Scare Crow (21 page)

In the end, Manny got what she wanted. Sure, she got a dozen innocent men killed—hers
and mine. Sure, she almost got us killed. Sure, she started a war—the last crack to
break up the Coalition. But she got me. Stuck with her in a hot little room in the
pro
cess.

It was too bad that she had gotten shot in the leg. Her legs were the best part about
her.

****

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Carly yelled as though I weren’t standing right
next to her. “Spider tried to call you to warn you about what was going down, and
you ignored his calls. We thought you were
dead.”

Spider stood next to her, watching my expression but remaining si
lent.

Manny and I had been found alive in the basement of the Thai restaurant once the fire
burned out, almost twelve hours later. I had gotten on a plane and landed on a small
tarmac outside Al
bany.

“Some things just need to happen the way they were meant to,” was all I
said.

Spider let a sad smile come over his lips before walking away. Carly guffawed at me
and at
him.

With the explosion and dozens of cartel men dead, things were going to be moving swiftly
now. I didn’t have any time to waste. I marched to my car. Carly ran behin
d me.

“This was all Manny’s doing, wasn’t it? She was the one who masterminded this huge
fi
asco.”

“You said you needed to speak with me. You said it was urgent,” I said, opening up
my car
door.

Carly held on to the door and watched me buckl
e up.

“It’s Frances. She wants money, and she says she’ll go to the cops with what she knows
if we don’t give it to
her.”

Frances. The woman Bill had cheated on Carly with. The woman Bill had cheated on Carly
with and had gotten preg
nant.

“Give it to
her.”

“I thought we had decided that we were done giving her money until we knew for sure
what she was doing with all the money we’ve been giving
her.”

In reality, Spider had decided this, and I had simply gone along with it because I
had bigger fish to fry than worry about Frances. But apparently, they were going to
keep dragging me into this soap opera. “What difference does it make what she does
with it? If she needs money, just give it to her. Hopefully she’ll use some of it
for Da
niel.”

I already knew what she was going to ask me, because this always seemed to com
e up.

“Why don’t we just give the money directly to Da
niel?”

“Daniel lives with Frances’s mother, and Frances keeps them pretty well-hidden from
everyone. You might be able to find them and give them money, but if Frances finds
out, it might be enough to either snitch to the cops or betray us to someone else.
Then we’d have to make the decision we’ve been avoi
ding.”

Carly took a second before saying what she really wanted to
say.

“Spider thinks that she’s up to something alr
eady.”

“And
you?”

There was sil
ence.

Being the other woman would have normally warranted Frances an ass kicking from Carly
and death if we had even the slightest indication of treachery. Daniel was an innocent
party to his parents’ affair, and Carly had always tried to remain objective about
the whole Frances situation for Daniel’s sake. So had I—for Bill’s sake. Even with
all the time that had passed, it hadn’t gotten any easier on her, and Spider wasn’t
hel
ping.

“Spider always thinks that she’s up to something,” I said, my tone sympathetic. “I
haven’t seen anything concrete that would tell me that she’s up to no good. Just give
her the money, C
arly.”

Carly stood, as though there were something else she wanted to talk to me about. I
had an idea of what that might be, but now was not the
time.

I closed the door and drove
away.

I was on my way to the reservation to see Pops and Hawk, unannounced. It would have
been faster to land in Callister, but I couldn’t trust myself with Emmy so near. Now
more than ever, I had to stay away from her. I didn’t just have Shield’s eyes on my
back anymore; with Manny’s doing, I also had the cartel’s, and they were a lot smarter
and more dangerous than Shield. Once word of a broken Coalition spread, once it was
known that we were no longer an army, we were going to be atta
cked.

When I got to Pops’s place, he was already outside, cutting wood in his rubber b
oots.

He wasn’t surprised to see me. He was
never
surprised to se
e me.

Pops stopped what he was doing and wiped the sweat off his brow. He glanced at me,
though I wasn’t sure if he ever actually saw me, and then his eyes turned to the tree
tops.

“The wind is changing,” he said to the air or the earth or any of the elements he
worsh
iped.

Hawk came out of the house holding some kind of meat on a stick, eating it as though
it were cotton candy. His mother looked after her overgrown baby from the wi
ndow.

“What’s this about?” he asked me with a mout
hful.

As gruff as Hawk was, I still preferred to do business with him. He, at least, was
in it for the money. Something I understood. Something I could work with. His father,
on the other hand, had always had his head in the clouds, talking in prose and long-winded
legends instead of getting to the point. This only got worse with his advancing age.
I liked him. Of course, I liked him. He had been there for Bill and for me in the
worst of times, when no one wanted to deal with us. Despite his deteriorating state,
I owed
him.

They grew the best marijuana in North America and had one of the few remaining safe
drug entries that were left completely unguarded. They were small, yet influential,
and no one owned them, not even us. One of the few last-standing independ
ents.

“I want to offer you a chance to join the Coalition,” I
said.

“Let’s walk,” Pops said. Despite the freezing temperature, we headed into the woods
on a path beaten by his soles. Hawk followed closely behind his fa
ther.

“You already offered this to us. Many years ago. This offer was ref
used.”

“This is the last time I will be making this o
ffer.”

Pops sm
iled.

“We’ve been fine without your Coalition. We answer to no one,” Hawk answ
ered.

“Things are changing. If you don’t join the Coalition, you will lose our busi
ness.”

It was a matter of weeks, possibly days. Once we joined forces with the Mexican president,
once the Coalition broke apart, it would quickly ensue that all known independents
would have to pick a side or see their work, their family, everything they had ever
known and loved burned to dust. If the tribesmen joined our side—joined me—I could
protect them. If they joined Shield, they were the enemy. I didn’t want to see this
ha
ppen.

Pops stopped at a tree and examined a lone wisp that was growing out of the t
runk.

“What will happen to you if you lose our business?” I wondered, my voice
low.

“We will go elsewhere,” Hawk gru
nted.

“What if there is nowhere else to go? What if the only other place to go is worse
tha
n us?”

“We’ve always found our way. With or without your Coali
tion.”

I wish I could tell them, tell Pops, about what was about to go down. How bad it was
going to
get.

But Pops was too busy looking at sticks and trees. “This twig is nothing more than
a cumbersome piece of wood,” he said. “It sticks out as though it was a mistake. Some
would see it as something that needs to be broken off, because it whips them in the
face every time they pass by, because it doesn’t fit with the rest of the tree. Look
at this tree. It is beautiful, tall, and thick. But inside, it is dying, and this
misplaced little wisp is its only hope. Disease has already spread though the veins
of this tree, and what was meant to die, will. There’s no changing that. But this
tree will grow strong again because of this insignificant piece of wood. In the end,
this twig will become its strongest br
anch.”

I knew not to expect an explanation, and I really didn’t have time for one anyway.
“I won’t be able to protect you anymore. If you don’t join, this will be the end of
our affilia
tion.”

Pops turned and made his way back down the path. Hawk and I followed him all the way
to my car. Apparently I was being escorted
out.

Pops took a serious tone as I opened my car
door.

“As planned, we have arranged for a full shipment to come through in two weeks, and
the plants that you have requested us to produce are almost ready for cultivation.
If you honor your covenant, so wil
l we.”

He walked away. They were on their own from no
w on.

CHAPTER 11: EMILY

HATE TO LOVE

As my roommates finished their last exams, the house slowly emptied. Everyone was
going home for the Christmas holidays. Joseph and I were the only ones still left.
And Meatball, of co
urse.

I wasn’t exactly sad to see everyone go. No one had really talked about the fact that
Griff was gone overnight, but there were the uncomfortable stares. I knew what they
were thinking:
it should be you who left, not him, not
our
Griff
. Except that he wasn’t
their
Griff—he was mine. And I was the one who had sent him run
ning.

It wasn’t like I wasn’t used to people leaving—eventually, everybody did in some way
or another. My brother, Bill … Rocco … Cameron … and now Griff. If Cameron had, or
had had my heart, then Griff had my soul. But there are only so many pieces people
could take from you before you disappeared altogether. I could feel myself sinking,
as though I had plunged through thin ice and gotten pushed down by the undercurrent,
hands skating under the cold hard ice, unable to come up for
air.

And then there were all the nightmares. At least one every night since Griff had left.
Spiders falling, dangling from my ceiling. Trying to run away from Victor with my
feet stuck in quicksand; him holding an olive branch, watching me go under. My dreams
of Cameron and Rocco had been replaced by my own eventual, definitive demise. My prop
hesy.

After Bill died, I came to loathe the holidays. All holidays. Because my brother wasn’t
there with me and because I was forced to be with my parents, wherever they were in
the world, without my brother as a buffer. When Griff bought that Christmas tree and
we started making plans to spend the quiet Christmas holidays together, I had started
looking forward to this, like a prisoner looks forward to a day pass. I was imagining
carolers coming to the door while we sipped hot cocoa … I didn’t really have much
experience with
happy
holi
days.

In the end, the holidays would still be quiet … very quiet. At least there were still
Meatball and Joseph, I tho
ught.

But when I came out of my room and Joseph was loitering by my curtain, I realized
that I wouldn’t even have that. He was swaying, as though he had been deciding something
and been caught trying to escape. When he saw me, he held off and forced a smile.
I was embarrassed for putting him in that position. Of course, he wouldn’t be there
to spend the holidays with me or with Meatball. He had a family. A mother who loved
him, who worked three jobs to keep him in school, who sent home-cooked meals because
she was worried he wasn’t eating en
ough.

I felt my stomach flutter in a way that comes only when you come to terms with the
fact that you’re a total l
oser.

“Oh, hi, Joseph,” I said, adding the element of surprise to my tone. I quickly turned
to my bins that were stacked against the wall outside my room and pulled off the lid.
“I thought you had left alr
eady.”

“Yeah, I’m, uh, heading home. For, you know, Christmas. And all that family stuff.”
He stood for a second, watching while I started digging through the top bin. “Did
you, uh, wantta
come?”

I could almost hear what he was thinking.
Pleasesaynopleasesaynopleases
ayno.

“Thanks. That’s really nice of you to offer. But,” I quickly added before regret could
settle his features, “I really should go through these bins before Hunter calls the
fire captain o
n me.”

Joseph flipped his backpack over one shoulder and rushed to the stairs before it was
too late. “Okay. Happy holi
days.”

Meatball followed him down and waited by the door. Unfortunately, he was stuck with
me. We were each other’s only fa
mily.

Even though Joseph was gone and I really didn’t need to keep up the charade, I kept
plunging through my bins. I hadn’t really gotten around to it since Carly and her
cronies brought them back to me. More than anything, I needed to keep busy. The house
was just too quiet, and the sound of work underway made it slightly less monst
rous.

I remembered running through the house as a little girl, looking for Maria. Whether
I was upset or scared or needed to be with someone who wasn’t trying to mold me, I
would run through every room until I found the one Maria was cleaning. Then I would
pick up a rag or a mop and try to help; she would hum, and I would talk about nothing,
and she would listen an
yway.

For me, cleaning was tantamount to a
hug.

Though we always had to keep an ear out for Mother. Catching me fraternizing with
the staff (cleaning no less) would get Maria fired and earn me a disappointed scowl
like the mother duck gave to her ugly duck
ling.

I went through the Rubbermaid bins rather aimlessly. Searching for clothes that would
fit my growing state, knowing that I had barely enough clothes at the most skeleton
of times. I made a small, very small pile of things I could probably toss, which included
miscellaneous class notes, inkless pens, a key chain, and a sock without a partner.
I put the single sock back in the keep pile. As less than an hour had gone by when
I popped the lid off the last bin, I worried. Now what? I immediately comforted myself
with the remembrance that I lived in a student dump. A million hugs awa
ited.

While I worried about keeping myself busy, I ought to have been worried about what
I would find in the last bin. Part of me had initially, briefly wondered where these
had gone, while the other part stopped me from really searching for them, hoping that
I would never see these again. There, under the scarf and mitts that I had been looking
for a few days ago when the really cold weather started poking through my jacket,
was
Rumble Fish
—the book and the movie. The book I had been reading when Bill died, and the movie
Cameron had gotten me to help me deal with Bill’s death. More reminders of love and
loss, reminders that I didn’t need and could hardly
bear.

I carefully placed the lid back on the bin, my hands trembling. Then I stacked the
rest of the bins back on, burying the find, putting its contents back to forcefully
forgotten places. I walked down the stairs slowly, mechanically. Meatball was still
waiting at the door as I passed him on my way to the kitchen. In my peripheral vision,
I saw the lone tree sitting in the corner. Griff and I had bought a box of secondhand
ornaments that we had placed next to it, ready for some happy time around the tree.
Would there have been Christmas music in the background? And then the carolers would
come knocking, and we would turn the music off and go sip our hot cocoa on the front
s
toop.

It hit me. It really hit me. I was alone, completely, totally alone. I had a dog who
wished he were somewhere else, and a child growing inside me who would soon wish the
same.

I grabbed my car keys and Meatball’s leash, and we headed
out.

For the past couple years, my mom had been spending the holidays holed up in a Belize
spa, which was code word for the plastic surgeon’s office, where she worked on looking
rested. She had gotten nipped, tucked, and filled so many times that she was starting
to look like a balloon animal: a little twist here, a little air there, and voila,
you’re a po
odle!

As for my dad, he was wherever work took
him.

As a kid, my parents would plunk me in some hotel or in one of our houses—Hamptons,
Aspen, Paris—where the staff were paid to ensure that I had a merry Christmas. One
year, my mom had even paid some of the staff’s kids to come over and play with me
on Christmas Day. I ended up hiding in a corner, watching them as they jumped on my
bed and complained about my lack of toys. I had no idea how to play with kids or
toys.

Eventually, I made Isabelle and Burt’s life easier and cheaper by finding something
better to do over the holidays. Last year I’d found a professor who was looking for
an assistant to do free grueling research over the holidays. He never thought he’d
actually find someone desperate enough to d
o it.

When Meatball and I pulled up to the gates, it was already dark. With my parents gone,
I had expected the Hamptons estate to be sparsely staffed and no more than dimly lit.
Instead, it was fully decked out for the holidays. Large Christmas wreaths hung on
each of the iron gate egress panels, and little white lights had been spiraled around
the stone pillars. This was as Christmassy as the Sheppards had ever gotten. I didn’t
know they had it in
them.

“It’s Emily,” I yelled to the freestanding speaker
pole.

“Who?”

It was a new voice on the other end. A new head of security. I sighed. Lansing had
been head of security for as long as I could remember. I think he was already ninety
years old when I was born. I knew he would have to retire eventually, though sorrow
filled me as I realized I hadn’t been there to see him
off.

“
Sheppard
. Emily Sheppard. I …” While I struggled between
I live here
or
my parents live here
or
I’m selling Girl Scout cookies
, there was a scuffle over the spe
aker.

“
Tesoro
! Is that
you?”

Maria had come on the line. Her voice had aged into a scratchy coo, but I would have
recognized it anywhere. She had called me
tesoro
, Spanish for treasure, since I was a kid. It was a comforting pet name, though I
had always wished she had chosen a different one. Treasure reminded me of something
buried, something that could be looked at but not touched, which I suppose was
true.

The gate swung open, and we drove ahead. Meatball sat erect next to me. Even he could
feel the impending doom. But this was still better than spending the holidays alone,
cooped up in decrepit student housing. At least, he’d have room to run around
here.

The cobblestone driveway led into the trees and was lit up by lampposts, each adorned
with chic flags that hung down like icicles. Artsy snowflake, tasteful snowman, artsy
snowflake, tasteful snowman. It was like driving on the main street of small European
towns. My mother’s personal t
ouch?

The end of the tree line disclosed a surging four-tier water fountain and a mansion
that was lit like it was goading landing airplanes—no carbon credits were being saved
here. Good-bye, Amazon fo
rest!

I wasn’t sure if my parents were “home,” though it sure looked like they were. I went
straight for the service entrance, which was where I really wanted to be. My parents
would find out soon enough that I was t
here.

Maria was waiting for me hands on hips, devilish smile, when I pulled up to the side.
The service entrance was barely lit, and once I turned off my headlights, Maria would
have disappeared in the darkness had it not been for her blotted white apron. I had
to use the weight of my whole body to drag Meatball out by the leash. He was resolute
on spending Christmas in my car. I didn’t blame
him.

Maria ushered me into the kitchen, not knowing that I was accompanied by a beast.
When there was light, the look Maria gave me spoke loudly:
your mother is going to have a heart attack when she sees that
. I smiled her devilish smile and shrugged my shoulders in resp
onse.

The kitchen was not what I remembered it to be. Darlene, our head cook, used to have
the kitchen running like she was in the midst of a magazine shoot: smiling over steaming
pots, a little stir here, a little jiggle there, sipping on a glass of Cab-Sauv. Everything
amazing always. And she had a full staff bouncing at her commands. Now there was a
staff of three, steaming over enough food to feed the queen’s jubilee. Saucepans overflowing,
dishes falling over in the sink. More new faces—young faces—stress closing their faces.
I felt as though I had just entered a university dive that served caviar and ris
otto.

“Where’s Darlene? Where’s everyone else?” I asked Maria, eying the kid security guard
sitting on a bar stool by the speakerphone and playing a game on his p
hone.

When I turned to her, I saw strain reflected off Maria’s features. There was only
a twenty-year difference between the two of us. And yet Maria looked as though she
had aged an extra fifteen on top of that. Her hair was graying, and I could swear
that she used to be taller than that. But more so, Maria never—I mean,
never
—had a dirty apron. Even if my mother had her scrubbing the cobblestone around the
pool, Maria always reappeared looking untou
ched.

“Darlene found something else,” she said, using her apron to wipe off fish guts. I
noticed a half of salmon left bloodied on a p
lank.

“And Lan
sing?”

She gave me a sympathetic smile. “He found something else too. Are you hungry? I can
make you something, if you
like.”

“How long have they been
gone?”

She brushed my shoulder. This was as much touching as she could get away with without
getting fired. “Just a few months. I don’t remember your mother advising me that you
would be coming home for Christmas. How’s school? We’ve really missed you, you know.
Darlene was just saying the other
day—”

“You mean, before she left?” My jaw was so tight I thought my teeth were going to
pop out of my gums. Darlene and Maria were best friends. My childhood was filled with
memories of their inside jokes that I never understood but giggled at with them. Neither
had ever gotten married; neither had ever had children. Maria’s family was in Mexico,
and Darlene never talked about any family. All they had was each o
ther.