Shooting Scars: The Artists Trilogy 2 Read Online Free PDF Page A

have been a Norman Rockwell painting. I was about to throw red paint on it.
    “The fuck is going on?” I asked, one hand leaning against the wall.
    He finished flipping to the end of the paper – agonizing seconds of paper flipping through his deft fingers – before he laid it down and looked up at me.
    “Good morning,” he said, looking amused without smiling. “Did you sleep well?”
    It took all of my self-control to keep from tackling him across the table and clawing his eyes out. I knew we weren’t alone though. I knew there were people, somewhere, watching us, making sure I was following the straight and narrow. I knew I had to keep everything inside as much as I could.
    “Why the hell am I here?” I asked, my jaw clenched.
    “Because I live here,” he said simply.
    “Still?”
    He smiled, just a twitch at the corner of his snake-like mouth. “Painful memories?”
    “Fuck you,” I said. I instantly regretted it when his grin broadened.
    “I see. So they are.”
    I brushed my hair back behind my ears, as if that would help me think. “Why am I here? Why am I here
where you live
?” I mimicked his accent.
    He folded his hands in front of me and the damn watch started glinting like a gold spark in the sun stream. “I brought you here because this is our first task.”
    “First task?” I asked dumbly.
    “Sit down,” he said, gesturing to the seat across from him. Where I always used to sit. Same damn seat. “Please.”
    “No.” I crossed my arms across my chest. His eyes briefly lasered in on my cleavage. “I want you to tell me what the task is. I want to know why I’m here.”
    He leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “So impatient, my angel.”
    I shot to the opposite side of the table and shoved my finger in his face. My razor blade necklace swung like a pendulum. “Talk. You owe me that much, you piece of shit.”
    He eyed my finger and had the courtesy to wipe the smile from his face. “Okay.”
    I backed off, my nerves firing in all directions. I waited, shoving my itching hands in my back pockets.
    He breathed in delicately through his nose and folded up the newspaper as he spoke. “The task, why I brought you here, why I sought you, finally, is this … I know what you’ve been doing for the last however many years.”
    “Six. You know it’s been six.”
    He raised his brow. “Time flies.”
    “Keep talking.”
    He sighed. “Alright. You’ve been a thief.”
    “Just like my parents,” I filled in, knowing what else he’d throw in there.
    His smile wavered for a second. “Yes. Just like them. Anyway, I’m not judging.”
    Wouldn’t that be rich.
    “So,” he continued. “You’ve been doing that. Being generally immoral, such a far cry from the Eden White I loved.”
    The way he said
loved
creeped me out. It was like watching the devil say it himself. The word didn’t belong on his tongue.
    “And while you’ve been Ellie Watt, I’ve been … making adjustments. Making money. Going places. Moving up.”
    “If that’s moving up, then I’m moving out,” I muttered under my breath, making sure he could hear me.
    “No more Dire Straits?” he asked. “Billy Joel now?”
    “Get to the point.”
    “The point is, I know about you. I know why you were with me, at least for some of it. I know the truth about your scars. I know the truth about Travis.”
    I swallowed hard, the hairs standing up on my arms and prickling along my neck like tiny ants. Of course he knew. I remembered what Jim had told me about Javier already.
    Jim.
    My uncle Jim. My only real family. The memory of him hit me like a brick. But it wasn’t anything nice. It wasn’t the good times. It wasn’t something fucking normal. It was when he was dead. The bullet in his head, his shocked expression as he hit the floor in that motel room.
    And I was staring, just feet away, at the man who killed him.
    “Something wrong?” Javier asked.
    What would be the point in bringing