were around my waist, his long fingers nearly meeting in the middle. “Here, I’ll help you.” Before I could protest he was lifting me up somehow, my legs akimbo. I pulled up the hem of my dress just in time, grateful that it was wide and flowing and stretched across the back of the horse.

  Burt was on the other side of the horse, trying to help me settle in and he started squawking about something. The word “tattoo.” Javier’s head looked up sharply, his eyes flaring, mine going straight to the leg on Burt’s side. The skirt was hiked up to my knee exposing my cherry blossoms, so bright and daring in the tropical sunlight.

  Javier zipped over and looked at my leg. It seemed that Burt was quite pleased with the tattoo, but Javier wasn’t.

  He ran his finger down one of my scars, following a twisting stem. “What is this?”

  “A tattoo, obviously. Even Burt knew what it was.” I wish I could say I felt some kind of relief in Javier finally seeing it but I didn’t. I felt nervous and I didn’t know why.

  “When did you do this? It’s still raised!” His voice was hoarse. He kept looking at the tattoo, feeling it.

  “When I was in Vegas. Camden did it,” I told him. My eyes shot to Burt to see what he was making of all of this. He was watching the both of us, smile locked, until he met my eyes. Then he went off to busy himself with Raul and Peter who were bringing their horses over to the fence post in order to mount them.

  Javier didn’t seem to be able to take in that information. He looked confused, lost, off-guard. This was so rare to see and yet I felt no pride in making him that way. I just wanted to forget about it.

  “Why did you do this?” he asked, swallowing hard. “Your leg was fine before.”

  “It wasn’t,” I said, feeling irritated now. “And now I’m proud of it.”

  “This is the first I’ve seen it. Why aren’t you wearing shorts now, instead of jeans when it’s a hundred degrees outside?”

  I hated that question – I’d dealt with it my whole life. I gathered the reins in my hands and lightly clucked to Churro, Javier being pushed out of the way by the horse’s shoulder. “I think we have more important things to discuss than a damn tattoo.”

  Javier reached up and grabbed the reins, yanking the horse’s head back.

  Burt Reynolds cried out, admonishing him but Javier didn’t care. He glared at me until I could feel the heat, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the leather.

  “You let that boy mark you?” he sneered.

  Oh, of course this was a jealousy thing.

  “Yeah,” I said deliberately, leaning forward on the horse’s neck, “I did. I felt like I needed more. One tattoo just wasn’t doing it for me.”

  I hoped that made him angry. Really angry. In a sick way I wanted him to hit me. Just so I could forever throw it in his face and make him feel like less of a man. Another part of me was afraid that it might actually happen. Because the way he was looking at me was like a snake about to strike, a face that was both ice and fire, someone that wanted blood and vengeance and to prove just how fucking powerful he was.

  We were locked like that in a showdown of pin-prick pupils and venomous hearts until Raul got our attention.

  “I hate to break up … whatever this is, but we have to make it to Montepio by noon, is that right?”

  Finally Javier broke the staring contest, letting go of the reins with a sharp inhale. “Yes, thank you. We do. Let’s get a move on.”

  He mounted his horse with ease, springing up like a gymnast and Burt led us out of the corral. I straightened up off the horse’s neck, feeling dazed, like I had been caught in some dream and looked down at my fingers, only now noticing that I had them balled up into fists. I opened my palm and saw blood where my own nails had dug in.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CAMDEN

  “So, Camden,” Gus said, his hands squeezing the wheel like a stress ball. “When did Ellie first break your heart?”

  We were right outside of San Antonio and heading toward the border crossing at Nuevo Laredo. Apparently the border there was pretty lax and Gus didn’t expect us to get questioned much, if at all. The Mexicans didn’t really care who came into the country, even though the border line-up on the other side promised to be a nightmare.

  We couldn’t take chances, though. I was all poised to cross over as Connor Malloy, a regular Joe and not at all a wanted fugitive.

  “What makes you think she broke my heart?” I asked, looking at the flat, dry scenery skirt past us. Ranches, ranches, ranches.

  I saw him shrug out of the corner of my eye. “Only a hunch. Not many men turn into the tattoo artist version of Lawrence Olivier in Marathon Man. Just swap torture with a dentist drill for a tattoo needle.”

  “I’ve seen the movie,” I muttered. I looked down at his watch on my wrist, feeling heavy and foreign. It was four in the afternoon and we’d been driving non-stop since we left Ocean Springs. We were lucky enough to get out of Javier’s house without anyone seeing us, taking the beach around to the car, but we didn’t want to push our luck anymore. The Mexican border seemed extremely inviting for bo
th of us, now that Gus had killed two people.

  I shook my head, trying to make sense out of what happened and as before, no sense came. I completely lost every sense of right and wrong and good and bad. I became this black, suffocating thing, everything I feared in others. I became Javier. I became my father.

  That wasn’t me. I didn’t want to see that person again. He was getting locked in my head along with everything else I didn’t want to think about.

  Or maybe that person was what happened when all the things I hid deep inside finally came out to play.

  “Don’t want to talk about it,” Gus pondered. “I understand.”

  It was true, I didn’t want to talk about it. But Gus talking and asking me shit was the first time in days he’d shown any interest in me at all. He was treating me with a bit more respect now. Maybe he was impressed. Or scared that I’d tattoo his balls in his sleep.

  I sighed and sat back in my seat, hands in my lap, fidgeting. “I fell in love with Ellie in high school.”

  “Sweethearts, huh?”

  I smirked. “No. Just friends. And only for a short while. We were the resident freaks of the school. Ellie with her limp and scars. Me and my penchant for wearing makeup and a lot of vinyl.”

  “Makeup?”

  The way Gus said it, I knew what he was thinking.

  “Don’t worry,” I explained. “I’m not gay. At least, that’s what everyone jumps to as a conclusion. Even my father. I was a goth, an artist. The Art Fag, as they called me. Whatever, I had a lot of names. And I was beat on often as you can imagine. Ellie was my only friend.”

  “I see. A friend.”

  “Yup. Isn’t that the plight of every geeky teenager out there? Always doomed to be the friend? So anyway, I was in love with her and every day I’d try to work up the nerve and the guts to tell her how I felt and to kiss her. One day, I just did it.”

  “How was that?”

  I chewed on my lip, trying to figure out how best to explain it. “It took something away from me.” After I first felt Ellie’s lips on mine, the warmth, sweetness, I was never the same. She took a piece of me that I was unable to get back until I was inside her, feeling her heart and her sins in my hands.

  I was so afraid I’d never get to experience that again. All those years of longing, of looking for that part of me and she was the only one who could supply it. She really was the only one I truly, drowning in my passion, loved.

  Even at her very worst, she made me want to be better man. To be good enough for the both of us.

  “She must have cared about you a lot to walk away with that man.”

  “He is no man,” I spat out. “He’s a monster.”

  I could tell Gus wanted to say something about that but he didn’t. He just gave a grunt.

  I took the subject around the corner. “Do you think Ellie knows he wants her to kill her parents? I can’t figure it out. Why?”

  “I don’t think there’s much reason to any of this.”

  “I think you’re wrong,” I argued, jabbing my finger on the dusty dashboard. “You know how calculated he is. He’s had six years to come after her. There’s a reason behind everything now.”

  “Knowing there’s a reason isn’t helping us get an answer.”

  I studied Gus, his jowly face helped only by his beard, small eyes, grey bushy brows. He looked like your friendly neighbor on a TV show, a real Mr. Friendly. But this was a man who had shot and killed two people and didn’t seem to care much about it. I wondered if I’d ever surround myself with normal people again or if this was the life I’d have to lead forever. I wondered if this is what it felt like to be Ellie, to never know who to trust or where you’ll next lay your head.

  I chewed on my lip again, feeling some of that pain come back, when I first caught her robbing me. If only she’d really decided to go straight and get a job in Palm Valley and settle down. I would have somehow got out of the money laundering business … I at least would have tried. I never would have had to catch her. We’d never have to run or worry about getting caught. We could have settled down in my tiny house above the shop and lived a good life.

  But I guess Javier would have shown up anyway. Wanting her in exchange for fifty thousand dollars. What on earth was worth fifty thousand dollars? Was it just to kill her parents? To kill Travis? Was Javier seriously going around and killing everyone who had ever hurt her, even without her say?

  Or was it more?

  A flash of him and her flooded my head, bare legs tangled together, my art on her limb, his hands tracing her scars, the flowers, everything. My throat closed up. It couldn’t be that. It couldn’t be that. Because if it was, it meant one of two things: he would either rape her or take full advantage of her and if that was the case, I’d take that tattoo machine and draw him a new asshole before I rammed it straight into the motherfucker’s skull. And if it wasn’t that, Ellie must have wanted him.

  “Are you alright, boy?” Gus asked, taking his foot off the gas. “Your lip is bleeding.”

  I looked down at my hand where a drop had fallen, ruby red and glossy. Like the finest ink. I wiped my hand across my mouth, smearing it. Art.

  “Camden!” Gus barked.

  I jumped in my seat and looked at him. “What?”

  He frowned. “You looked all sorts of wrong there.”

  I nodded and leaned my head back. “Just thinking of things I shouldn’t. So once we get across the border, then what. ‘They went to Mexico’ is kind of a vague route to take.”

  “It is. We’ll ask around.”

  “Is asking around about one of the largest and deadliest drug cartels in Mexico, while being two gringos in Mexico, really the wisest decision?”

  “I have my sources,” he said. “If they haven’t turned.”

  “If they haven’t turned?” I repeated.

  He shot me a quick grin. “Everyone has their price these days.”

  I was getting to know that a little too well.

  Despite me fumbling with my passport like a god damn fool, the border crossing was easy. Gus was right, they didn’t really care who was going in. We kept driving until nightfall, when we reached a small settlement just before Monterrey. That’s when we were pulled over by a state police officer wearing a ski mask while holding an automatic assault rifle.

  “Buenos noches. Where are you going?” he asked us, switching to English once he noticed how white we were.

  “To see a friend of ours,” Gus answered amicably.

  The officer peered into the back of the GTO. We might have been able to go through the border with no inspection but I didn’t know if it would be the same case here. I tried not to tense up but fuck, what kind of a cop wears a ski mask?

  Then he rapped on the roof of the car and told us to drive on.

  Gus gave him a small wave and we roared off. We were a ways down the highway before he let out a large puff of air.

  “What?” I asked him, not used to seeing him anxious. It made me worry.

  “The police here are all controlled by the Los Zetas.”

  I watched the buildings grow larger and more affluent as we headed toward the city. “I’m not surprised. But we’re good. We don’t belong to any cartel.”

  “That who casts doubt on himself is often as good as dead,” he said.

  I looked at him askew. “Did you just make that up?”

  A beat passed. “Yes. No good?”

  I grinned and shook my head, letting out some of my frayed nerves. “No Gus, it’s no good.”

  We drove around the city of Monterrey, a huge, sprawling mess that grew darker and quieter as we went on. Gus told me the entire city had a sort of unofficial curfew, which made our car with its fake Cali plates stand out. Even though the city was still one of the largest cosmopolises in all of Mexico, it was very much under a different sort of law and whether we were looking for the Los Zetas or not didn’t matter when we were two white dudes in a cool car. Prime kidnapping material.

  So
on, we were pulling up to a small house in a nearby town that seemed to consist of a gas station and a post office. It didn’t look like much of anything but it seemed to be an unofficial hotel and the plump woman who answered the door with two children at her heels, up way past their bedtime, was more than happy to let us stay.

  She led us through to the back of the house where we had our own room and a tiny bathroom. American magazines sat on a bedside table.

  “I stayed here once, a long time ago,” he said as he stretched out on one of the tiny twin beds. “She was thin back then, if you can believe it.”

  “Two jokes in one day,” I said. “A record.”

  He smiled, then covered it up by turning off the light. There was a chance he was finally warming up to me.

  I didn’t bother getting under the sheets, the oppressive heat filled up our tiny room in minutes and the rickety fan overhead did nothing disperse it. I closed my eyes and thought of Ellie.

  There was a moment back in high school that Ellie never knew about. I never wanted to tell her, what would be the point? We were both sixteen and hadn’t talked properly for years. It was after I’d done the photography project on her and frankly I knew she hated my guts. She considered me a freak, thinking I was creepy and obsessive and a bit of a stalker. Sadly, I was all of those things. That was just me and it couldn’t be helped.

  There had been a school dance, the “Spring Fling” or something lame like that. Ellie didn’t go. I never expected her to. But I did. Just to be a pain in the ass, really. I wanted to show up and have people whisper to each other, “oh The Queen is here.” The attention, no matter how fucked up, was better than staying at home listening to my dad scream at my stepmother. He always would scream at me after.

  I went, dressed in a tux, like a normal person, except my tux was pastel blue. Yeah, I was trying to do an homage to Dumb and Dumber and it was lost on most of the school. So, of course I was already shoved by a few dickheads by the time I’d arrived.

  But there was this one dick, Curran Simpson, a real fucking jackass with big fists and a bigger mouth, who came barrelling up to me and spilled all of his punch down the front of my tux.