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His voice was low and rough, like he ate cigarettes for breakfast. I had a sudden flash of being a girl and running on the beach in California, he and my parents relaxing on the sand and laughing about something, sharing a bottle of wine. Had that really happened? Did I really possess a normal childhood at some point, or were all my memories a lie?
“Well, come on in, sweetie, I’ve been expecting you.” He held the door open and I gingerly walked in, brushing my memories aside. The place was well-kept but had all the earmarks of a bachelor pad. There were muddy tracks through the linoleum-tiled kitchen, the art work on the walls consisted of landscape portraits that were probably painted in the 1970s, and the air smelled stale, despite high-powered fans in every room desperately trying to combat the heat.
We ended the tour on the back porch where a shiny barbeque and a few patio chairs stood among beer cans and ashtrays. Cattle called in the distance, the fields of tan spreading out for miles over gently rolling hills.
“How about we get you settled and I’ll start up some steaks for lunch,” he said, gesturing to the grill. “We’ll need to get our bellies full before we start getting to the bottom of this.”
I raised my brow, caught off-guard. “Bottom of this?”
“Sweetie,” he said with a grin, “I know there’s a good reason why you contacted me and came here. I’ve been waiting some time now to find out what it is.”
Ah shit. I guess I wasn’t very good at being subtle. Here I was, trying to learn to be a con artist and I was already failing before I’d started.
He slapped my shoulder. “Hey, I wouldn’t have been a very good cop if I wasn’t suspicious of everyone. You learn to spot the signs. You go get your stuff and make yourself at home. I mean it. I’m not going to kick you out, no matter what you’re going to tell me. If you’re honest with me, I’ll be honest with you. Hell, I’m being honest right now. I don’t get a lot of company—you’re doing me a favor, too.”
And with that assurance, I headed out to the truck and started unpacking my stuff into his small spare bedroom, settling down into my next transitional life.
When I felt like I’d put just the tips of my roots into the room, it was time for lunch. He piled my paper plate with a thick, juicy ribeye and baked beans, food I’d missed out on over the last few days on the road.
“Don’t mind the paper plates,” he said, settling back into his chair and resting his feet on the railing. “Some days I don’t have time to do dishes, so I find this to be a hell of a lot easier.”
“I’ll have to remember that,” I told him, and cracked open a beer from the six-pack he’d just put on the table.
We munched and drank in silence, enjoying the stiff breeze that occasionally came through, lifting my hair from my sticky shoulders. When I couldn’t handle working through any more gristle and my belly was full, I tossed the plate away and we got to talking.
“So, Ellie,” he began, belching unapologetically. “What’s your story? Why are you here?”
What was my story? How did I begin?
“Well, you know about what happened to my parents,” I started. “How they took to the road again.”
“Yes. I sure do. Though I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t emailed me. I haven’t talked to your parents since…well…”
His voice trailed off and I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking about the accident. I think my parents lost a lot of friends around that time. Hell, they almost lost a daughter.
I went on, feeling it was too soon to dive into it. “So after high school was over and I left Palm Valley, I found out my uncle had a heart attack and I went back to help him on the date farm.”
“Where were you before?”
“Colorado,” I said.
“Doing what?”
I shrugged. What the hell had I been doing? After high school was over, I just drifted around from state to state, working odd jobs. I didn’t have a real life or a real purpose. Nothing seemed tangible until I realized what I had to do.
“I was just trying to survive.”
He cocked his head and gave me a curious look. “And what are you doing now?”
I pursed my lips in thought. “I’m going to try and make the best of it. I want to do more than survive. I want to live.”
“And that’s why you’re here. You think I can help you live, is that right? And what is living to you? What life do you want?”
Though Gus’s voice had a hard edge to it that made me a bit nervous, I could tell he meant well. I could also tell that this might end up being harder than I thought. He was already sounding fatherly, and I had that problem with Uncle Jim. I didn’t want someone to look out for me, I just wanted them to help me.
“I want to let go of my past. I have things I need to get over.”
“Like what?” he asked, but from the way his tone softened, I could tell he knew.
I looked at the cows in the distance, under the wide Texas sky that made everything feel so free. “I want to hurt the man who hurt me. I want to destroy him for destroying me. And I won’t be happy, I won’t be free, until I do so.”
A thick silence came over us like a cloud moving in front of the sun. I’d never admitted any of that aloud before, it had always stayed locked up in my head. As scary as it felt waiting for his answer, for his judgement, it felt good.
Gus studied me for a few moments with those dark eyes of his. “I see. I figured as much, Ellie. What happened to you was terrible and you never had any kind of support to get you out of it.”
That was an understatement. What had happened was something out of a movie, except it wasn’t a movie. This was real life. I was only ten years old when I was robbed of my youth, my innocence, my confidence, my love. My parents had used me in a con to get money from a dangerous man. When the man found me trying to rob him, he retaliated by throwing acid on my leg. He scarred my leg for life, scarred me for life. He took away all the good in my past and robbed me of a future. I never became the person I was meant to be. Instead, I had to become someone else. And I didn’t know who she was yet.
I kept my eyes focused on the cows, trying to keep the tears from spilling. “What did you know about what happened?”
He sighed and ran his hand through his silver hair. “I know only what your father told me. That they made you rob Travis Raines, a man that has more enemies and allies than anyone I know. That your father knew it was a bad idea. That you got caught, because you were only a fucking child. That you nearly lost your leg. That child services was sniffing around. That your parents were going to quit being con artists. That they wanted to give you a better life.”
I couldn’t help but let out an ugly laugh. “Yeah, a life that lasted about a year. I was only in Palm Valley for one year before they pulled another scam and left me there.”
I could feel him watching me, feel his sympathy. I hated it.
“Your parents,” he began, then looked down at his beer. He gave his head a quick shake. “One of my biggest regrets was walking away from them, you know that? I just didn’t want to get involved. I should have supported them. When I found out they were moving you to California, I should have been there for you, and for them. But I couldn’t. I regret that, you know?”
“I don’t blame you,” I admitted. The sun was baking my jeans, but to remove them and put on shorts or a skirt would reveal the criss-cross of ugly scars on my leg, something I always kept hidden. “They obviously would have brought you down with them somehow.”
“But I feel guilty,” he said roughly, and I looked at him in surprise. His eyes were shadowed from his furrowed brow. “Because maybe I could have talked some sense into them. Maybe I could have prevented them from leaving you.”
As damned selfish as it sounded, it felt nice to have this older man feel so much on my behalf. After my parents nearly got caught with their scam and had to leave Palm Valley, I was put into Uncle Jim’s care. But as much as I loved my uncle, his care had been reluctant. I was more of a burden to him than anything else—at least I sometimes felt that way.
“That’s why I’m going to help you get what you want,” Gus said. “Even though what you want won’t make you happy when you get it.”
I swallowed hard in disbelief. “I think you’re wrong.”
“I’m right, Ellie. You want revenge. You want vindication. And I hope you get those things. But the relief will be fleeting. Because you can never right the external wrongs until you fix what’s wrong inside you.”
“Seeing Travis Raines with a face full of acid will give me my life back,” I sneered, feeling an inky hatred swarm through my blood, saturating me. “To watch him suffer will fix everything.”
“Is that what you want from me?” he asked point blank. “Do you want to burn him as he burned you? Perhaps even worse? Do you want to kill him?”
The casual way that Gus said those last words gave me a start. A strange feeling spread inside my chest. “No, I don’t want to kill him.”
I’d been dreaming about revenge since I was ten years old. I never once imagined killing the man—I’d never thought of killing anyone. Death wasn’t revenge; it was the easy way out. I wanted to make things as hard as possible.
Still, it made me second guess going to Gus for help. I’d known he was with the LAPD at some point in his life, maybe when I was very young. I knew that at the time of the accident, he had gotten fired or quit and had taken to helping people like my parents out, with what I didn’t know. I’d been under the impression he had turned into a con artist, just like my parents, only with a few more tricks and connections because he had been on the “inside.” But maybe I had totally underestimated him here. Was killing people just something he did?
He was watching me carefully and nodded. “Take it easy, Ellie. I’m not saying you need to kill him. Or that you should. Or that you should do any of this. I just want to know what you want. Specifically. So I can help you get it.”
I took in a deep breath and steadied myself. The conversation had my heart racing. “I just want what I said. I want an eye for an eye. And I need you to show me how. How to get close. And how to disappear.”
“How to be a con,” he mused, taking a sip of his beer. “Yes, I think I can do that.”
CHAPTER THREE
I spent the next two weeks with Gus, barely leaving his side. In the mornings we’d let the cows out, in the evenings we’d let them back in. I shoveled hay, I shoveled shit. I cleaned up his house, I made dinner. I helped whenever I could, because whenever he could, he was helping me. He was teaching me to become a con artist like my parents, but hopefully better.
We went through all the steps. In order to get close to Travis, I needed to infiltrate his crew. Because I didn’t know anyone in the whole drug cartel line of work, I was going to have to make do with what I had. Which basically was the fact that I was a vagina with legs. The easiest way for me to get close to anyone on Travis’s side of things was to stake him out, find a man who was close to him, someone who could succumb to my charms, and go after him.
