Scare Crow (33 page)

Our gazes met in his rearview mirror, and he sped forward, leaving two angry men on
the side
walk.

It should have taken us an hour and a half to get to the airport. But forty-five minutes
later, I was in the terminal and threw my passport at the airport attendant. “Next
flight to Callister, New
York.”

Pain shot down my back and into my legs, making my knees buckle. I had to hold on
to the edge of the cou
nter.

The woman behind the counter got on her tiptoes and looked
over.

“How far along are
you?”

“I’m desperate,” I told her, trying not to cry. I felt as though the world were watching.
Every passerby who happened to look in my general direction was the face of an impending
enemy. Trying to lie to her while keeping an eye out for the world was too
much.

The woman watched me. She had a ring on her finger, her hair was pushed back in a
tight bun, and she was of my mother’s age. My heart
sank.

She kept my passport in hand. “You’re already booked for a flight in three hours,
Miss Shep
pard.”

“It’s Emily,” I snarled. If one more person addressed me as Miss, I was going to tip
over the edge. “And I know. I’m asking you for your earliest flight. When is
that?”

“They have already boarded.” She arched her brow. “Does your mother know where you
are,
dear?”

I laughed, and a tear escaped the edge of my eye. I was exhausted, physically, emotionally.
My head fell into my hands while she kept on working, typing, picking up the phone,
muttering as though my life didn’t depend on
her.

It was only a few minutes later when I heard, “Ma’am?” This time it was a male voice.
I couldn’t raise my head, but a tap on the shoulder forced me to. An airport usher
was standing next to a cart. “We can get you through security immediately. The plane
is waiting on the tarmac for
you.”

I turned to the attendant behind the
desk.

She smiled. Like a mother would, should. “Have a nice flight, E
mily.”

Despite my waddle, I was afforded several nasty glares on my way to find my seat on
the plane. I was sitting between two old ladies. While they bickered over me, loud
enough so that their hearing aids could pick their voices out of the crowded plane,
I opened Bill’s letter to me once again, savoring every blotch of
ink.

Emmy,

How do you start writing a letter when you know your words will be your last, be the
final voice, the final time your little sister will hear from you? I can tell you
that there are not enough words in this world when you know they are your
last.

I hated you. I never told you this, but when you were born, I hated you and wished
you would die. Your mom pranced you around—this thing that was covered in pink frills—as
though you were the Second Coming. My mom had just died, and nobody cared; they came
to see you and celebrated. They wouldn’t let me anywhere near you, which was fine
with me because all you did was cry and cry and cry. Anytime anyone picked you up,
anytime visitors came around, you c
ried.

Eventually, they all got sick of you crying and disappeared. You were alone in your
room. You were screaming as usual. It was the middle of the night. I went up to your
crib with Booger. I dragged a chair and peered over your bassinette. I put Booger
next to your face, not sure if I was going to put him over your face. You stopped
crying. You looked at me and stared. I put my finger in, and you grabbed it and shook
it. I never left you after that. You cried with everyone else. Never with me. You
had my heart the minute you looked up at me. No one has ever looked at me the way
you did. The way you stil
l do.

That’s why I wish that you never see this letter. Because it means that you know.
About me. About what your dumb brother has done, has become. And this, above all the
other shit, makes me feel sick. I never wanted you anywhere near this life that I’ve
created for my
self.

Too little, too late, I g
uess.

I suppose there is one silver lining: Cameron. He was the only one who could have
led you here. He’s a good kid. Trust him. I left an envelope for him. Please make
sure he get
s it.

You have likely come here looking for money. There is lots. I hope you can find something
good to do with it. I never could. Unfortunately, the money is not here, as you likely
expected it to be. Bad people will be looking for this money, and I will get to that
in a minute, but I have placed one more obstacle for you. The reason I have done this
is obviously to keep your money as safe as possible, and because I want you to find
someone who has grown to take the other piece of my heart. Her name is Carlita Fernandes …
but don’t ever call her that to her face, and please don’t tell her I told you her
real name or she’ll hunt me down and kill me again. Her name is Carly. I know it’s
a dumb thing to say, but I really hope the two of you will like each other. Carly
has so much to teach you, and she has so much love to give even though she has a strange
way of showing it. If you think she hates you, then she probably loves you more than
you
know.

Now, about the money. You probably already opened the bigger of the two envelopes
(you obviously haven’t changed) and were probably disappointed to find scraps of paper.
Do not throw these away! They are worth a lot of money. Take them to Carly. She will
know what to do with
them.

You will have a lot of questions as to my death. I won’t be able to answer all of
them because I simply don’t know how I am going to die. I don’t even know if they
will leave a body behind for fear of discovery, of retalia
tion.

But there are things I need you to know so that you can keep yourself safe now that
you have been exposed to my w
orld.

You have likely heard from our dear parents of the trouble I have been in (since birth
apparently), and you know that I was sent to live with my police-officer uncle, Victor.
What you don’t know is that Uncle Victor is no honorable soldier. He is deceitful
and a sadistic criminal. He has dual personalities—the one he wants everyone to see
and calls Victor, and the real one, named Shield. He had big plans about becoming
lord of the underworld while keeping a grasp on the rest of the world. When I went
to live with him, he immediately put me to work as his drug lackey and talked to me
as though I were some dimwitted kid who had no idea how the underworld worked. Little
did he know, I knew more about it than he did. He did have some good ideas, though,
so I stood back and list
ened.

In the meantime, I was still going to high school, and I met this girl. Frances. She
was hot. I won’t gross you out with any further description. I’ll just tell you that
we dated for a while. It was nothing serious. I took her around with me. She met Uncle
Victor, and his eyes practically popped out of his head when he saw
her.

And then came Carly. There was no one else, I knew, after that. Unfortunately, she
was tied to this guy named Spider. I tolerated him as long as she loved me. I immediately
broke it off with Frances, and she disappeared. It wasn’t like we were in love, but
I was fond of her. She was a nice girl, and I wished her
well.

When the time came and with my best friends at my side, I reinvented the underworld.
I had the worst of enemies sit at the same table with me at the helm and for one common
goal: money. By getting the underworld to work together as one, we were making more
money than ever. Sure, it was initially Victor’s idea; I was the only one smart enough
to make it happen, th
ough.

However, Victor was not prepared to let me take over the spot he claimed as his. He
went to the captains. He used his police authority to try to blackmail the lords of
the underworld to have me dethroned. This backfired, and he was lucky they didn’t
sever his head from his shoul
ders.

I thought that was the end of Victor, until Frances came knocking at my door. Her
face was beaten to a pulp. She was covered with bruises. And she was pregnant, with
Victor’s baby. While I had been busy taking over the underworld, Victor had used this
time to woo Frances, blinding her with presents and m
oney.

If I hadn’t introduced them, if I hadn’t been in Frances’s life, none of this would
have happened to
her.

No one in my world knows that I am related to Victor, and I have kept it this way
because I don’t ever want to be associated with that bastard. We may look similar
and have some of the same rotten blood in our veins, but as far as I’m concerned,
we are not related. You, Carly, and Cameron are my only family. (Don’t worry. Cameron
will ensure that Victor never goes anywhere near you. I have asked him to watch over
you; though, given that you know about our world, he didn’t do a very good job. I
may have to roll over in my grave and haunt his
ass.)

At first, I thought I could hide Frances. I got her an apartment; I bought her groceries.
I gave her money. But that wasn’t what Frances wanted. She wanted what every mother-to-be
wanted: for the father to love his child. I had had my suspicions. Frances wasn’t
a very good actress, and bruises kept appearing on her skin. When I saw the bruises
on her belly, I knew this was going to end badly for her. I confronted her about Victor.
She didn’t deny that she’d been seeing
him.

I never told anyone about Frances. I never told Carly about her, because I was ashamed
of what I had done to Frances and because I wanted to keep my family ties with Victor
a secret. Keeping such huge secrets from the people you admire the most is like jumping
out of an airplane without a parachute. You free-fall until you hit the ground. I
was getting skittish and making decisions without really thinking. Everyone was suspicious;
Spider, the idiot, even accused me of cheating on Carly in front of
her.

Now I am on my way to meet Frances. She called me this morning, frantic, crying. She
said that Victor had dragged her to a seedy motel in Callister and wanted her to work
in his escort business. Apparently some of Victor’s slum-of-the-earth clients like
pregnant w
omen.

My gut tells me that it’s a trap and Victor will be waiting for me when I get there.
He has been wooing some of the captains and must actually believe that if he takes
me down, the captains will choose him as their le
ader.

They w
on’t.

Cameron is and has always been my successor, even if he doesn’t want it. He is brill
iant.

My beautiful, smart little sister. As I’m writing this letter, I’m incredibly sad.
Not because I know what’s about to happen to me, but because I won’t be there to watch
you grow up to be the strong (stubborn) woman I know you will be. The fact that you’re
reading this letter means that, once again, you didn’t listen to me, that you went
looking for trouble and found it. I wish you would be more cautious, but that was
never you. I love you so much, kid. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about you
or talk about
you.

By the time this letter reaches the bank’s coffers, I will have likely left this earth.
If there is one thing I can impart to you before I am gone, it is to believe in yourself.
You, more than anyone else I have ever known, can achieve anything you put your mind
to. If only you could see yourself through my eyes, through the eyes of everyone who
has ever encountered you, you would understand the effect you have on pe
ople.

I love you. Be saf
e. B.

P.S. I really wish I would have locked you in a tower before I died. Please make sure
Cameron gets his enve
lope.

****

The two old women flanking me on the plane were actually sisters, named Georgia and
Beatrice. They were bachelorettes who had lived together their whole lives but couldn’t
stand sitting next to each other on a plane. They were off to visit their younger
sister—who had been married (twice) and had a flock of kids and now grandkids. All
ungrateful, all impolite, all of whom were coming to pick them up at the air
port.

“I would love to meet them,” I found myself sa
ying.

They gri
nned.

I spent the next hour complimenting Georgia on her knitting. It looked like a blanket,
but it was a shawl. The sisters enjoyed bonbons—these they did not s
hare.

By the time the plane disembarked, I had a green scarf blanket on my red head and
Georgia and Beatrice’s arms scooped into each of mine. As they had promised, their
sister’s entire family immediately jumped for them, with flowers and banners. As all
ungrateful, impolite famil
y do.

We were surrounded as soon as we came into sight and led to the carousel in a tornado
of hugs and cha
tter.

While I was introduced, I kept an eye out for Victor’s men. There were a lot of people
in the airport, many of whom wandered around looking for someone. Any of them or all
of them could have worked for Victor. But no one seemed to have eyes on me. As far
as the world was concerned, I was just another one of the fat old ladies. The third
bachelor
ette.