by Karina Halle
“What? I don’t.” He motioned to Vincent. “Does he?”
I looked to Vincent. He smiled sympathetically at me and tilted his head downward.
“I’ll get over it,” he said.
My world froze.
Sophia cried out in indignation, anger and betrayal spilling from her lips, and I was too dazed to even hold onto her. She ripped herself out of my grip and ran toward Vincent, fists in the air, screaming her head off, ready to pound on him.
He raised his gun and shot her in the chest.
She crumpled to the ground, dust flying around her.
My collateral was dead.
The planet slowed on its axis. Every second stretched longer.
I looked at Camden who had stopped in the middle of it all, hands still above his head, halfway in between Javier and Vincent. Camden looked back at me.
He smiled sadly.
“Take care of Ben for me,” he said.
I blinked, trying to understand the implications of what he was asking while my heart sunk as hard as rock, blasting through me until I knew it wasn’t beating anymore.
“Camden!” I screamed, an out of body experience.
Vincent aimed the gun at him.
Pulled the trigger.
Shot Camden straight in the chest.
In the heart.
In his beautiful, lovely, endless heart.
He flew backward, all 6’2” of him, tats and muscle and love.
Fell hard to the ground, making it rumble at my feet.
Motionless.
A bullet whizzed past my head and I had a split second to react. Not that I wanted to react, not that I was trying, not that I cared.
Because I was already dead. I died out there with Camden.
I didn’t even care anymore.
But the body’s will to survive is strong. Humanity’s instinct to preserve itself lives on. I was acting without knowledge, without thought.
I ducked low to the ground and rolled until I was by the giant landing gear and then popped up behind it, using it as a shield.
I leaned against it, trying to find my heart but it was gone.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I sobbed uncontrollably, once, twice, loud, my soul being seared open by the pain, the debilitating pain. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t even be.
Camden.
My moon.
Shattered.
Lifeless on the floor of the Mojave Desert.
Another bullet rocketed off the landing gear making me snap to attention. To the reality that was going on. There was a firefight. I was in the middle of it.
I peered around the gear, my eyes straying to Camden who was still lying there on his back, head facing straight up. Vincent was shooting at me. Javier was retreating behind a wing and shooting at Vincent. Este was there, jumping off the top of a plane and onto one of Vincent’s men. Guns were going off in all directions.
Vincent started running toward me and I fumbled for my gun, ready to finish off the man who had killed the love of my life.
But Javier popped up, aimed, fired, and shot Vincent in the side. He fell to the ground and Javier took off running behind the body of a 737.
I quickly got up and walked straight to Vincent. I turned him over with my boot so he was looking up at me, barely alive, and stepped on his chest.
I didn’t even have words. I just pulled the trigger. Aimed at his head.
Done.
Then I looked around me. More fighting was going on behind the jetliners, giving me a moment of clarity. A moment of quiet. I may have still been an easy target, but I had to take it. I had to take this moment and make it mine.
I staggered over to Camden, my legs growing weaker and weaker with every step I took until I finally collapsed to my knees and crawled the rest of the way, dragging myself over the sand.
I grabbed for his hand, his still-warm hand, and held onto it as the tears unleashed. I sobbed, beside myself in the agony, in the grief, knowing I had to somehow pull through in life without him, to take care of Ben. But it shouldn’t have been this way.
The hero doesn’t die.
And Camden McQueen was a hero unlike any other.
Selfless, brave, protective.
Good.
So fucking good.
I moved another inch and tried to see through my tears to his flawless face, to take it in one last time. I placed my shaking hand to his lips.
He kissed it.
His eyes flew open and he looked at me.
I almost screamed. I jerked, startled, scared.
“Hey,” he said.
I couldn’t even form words. My chest was about to explode from sheer and utter joy. How could this be?
I looked down at his wound. He was shot, wasn’t he? I put my hand there, feeling along the denim, expecting it to come away with blood. There was nothing. His chest was stiff, harder than normal. With my mouth agape, I unbuttoned the first few buttons of his shirt and saw the bulletproof vest underneath.
“What the …” I was unable to finish the sentence.
I laughed, confused, elated and looked at him, my hands flying for his face. “You’re not dead.”
He smiled and kissed my palm. “No, thankfully. Feels like I got slammed with a brick though.” He tried to sit up and looked around him. “I think we need to get out of here.”
I put my hand behind his back and helped him sit straight. “I still don’t understand. Why do you have a vest? Who gave you a bulletproof vest?”
He cocked his head to the side, dust falling off his black hair. “Javier.”
I shook my head, unable to comprehend any of this.
He was alive!
He was alive!
“Why would Javier give you a bulletproof vest?”
“I smooth-talked him.”
I raised my brows and got to my feet, helping him up. “How the hell did you smooth-talk Javier?”
He shook out his arms and ripped open the rest of shirt to get a better look at the vest. The crunched bullet fell to the ground. “Well, I didn’t know if it would work but I used you. I told him the truth, that you might be pregnant with my child, and that if he really, truly cared about you, he wouldn’t take me away from you. So he had a change of heart and gave me the vest. He’s wearing one too. He did when he got shot at Travis’s as well. Playing dead worked well for him, so … ”
“A change of heart?” I exclaimed. “He still handed you over to Vincent! What if Vincent shot you in the head?!”
“Ellie, he doesn’t have a very big heart.” He gave me a pointed look. “But I’m sure in his fucked-up mind, he was being noble.”
“I’m going to fucking kill him,” I sneered. I got my other gun out of my boot and started looking around wildly, wanting to find him and get rid of him for good. The firefight had stopped. There were no more sounds coming out from behind the planes. We were alone. Javier was gone. Escaped into the desert.
I didn’t want to live in fear anymore.
“I have to find him,” I growled and started running toward the way we came in, my eyes searching high and low for him and only seeing other bodies instead. Camden ran after me, our footsteps echoing in the boneyard.
Suddenly Javier stepped out from behind a jet engine.
His hands above his head.
And Gus behind him, a gun in each hand, aimed at Javier’s head.
Just like me.
Like father, like daughter.
I had no idea how he found us but I was sure as hell glad he did.
Javier, to his credit, did seem scared as he looked between the two of us, four guns trained on him. And this time, my hands were as steady as the rocks around us.
Still, Javier nodded at Camden and said, “You made it. That was lucky.”
“Shut up,” I sneered. “Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t kill you for good.”
“Or why I shouldn’t,” Gus spoke up.
Javier eyed Camden, who
only crossed his arms on his chest and shrugged. “A fifth gun would be overkill,” Camden remarked.
“Speaking of,” I said, looking over Javier’s shoulder at Gus, “shoot for the head. He’s wearing a vest.”
Javier looked at me in shock.
I waved my guns at him and in the direction of the fence. “Walk,” I commanded. “Keep your hands above your head.”
I nodded for Gus to lower his weapons, to leave us alone. This was between Javier and I.
Javier slowly turned around, his brow furrowed in confusion and now I got to jab my gun into his back.
“Keep going,” I said. “All the way to the fence. Stay turned around.”
“Angel,” Javier said, fear breaking in his voice. “I saved your Camden for you. I did it for you.”
I walked over to him, until I was right behind him. I could hear Gus and Camden hovering nervously in the distance, but to their credit they didn’t say anything and they stayed where they were.
“I know you did,” I told him, right into his ear, the back of his hair tickling my face. “And that’s what makes you and I so tragic. Don’t you think?”
“Angel,” he pleaded.
I pressed the gun into the back of his neck.
“You won’t ever call me angel again. Because I am not your angel. And my wings aren’t dirty.”
I pulled my mouth away from his ear. “And I don’t have your soul. But if it’s out there, you might want to find it, before it’s too late.”
I quickly bent down and pulled the pair of handcuffs out of my boot, the same ones he’d used on me last night. I flicked a cuff open, his eyes widening in surprise, his body shaking slightly.
“Don’t get any wrong ideas,” I said. “That kinky shit is over.”
I snapped one cuff over his wrist and snapped the other to the chain-link fence, his hand held slightly above his head. He turned and stared at me absolutely flabbergasted.
I stepped back and grinned happily at him. “I really hope you’ve been bribing the DEA agents well, Javier Bernal. Because you are going to need a lot of help to get out of this one.”
He shook his head. “You can’t leave me here.”
“Just be glad you’re intact enough to leave behind,” I said. “Puta conya,” I swore in Spanish, spitting at his feet.
Then I turned to look at Camden and Gus who were staring at me with a mix of awe and surprise. My men. My wonderful men. I blinked back a few tears, then walked over to them.
“Time to get the hell out of here?” I asked.
They nodded in unison. Camden grabbed my hand. And together we ran out through the hole in the fence and across the desert floor.
I didn’t look back at Javier.
Gus had parked his car right where I had left the Mini.
“How did you find us?” I asked, wiping the dust and sweat off my brow. In the distance I could hear helicopters, probably the DEA and the feds. They were going to have a field day once they got their hands on Javier. The leader of Los Zetas, caught right in their own backyard.
Gus looked at me like I was an idiot. “Tracking device. Haven’t you learned anything, Ellie girl?”
Camden’s head snapped up. “Where’s Ben?”
“He’s fine,” Gus said. “My friend has him. You guys get in and follow me.” He eyed the sky, hearing the choppers too. “We’re going to have to be quick about this.”
Camden got behind the steering wheel and I climbed in the passenger side as Gus got into his car and roared out of the desert.
“You okay to drive?” I asked him, knowing he could have a cracked rib even if the bullet didn’t go through.
He gave me a cocky smile. “Baby, I’m Camden McQueen.”
I grinned back. “Okay, then let’s make this fast.”
“I’m good at that,” he said, winking at me as he floored the Coop forward, growling after Gus’s trail. “Remember? Best five minutes of your life?”
I put my hand over his. “Let’s make it the best fifty years of my life. And then some.”
“It’ll be the best of everything.”
Calexico’s “Fortune Teller” came on the radio, bringing back a million memories, all of them rising up with the sand around us, flying forever into the atmosphere. I looked though the sunroof up at the impossibly blue sky, the color of Camden’s eyes, and smiled to myself.
He was alive.
I was alive.
We had our lives left to live.
New paths.
New journeys.
New hope.
“Let’s go say hi to Ben,” I whispered.
We left the desert behind us in a cloud of dust.
EPILOGUE
“That’s a beautiful tattoo,” the barista behind the counter said, looking down at the woman’s leg.
The woman looked down at herself. She’d taken to wearing shorter skirts lately, even though the wind off the Pacific was known to flip them up at a moment’s notice and flash the world your underwear. The woman didn’t care though. Her legs were now a work of art.
“Thank you,” the woman said with a gracious smile. She was a stunning woman in her early thirties, high cheekbones, dark brown eyes and long blonde hair that cascaded down her back. Her face was tanned from days spent outside, sunscreen no match for the Californian sun.
“I love cherry blossoms,” the barista commented, handing the woman her massive café mocha. “And I love that moon in the middle of it all.”
The woman smiled to herself, not wanting to share the whole story with the barista. There wasn’t many people she could tell the truth to, that the tattoo of the moon was not only for the man who inked it there but to cover up the scars of a bullet wound. The coast north of San Francisco wasn’t exactly known for high crime, unless you counted Eureka, but no one ever counted that.
“Where did you get the tattoos done?”
“I know a guy,” she said slyly. “Has a shop in Gualala. Only works part time though.”
“I love Gualala,” the barista exclaimed. “They have an amazing barbeque joint there. Really quiet though. You live near there?”
The woman nodded, eager to get away from the Chatty Kathy. “I do. But I work up and down the coast. Makes driving down to Bodega Bay worth it just to get Starbucks.”
She then thanked the barista and left before she had to start talking about her job. Not that she minded, but it always made her feel a bit edgy when people asked too many questions about her.
She got in her car, a sexy black 1973 Dodge Challenger that she drove way too fast up and down Highway 1, and looked over her shoulder to the back seat to make sure her photography equipment was still there. Satisfied, she gunned the car, taking it north. Today’s photography session was a pretty simple one, engagement photos on the beach, a happy young couple in love.
The woman felt a bit sad at the fact that she never got to have engagement photos. But then again, no one could do a better job than she could. She would have never been satisfied with them, and besides there was no point in photos when her wedding had been such a simple one. Just her, her husband and her father on the beach at Gualala State Park.
And their son and dog of course, two unreliable ring bearers.
She flipped through the radio stations, pausing when she heard Guano Padano over the air and grinned to herself. The little-known Italian band was finally getting some airplay in the States. She rolled down her window and stuck her head out, smiling like a fool into the waning sun.
When she finally reached the house, the sun was close to setting. She had to hurry. She hated missing sunsets.
She parked in the gravel driveway and grabbed her camera. She looked over the edge of the dunes in front of her house and saw two children chasing each other on the sand, a dog darting between them.
Gus was sitting down on a beach blanket, having a beer and trying to throw the ball for the dog. Sammy wasn’t having any of it, preferring to run down the kids instead, barking and wagging her tail
.
In front of them, out in the surf, stood her husband and his strong, solid silhouette, ankle deep in the waves, watching the sun begin its descent.
Her heart bloomed and she ran down the wooden steps to the beach, her feet running through the warm sand, one of her most favorite feelings in the world.
She waved at her father as she passed him and then prepared for the onslaught of the dog as Sammy jumped up at her. The woman raised her camera in the air, knowing the dog’s tendency to slobber all over it and scratched her quickly behind the ears.
“Hey mom!” Ben yelled, a spritely eight-year-old with dark hair and a tall build. A short attention span too. He looked to Gus, “Grandpa, throw me the ball.”
Gus threw it underhead and Ben caught it, just as Violet came screeching toward the woman’s legs.
“Mommy!” Violet cried out, wrapping her tiny arms around her cherry blossom tattoo. “You almost missed sunset.” She was four years old and into keeping track of routine. If the slightest thing was out of place, everyone would hear about it.
“But I didn’t,” the woman explained happily, crouching low. She smoothed the fine blonde hair off of Violet’s head and peered at her. “How are you, baby? Almost bedtime soon.”
“No!” Violet screeched.
The woman laughed, used to this. “Yes. Now go say hi to Grandpa. I’m going to go take a few pictures and then we’ll put you to bed and read you a story.”
“No,” the girl still said but she giggled and ran away to Gus, flopping onto the towel beside him.
The woman watched her go, then straightened up and looked to the ocean.
Camden was staring at her, a big smile on his face.
She grinned right back and trotted up to him.
“Hey sweetheart,” he said to her, opening his arm for her. She snuggled right into it, not even feeling the sharp cold of the Pacific Ocean as it crashed around their feet, then raised her head for a kiss. Camden kissed her deep and long before pulling away.
He was all dimples and blue eyes. He still took her breath away.
“How was work?” he asked, putting his arm around her waist and holding her close.
She rested her head on his shoulder. “Good. Couple in love. You know how that goes.”