“Then let me go,” I spat out. “You don’t need me.”
“Of course I need you. Please tell me you didn’t spend the whole day trying to think of silly little ways of escaping instead of giving me an answer.”
I ignored him and his mind-reading ways. “Let me go, Javier. If you’re not keeping me here by force, then you’ll get the f**k up and let me walk away.” My voice shook a little.
He grew silent and I could hear nothing except the waves and hushed Spanish in the distance. It sounded like his henchmen, somewhere nearby watching the scene, keeping an eye on their boss to see what he was going to do next.
What he did do next surprised me if not them. He cleared his throat and said, “Fine.”
Then he got to his feet and stepped away, dusting the front of his pant legs and adjusting his suit jacket. Same scuffed wingtips as earlier. He waved out his arm toward the street, as if highlighting the way to go.
“You are free to go, Ellie Watt. I cannot keep you here if you don’t want to be here. I thought you were someone else. I suppose I was mistaken. Even I can make mistakes.”
I wasn’t sure what the hell he was doing but I wasn’t going to waste an opportunity. I snapped up to my feet as quickly as I could and stood across from him, a little unsteady.
He pointed at me, letting his finger trail up and down my body. “You’re wearing a lot of sand.”
I glanced down. I looked like icing powder exploded all over my jeans and t-shirt. I didn’t care.
“So I can just go,” I said warily. This stunk to high heaven.
He nodded gravely. “I brought you here because I thought I was doing you a favor.”
“You thought I was going to do you a favor,” I corrected him.
His eyes relaxed. “This is something we both want. You know you want it, need it, crave it.”
No, I wouldn’t start bargaining. I wouldn’t examine what my revenge meant to me now. Being with Camden had taught me that revenge wasn’t the be all and end all of my existence anymore, that I could go legit like I had once planned and going legit, going moral meant not throwing it all to shit and killing a man, no matter how evil that man was.
The man who ruined your entire life, your entire family, your soul, something whispered from some deep dark place inside me. It used to be a familiar voice and that alone made me realize that I’d changed over the last little bit. It once was familiar and now was strange and buried.
“What are you thinking?” Javier asked with false politeness. I could see his eyes burning gold and green with curiosity.
“Go to hell,” I said, “is what I’m thinking. Now, I’m going to walk and pretend I never saw you. You’re going to pretend you never saw me. You can go onto kill Travis if it makes you happy. I won’t condemn you for it though I can’t say the same for everything else.”
“That sounds fair,” he said, clasping his hands together like he was about to teach a sermon on the beach. “Adiós, my dear angel. I’m sorry we couldn’t work this out.”
I watched him for a few beats, my peripheral vision picking up his henchmen who were far out of reach, watching, perhaps as confused as I was. Something was up, obviously, I wasn’t that much of an idiot. But I figured I should probably run for my life while I could.
I’d turned on my heel and was about to sprint away to the road when he cleared his throat. Here it came. The catch.
“Of course,” he said, “there will be consequences for your lack of loyalty.”
My jaw came a tiny bit unhinged. I froze in my tracks for a second, then slowly turned to face him. “Loyalty?”
He twisted his lips in agreement. “Yes. I thought you would have stayed loyal but you’re no different from the rest of them. Remember Miguel? When I found out how disloyal he’d been. He was a traitor.”
My face was making expressions that I couldn’t control. Disbelief and a flood of impatience lay thickly on my tongue. “I don’t … I don’t even know what to say. Are you saying that I’m disloyal to you? Javier …” I burst out laughing and leaned forward, hands on my knees. “Javier, you really have lost it haven’t you? You f**king need to be loyal before you can be disloyal.”
His expression was stone. “You were loyal.”
“I was loyal and then I caught you in bed screwing some f**king chick. How is that for loyal?!” I was yelling the last bit, hoping that his henchmen had picked up on it. Not that it mattered to them but somehow it mattered to me that they knew how f**king delusional this man was.
He frowned and took a step forward. “I’m sorry, Angel. I didn’t realize that it had such an impact on you, to affect you all these years later.”
My eyes narrowed, pushing all my ire into them and I jabbed my finger into the air. “No. I know what you’re doing. You’re sick, you know that?” Not only was he trying to make it seem like I was some hung-up ex-girlfriend, he was quasi-threatening me. Slit my throat for not going along with some f**ked-up plan? Is that what he was seriously suggesting?
My heart was beginning to beat loudly in my head, throwing me off a bit. Was I panicking? Or just getting a major mind f**k?
Run, my gut screamed at me.
And so I did. I didn’t have time to get sucked into whatever trap he had planned. He seemed to think I’d be too caught up on old feelings and sentiment to go anywhere but that bitch was wrong. Javier’s betrayal was a learning experience. It taught me to never let my guard down. To never trust men like him.
I ran across the sand, along the flax and to the path that led between his house and the next. The road was almost at my feet. I had no car but I had memory and I knew if I ran fast enough, long enough, I’d hit up a payphone by the fried chicken joint and then I’d be calling Gus for one big favor.
Before I could hit the pavement, I hit someone else.
I shrieked and leaped back. I’d run right into Raul, who was raising his hands like he didn’t mean me any harm though his eyes said otherwise. Pinched and vulture-like, he made my blood curdle.
“Raul, you’re back,” Javier’s voice came from behind me. Fuck he was fast, my eyes darting to the side of Raul, where freedom lay. I could still run. Raul wouldn’t stop me if Javier wouldn’t.
“I had to make sure Camden got away in good faith,” he answered, his scars stretching as he talked.