Bold Tricks

CHAPTER SEVEN

We didn’t stay at the bar too much longer. After we said goodbye to Dom and Esteban (who started insisting I call him Este), we went back to our rooms. I desperately wanted to follow Camden into his, but I said goodbye to both men at once and Camden went in his room first. Javier was further down, lingering at his door, watching me in silence. His face was in shadow but I could still feel his eyes, his hesitation, as if he wanted to say something to me.

There was no hesitation on my end. I gave him a hard look and went to my room. Violetta was in the washroom, the tap running.

“Ellie?” she called out from behind the closed door.

“I’m here,” I told her and climbed into my bed. A tank dress was no different than a nightgown and I wasn’t chummy enough with her to sleep naked.

The bathroom door opened and she staggered out. From the weak light that lit her up from behind, I could see she looked pretty wrecked. Or wrecked but still pretty, as it seemed to be the case with her.

“How are you feeling?” I asked. “How’s your arm?”

She gave me a sloppy smile and eased herself into bed. “I feel kind of sick and I can’t feel my arm. But I don’t feel any pain.”

“Good.”

“Ellie,” she said softly. “What’s going to happen to me?”

I turned my head on the pillow and looked across at her. “What do you mean?”

She sighed and looked up at the ceiling. I had an idea of what Javier’s nose must have looked like before it was broken a million times. “I have a bad feeling. I’ve had it for a week. That I’m going to die.”

“You’re not going to die, Violetta. Javier wouldn’t let that happen.”

“You know that’s not true. Javi always acted like he cared more than he did. Even when I was younger, he would be nice to me if it got him something, maybe a treat from mom. Or he did it because it was expected. I don’t know if he cares if I’m alive or dead.”

I licked my lips, thinking back to the conversation in the bar. “I know he wants to keep you safe. He may have a funny way of showing things but he does care about you. He wouldn’t have come this way if he didn’t have to. Tomorrow he’s going to send you away from all of this.”

She laughed. “Let me guess, to see my sisters?”

“You don’t need to get mixed up in this.”

“I already am.”

“It’s not too late to get out. And I, I will make sure you’re taken care of.”

She turned her head to look at me, her eyes glinting in the dark. “You’re nothing like him, you know.”

The back of my neck tingled. “I’m not?”

She shook her head slowly. “No. I thought you would be. But you’re not.”

I could barely find my voice. “I wasn’t a good person. I was a con artist.”

“I know. You left that out earlier when you told your little story, but I know. What difference is it what you were? You’re not conning anyone now are you? You’re risking your life to save somebody. You risked your life to save me and you don’t even know me. You could have let me fall and ran on but you stopped and you helped me. I don’t think there’s anything more noble than that. You have more courage than any of those cartels do. They wouldn’t even do that for each other. It’s every man for himself. You’re not like that.” She paused. “And neither is Camden.”

She was at least right about him. But when you’re told over and over again about how immoral you are, how bad, how wicked, how unlikeable, how terrible you are, it’s hard to hear anyone say any different. I felt like a fraud being good just as I felt like a fraud being bad.

“Camden is a good man,” I whispered, a pit lodged in my throat. “Too good for me.”

“And you say he’s not your man?”

“No. He’s no one’s.”

“If you say that then you don’t see what I see.”

I smiled weakly. “What do you know? You’re high on morphine.”

She giggled. “This is true. But I know love when I see love. You never forget your first love.”

Javier was my first love. That was always a hard pill to swallow. “No. I suppose you don’t.”

“First love or not, it’s what you have now that matters. And you have Camden. You should be with him.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Things are only complicated if you make them. Believe me, I know. I wanted everything at one point. Then I lost my parents, a sister, and in a way, I lost a brother. After Beatriz died, Javier changed. And then I realized I didn’t need everything, I just needed people to love. That was it. Only people to love and to love me.”

Tears welled up behind my eyes. I didn’t really know Violetta. I didn’t know exactly what she’d gone through. Yet still, her words could have been my words.

“I’m glad I met you,” I told her, my voice choking up. “Really.”

“Same here. Just …” she trailed off.

“What?”

Her features softened in the dark. “Be careful. Javi may have loved you … and maybe he still does. But don’t think he wouldn’t throw you under a bus in order to get what he wants.”

And what if what he wants is still me? I thought. And what happens when he figures out he can’t have it?

“I’ll remember that,” I told her. We lapsed into silence, her breath becoming steady.

I fell asleep thinking about jungles and guns and death and blood. I dreamed about Camden, Gus, Violetta and I buried under a landslide, and Javier on the mountaintop, one foot on my mother’s severed head.

I woke up soon after that and never got to sleep again.

By the time the sun rose in the air, blanketing the surroundings in warmth, bare, distant mountains looking remarkably clear against a blazing blue sky, I was already dressed and packed. Violetta woke up in pain, so I left her to visit Javier’s room for more medicine. I knocked on the door and held my breath, hoping he wasn’t going to give me too much trouble over this.

He answered it, the chain across the door, one golden eye peeking through.

“Yes?”

I rolled my eyes at his formality. “Can I come in?”

“Oh, really?”

I stuck my boot in between the door and the frame. “Yes. Now.”

He grunted and closed the door, forcing my boot out of the way. Then I heard the chain slide across and he opened it.

He was only wearing a towel again.

Fuck my luck.

Do you just walk around naked all the time, I wanted to say. But I knew the answer was yes and his ego would blow up at the fact that I’d noticed.

I didn’t let my eyes stray south for a second longer and walked into the room, looking around.

“Where’s the morphine?”

“A little early to be getting high, Ellie,” he said, his fingers toying with the edge of his towel as it snaked across his waist. “Had I known you were into the poppies, I would have done away with all the cocaine.”

I crossed my arms and looked at him dead on. “It’s for your sister and you know it is. She’s in pain and she needs it. Now.”

“You’ve really taken a shining to her, haven’t you?”

“She’s nothing like you, maybe that’s why.”

He nodded and walked slowly, very slowly, across the room to the desk. “She’s weak and foolish, that’s her problem. Though perhaps that’s why you like her. You can relate.”

I breathed in sharply through my nose and willed my heart to calm down. “Just give me the morphine.”

He reached into a crumpled small paper bag and brought out the syringe and a vial. My eyes widened a bit at the sight.

“Got enough there?” I asked him snidely.

He pierced the bottle with the syringe and filled it a quarter of the way up. “I told you that I’d only get the best for her. The rest, well, the rest we might need.”

He walked over to me, each step with purpose, each step closer to shaking loose his towel. He smiled, all white teeth, canines showing and proudly displayed the syringe and the medicine in his hands.

“I’ll give you this if you do me a favor.”

I did not like the sounds of that.

“Javier, there isn’t time to play games.”

“There is always time to play a game, angel. You’ve been playing them from the moment you were born.”

He took a step forward again and I backed up until the back of my knees hit the edge of the bed.

“Even your feelings for Camden are nothing more than a game to you,” he went on. One step closer. “You want him because you can’t have him. You can’t have him because you disgust him. And once you do, if you get to him using those pretty eyes of yours and that tight-as-hell pussy, you won’t even want him anymore. You’ll toss him aside. Just like you did to me.”

I had enough of this. I quickly reached for the syringe but he yanked it out of the way and grabbed my wrist, his fingers searing into me like hot knives into butter.

He jerked me closer to him until my chest was pressed against his, his erection hard against my thigh. “Now about that favor.” He stared at my lips, his eyes full of lust and madness and victory. “Kiss me.”

Was he seriously this sick, to make me kiss him in exchange for the medicine for his own sister?

“Forget it,” I told him. I’d find another way to get it to her. I turned to walk away but he held me in place and brought his face to mine. A wash of softness came over his brow, his mouth turning down, his lids heavy. “Am I that repulsive to you now?” When I didn’t answer, he whispered, “You know I’m doing all of this for you, my angel. I wouldn’t do this for anyone else, not ever.” He cupped my face with his free hand. “You could still be the queen of everything.”

A queen of everything but still a queen with nothing.

“I have to go check on her,” I said, closing my eyes, wanting to be free of him. I waited tensely, listening to my heart thumping in my ears, the shortness of his breath as he held me there.

Finally he released me and pressed the vial and syringe into my hand. “Take this to her then. Make yourself feel better.”

I turned around without looking at him, the medicine damp from the sweat of his hand, and got out of the room. The morning sun seemed glaring now after being with him.

I made it two steps out the door when the wall beside me exploded into a shower of cement and paint. I dropped flat to the hard ground on instinct, covering my head, looking around me wildly. Suddenly Javier’s window exploded and I could feel bits of wayward glass raining down on me.

I reached into my boot and pulled out my gun, my eyes darting all over the parking lot. There was nothing unusual, just a few cars and Jose. But across the street was a long fence belonging to a house. If the shooters were hiding behind there, we were sitting ducks.

“Ellie?” Javier called out from his room. My ears were ringing with the sound of the gunshots, my lungs seizing at the close call. The shots had stopped for now but they were just waiting for an easy target.

“I’m okay!” I shouted back.

Camden’s door swung open and he suddenly burst out, running fast as hell, gun in his hand, over to a high van that was parked near the entrance and closest to the fence on the other side of the road. He flattened himself against the back of the van and his eyes darted over to me. If I ran, the gunmen would try shooting and reveal their location. I looked over at the door Camden had left open. Could I make it there before their bullets got me?

Only one way to find out. I nodded at Camden.

Then I got to my knees and sprinted. Shots fired out in my wake, some of them far above my head which showed that the shooters didn’t have the best accuracy so far. I was just about to duck inside the door when Violetta came stumbling out of our door, looking panicked.

“Get down!” I screamed at her. I ditched Camden’s room and ran for her instead. I tackled her to the ground just as the window to our room shattered with another blast of gunfire. Even though I smashed up my elbow in the fall and we partially landed on Violetta’s arm, Camden took the opportunity to take out whoever was shooting at us. He popped off a few rounds, splintering the fence across the street, the noise punctuated by a few cries of agony and defeat.

Violetta moaned beneath my arms, her own pain taking over her. I rolled her over and peered at her face, the tears streaming down it. “I’ve got something for you, it will just take a few seconds, okay?”

“Who the fuck is shooting at us?” she cried out.

I looked up at Camden who was peering around the van, being extra cautious. From behind us, I could hear another door open.

“Are you okay?” It was Javier. His footsteps stopped right behind us.

I eased myself off of Violetta and Camden came trotting over and helped me get Violetta to her feet. “We’re okay, thanks to Camden.” I gave him a quick smile. “Can’t see things from far away, right?”

“I got lucky,” Camden said, but his tone and the darkness in his eyes said it was nothing as frivolous as luck.

“Well let’s not start thinking he saved the world yet,” Javier said. “We don’t even know if they’re dead.” He took his gun out from his waistband and snapped back the clip. “But if they aren’t they will be.”

He trotted across the parking lot, his shaggy hair blowing behind him, and crossed the street, gun held low. I looked over at the hotel lobby and saw a few people gathered, some on cell phones, perhaps to call the police.

I looked up at Camden. “We have to shoot her up and get her out of here.” I held out her good arm and he grasped it around the forearm while I quickly found a vein near the crook of her elbow. “This will pinch. And then you’ll be flying, okay sweetie?” I tapped the vein and stuck the syringe in, injecting the morphine in one push. She immediately relaxed in my arms, but not too much. Javier had put enough in there to take away the pain but not as much as she had the night before.

“Why don’t you go wait in the car?” I told her, smoothing back her hair.

“Can I drive it?” she asked lazily.

I smiled. “Not yet. But you can listen to the radio if it will make you feel better.” I put the car keys in her hands and sent her off.

I turned to Camden. “I think we have five minutes tops before shit hits the fan.”

He nodded at the broken windows and blasted walls. “I think it’s already hit the fan.”

“True but–”

“No!” Javier’s scream cut through us. We snapped our heads to look. He was running across the street toward us, screaming and waving his hands frantically. “No!”

I looked to Violetta, where he was headed. She had just gotten in the car.

She adjusted her seat.

She started the car.

Jose made a strange grinding sound.

My lungs, heart, soul collapsed.

And Jose exploded.

One minute I saw Violetta’s dark hair through the back window, Javier running across the street for her, a look of absolute horror on his face, a look I’d never seen before and a look I’d never forget.

The next minute, there was a fireball, hotter than hell, larger than life and I was flying backwards, blown into the wall by the fist of heat.

I slammed into the wall and fell to the ground, heat taking over my body, my brain humming with blood and echoes of the blast. I lay there for a few seconds, trying to figure out what had happened. Where was I? Why was the world on fire?

Violetta.

I lifted up my head and saw the flames that licked high into the sky, Jose a burning carcass of memories. Violetta. She’d been inside.

I had given her the keys.

She was dead.

Burning alive.

A messy, anguished sob came out of my mouth. Even though the heat was searing my eyeballs, I couldn’t look away from the flaming wreckage, the cries around me muffled, like my ears were plugged with cotton balls.

I felt hands wrap around my shoulders and pull me up to my feet. A strong arm went around my waist and I was turned away from the inferno and brought into a room.

My hotel room. It seemed like a cave now with the fire raging outside. Violetta was dead. Jose was gone.

“Ellie?” Camden said softly, running his hands down my face. “Fuck, you’re hurt.”

I looked up at him, seeing him but not seeing him. He gently touched my temple and I saw blood on his fingers. “Come on, we’ll get you cleaned up.”

Cleaned up? Who cared about being cleaned up? What the fuck just happened?

“Violetta!” I cried out suddenly, tears rushing to my face. I tried to run back outside but he held me in place.

“No,” he said roughly. “There’s nothing we can do for her.”

I looked at him with wild eyes and he brought me closer to him. “I gave her the keys.”

He shook his head. “You couldn’t have known there was a bomb in the car.”

“Javier!” I cried out. “Javier knew! He was running and yelling and … oh my god, Camden, what happened to him?”

His dark brows came together and he bit his lip, his eyes searching me. “Ellie …”

I shook my head and pushed him out of the way. “No!” I ran out of the room and back to the scene of the crime.

People from the hotel were gathered around the blaze, some with fire extinguishers, trying to put it out with futile sprays of foam. I didn’t see Javier anywhere.

I swallowed the bile that was coming up my throat. Had Javier been swallowed up by the same blast that was currently consuming his sister? Was he there now, a charred skeleton amid the flames?

I promptly leaned over and threw up on the ground.

Camden’s hand was on my back in seconds. “Come on, come back inside.”

I made a pitiful noise, wanting nothing more than to scream, cry, run.

“Please, Ellie, you’re hurt.” I felt him reach for my head. I moved out of his grasp getting hit with dizziness instead. I staggered a bit then froze when I saw Dom coming out of the crowd of people, heading toward us, a gun noticeable in his waistband as the breeze lifted back his slick suit jacket.

We needed to run. But I couldn’t even move.

Dom stopped right in front of us, a sympathetic smile on his lips. “You two need to come with me.”

“Why?” Camden asked, his voice strong and steady.

Dom glanced at the burning wreckage, at the people who were now stealing glances at us.

“Because we have to go,” he said simply. “You don’t want to be here when the police get here. And the men who did this? They’re still out there.”

“Where’s Javier?” I asked him, not quite certain that he wasn’t one of the men who had tried to take our heads off and blew up my beloved car and Javier’s beloved sister. And possibly Javier.

He looked over my shoulder into the room and said, “Just grab your stuff and go. I’m parked around the corner.” Then he took off toward the bar. I watched until he disappeared around the building.

“What do you think?” Camden asked. “We don’t have to go with him. We can go out on our own. It could be a death trap in that car.”

I couldn’t even think. I didn’t even care.

Camden sighed and brought me to him, wrapping his arms around me and holding me tight. I could feel his heart beating against mine. I closed my eyes, feeling waves of darkness trying to swallow me whole. This was all too much and my brain couldn’t even take it in. It was spitting it all out, rejecting reality, leaving me with a numbness I welcomed too much.

“You tell me what to do,” I whispered into his chest. “I can’t.”

I don’t remember much after that, maybe it’s because I had a concussion and pieces of Jose still in my hair or maybe because my head was protecting me from the brutality of the truth. It was all like a dream. Camden brought me inside and we gathered up the rest of my stuff, everything that had been in Jose. Then we hurried along the row of rooms toward the bar. I could hear the cries of people behind us, as if we were the bad guys and we were getting away. But no one came after us as we rounded the corner and saw a shiny black Escalade at the curbside, its engine running.

It was all a dream until I got into the car.

Este was sitting by the door in the back to make room for me.

And Javier was sitting in the front seat.

Alive.

My heart churned like a cement mixer, a million competing emotions running through me. Relief he was alive. And fear because he wasn’t dead.

I climbed into the middle seat, still dazed but feeling everything sparking back to life, like I went from black and white back to Technicolor.

Javier didn’t turn around to acknowledge me. In fact, as Camden closed the door and Dom drove the Escalade down the street, no one said anything. The five of us were silent though apologies were dancing on my tongue. I wanted to tell Javier I was sorry about Violetta. I wanted to tell him it was all my fault. I wanted to beg for forgiveness.

But I didn’t. Because it wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t bring her back. It wouldn’t make anyone feel better. Not even me.

Camden reached for my hand and held onto it tight. His skin was warm, firm and soft all at once. I raised my eyes to his. He was here with me, a simple fact in an unsimple world.

We stared at each other for a few beats, my thoughts lost in those baby blues, in the hardness that surrounded them, and the soulfulness deep inside. Violetta’s words from last night swirled around in my head. Her wish for love, to love and to be loved.

I couldn’t be sure I had the latter. I certainly didn’t deserve it. But I had the former. I loved this man who was sitting next me, who had been by my side, on my side, from the beginning. I had to hold onto that. I had something that Violetta died without – knowing that someone completely owns your heart. Camden owned my heart and the blood it pumped through me. He owned every atom and inch of my body, every crevice and dark shadow of my soul. From now on, he would possess it freely, easily. I was his. And if I blew up the next day, if I met my death trying to get back Gus and my mother, at least then I could die knowing my heart was put to good use. It wasn’t wasted. And if it wasn’t wasted then perhaps I wasn’t wasted either.

I squeezed his hand back, silent thanks for his comfort and devotion. Then I carefully leaned my head on his shoulder and tried to forget about the pain that the morning had brought me. The lives it had changed.

We sped south in a car full of love and death.