In the next second I focused all my energy into a squat, my years of surfing at Long Beach finally coming into play, and with a giant groan I sprung up and out, my shoulder driving into the couch back. Ikea made flimsy couches but they were that much easier to move.
I felt the couch awkwardly make contact with Vincent, his gun going off but up in the air, cracking a hole in the ceiling. I kept driving the couch forward until it knocked him down and was out of my way. He cried out and the gun went off again, this time whizzing over my shoulder and crashing through the window. I burst out the door just in time.
I leaped down the stairs three at a time, my back feeling like a bull’s-eye, not knowing when Vincent was going to fire on me. The sunlight was so bright, so terrible and out of place after what I’d gone through.
As I neared the car, I noticed it was empty. There was no time to process where Sophia and Ben were. For once, I wasn’t worried about them and I was proven right when I jumped in the driver’s seat.
With my hand on the gearshift, I stared up through the windshield to the apartment. Sophia and Ben were standing a few doors down, huddled with a neighbor and watching me, watching everything. She was crying and playing the part. It sickened every bone in my bloody body.
Against my better judgement I stuck my head out the window and yelled at her. “I’m coming back for him!” Call me crazy, call me whatever you will, there was no way in hell I’d let my son live with that devil of a woman. I would come back for what was mine.
She held Ben close to her side and gave me a look of Oscar-worthy revulsion. “Over my dead body!” The neighbor, a round Latino woman, was watching our exchange with horror no doubt for the poor, ex-wife. That poor, poor double-crossing bitch.
“We’ll see,” I said to myself, though I wondered if it was loud enough to hear, if it would come back to haunt me. I wondered if I meant it.
I popped the car in reverse and peeled back out of the parking lot as Vincent came staggering out of the apartment, waving his gun around like he had a chance of hitting me.
I was already gone before he could steady his hand. The GTO roared down the quiet sunny streets of suburban Los Angeles, and I wondered when the fuck I’d stop being a chump and if I’d ever get to see my son again.
If I’d ever get my life back and take charge.
But I had to.
I wanted to.
I was going to find Gus.
And then I was going to find Ellie.
And nothing, absolutely nothing, would get in my way.
CHAPTER FIVE
ELLIE
My escape artist skills had grown rusty. Which wasn’t really all that surprising since I’d apparently turned into quite the shit trickster as well. Whether I’d grown too confident and too cocky by driving that damn, damn car around or I was doing it, as Javier had suggested, because I wanted to get caught, I was obviously losing my touch. I decided that I’d become too cocky, because wanting the vile Mexican to actually find me was a whole other can of worms that I wasn’t about to dive into.
Besides, I had bigger problems. Like getting caught right after I made a break for it.
You couldn’t really blame a girl for trying.
After Javier had left me in that rotten house to whatever business he did (strangling puppies was my guess), I spent the rest of the day devising a plan to escape. It probably would have been time better spent if I had thought about what Javier had propositioned me with but I was so certain I could get out of it that I didn’t even have to think about the “what ifs.”
Another reason why I was losing my touch: a good con artist always examines all the scenarios, the “what ifs,” the multiple ways the game can play out. But I did none of that. Instead I observed the burly man on the other side of the front door and the smaller man in the black suit who was stationed by the French doors in the kitchen, guarding the way to the balcony like some bored bouncer at a club. I decided I’d fake out the smaller guard, maybe hit him over the head with something (he was smaller after all and the kitchen was full of blunt objects, even if all the knives were conveniently gone) and make a run for it. Once on the beach, I could book it down to one of the neighbors, providing he hadn’t paid off everyone on the sandy strip. There was a chance that he did. Javier didn’t just split from Travis without being extremely thorough.
I should have mulled on that observation a little bit longer. At around five in the evening, when the sun was low in the West and the shore looked fuzzy with light, I had knocked on the kitchen door. Through the glass, I could see the short man ignoring me so I rapped again and stared at him impatiently until he turned to look.
I made the motion for him to open the door, all while keeping a heavy pestle from a pestle and mortar set nestled in my hidden hand like a police club. Finally he opened the door and gave me an expectant look.
“Hi,” I told him, all smiles. “I don’t know if you realize this but I’ve effectively been kidnapped.”