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

grocery list of felonies I’d committed in the last week alone.
    Once I got Sophia away, maybe even in another state, Oregon, who knows where, I’d contact Gus, the guy Ellie vouched for. We could get Sophia a new name. We had money. We could start again.
    It sounded all too familiar.
    What about Ellie?
    What about Ellie?
    What about Ellie?
    What happened to her? Every day I was apart from her was a day she was farther and farther away. Three lives were at stake here and I couldn’t save all of them at the same time.
    I exhaled loudly feeling nothing but hopeless and my eyes fell to the passenger side. The briefcase was gone. I sat up and craned my neck to look at the store. I couldn’t see Sophia inside. No …
    Panic rose inside me. She wouldn’t take the money and leave me here? She didn’t hate me that much. She couldn’t …
    I didn’t know
her
at all, did I?
    I quickly got out of the car, my footsteps sounding hard on the asphalt in a rare moment of quiet from the highway. The store looked empty for all I could see and we were the only car on the lot.
    I opened the door, the bell jangling too loud for my liking. A double-chinned man with fuzzy grey hair was looking at a crossword puzzle. The store was empty.
    “Excuse me,” I said trying to hide the anxiety in my voice. The clerk didn’t even look up. I walked over and leaned over the counter, getting between him and the puzzle. Finally his tired, red eyes met mine. I knew those eyes, they were desert eyes, dried out from too much sun and too little joy.
    “Can I help you?” the man asked. I could sense he was about to reach under the counter for the alarm so I backed off.
    “Did you see a woman and a young boy come in here?” I asked.
    He frowned then relaxed a bit. “I saw a woman. Can’t say I saw a boy.”
    “Was she petite, you know, short, dark hair, Italian looking?”
    He rubbed his lips together in thought. I didn’t have time for him to ponder this shit. I needed to find out if Sophia left me and fast.
    “Think!” I barked, losing control for a moment. “Was she here?”
    The man froze, taken aback. At the same time, I heard a door slam behind me. I turned to see Sophia coming out of the restroom with Ben at her side. Her eyes were drawn thin, eyeing me suspiciously.
    “There you are,” I said, turning and giving Ben the most genuine smile I could muster. Relief never felt as soothing as it did just then.
    “Where did you think I went?” she asked. I nodded at the briefcase. She shook her head and quickly pushed the door open. “Come on, sweetie,” she crooned to Ben.
    I followed her out to the car, trying to burn away the guilty feeling. My first thought was that Sophia had taken the money and run. I wondered when I’d ever trust anyone again.
    “Sorry,” I mumbled to her after I got in the car and pulled it back on the highway. The sun was sliding low in the sky, casting a warm golden light that made you feel warm and safe, like your mind was flipping through photographs of summers long ago. It was nostalgic and good and terribly misleading. I hated this time of day.
    She was silent, mulling over my distrust.
    “Sorry,” I said again, passing the road-side dinosaurs of Cabazon. “I thought you’d left.”
    “You
would
think that,” she said.
    “Mama, I’m tired,” Ben finally spoke, tugging on her sleeve as she held him. His voice brought tears to my eyes. I’d never heard him speak before. My mouth was torn between a gap and a smile. In another life, this would have been ordinary and I would have brought the car around and shown Ben the dinosaurs. In another life, he would see me as his father. In another life I wouldn’t be trying to find a new one for us all.
    “Watch the road,” Sophia said, tapping her hand on the dashboard and I looked up in time to see I was crossing over the dividing line. I corrected myself, my heart racing loud, and rubbed my forehead until I could feel. I needed to hold it all together,