Sins & Needles(42)

Tears pricked my eyes. Shocked wasn’t the right word. It didn’t convey enough of what I was feeling. None of this made sense. This wasn’t the Camden I knew. I didn’t know who the hell this was.

He was terrifying.

“Are you an undercover cop?” I asked, picking up my voice from the floor.

“Turn around, Ellie. I cocked the gun to make a point. The next point I make will involve pulling the trigger.”

I did as he said. As he walked toward me, I ran through my ways out of this. I could chance it. I could predict where his gun was and turn and knock it out of his hands. I could go low and kick him out at the shins. Or the balls. Anything that would get him to drop the gun, anything to reverse the roles.

But I’d never done that to someone with a loaded weapon before. I didn’t trust my reaction time. I couldn’t count on my limbs to do the job. It was too much of a risk and I’d already taken too many.

I felt him stop behind me, his breath tickling the back of my neck. It was no longer erotic, it was horrifying as hell. His hands went for mine and he slowly placed the cold cuffs over my wrists. When they clicked shut, it was the sound of defeat.

“No, I’m not a cop,” he said to my neck. His voice was so flat, so inhuman, he might as well have been a robot. “I’m just a tattoo artist. I’m just a guy who used to be in love with a girl. I’m just a fool who’s been fooled too many times before. I’m just a man who’s finally getting his revenge.”

“You’re a monster,” I spat out.

He laughed, cold and sharp. Then he placed his hand around my throat and squeezed hard. My windpipe crushed, I could barely breathe.

“Do you ever look at yourself in the mirror?” he asked, his voice rising. “Do you like what you see?”

I fought for breath, trying to squirm away under his hand but it only made him tighten his grip. Those wonderful strong fingers would be the death of me.

“I made an assumption about you,” he said, his voice calm again. “And I was right. If I’m a monster, then you must be the creator of them all. You’re my Dr. Frankenstein.”

And like that, he suddenly let go. I bent over, trying to get air into my aching lungs, trying to think past the burn in my throat. My heart was pounding so loudly I was almost deaf.

“Come here,” he said, and grabbed me by the elbow. He threw me roughly into his desk chair where my hands were crushed against the seat. With the gun still on me, he bent down and scooped up the Safeway bag.

“You know, if you needed the money, you could have just asked me.” His voice was a little gentler now. “I would have given it to you, no questions asked.”

“Why?” My hat fell off my head onto the floor and my hair obscured my vision.

He walked over to me, putting the bag on the desk, and crouched down in front of me. Through the strands of hair I could only see the shiny barrel of the gun in his hands.

“Because it would have meant that you changed. That you found the decency to be honest. I would have rewarded you for that.”

Being busted and cuffed with a gun pointed at you isn’t the best time to get annoyed about things outside the big picture. But I couldn’t help but snarl at his patronizing tone.

“How did you know?” I asked stiffly. “How did you know I was going to scam you?”

He smiled. Beautiful. Wicked. “Because the moment I told you I was successful, the moment you saw my shop, the moment you saw the money I brought in, I saw the same look in your eyes that you used to give the popular girls in high school. The very same look you gave them that day in the cafeteria when you turned on me. The day you humiliated me. The look that said ‘opportunity’.”

“So you set me up?” It was too much to take. I couldn’t believe that Camden had been playing me this entire time.

“Yes, I set you up. I hoped you’d fail. I hoped that I’d lie on the couch all night and never hear you breaking into my house. I hoped that you’d prove me wrong, that you liked me for me. But I was right. Fuck, Ellie. I’ve never hated being so right in all my life. You’re a con artist. A liar. A thief. An unredeemable soul. You can’t be reformed. You can’t be saved. You’ll die trying to make the world pay for what it did to you. And you’ll die alone.”

My heart clenched at his words and the inside of my nose grew hot. The tears were back.

He brushed my hair behind my ears and I flinched at his touch. He observed me curiously.

“Crocodile tears?” he asked with a shake of his head. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

I swallowed. A hot tear ran from the corner of my eye. “I’ve never been more serious in my life.”