Sins & Needles (The Artists Trilogy #1)

by Halle, Karina

  It finally sunk in. We got moving. He insisted on taking his vintage acoustic guitar, but other than that, we made sure he took only what he needed. Documents, money, some clothes, some of his tattoo gear. My bag was small to begin with; everything else was already in the car.

  We did a final sweep of the place, Camden taking a picture of Ben from off the fireplace mantle, then hurried down the stairs and into the garage. After a quick survey of the backyard, we walked quietly across it, helping each other over the fence into the neighbor’s yard and then out onto their street before we drew attention to ourselves.

  I didn’t feel relief until we walked further up and saw Jose, still sitting by the park. But my relief was short lived. I couldn’t stop thinking about the $50,000 reward for my head and how Camden had passed it up. Just like that. And the funny part was, I believed him. I believed Camden wanted to stay in control of me, I believed he still needed my help. I believed he didn’t turn me over to the “bad guys” because he didn’t want to do me any harm.

  But the last time I believed in Camden, I got screwed. I was going to have to be a little more careful this time around.

  Then

  The girl coasted down the street in her beat-up Chevy truck, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. Considering it was Mississippi in April and everyone had their heads hanging out of their trucks, sweating like pigs, she fit right in.

  But she wasn’t a local. She’d only been back in the state for three weeks, and during those three weeks, she kept seeing the same people. That was on purpose. The girl had found a familiar house—a rich man’s house where bad things happened long, long ago. And she watched that man’s house day in and day out. Sometimes from far away. Sometimes from up close. But she made sure that no one ever saw her.

  And as she watched his house, this man she remembered as Travis, she watched many men come and go. Some women—some very attractive women—but mostly men. Men who got shit done. Men who wore suits and talked smart. Men who’d cut off your ear with nail clippers.

  She watched the men, figuring out which man was the most important to Travis. Which man held the most power. And, over time, she figured out it was a man who looked no older than she did. He was practically a boy, with longish hair that flowed delicately as he walked. When she watched him from afar, you wouldn’t think anything of him. But he had a way about him—the way he held himself with such ease, gestured with such control, such confidence, that you couldn’t be fooled. That man, as young as he seemed, could not be underestimated. Even Travis seemed to regard him like a snake in a cage, a snake that could easily slip through the cracks.

  Once the girl decided that this man was the man she needed to know, she waited until he left the compound, roaring off in a ‘70s Pontiac GTO, and followed him. She followed him day after day after day. Seeing where he went. Every day he’d leave the affluent suburbs of North Biloxi and head to the quaint town of Ocean Springs. He’d pull up to his small white house with its curved stained glass windows and sprawling porch and disappear inside.

  The girl never saw anyone else visit the man. She often wondered what he did in there. Did he watch TV? Did he sit on his back porch watching the waves crash against his private beach, the wind rustling the sea grass? Was he lonely?

  She wondered all these things about the man and slowly gathered up the courage to find out for herself. One day she followed the man to his favorite café in town, and instead of hiding out in her truck like the stalker she was, she decided to go into the shop. She decided to finally meet this man.

  The girl walked in still sweating from the humidity outside. Inside the shop it was cool and surprisingly busy. She spied the man in the corner of the room, relaxing back in a wicker chair, a cup of tea in his hand. He was flipping through a Men’s Health magazine, seeming bored yet content.

  The girl took a deep breath, ordered a coffee at the bar, then took a seat on the couch nearest him.

  Up close, the man was just as young as she thought. Maybe twenty-three at the most to her twenty. It was hard to tell when he was dressed so sharply. He wore a watch like the kind her parents used to get her to steal from rich men. He gave off an air of sophistication and wore cologne that smelled more like tea than the tea he was drinking.

  She tried not to stare at him too much, but after a while, he caught on. Perhaps he’d always known and had been playing his cards slowly.

  He looked up at her, and in that instant, he took her heart away. His eyes saw right into her. And he smiled. He liked what he saw.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The second we got into Jose, we roared off down the street in the opposite direction of the main drag. It would take a little while to get out of town, but I wanted to make sure we weren’t being followed, and I really wanted to make sure we weren’t about to zip past Javier and his henchmen if they were scouting certain roads.

  “Where are we going?” Camden asked as the houses on the street got smaller and more spread apart. Sand and brush invaded the suburbs.

  Why, I thought, so you can text your new buddies? I had to stop thinking that way, thinking that Camden could have made a deal with the Devil, but my paranoia was at an all-time high and there was no such thing as being too careful.

  “We’re going to clean your money,” I told him, taking a sharp left onto a street that led out into the desert.

  “You know how to do that?” he asked.

  I gave him a wry smile. “Of course I do. I’m a con artist. Almost every paycheck is dirty in some way.”

  “Dirty deeds done dirt cheap.”

  “Oh, I do nothing for cheap. Not even this. Put your cell phone on the dash.”

  He was startled. “What?”

  I nodded at the dash. “Do it. Put it up there. I don’t want to see you sending any covert messages.”

  There was silence. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. He was staring at me, seemingly befuddled.

  “What?” I asked impatiently. “What’s the problem?”

  “You don’t trust me?” he asked, indignant.

  I snorted. “No. You put yourself in my shoes and tell me…would you trust you?”

  “Yes,” he said right away. “If I were you, I would trust me.”

  “And I thought my ego was bad,” I said under my breath.

  “I’m not trading you in for money.”

  “No, you’re just keeping me around for money.”

  “I was. Everything is different now.”

  “No it’s not. I still can’t get away from you even if I tried,” I pointed out. “No matter what, you’ve still got that evidence on me. Don’t think I haven’t forgotten. I’m willing to bet that you’ve emailed the file to yourself. You said so; you have it ready to go at the click of a button. But if you turned me over to the cops—over to your father—you wouldn’t get any money and you wouldn’t be able to run. Now you have money…and the potential to make a lot more.” I sighed bitterly. “You don’t need me and I’m more screwed than ever.”

  “Have I hurt you?”

  “What?”

  He repeated himself, voice hard. “Have I hurt you?”

  “Physically? Not really. Mentally, yes.”

  “How have I hurt you mentally?”

  I bit my lip and started looking for signs for the highway. I hated the way he turned the conversation around. “You said some pretty mean stuff.”

  He shook his head and muttered, “Unbelievable.” His gaze went to the window where the landscape of rolling alabaster and russet flew past. “You tried to rob me, Ellie. I’m allowed to be mean. I have the right to.”

  “You’re justified?” I asked poignantly.

  “Yes.” He sighed and took his cell out of his pocket, slamming it onto the dash. “Here. You can keep it if you want. It’s of no use to me. I haven’t hurt you and I’m not about to.”

  I hesitated, then took the phone and stuck it in my bra for safekeeping. It made me feel a little bit better but I wasn’t ready
to give him the benefit of the doubt yet. It would take a lot more driving without any suspicious vehicles trailing us before I’d even think about letting my guard down.

  Once I reached as far as I could go in Palm Valley, I pulled the car onto Highway 62 and headed east.

  “Keep your eyes peeled for anyone that could be following us,” I told him, though I didn’t know what the point was if he was in on it.

  He turned in his seat and peered out the back window, which was unfortunately covered in a layer of thick dust. Damn desert living. Everything turns to dust after a while.

  He eyed the side mirrors for the next few minutes, as did I. It was about 1:30 in the afternoon and traffic wasn’t too bad. If someone was following us, they’d be easy to spot, though we probably wouldn’t really know until we made our first stop.

  An hour later we pulled into a gas station at Vidal Junction. As I pumped gas and as Camden went into pay, I brought his phone out of my bra and checked his messages. There was nothing, just a few clients wanting appointments and Snooty Neo from the band wanting to discuss the next show. I felt a pang in my heart for Camden, the fact that these clients, his band, they’d all cease to exist for him. He never even got a chance to say goodbye.

  I scoured the gas station, looking for anything out of the ordinary. We were literally in the middle of nowhere and Vidal Junction was nothing but a ghost town that sat on all four corners of Highway 62 and 95. It kind of gave me the creeps but at least the lack of traffic and people made spotting the unusual easier. And aside from a family who was bitching at each other as they climbed out of their overheating station wagon, there was nothing strange.

  Satisfied, I took out my own phone and checked it. I wanted to check in with Uncle Jim, just to make sure he was okay. The last text I sent him was just thanking him for all his hospitality and that I was off seeing friends on the coast, and that maybe I’d see him again real soon. Short and sweet. He had responded with “Take care, Ellie.”

  This time I texted: Hey Uncle Jim, how are things going?

  I waited for a bit, and when the gas was done, I put the phone away. I hoped he’d answer soon with a “Fine, how are you?” but perhaps he was out in the palm groves helping with the harvest. It was sunny here in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, but things had cooled down in Palm Valley, which always made harvesting easier.

  “Ready to go?” Camden asked as he came out of the store, holding a bag full of crap. I didn’t know what was in it, but you couldn’t buy anything except crap at a gas station.

  I slipped on my shades. “Yep. You buy out the store?”

  “Food for the road,” he explained, getting in his side.

  I eased in, careful of the leather seats and grateful for the shade above the gas pumps. He opened the bag to reveal packages of beef jerky, Corn Nuts, Doritos, Combos, sunflower seeds, sour berries, honey mustard pretzels, Reese’s Pieces, a few cans of Red Bull, and a banana. “The banana is for you,” he said.

  “Fuck that, give me the Corn Nuts.” I reached in and snatched it out, along with the sour berries and a can of Red Bull. Who the hell eats a banana when they’re on the run?

  I put The Dead Weather’s Horehound on the mp3 and the dissonant chords of “Treat Me Like Your Mother” came blaring out of the speakers.

  “Getaway soundtrack?” Camden asked as we zoomed onto Highway 95 and headed north toward hills of craggy red rock.

  “Gotta have fun when you can,” I told him with a smile. The getaway was the best part. It was the only time I felt remotely free. I started singing along with the song, doing my best Alison Mosshart impression, which I must say was pretty good. I’d perfected her a long time ago; seemed I was always running from something.

  “Look me in the eye now, you want to try and tell a lie?” I sang.

  And to my surprise, as soon as Jack White’s vocals started, Camden jumped right in. I eyed him appreciatively, impressed that he knew the words. Soon we were singing, shouting, shaking our heads, spelling out the word “Manipulate.”

  The irony wasn’t lost on me.

  The sing-along continued until just past the town of Needles. It was nice to pretend we were just taking a road trip or something, fiddling with a playlist and fighting over who got to eat what junk food. It some ways, it felt as natural as the date we had gone on, as natural as the friendship we once had. But, as Mosshart and White had sung, it was all a lie. And it was too late for anything else.

  We pulled into a deserted rest area that consisted of a public restroom that had seen better days, a patch of brown grass, and picnic tables surrounded by a chain link fence that protected the place from the barren wasteland beyond it.

  “I need to stretch my legs,” I told him, shutting off the car and walking with my arms above my head over to the picnic tables. The sun was lower in the sky but it was still hot as hell. I brought out my cell and checked to see if Jim had gotten back to me. He hadn’t. Okay, now I was starting to worry.

  “What’s wrong?” Camden asked, approaching me. He looked so sincere and concerned, like a sexy, worried nerd. There weren’t too many like that.

  I straightened out my back and put my phone away. “What makes you think something’s wrong?”

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “You mean besides the very, very obvious?”

  “Haven’t heard back from Uncle Jim yet,” I said softly.

  He walked up to me and grabbed my hand, squeezing. He peered down at me, and with the way his eyes glinted behind his glasses, I had another one of those flashbacks to high school.

  “He’ll be fine,” he told me.

  “How do you know? Usually he texts me back right about now.”

  “I don’t know. But I choose to believe he’ll be fine, because as selfish as this sounds, we need to worry about us right now. Worrying means nothing if we’re dead.”

  “Are you scared?” I asked him.

  “I’m fucking terrified, Ellie,” he said. From appearances he looked so strong and put together—tattoos will add toughness to anyone—but I knew better than that.

  “Me too.”

  “We might be scared of the same thing.”

  “You should be afraid of the people whose money you just stole, not Javier. If he ever catches up to us, there’ll be no more us. He only wants me, and I’ll do whatever I can to keep you out of it.”

  He stroked his chin in bemusement. “I was pretty sure you’d bring me down with you.”

  “Believe it or not, that’s not my style.”

  “Well, I haven’t seen any car for quite some time, let alone the same car. I think it’s safe to say he’s not following us. Do you mind telling me where we are going?”

  “Laughlin, Nevada,” I said, deciding to trust him a little. Besides, I still had his phone and I’d keep watching him like a hawk. I pulled my hand out of his and walked back to the car. He followed behind me.

  “Doing some gambling?”

  “We are. Just try not to bet the house.”

  ***

  The Avi Resort and Casino was just outside of Laughlin in Nevada at the weird corner where the state met California and Arizona. It wasn’t anything fancy, just one of those big interchangeable casino resorts that you could find on any Nevada highway. The Avi though, had a casual atmosphere and was popular with families thanks to its sprawling pool and the mighty Colorado River which swept past their private, manmade beach. The casino also paid out pretty well and was the perfect place for two ordinary twenty-somethings like ourselves to win big.

  Of course, we probably wouldn’t be winning anything. We’d be losing. But this was the first step toward getting Camden’s money cleaned. He could keep the money in cash if he wanted, but it was extremely risky and dangerous, far too easy to lose, and if he wanted to start a legitimate life again, he’d need clean money in a bank account.

  After we secured a modest room at the resort, we’d head to the cashier and exchange $5,000 in cash for the same amount on their electronic card. Sma
ller casinos like this tended to ask questions if you handed them high amounts, but it didn’t mean people weren’t doing this every day and legitimately. Then we’d gamble for a bit, hopefully losing not more than a hundred dollars—easy to avoid if you just stick to the penny slots—then call it a day and cash in. They give you a check, you deposit the check into your bank account as casino earnings. Your money has been cleaned.

  Rinse and repeat.

  “Are you sure this will work?” Camden asked as we locked our hotel door and walked down the dim hall that, despite the non-smoking policy, still smelled like years and years of built-up smoke and nicotine. You could probably lick the walls and get a bit of a buzz going.

  “It will work,” I told him. “I’ve been doing this a long time.”

  “When was the last time you were here? You’ve only been of age for five years.”

  I looked at him oddly. “I was nineteen the last time I left California. Stopped here on the way out. And it’s called a fake ID, something you should know about, Connor Malloy.”

  “I’m not Connor Malloy until I get the Social Security Card,” he pointed out.

  “As soon as I know where we’ll be next week, then you’ll get your card,” I told him.

  We took the elevator down to the main floor and were barraged with casino sounds: blips and bleeps, bells, chimes, the pull of the lever on older models, the smack of buttons on newer ones. A waitress walked by, the ice rattling in the drinks that sat on her tray. Camden quickly plucked one off the tray and slipped the woman a dollar.

  “I think I need this,” he told me before downing it. We both needed a drink. Several. But first things were first.

  We went over to the cashier and I smiled at the petite, round-faced Asian girl on the other side.

  “Hi, I’d like to exchange some cash for a card,” I told her with a bright smile, noting her nametag which said “Cammie.” I reached into my purse and slid a wad of crisp bills toward her.