Sins & Needles (The Artists Trilogy #1)

“And?”

“And that was it. I told him what I knew, that they were cons that went on the run and never came back. I told him you came from Mississippi, originally.”

“I bet that blew his mind,” I muttered.

“No.” I looked at him sharply but he shrugged. “No, he didn’t seem surprised at all. He just nodded like he already knew everything. Everything in the world. He’s a…how on earth did you go out with that guy, Ellie? I would have gone insane.”

“It was long ago.”

“We were long ago.”

I nodded. “We were. And here we are. And there he is. And we have to go.”

I could tell he wanted to argue. That he wanted to talk about the drop and the dream and the plans. But acceptance was coming into his eyes. I knew because it looked like disappointment and defeat.

“He’s bad news, huh?” he asked, leaning forward, elbows on knees. The dolphin he had tattooed there look like it was winking at me.

“Remember when you asked me who was chasing me? Now you know. I stole his car, I stole his money. I had my reasons. They still want it back. They haven’t forgotten. Drug lords don’t forget. Ever.”

He looked a little pale. I said, “We can’t wait for the drop. They will come back here, they will come into your house, and they will find me. I have nowhere to go or hide in this town. It’ll be a miracle if they haven’t gotten to my uncle already. You didn’t mention him, did you?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t. I said in high school you stayed with your Godparents. Your uncle isn’t a Watt, is he?”

“No, Bespo. Jim Bespo.” I breathed out a sigh of relief. “We have no choice, Camden. Either you let me go right now and you stay here. Or you come with me. Or I go with you. Either way, I have to go or I’ll be dead.”

I said all of this so matter-of-factly that I barely recognized myself. I wanted to give myself a high-five for seeming so put together. I wasn’t. I was screaming on the inside.

“We can take the money in the safe,” he said.

“And we have your ID. That’s a start. We can get Gus to send us the rest of your documents somewhere else. But we have to leave now.”

He nodded and got to his feet. I joined him, putting my hand on his arm, forcing him to look at me. “Camden, we’re leaving and we’re not coming back. Ever.”

He rubbed his lips together, his eyes scoping out the room, taking it all in, everything he loved. We didn’t have any time to pack with thought. We had to throw everything together and go.

“We’ll take Jose,” I said.

“His car? Isn’t that a little obvious?”

“They’re watching your car at the moment, not mine. They don’t know where mine is.”

“They could have seen it at the park.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “Maybe. But probably not and probably not is better than a definite yes. If your car is gone, they’ll know.”

“If I’m gone, they’ll know.”

“But it’ll take longer for them to figure that out. I’m giving us five minutes. We’ve already wasted enough time already. Grab one bag, pack only what you need. I’ll take care of everything else. We’ll head out the garage door and through the backyard, through the neighbors. Just in case they’re watching the house already.”

He stiffened with paranoia. “Should I go to the windows and look?”

I shook my head. “Don’t even think about it.”

Camden stood in the middle of the living room, looking overwhelmed and stunned, not ready to let go of this life and let in another. He thought he had more time. We barely had any.

“Four and half minutes until we’re dead, Camden McQueen,” I whispered.

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?”