Scare Crow (34 page)

I snuck away from the sisters’ circle as we got to the parking lot, when I was sure
we weren’t being followed. Then I went to get my car, remembering that I had left
it in the staff parking lot and that I had no way of getting out of there without
a
pass.

Once I got to the car, I sat behind the wheel for a second or two. Then I turned the
ignition on, reversed and sped up to the parking arm without stopping. I watched the
bits of wood and car fly in the air from my rearview mi
rror.

Despite being low on gas, I drove as fast as the Roadmaster would let me, but as I
neared the corner of our street, something told me to slow down. A sixth sense that
had been growing on me from the day I had met Cam
eron.

I immediately saw a police car parked in front of our house. I turned on the opposite
side and parked close enough to see the house but far enough to keep out of s
ight.

There was a Callister City police officer at our door, talking to one of my roommates.
It looked like it was Hunter. The officer looked agitated, swinging his arms, gesturing
in time with his words. Hunter kept shaking his head in response, with a look mixed
of fear and con
cern.

I was glad that Griff wasn’t the one at the door. He probably wasn’t home from his
interviews yet. God only knows what he would have done if he had been confronted by
these defec
tors.

Once upon a time, I swore that when given the opportunity to fight for love, I would.
I swore that I would not disappear just to keep someone I loved, someone who loved
me, safe. I swore I would never hurt someone the way Cameron had hur
t me.

As I watched the officer leave the front porch, thwarted because he hadn’t found me,
and go back to his car to wait for me to come home, I did exactly what I swore I would
neve
r do.

I put the car in drive, and I
left.

For Griff. For Meatball. Because they would be safe as long as they didn’t try to
fight Victor for me. Victor would leave them alone as long as I stayed
away.

Penniless, running low on gas, I headed for the fre
eway.

I didn’t have any time to waste. I had to keep dri
ving.

I took one deep breath, then another. But each breath became shallower, getting pushed
out by a devastation so deep I couldn’t swim out of it. I pulled over to the side
of the road and let my head fall against the steering wheel. I wanted to cry, so badly
that my insides were hurting from my defiance. Every part of me was contor
ting.

In my peripheral vision, I caught sight of an envelope sitting peacefully on the passenger
seat. It was clearly labeled “Cameron” in my brother’s clumsy handwriting. I grabbed
it and ripped the seal. (It wasn’t like Cameron was ever going to rea
d it.)

Hey, B
uddy,

Stay the fuck away from my si
ster.

Sincerel
y, B.

P.S. Thanks for watching over her. Thanks for everything. But seriously, don’t even
think abou
t it.

I stared at the ink on the page. A snort escaped my throat. I smiled, and then I grinned.
Then I was laughing so hard, cool gushers came strolling down my ch
eeks.

I put the car in drive and rolled
away.

The car practically coasted to Cameron’s cottage, as though it was hooked to a fishing
line, getting reeled in. But halfway down the driveway, the Roadmaster officially
ran out of gas. I got out and abandoned my car. I had forgotten how the blackness
of night could consume everything out here. There was no moon and no stars to light
my way, so I kicked at the pebbles to ensure that I was sticking to the driv
eway.

Eventually the trees cleared and my eyes adjusted enough to the darkness so that I
could make it to the
door.

I had gotten so used to the feeling of bleeding that I had stopped noticing the wetness.
The problem was that when I turned the light to the kitchen on, I saw that this blood
had already soaked my underwear and my pants. I was exhausted, but I was in no pain.
I changed into some of Cameron’s old clothes that he had left in a corner cabinet
and went to lie
down.

The agony did come. It was still dark when I was awoken by the excruciating pain in
my back and pressure at the bottom of my abdomen. It felt as though my body were building
up to explode. Or implode. I forced myself up and brought my hands to my stomach.
I didn’t need to have the light on to know that my blood had soaked the matt
ress.

As dynamite detonated inside me, I let out a scream, one that came from deep beneath,
before falling back into the pi
llow.

Into the dark
ness.

****

I woke up again. My arms and legs were numb. I rolled over onto the floor and stretched
one arm in front of me and then another, dragging myself to the stairs in an army
crawl. I lifted my arm, trying to grab the
rail.

Before rolling back into the dark
ness.

CHAPTER 18: CAMERON

LIFELESS

“A toast.” Julièn raised his champagne glass, and the rest of the table followed his
command. Mine was already empty. Manny refilled it, and I chugged it down while Julièn
s
poke.

“The great Winston Churchill once said that ‘
War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all
.’” Julièn nodded at all of us, so that we could fully absorb the power of his words.
The idiot had actually just quoted a passage from Tolkien’s
Two Towers
novel. I poured myself another glass of champ
agne.

“Ladies. Gentlemen,” he started again once the moment had passed. “Tonight, we have
freed Mexico from the tyrants who have killed and stolen from us, filling their pockets
with the people’s money. Today is a day that will be marked in history as the day
Mexico was returned to its people. May God have mercy upon our enemies, because I
won’t.” He chuckled at his clever comment, which was actually a quote he had stolen
from General Pa
tton.

“Cheers!” I said, raising my empty glass, and glasses clinked around the t
able.

From the pout on Julièn’s face, he wasn’t done with his speech. He took a sip and
thankfully sat back down so that we could eat our damn
meal.

My end had come after I had seen Emily with Griff, after I had gone to Manny’s room
and told her that I’d had a change of heart, in many respects. We were back on track—suicide
mission. At exactly 4:00 a.m., tactical teams would be marching into bedrooms and
assassinating the leadership for all three cartel fami
lies.

Julièn, Manny, and I would soon have control over all of Mexico’s drug trade. But
as far as “the people” were concerned, we had just cleaned house and ridded an entire
country of its drug pro
blem.

I could already feel the storm surging, like clouds darkening, billowing, merging
above. As news of the change in command spread, the remaining cartel members would
plan revenge, and a hundred others would see the fall of the leaders as their opportunity
to appoint themselves as drug kingpins, each trying to out-shock the other. Murder,
torture, theft … this was nothing compared to the violence that was to
come.

We had unleashed a torrent of power struggles. But we would never live long enough
to see it ha
ppen.

While we were celebrating ourselves in San Luis Potosi, I wondered who would be first
to come for us. The remaining cartel members—the ones who were loyal, who believed
in the old tradition of an eye for an eye—or the wannabe king
pins?

It didn’t matter. The end would come all the
same.

The plates for the main course had finally started circulating around. Mine came in
the form of a cell phone. I looked up cockeyed. There was a waitress. Young. Hot.
Then there were three of
her.

“You have a phone call,” she yelled, as though she had told me this already. She came
back to being only one of her
self.

“You’re like an accor
dion.”

“The person on the line said it was urgent. Very ur
gent.”

“What’s your name?” was what I tried to ask her, though the words sounded more like
“wazun
ayme.”

The waitress gave me the phone and
left.

Amused, I put the phone to my ear while I watched her tight ass leave the
room.

“It’s Carly,” Carly announced on the line. “I’ve been calling your cell phone for
hours. You haven’t been pickin
g up.”

“There was champ
agne—”

“It’s about E
mily.”

Like a punch in the face, I immediately sobere
d up.

****

“I think she was with Frances,” Carly murmured, as though she were the one who was
sitting in a bathroom, hoping no one was trying to listen in. I had quickly stepped
away without an explanation and knew that Manny was probably standing with a glass
between her ear and the door. I had called Carly back on my cell phone because I couldn’t
trust Julièn at the best of times, and certainly not with
this.

“What do you
mean?”

“I mean, she got into a car. I can’t be sure. They left so qui
ckly.”

“Was it Frances, Carly?” I insisted. “If you had to bet your life and mine and hers,
was it Fra
nces?”

“Yes, it was Frances,” she replied fi
rmly.

I took a breath. This didn’t mean Emmy was in trouble. We had our doubts about Frances,
but maybe, just m
aybe—

“Cameron, there’s something else.” I could hear Carly breathing quick, stressed breaths
over the line. “She’s pregnant. She’s very preg
nant.”

I hung up and got on a p
lane.

****

“What do we know?” I was on the jet, flying over the Mexican border. I had left the
party without excuse, without even announcing my depar
ture.

Carly said, “I talked to Griff. He doesn’t know where she is either. She left him
a note. Something about her mom being in the hospital. Something totally b
ogus.”

“He lost her,” I said through gritted t
eeth.

“He lost her? You
abandoned
her. Emmy’s been put aside and left behind more times than one human being is capable
of handling. I’m surprised she’s made it this far without falling apart,” Carly sna
pped.

Then she took a breath. “He’s hysterical, Cameron. Just like the rest of us. I’m just
glad we got to him before anyone
else.”

“Has anyone seen Fra
nces?”

“No one. We went through her apartment and talked to her mother. No one has seen her
or heard from her. Spider has guards standing outside all her known hangouts. Nothing
yet.”

Emmy was with Frances. I could feel it. I had overlooked Frances because—because why?
Because she was the mother of Bill’s child, because I didn’t want to think Bill had
ever been wrong about her. Because I got lazy, stopped paying attention. I had forgotten—let
myself forget—my role. Nobody was ever to be left without supervision, without consequences.
My epic failure to do my job was going to cost me Emmy and the child she was carrying.
My
c
hild.

“I don’t know. I just don’t know,” Carly whimpered. I could tell that she was starting
to fall apart herself. We didn’t have time for
that.

“Where was she when you saw
her?”

“Downtown. I was on my way to see Henry. I’ve been working with him to get all your
funds liquid
ated—”

“Did you see H
enry?”

“No. Obviously not! You can’t think that after I saw Emmy, pregnant, leaving with
Frances, that I would be worried about your damn m
oney!”

“That’s not my question, Carly. You gave Emmy Henry’s information some time ago. Did
Emmy go see Henry? Has anyone talked to
him?”

“I’m sure Henry would have called me if she had,” she said, though it was more of
a question to herself. She immediately hun
g up.

****

“Henry’s dead,” was the first thing Carly told me when she called me back. I was flying
over Kansas, pacing back and forth between the empty seats. “We found him in his office.
Two shots to the
head.”

Emmy had seen Henry. Someone knew she had gone there and had assassinated Henry before
he could war
n us.

“She went to the Cayman Islands. Check the airport,” I ord
ered.

When I finally landed, I was trying to get the door open before they had even stopped
the p
lane.

Once outside, I immediately saw Carly and Tiny, who were waiting for me at the bottom
of the plane’s stairs. Tiny was standing, stoically. Henry was a good man—a great
man. He had been loyal to all of us, asking little in return. This was a rarity. And
he had practically raised
Tiny.

I nodded to Tiny, and he nodded back. Whoever had murdered his uncle would pay. But
right now, we had to find
Emmy.

“We had someone check the flight registry. She did go to the Cayman Islands with Frances.
And then she came back. No one has seen or heard from her since the plane landed.”
Carly’s hair sprang out of her ponytail, as though she had been trying to rip it out
herself. I could tell that she had been crying and was trying not to start again.
“Spider went to the airport as soon as you told us, but the flight had already disembarked
its passengers. We weren’t there when she came out. We missed
her.”

“And Fra
nces?”

“She was on the flight after Emmy. She was grabbed by a bevy of Victor’s men. There
were too many of them. Spider couldn’t grab her him
self.”

I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. Frances had been and still was Victor’s pawn.
Spider had been right all along. Frances was the mole. She was the one who told Victor
about Emmy, about where he could find us. She was the one who got Rocco killed. And
now, she had sent Emmy into Victor’s grubby fingers. No, I had sent Emmy running into
Frances’s arms. Frances had just taken me up on the opportunity I had allowed
her.

“They have her, Cameron. They have her and the
baby.”

Carly wasn’t helping my concentration. I would get Emmy back, one way or another.
Whatever it would take. I tried to block out the images of what would happen to her
if I didn’t get to her fast enough, if I didn’t get to her before the baby came and
they started sending her to me in pi
eces.

“Has Victor called
yet?”

Carly knew what I was asking: had Victor called to gloat, to make his demands, to
use Emmy and the baby to blackmai
l me?

“No. Not
yet.”

“And you’re sure it was Victor’s men who picked up Fra
nces?”

“Positive. Spider followed them out to the car. Victor was waiting for
her.”

“Did Frances look like she was surprised to see
him?”

“No. But Spider said it looked like she had been crying and Victor’s men were pretty
rough with her while they led her into the
car.”

I opened my eyes and looked into the darkness that went beyond the small airport beams
of l
ight.

“Did you check her
car?”

“We couldn’t find it. We checked all of the airport parking lots near her terminal.
Not
hing.”

“And no one has seen or heard from
Emmy?”

“No
one.”

My eyes turned back to my car, which Tiny had driven onto the tarmac for me. In the
light of the airport, from a little less than two hundred feet away, I could see the
purple jacket that I had stolen from Emmy, which was still draped over the passenger-side
seat. I started run
ning.

“Where are you going?” Carly asked, running afte
r me.

“What about her roomm
ates?”

“No. We already checked
with—”

“And her par
ents?”

“No one, Cameron. What’s goin
g on?”

“Keep your phone on and call me if you have any news,” I told her as I slammed my
door shut and sped
off.

However slim, there was still a cha
nce …

An hour later, I curved onto the driveway to the cottage, barely taking my foot off
the pedal. The sun was just about to explode over the horizon, but it was still dark
under the shadow of the trees and I almost slammed into the back of Emmy’s car. It
was halfway between the road and the cottage, and the driver-side door had been left
wide-open. I was out of my car and running, catching a heart-wrenching glimpse of
the blotches of blood on the front seat. I started screaming her name before the cottage
was even in s
ight.

I came crashing through the door, scrambling to find the switch. When the light came
on, I saw her. At the top of the stairs, half of her hanging over the first steps.
There was blood dripping over the side of the loft onto the floor b
elow.

“Emmy,” I said as I came to her, though I hadn’t found my voice
yet.

She was completely limp and gho
stly.

“Wake up,” I told her as I pushed the hair stuck to her forehead. She did not
stir.

“Emily, wake up,” I said more forcefully while I rubbed her cheek, felt her slight
bre
aths.

I took my cell phone out of my pocket and made a call to Doctor L
orne.

He picked up on the first ring, as he always did. “I’m coming in hot. Emmy’s pregnant
and bleeding badly.” He didn’t need to ask any questions, and I didn’t need to tell
him to be ready because he was always r
eady.

“You have to keep fighting, Emmy,” I pleaded with her as I ran back to my car with
her in my
arms.

I had her head lying on my thigh as I drove like a maniac, daring some idiot cop to
even try to stop me. One hand was on the wheel; the other one was on her
neck.

There was a pulse. There was a pulse. And then there wa
sn’t.