Scare Crow (29 page)

Joseph pulled cash out of his torn wallet and handed it to the vet. It would take
me a while to pay him back, but I would. Every penny and
more.

The vet left us so that we could visit with Meat
ball.

While my dog lay sleeping on me, I left one hand on his chest so that I could feel
him breathing in and out, feel the pulse of his beating heart under my fingers. And
then I remembered what was waiting on the floor at the house. “What am I going to
do with the body?” was the murmur that came out of my mouth. I wasn’t worried about
the fact that I had just killed someone. I was worried about how I was going to get
rid of that excuse of a human being that was lying in a puddle of blood on the carpet.
Former human b
eing.

“It’s already been taken care of,” Joseph said, his voice completely calm, as though
we were talking about picking up a pint of
milk.

“How?”

“I called my brother. He took care o
f it.”

My breath was cut short. “You shouldn’t have involved your brother in all of this.
You’ve just made him an accessory to murder. A cop’s mu
rder.”

Joseph laughed. “Are you serious? My brother couldn’t wait to take credit for the
kill. The guy you killed has apparently been wanted by some big bad drug guy, and
there was a huge reward for whoever managed to find him. My brother’s going to soar
up the gang ranks with this one.” He put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “No one
will ever know you had anything to do wit
h it.”

I tried to breathe through the disquiet that was building in my sto
mach.

“I need a favor from you. Don’t tell Griff about
this.”

Joseph’s shoulders sank. I knew he liked and respected Griff. But it had been a long
time since I had seen Griff that happy. Norestrom might have been dead, but more like
him would
come.

“Won’t he wonder what happened to Meatball?” Joseph wond
ered.

“I’ll make something up. I’ll tell him he got neut
ered.”

Joseph winced and looked at Meatball sympathetically. “Meatball will be happy he only
got
shot.”

I knew that I would have to think up a better story because the white patch over Meatball’s
chest wouldn’t match the story. But Meatball was going to stay at the vet’s clinic
for a few more days until his wound healed. I didn’t want to leave his side, but the
vet wouldn’t let me spend the night by his cage. To get me out the door, the vet assured
me that Meatball would be in a drugged coma so that he couldn’t scratch at his stitches
and that he wouldn’t even know that I wasn’t t
here.

When we got back to the house, the sun was about to poke its head over the horizon.
The hallway carpet had been ripped out, exposing sparkling clean parquet flooring.
My cell phone was ringing in my bedroom. I had expected it to be Griff, but I didn’t
recognize the nu
mber.

“H
ello?”

“My father has asked me to tell you that we have accepted your offer. We will be in
touch,” said a voice over the phone. The man hun
g up.

It only took me an extra second to figure out that Hawk had just calle
d me.

And that I was about to become a drug
lord.

I let my body fall into the mattress. It was no longer a matter of
if
I were going to do this. The deal was done. I was doing this. I turned my head and
saw one of Bill’s boxes at the foot of my bed. I had been going through his things
slowly, methodically, hoping I would find him somewhere in t
here.

If he saw me now, about to embark on a major drug deal, he would have locked me up
in a tower and swallowed the key. But he was gone. And I needed to do what I needed
to do to protect myself. All of a sudden, I thought of somet
hing.

I went searching through the box that contained Bill’s high school stuff and pulled
out his last yearbook. I flipped through the pages until I found what I was looking
for. Frances wasn’t hard to find. She was on every other page. I burst into Joseph’s
room and jumped on his
bed.

“I need you to find someone fo
r me.”

He pulled the blanket over his face. “I still haven’t found the last guy you wanted
me to
find.”

I yanked the blanket back and threw my brother’s high school yearbook on his chest.
“I have a first and a last name. I even have pict
ures.”

Joseph grinned devilishly and jumped out of
bed.

“This is it,” I told myself while he was clicking away. “This is how I am going to
make this r
ight.”

CHAPTER 16: CAMERON

FAITH OR FATE?

“Cameron.” My eyelids flipped open. It was Emmy’s voice. She was in my head a
gain.

She had as much room as she wanted in there
now.

I threw a T-shirt on and marched out of my room into the guest suite I was now sharing
with Carly and Tiny. They had arrived late last night with news. I had dragged both
of them to the waterfall outside so that our voices would be drowned out by the crash
of w
ater.

Tiny stood waiting. He wanted to tell me something but watched Carly from the corner
of his eye. I knew it had to do with his secret task of finding Nores
trom.

Carly huffed at Tiny. “If you needed to come here without me, then it’s obviously
something you guys don’t want me to know. So I obviously need to know what this is
about. I didn’t come all the way here to be kept in the dark. Spill it,
Tiny.”

I didn’t care anymore if Carly knew what I had been up to. I just wanted to get to
Nores
trom.

“Go on,” I ordered
Tiny.

“Norestrom is
dead.”

“How sure are
you?”

Tiny glanced around and pulled out his phone. A video came on. Gangsters hidden under
neck scarves, waltzing around a body. Norestrom’s dead, useless co
rpse.

“He was shot in the
back.”

“Who shot him?” Carly wondered. She wasn’t surprised as to what I had been u
p to.

“The Finch Street boys. They heard about the reward that was being offered, and they
found him hiding in one of their neighborhoods. They killed him when he tried to
run.”

The Finch Street boys … their neighborhood was close to Emmy’s neighborhood. Norestrom
had been close to Emmy. Too c
lose.

“Give them the reward,” I told Tiny, even though the reward had been for Norestrom
to be delivered alive. They had saved Emmy without knowing it. As much as I wanted
my revenge on that bastard, Emmy was more important. Shield would just have to suffer
my revenge for Norestrom as well as him
self.

I had spent a lot of time working with Julièn and Manny. Visiting the pot fields.
Meeting growers who had no idea what they were doing. Julièn was good at making deals,
but he was not a businessman. He took no care in the product he delivered. As long
as there was product and he got paid, the rest was immaterial. He had a lot to learn
from
Pops.

Yes, I had put in a lot of hours with Julièn, but I still had a lot of work to do.
I had to make amends with all three cartel families. I had to make amends with Pops.
I had to kill Shield. I had to fix the Coalition. It wasn’t too late. I could fix
anyt
hing.

First, I had to get Emmy back, if she would have me back. Yes, I could fix anyt
hing.

Tiny was watching yesterday’s sports highlights from the designer couch that doubled
as his bed. The television was small in terms of the kind of system Tiny was used
to. It was hidden behind a fake Rembrandt because it didn’t fit into Julien’s European
décor. As though Europeans didn’t watc
h TV.

Carly was sitting by the window with a cold cup of coffee in her hands. I was in a
hurry, energized for the first time in months. I couldn’t wait to loop her in. But
there was something that slowed me down. Her eyes were moving, but she was absent.
Body. Mind. Spirit. All disjoi
nted.

She had never been so far away for so long from Spider. This was no acci
dent.

Julièn’s boys were playing soccer on the grass outside. Carly was watching
them.

I sat across from her and poured myself a co
ffee.

“What are you doing here, Carly?” I asked her. We both knew Tiny didn’t need to be
escorted here to give me the news about Nores
trom.

“Apparently you have a death wish. I came here to make sure you didn’t get yourself
killed. Or get Manny pregnant. Same differ
ence.”

One of the boys, the youngest one, ran for the soccer ball but forgot to stop when
he got to it. He rolled over the ball and went soaring into the soft grass, making
his brothers and his mother cackle. I thought of Emmy and chuckled. Carly remained
deta
ched.

“We both know you’re not here for me,” I
said.

She turned her robotic gaze to me. “He got a vasec
tomy.”

I remembered what Spider had said to me after Carly had miscarried—the last time Carly
had miscarried. “I can’t let her do this to herself anymore,” was what he had said.
I guess he had found a
way.

“The funny thing is,” Carly continued in thought, “he isn’t the only one who can get
me preg
nant.”

She said this as though Spider weren’t the only one for her. I si
ghed.

“Not everybody is meant to have children.”
Definitely not us
, I thought but didn’t
say.

“Julièn has kids. And he is the w
orst.”

I couldn’t deny that. But the boys—the three successors—were Julièn’s trophies. He
had provided the seed; this was the extent of his attachment. I was trying to find
a way to explain this to Carly, but the usually subdued Tiny interrupte
d us.

“It’s that guy. The ginger who used to work fo
r us.”

He leaned over his fat belly to get a better look at the sc
reen.

I wouldn’t have bothered to get up had it not been for Carly. She stared at me, wide-eyed,
like she had surprised a bear in the bushes and was deciding whether she should run
or scare him
off.

I saw the screen just as that guard, whatshisname, came out through the archway under
the stands. He bounced his way down to the
ring.

I would have spotted her anywhere, even in an arena of thirty thousand screaming heads.
And I had. I stopped moving, hypnotized by the small screen that was out of place
in this European design. I sat on the uncomfortable couch and leaned over like
Tiny.

The sports anchors talked about his knockout win. About Griffin the Grappler Connan.
That was his name. Griff. The one who’d had his eye on Emmy. The one whose face I
had wanted to kick in. Still wante
d to.

The Grappler’s triumphant return to the ring wasn’t the real news, though. What he
had done afterward was. He had run out of the ring. Before shaking his dumbfounded
opponent’s hand as a show of respect for the sport. Before the referee had raised
his hand and officially declared him the winner. Before the belt had been looped around
his w
aist.

Before Griffin the Grappler Connan had had a chance to celebrate his win, he had run
out on all of them and into the crowd. Stepping over fans, to get to this unknown
girl. The camera honed in on them—she was in his
arms.

The picture stilled and diminished to a floating image between the heads of the two
jocks reporting sports.
The real knockout
, the caption read under Emmy’s face as the anchors giggled craftily. They moved on
to the next highlight. They could do that—move on. As though this were just another
day in the of
fice.

Tiny had already quietly disappeared from the suite. Only Carly and I rema
ined.

“This?” I shouted, grabbing my head in both hands. “This was your plan to keep Emmy
safe? Send her into the arms of that … of that …” I was shaking my head, trying to
erase the image of Emmy’s arms around that bastard’s
neck.

Not him. Not him and her. He wasn’t good enough for her. Those arms, that skin of
hers, smooth, silky, around
him.

Carly cocked her head and fought back angry tears. When she spoke, I realized it was
me she was angry with. “This was what you wanted, wasn’t it? For her to be safe? For
her to move on without you? She’s moved on. I did what you asked m
e to.”

“She deserves better than him.” She deserved … me. The better version of me. The one
who had gone to MIT. The one she had met on the street and fallen in love with over
a candlelit di
nner.

“You left her. She deserves to love.
And
be loved back. And he loves her, Cameron. I saw it. The first time I spotted them
together at the Farm. So did you. That was why you were in such a big hurry to get
rid of
him.”

I was about to tell Carly about getting Emmy back, like she had wanted me to do, asked
me to do, but she beat me to the p
unch.

“This life … no one wants this life. I miss her too, Cameron. But did you see? How
good Emmy looked? She’s happy. Griff makes her happy. He’s a good man. He’ll protect
her. He’ll put her f
irst.”

I never thought I would want to punch a girl so much, let alone one of my best fri
ends.

I had to breathe. I had to focus on every br
eath.

Carly was right. He was a good man. And I was scum. Emmy. She was smiling, beaming.
When he had come to her. She looked more beautiful than I had ever seen her. It was
as though she were shining. Glowing under the camera li
ghts.

Happy? Emmy was happy? Emmy had move
d on?

She had found someone else, someone of her own kind, al
most.

She had done exactly what I had asked her to do. For once in her beautiful life, she
had done exactly what I wan
ted …

She wasn’t coming
back.

And I wasn’t bringing her
back.

She didn’t belong with me. I was an idiot to think, to have thought that we were meant
to be. I was an idiot to have h
oped.

As I turned to Carly, I had solidified and my heart had deadened. “It would be best
if you left immedia
tely.”

“What?” she asked, even though she had clearly heard what I
said.

“Go with Tiny. That’s an o
rder.”

She kept a steely gaze on me. Then she nodded
once.

I grabbed the doorknob, left the room, and went to knock on another
door.

Manny was still in her nightie when she appeared through her doorway. She placed her
hand on my chest, and I pushed my way in
side.

Broken hearts are for fucking
saps.