It didn’t take long before the man was tied spread eagle on the bloody bedspread. He still didn’t look scared, didn’t look like he was in any pain, didn’t look like he was worried.

“Now, talk,” I told him.

“You both are so dead,” he said, slurring his words around his fat lip. “What are you going to do, shoot me in the leg? You’ll only attract more attention to yourself. Besides, I’ve had worse.”

“Oh good,” I said, coming closer. “It’ll be a nice experiment then, to see if I come close.” I wasn’t really sure who was talking, the words that were coming out of my mouth, the strange sense of calm, almost a high, that was replacing the rage. It scared me more than the anger had, than the blackness. This was something else. Sinister.

“Camden, maybe you should let me handle this,” Gus said taking a step closer.

I waved him off. “You can have the next go. I think he’ll tell us where she went.”

I shrugged off the backpack and pulled out my secret weapon, my tattoo machine. It had ink in it too still, bright blue.

“What the hell is that?” Gus asked, even though we all knew what it was.

“Tattoo gun,” I explained. “Well, we call it a machine. In this case, gun seems more fitting. Doesn’t fire bullets but it can fire a lot of pain if you apply it in the right place and press down hard enough.” I took the needle and pressed it against the man’s stomach just below his chest, feeling his pulse underneath his skin. “I’ve always wondered if I could tattoo’s someone’s organs. You know someone is going to ask for that someday.”

Finally I saw the man’s eyes widen ever so slightly. I smiled back. “Really,” I went on. “I’m curious. Care to be my experiment … what did you say your name was?”

The man’s jaw wiggled back and forth. Debating.

“That’s your first question. What’s your name?”

“Camden, we don’t have time for this.”

I ignored Gus. “This is a liner needle, thick enough. Similar to what did the tattoos around your arms. Except that yours was done properly and I’ve made some adjustments with the length of the needle. I bet I could at least puncture your stomach if I pressed hard enough. Maybe fill it with ink? Wouldn’t that be something? I’d tattoo you from the inside out.”

“Jesus,” Gus muttered under his breath.

I plugged in the machine and stepped on the foot petal. “Your name,” I repeated.

The man hesitated. I didn’t. I plunged the tattoo needle into the middle of his abdomen, just below his rib cage, pressing it as far as it would go. It felt so incredibly wrong to do this, going against everything I’d ever been taught. It went beyond art now. It took me to another level. A bad place.

The man cried out from the pain and I kept the needle there as deep as it would go. An inch of a vibrating tattoo needle was a pain that no one should ever feel.

I almost felt sorry for him. Then I remembered who was on the line.

“F-Felipe,” he stuttered, “Felipe Alvaraz.”

“Good, good,” I said, taking the needle out of his chest. A swirl of red blood and bright blue ink came together to form an overflowing pool of purple. “Next question. Is Ellie okay? Is she hurt?”

He shook his head. “She’s not hurt. She’s f-fine. She’s the one who did this to my head.”

I smiled to myself. Good girl.

“And where is Javier taking her? What does he want with her?”

The man’s lips formed a thin line. I raised the machine, reminding him.

“Tell me and I won’t do anymore. Where are they going and why?”

“Fuck you.”

“Wrong answer. Gus, hold the back his head please.”

Gus didn’t move. I shot him a steely glance. He was frowning at me, the most concerned I’d ever seen him. “Gus, do it now. We don’t have time.”

He nodded ever so slowly and then leaned across the bed, pressing his big hands down on the man’s forehead. He shook his head back and forth, trying to escape but Gus put his other hand on his chin, pinning him in place.

“What are you doing, Camden?” he asked.

“Women are going crazy for permanent eyeliner tattoos these days. Thought I’d jump in on a trend. Get some practice on what not to do.”

The man’s eyes flew to me in horror. I felt nothing. I didn’t have any nerves left and my hand was as steady as a rock. If this was what it felt like to be Javier, putting that bullet in Uncle Jim’s head, well in some sick fucking way I could understand the pull.

“Hold him steady. I don’t want to miss.”

I took the machine, turning it on again, relishing the buzzing and held it just above Felipe’s eye. “It’ll hurt less if you keep your eyes closed.”

Actually it didn’t matter. But he didn’t have to know that.

I lowered the needle and the man shut his eyes tightly, struggling under Gus’s sure grip. I pressed it, just a bit, into the scrunched up eyelid. The man cried out. Then I pressed it in further, like puncturing a really dense grape.

Screams filled the room.

“Camden, stop,” Gus said.

“Tell me where they went and why he has her or I’ll remove it with your eyeball still attached.” I pressed it a bit further. Ink filled the hole. If he was lucky, he was getting ink around his cornea, causing permanent color but no major damage. If it was through his retina, he’d be blind for life.

“Fine!” the man screamed and then started hyperventilating. “Th-they, he, Javier, he took her to Mexico.”

I exchanged a glance with Gus. “Why? What’s in Mexico?”

“Travis,” the man sobbed. “Oh please just take it out of my eye.”

I felt like my lungs were filled with sand. “I will,” I told him, trying to breathe. “Where in Mexico?”

“I don’t know. Veracruz, maybe. The Gulf Coast. Travis has places all over.”

“Why is he taking her to see him?”

He started shaking, convulsing, succumbing to the pain and panic. “I don’t know! It wasn’t part of the plan.”

“What was the plan?” Gus asked quickly. The urgency was spreading.

“Her parents. He wanted her to kill her parents. He thought they’d come back here.”

Those words sank over the room.

I shook my head. “Why would they come back here? Aren’t they working for Travis?”

“I don’t know. Please, please just let me go.”

I looked to Gus for his opinion. He only nodded. It was over. We had the info and now we had to get out of there.

“Hold still, Felipe,” I told him and while pressing down around his eyelid, I pulled the needle out. He let out another cry of pain and I stuck the machine in my backpack. “Now open your eye. Don’t worry, I’m just checking to see if there’s damage.”

Felipe shook, afraid.

“Camden, we have to go now.” In the distance sirens could be heard, wailing on the breeze.

“Look at me,” I said, getting up and leaning over him.

Felipe tried to open his eye but couldn’t. I placed my fingers on either side and forced it open. It was total fucking mess. Blue ink bleeding out from the white. But his iris and pupil were uncolored. “You won’t be blind. You’ll just look like an idiot for the rest of your life.”

I turned around, wiping my hands on my jeans. “I guess we should leave him tied up, right?” I said to Gus. “If he’s lucky, someone will set him loose.”

“Yes,” he said in an odd voice. I turned around to look at him. Gus had a gun pointed at Felipe’s head.

“Gus, no!” I yelled, but it was too late.

He pulled the trigger. He shot Felipe right in the temple, causing his head to slump to the side. Alive one minute, dead in the next.

I had trouble speaking, the gun shot still ringing through my ears. “He would have been okay,” I finally said. “I hadn’t really hurt him.”

He gave me an odd look. “No, but you could have. You wanted to.”

“No. I didn’t want him dead.” It felt like a lie on my lips.

Gus came over to me and placed his meaty hand on my shoulder, looking me in the eye. “He would have talked. We still have the element of surprise. We can’t afford to take any chances, not after tonight.”

He walked toward the hall and paused in the doorway. “This is a different world now. You’re not Camden McQueen. You’re Connor Malloy. In this world, you will have to do things you never thought you’d do, things you wish you never did. I think you already got a taste of that today. That flavor will stay on your tongue. Now come on. We have to get out of here.”

I followed him out the door, fighting the instinct to turn around and look at the mess we’d made. Felipe’s death now was as much on my hands as it was on Gus’s.

Ink and blood.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ELLIE

After the incident in the cockpit, Javier went back to ignoring me for a few days. Well, maybe he wasn’t ignoring me so much as he was keeping quiet and oddly professional. Whatever intimacy we shared, those secrets dredged up from the past, were gone, like it never happened and we were back to the strained relationship of blackmailer and hostage.

The next few days crawled by, time going slower out on the Gulf of Mexico. We saw very few boats, I suppose because it was still considered hurricane season. And yet, the weather was absolutely beautiful, clear skies that mimicked the expanse of water, stretching forever and ever. We were sailing through nothingness. This was the place you’d come when you wanted to feel each and every minute pass through your skin.

I became more comfortable on the ship yet at the same time, my nerves were frying in my chest like eggs in a pan. I didn’t know what was expected of me when we finally got to Mexico and I was too afraid to talk to Javier about it. Was it as I thought? Was I bait or was Raul right and I was the executioner?

Those words of his echoed in my mind, that I was no good at heart, that I was born to be bad. It was almost cheesy and laughable the way he said it, but there was no mistaking his conviction. I knew deep down that I spared Camden because it was the right thing to do, because I wanted to make up for every bad thing I had ever done to him, for everything in my life. I knew that was the reason I went with Javier. But Javier believed otherwise and I knew he wasn’t going to stop until his point was proven. He held the shackles to my past and was threatening me with them.

On our last evening out at sea, we spotted land. Actually, I spotted it. I was at the front of the boat, sitting on a beach towel I’d spread out on the deck. Massive Attack’s “Angel” was playing from a set of iPod speakers I’d brought out from one of the lounges, the bass building up to that first glimpse of hazy landmass, just appearing on the smooth curve of the horizon. It was so jarring, so strangely terrifying and different.

“Land-ho!” I yelled, then laughed despite myself. I’d always wanted to say that.