Scare Crow (16 page)

The search engine returned with a list of articles matching my keyw
ords.

“Hello?” Bubbalicious wrote back. I printed the article I had been looking for and
had the good sense to print the conversation that Joe didn’t know he’d had with Bubbalicious
before I erase
d it.

Apart from the fact that he looked barely past puberty and spent a lot of time in
front of his computer, I realized how very little I knew of Joseph. We had been living
under the same leaky roof for over a year, and I didn’t even know his last name. Then
again, he probably didn’t care to know my last name ei
ther.

When I was growing up, I wasn’t allowed to watch TV. While Bill was in the next room
allowed to poison his brain with whatever kept him quiet, I was sitting with another
adult. Music lessons, science and math, French, German, Mandarin. It was never enough
for my mother. If she suspected that one of her friends—acquaintances really—had smarter,
more thriving, better children, then I could expect to have a brand-new teacher the
next day. Everything I saw, everything I heard was being controlled by my mother and
her paid min
ions.

When I was eight years old, my mother saw a little girl wearing the same dress as
me at a party. My eight-year-old self must have looked fat because I had a nutritionist
the next day and was put on a diet. I ate a whole cheesecake that night. My mother
thought it was my way of rebelling against her, that my brother was a bad influence
on me. I just really liked des
sert.

I was eventually sent away to school because that was what parents did to rebels like
me: they sent them to overpriced prep schools. My mother made special arrangements
for me to get my own room, with no TV allowed of course. I just had to be the weird
homeschooled carrot-haired kid who had no idea who Elmo was. Making friends was super-easy
from then on. I hung out in the bathroom a
lot.

I did full-out rebel when I left my mother’s clutch and moved to Callister. But moving
into small quarters with a bunch of other people had been a bit of a stretch for a
social idiot like me. Now I wished I would have taken the time to get to know Joseph
a little more. He seemed like the kind of guy a desperate girl like me might
need.

Griff eventually gave up pacing outside the door. I heard him go down the stairs and
back into the kitchen. Cold pancakes on his p
late.

I was about to go back to my room when I spotted boxes under Joseph’s bed. Reclusive,
secretive Joseph. I couldn’t resist. I quickly fell on my knees and started snooping.
There were a lot of computer parts and wires and a serious lack of condoms. At least
he wasn’t so delusional as to think that he was going to get lucky sometime soon.
There was also a can of red spray-paint. I imagined him a graffiti artist. Who was
this kid? Whoever Joseph was, I liked
him.

Griff had made his point—I couldn’t fight a grown man with my bare hands. But he had
also hit a nerve when making his point. All my life, others had been making decisions
for me, deciding the person I was going to be. Griff’s reality check had had the same
effect on me as my mother’s nutritionist. I needed to show them that they were wrong
about me, about what this spoiled little rich girl could accomplish. Eating a whole
cake did not kill me, and neither would Vi
ctor.

I folded my printouts and stuffed them in my pocket. Then I took the can of spray-paint
and hid it under my shirt. I snuck back into my room to drop off my stolen goods and
went downstairs with a smile so that Griff and I could go back to not speaking over
cold panc
akes.

****

Griff was right. I was not an assassin, and I did not own any weapons. But I wasn’t
totally helpless either. I had options, and I had a brain. I just needed to work through
it
all.

When I left for work on Monday morning, I was dressed in a gray hooded sweater and
a pair of old navy-blue sweatpants. It hadn’t escaped my attention that my clothes
were floating on me lately, when they ought to have been fitting snug at around six
months pregnant. I tried to put this out of my mind as I hid the newspaper article
and can of spray-paint in my book
bag.

Griff barely looked at me the whole way to work. When I reached for the door to the
admissions office, he turned around and walked away. A small seam ripped inside of
me even though I was grateful that he didn’t decide to sit in the waiting area all
morning until I was done working—something that he often
did.

I knew it wasn’t going to be too difficult faking illness to get out of work. I wasn’t
exactly a picture of health these days. After I struggled to put one foot in front
of the other and had had to hold on to a desk when a dizzy spell came, Betty came
to my rescue and had me sent home, even though I hadn’t really spoken to her much
in the past weeks. The worst part was that I hadn’t even started faking my illness
yet.

I hopped on a bus headed downtown and closed my eyes, waking up at every stop to ensure
that I wasn’t going to miss
mine.

****

The wind blowing through the buildings was vicious and cold. It took my breath away
and practically knocked me over when I stepped off the bus. I strained, pushing to
take every step as I walked up the two blocks to City
Hall.

The city square was abuzz with camera crews and reporters. There were people looking
over bridges; a few had climbed up lampposts. All hoped to catch a glimpse of Victor
Orozo as he valiantly accepted the key to the city. They must have all read the same
announcement I had in the
Callister City Standard
, though I doubted that they had the same plan I did. To be honest, I wasn’t sure
what my plan was. Not exa
ctly.

Spider and Victor. One wanted to be lost; the other wanted to be everyw
here.

How do you hurt two criminals who have only darkness in their hearts? How do you get
your revenge and kill them when you’re just one girl, as Griff had made me rea
lize?

You go after the only thing they both cherish more than anything: supremacy. Their
desperation to be king, I surmised, was their biggest weakness. They were hungry for
power, and they were not good sharers. Only one could be on top, and any threat to
his reign could send the other over the
edge.

But neither could kill the other without approval from the captains of the underworld,
something that wasn’t going to happen. Not without a little encouragement. Cameron
had told me that the one thing the underworld avoided at all costs was publicity,
and nothing attracts the media more than a good old-fashioned gang
war.

Spider and Victor were going to war … they just didn’t know this
yet.

As a white Cadillac drove up, the crowd soared, and so did my energy. I felt as though
I had just been shot straight to the heart with adrenaline. I got close to the car,
keeping my book bag close and my face hidden under my hood. Victor stepped out into
the sunlight, and I stopped. I was remembering what he had almost done to me in that
tiny room with the swinging lightbulb, remembering that he was the reason that Cameron
had decided to leave me forever by choosing his d
eath.

Victor walked to the podium, where the clueless mayor was waiting while the clueless
crowd cheered and applauded. And I wanted to scream, expose him for the murderer that
he was. His driver got back in the car and slowly drove away, avoiding the mob as
it crossed the street to get a closer glimpse of the hometown
hero.

I smiled and followed the car from the sidewalk, hidden among Victor’s
fans.

The driver parked the car around the block and got out, locking it before walking
to the square. I waited in the shadow of one of the buildings. When he was out of
sight, I marched ahead, pulling the spray can out of my bag and shaking it so that
it was ready to go by the time I was by the
car.

I didn’t waste any time. I leaned over the hood and drew a large red ugly spider on
Victor’s beautiful white Cadillac. Then I moved to the passenger-side door and repeated
the same message. I was about to move around to the back of the car when three men
dressed in black suits came through the crowd, smiling, quietly chatting with each
o
ther.

They hadn’t seen me yet, so I pulled my hood down and started backing away from the
car.

Then one of them stopped, midconversation. He saw the art I had left on Victor’s car.
And then he sa
w me.

He started running, and when the other two realized what was going on, they followed
his lead. My legs unfroze, and I turned around, tearing down the sidewalk. I ran through
traffic to the other side of the street, dodging shoppers and slamming into a few
shopping bags. I ran around a truck that was pulling out of a delivery zone, got clipped
in the hip in the process, and ducked into an alleyway when I was out of their sight
line. My heart pumping, my breath gone, I sank behind a garbage bin and peered around
its corner. A bunch of black suits ran by, more than the initial three who had seen
me in action. I let my head fall back against the cold metal bin and waited for my
breath to find its way back to my l
ungs.

It was only when I got up again that I realized how badly my hip was hurt. Keeping
out of sight from the street, I kept to the brick wall and went to the first door.
It was locked. But there were four doors in the other building that led into the a
lley.

Before crossing the short way to the other building, I held on to the bin and peered
around its corner. I was tackled to the ground by a mass in a black
suit.

We wrestled on the cement wet from the leaking garbage bin. His sunglasses went flying.
He got hold of my arms and sat on my
legs.

I kept struggling, to no avail. I wasn’t going anywhere. The only thing that was going
through my head was that Griff had been r
ight.

The man dragged me up, pushed me against the brick wall, and yanked the hood of my
gray sweater off my head. My hair popped out like a jack-in-the-box. Victor’s minion
ga
sped.

I looked up, face-to-face with the man in the black
suit.

It was Mike. The same Mike who’d stood outside the room where Victor was keeping me
captive. The same Mike who had refused to help me get away from whatever Victor had
planned fo
r me.

Mike let go of my arms. “You,” he said, incredu
lous.

I spit in his face.
“Me.”

I clenched my teeth, readying myself for the blow. But it never came. Mike wiped my
spit off his face and just kept staring a
t me.

He glanced down at the spray can that had come loose during our struggle. His eyes
made their way up my hands, which were stained with the evidence of red paint, and
back up to my
face.

His own face was crumpled in disbelief. A herd of dress shoes ran and stopped outside
the entrance to the alley. We were still hidden behind the garbage bin, against the
brick wall where he had shove
d me.

Mike stood still for a second, as though he were deci
ding.

Then he put his finger to his lips before stepping out from behind the
bin.

“Nothing in here,” he reported as he walked the alley and tried the first door across
the way. It was also locked. The men walked on, and Mike came back. “What the hell
were you doing?” he dema
nded.

I furrowed my brow. “Sending a mes
sage.”

He stood again, watching me. He looked at my sweater, and it was also splattered with
paint. I obviously needed spray-painting les
sons.

Mike grabbed the can of spray-paint from the ground and flung it into the garbage
bin. Then he took off his jacket and pulled his T-shirt
off.

“Take your sweater off,” he ordered, handing me his T-s
hirt.

There was no way that Victor’s minion was actually going to help me. Especially after
he had refused to so many months ago. And yet, I did what I was told and pulled my
sweater over my
head.

While I put Mike’s black T-shirt on, he buttoned up his jacket so that you could hardly
tell he was shirtless. He crossed the alley and checked the other doors. All locked.
No
exit.

He considered this, came back, and threw my painting sweater into the
bin.

“Do you have a watch?” he aske
d me.

I didn’t. He sighed and gave me
his.

I was beyond trying to comprehend why he was doing
this.

He sat me down against the bin and pointed his finger at me. “Don’t move from here
for the next two h
ours.”

I no
dded.

He
left.

I had no idea what had just happ
ened.

But I listened to Mike and did not move from my spot, keeping my eyes on the w
atch.

Within half an hour, I was shivering so hard my body was making the garbage bin rattle.
Once the adrenaline wore out and the cold seeped in, I couldn’t move without shots
of pain up and down the side of my
body.

Then the cramps came. In my stomach. It was unlike anything I had ever felt. It was
the sort of pain that ran through every vein and lit coals in my belly. For once,
my heart and my mind were on the same track. Something was happening; something was
wrong with the
baby.