Scare Crow (5 page)

I lit the match and threw it into the pit, lighting up the gasoline that Tiny had
already poured in there. I walked to the truck, pulled out a couple money crates,
and threw them in with Breland. He would die a rich
man.

I got in my Audi and left Tiny to clea
n up.

Like the man who had ratted him out, Officer Breland had paid for what he had done
to my kid brother. While my spree of payback was far from over, this one small kill
had refueled me. But I wanted,
needed
more.

Breland was the fourteenth man to die at my hands—fourteen, which was how old Rocco
was when he was murdered. Every time you take a human life, something—a darkness—grows
inside of you, pushing you out, until eventually there’s nothing but that darkness
left. The only time I had felt the darkness recede and make room for me again was
when I was with Emmy. Without her, the darkness was creeping back like the venom that
it
was.

****

When I drove up to our plane, I was an hour early, and Spider and Carly weren’t there
yet. I got on the plane and ordered the pilot to take off. Then I called C
arly.

“I need you to liquefy my personal funds,” I told her after she had answered a groggy
h
ello.

“Why?”

“Just do it, C
arly.”

Once upon a time, she would have been taken aback by the harshness in my voice. But
this harshness was all I had to offer these
days.

“When do you need i
t by?”

“Yeste
rday.”

“Fine,” she answered abruptly. “How
much?”

“As much as you can get me on short no
tice.”

She paused as the plane’s engines roared and pulled us into the air. “Where are
you?”

“P
lane.”

“Is Spider there
too?”

“The two of you will have to catch the next flight out. I don’t have time to
wait.”

“I’m not going. Spider was on his way to meet you. A couple more minutes wouldn’t
have hurt,” she sna
pped.

“Call me back when the money’s ready.” I hung up on her and turned my phone
off.

I looked through the window as daylight brought the New York landscape back to life.
Pastures looked like tiny soccer fields below … and I immediately thought of
Emmy.

The first time I saw Emily Sheppard, Bill had just passed away, and she was just a
kid. She was on a soccer field in the middle of a game—this gangly, whitewashed, redheaded
kid. I sat in my car, amazed. I had never seen a worse soccer player in my life. She
was fast but tripped so many times over the ball or her own feet that her teammates
practically burned a hole through their lungs to try to outrun her so that she would
be nowhere near the game
ball.

And then it had started raining. The field became a sodden mud pit. The girls were
sliding everywhere, the coaches had their coats pulled over their heads, and the refs
were trying to keep steady on their feet. But Emily was unaffected and seemed more
determined than ever. The muddier the field got, the steadier she became on her feet.
She found the ball, kicked, and scored just as the ref blew his whistle to stop the
rained-out game. While the crowd ran for cover inside the school, Bill’s sister stayed
behind to help one of the assistants gather up all the balls and lug the nets back
into the sc
hool.

On that rainy afternoon, I drove out of the parking lot shaking my head, with a smile
on my face. Bill’s sister was not the rich snot I had expected her t
o be.

Soaring daylight followed me into San Francisco. When I got to the apartment, I sent
one of my guards to take word to Shield that I was in California, ready to
meet.

I didn’t have much time before Spider would be in town too, so I threw my stuff in
a room and headed back out. I drove across the bridge into Oakland. I turned into
the employee parking lot for the Port of Oakland and inched my way through the lanes,
searching for the right Burgundy minivan. When I found it, I parked the car a few
spots away, checked my watch, and wa
ited.

I had done my research, knew everything about him on paper, but I needed to see him
for myself. See from my own eyes what kind of man he
was.

I watched the cargo be lifted from the ships to the docks and wondered what Emmy was
d
oing.

CHAPTER THREE:
EMILY

FISH TALES

I found myself staring at the glow in the dark stars that were stuck to my ceiling,
left behind by the student who used to occupy my broom closet. I counted them, as
I usually did whenever I couldn’t sleep. The stars had started peeling off, and once
in a while I’d find one on the floor. One was missing since I’d last cou
nted.

Funny, I hadn’t found any on the floor la
tely.

I imagined Meatball would be glowing in the dark soon too if he kept eating the plastic
s
tars.

The house was darkened and quiet except for Meatball’s snoring. The last thing I lucidly
remembered was flushing the shards of a pregnancy test down the toilet, but the rest—petting
Meatball, brushing my teeth, drinking a glass of milk after brushing my teeth—I could
only remember as though I had been watching the automated me from a dist
ance.

When I had left the clinic, it was early afternoon, and now it was almost dawn the
next day. How did it get so late? I wasn’t even sure if I’d slept at all or if I had
been blankly staring at the plastic stars all day and n
ight.

As soon as a bit of light from those rooms in the house that had the luxury of windows
started poking through my curtain door, I couldn’t wait to get outside and take Meatball
for a walk. But the minute my feet hit the floor, I ran to the to
ilet.

When I was good and empty, I resurfaced to find Meatball sitting, quietly, by the
bathroom door. He didn’t even go totally nuts and spin around in circles when I asked
him if he wanted to go for a
walk.

The nausea had disappeared just as quickly as it had come. Yet I still needed to climb
out of the cloud of lethargy that had taken my brain hostage. For the first time in
many weeks, I grabbed my running shoes at the
door.

But instead of taking
me
for a walk as he usually did, Meatball stayed to my side, so closely that his fur
rubbed into my pant leg. This made it very difficult for me to run. So we slowed down
and took an extra-long walk, one that took us out of the slums and into the sub
urbs.

We came to a park outside an elementary school, where houses and patio sets backed
onto the green space. I could tell that the houses were new builds by the lack of
weeds and the wisps of trees that were planted on every third lot. Exactly the same
tree in exactly the same spot over and over again. I felt like I was in Legoland.
The leaves had already started to change color, and the air smelled full, like the
final give-it-everything-you’ve-got round of explosions at a fireworks show before
everything goes dead si
lent.

While we snaked the pathway, I was humming some nonsensical tune under my breath and
cramming my brain with as much useless detail as possible. Like the number of houses
that had a birdhouse in their backyard. There were five. Like the number of picnic
tables in the park. There were seven
teen.

It must have been still quite early in the morning because the park was empty, except
for a toddler who was playing in the sand by the climbers, while a woman who I assumed
to be his nanny watched him from a park bench. Meatball had a leg up, so I stopped
by the chain link fence, watching the little boy. He went up the climber, ran around,
and went back down the slide. But when he reached the bottom, he tumbled
off.

He started to
cry.

The nanny ran to him, wiping his tears and hugging him while he dug his face into
her shoulder. They held on to each other so tight, so natur
ally.

She was his mom, not his nanny, I realized. And something inside of me trigg
ered.

I took Meatball back
home.

As soon as we walked through the door, Meatball fled to the kitchen before I could
fly to my room. I poured dog chow into what used to be a salad bowl, and he sat next
to it, wai
ting.

I sighed. My nausea was creeping back, and the last thing I wanted to do was put anything
in my mouth. But we had a ritual: if I didn’t eat, then Meatball would sit there all
day until I did. I opened my designated cupboard. There was a ketchup bottle, a pouch
of Lipton soup, and a deflated bag of bread. I pulled out the last piece of bread
and forced myself to chew. Meatball scarfed down his
meal.

“Hey, puke breath,” Hunter said as he strolled in. “Heard you made a scene in class
yesterday. Puking on command to get out of school. That takes serious dedica
tion.”

I quickly closed my empty cupboard while he was busy riffling through his own overflowing
cupboard. His mom regularly sent him totes stuffed with food and under
wear.

I waited for Meatball and wondered whether dog food was fit for human consumption—though
the half empty bag wouldn’t last much longer ei
ther.

Hunter was shifting his weight from foot to foot and finally turned to face me. “I
hate to bug you with this,” he started, “but the landlord’s coming by soon to pick
up all the rent checks. Yours are the only ones that I’m mis
sing.”

I was having difficulty breathing but still stuck a smile on my face and called Meatball
over. “I’ll go get them right
now.”

Meatball and I went back to my room, and I fell onto my
bed.

Spider. Vi
ctor.

Spider. Vi
ctor.

Every night I would rhyme off the names of the ones who had murdered Cameron and Rocco.
Every night I had imagined myself ruining them, killing them, even if it killed me.
But now, even this thought wasn’t enough to calm the panic that was rising insid
e me.

I was broke and soon to be homeless. I was a
lone.

And I was preg
nant.

I can’t even take care of my dog or myself
, I thought.
How can I take care of a child? How can I be a mother when I’ve never really had one?
How can I protect a child against a whole other w
orld?

I had never heard my mother say, “I love
you.”

Apart from my brother, Bill, Cameron was the only person who had ever said those three
massive words to me. There was one time when my mother had mentioned in passing that
she liked the way the nanny had styled my hair that morning. I refused to wash my
hair for five days, until my mother told the nanny that I looked
tres sale
, which was her French way of saying that I needed a
bath.

I grew up loving nannies who were not allowed to (or paid to) love me back. My mother
forbade them from ever showing affection, as this would not have been proper. For
good measure, to ensure that none of them ever got too attached, she would change
nannies every two years. Our maid, Maria, was the only constant in my life—she was
the one who would fill in when we were between nannies. She was promoted to head maid
when I got too old for nannies, but I still considered her as my n
anny.

My mind wandered back to the park, where the mother was soothing, hugging, loving
her child. And I wished I knew what that felt
like.

I stuffed my face into my pillow and started to
sob.

I cried so much that it felt like the fear, the pain, the loneliness were getting
rung out of my heart and escaping through my t
ears.

I cried my heart out, and Meatball never left my
side.

When I was a kid, my mother made me go to the Canadian Muskokas for a couple of summers.
My so-called vacations were always impeccably timed with the nanny
du jour
’s vacation. It was kind of a summer camp—if summer camps had executive chefs and
a butler for every bunker. Most kids arrived in their driver-driven Bentleys or limousines.
My mother made me go in the Sheppard helicopter, even though I was terrified of heights.
The helipad was conveniently floating in the middle of the lake, for all to see. The
Sheppards always needed to put on a good
show.

There was a dock where none of the well-to-do kids ever wanted to go swim because
a fish kept nipping at their toes as soon as they would get in the water. Every summer,
a mother fish would lay her eggs under the dock and attack anything that came close.
One year, one of the boys had the bright idea of putting a fishnet near the fish’s
eggs. The mother fish immediately started attacking the net, and the boy scooped her
out of the water. One of the counselors stopped the boy from killing it and ordered
him to put the fish back in the w
ater.

“She’s only protecting her babies,” the counselor expla
ined.

The next summer, the fish was gone, and so was the dare-to-chastise counselor. I was
left wondering why the fish valued the life of eggs more than its own when it had
never even met the ba
bies.

For a split second, I thought about going to my parents for support. After all, they
had more money than they knew what to do with, though they never parted with it unless
they got something in return. In the Sheppard family, charity rhymes with “what’s
in it fo
r me?”

But a daughter coming home pregnant … this would be worse than having a son who was
a troublemaker and a drug addict. Of course, my mother had gotten pregnant with me
after she’d had an affair with my then-married father. But this was different. Cameron
could not bring my father’s company a highly sought-after international merger as
my mother’s well-to-do family had. The ultimate shame for the Sheppard family wasn’t
getting pregnant; it was getting pregnant
for no reason
, without any financial gain to the family. The child growing inside me was worthless
to
them.

The thought of anyone thinking, let alone saying, my child to be worthless made me
immediately stop crying. I clenched my fists and eventually flipped onto my back,
lacing my hands behind my head and watching the stars on my ceiling a
gain.

Victor and Spider would come, eventually. Before dropping me off at home, Spider had
put forward that they couldn’t touch me because of who I was—because sooner or later,
someone would notice that the heir to the Sheppard empire was missing, and this would
be big news, something the underworld would avoid at all cost. But this didn’t change
the fact that I would always be a threat to them. I knew too much; I had seen too
much. I was a loose end, and loose ends did not exist in the underworld. Victor and
Spider were just waiting for an opportunity. Timing was everything with these people.
Like my parents, they were only out for themse
lves.

My child belonged nowhere. Not in my parents’ world and certainly not in the underworld.
But there was still my world, wherever that was. I brought my hands to my belly and
whispered, “I love you.” Because I did, more than anyone, anything, and everything
else in the w
orld.

Cameron’s voice suddenly echoed in my head. “Sometimes the person you love is killed
just because you love them.” I shot up as though a tarantula had crept onto my pi
llow.

My child, Cameron’s child, might not have had any value in my parents’ world, but
in the underworld, this child was priceless. If they wanted to shut me up—quietly—my
child would be their leverage. If they couldn’t come for me, they would come for the
former drug lord’s child. Of this, I was cer
tain.

Everyone in my life would sooner or later leave me. Even Cameron had given up. I would
do what Cameron didn’t. What he woul
dn’t.

I would stay and f
ight.

All the money in the world could not have made my own mother love me or even give
me a second thought. I had no idea how to be a mother, but I would try; I would do
everything in my power to be a good one. Like the mother fish, I would fight for both
of our survival, until my last br
eath.

I went from counting stars to counting fingers. According to my calculation, I was
about two months pregnant. Killing Spider and Victor
was still
an absolute. But I had to kill them before they figured out my little secret. Time
was running
wild.

I fell asleep with one hand on my belly and the other on my chest. My index finger
was entwined in the chain that Bill had given me before he
died.

****

I was awoken in the afternoon by my cell phone ringing. The caller ID warned me who
was cal
ling.

“Jeremy?” I answered, half asleep, half incredu
lous.

“You owe me big-time,” Jeremy said. “I found you a job in the admissions office. You
have a meet and greet with the admissions director on Monday. It’s not in one of the
departments, but at least it’ll look good on your re
sume.”

If Jeremy had been in front of me, I would have kissed
him.

“I don’t know what to
say.”

“Don’t get too excited. You’re mostly going to be stuffing envelopes and carting mail
back and forth. And the pay sucks. Just a couple of cents above minimum
wage.”

This was even better news. I had been making minimum wage in my previous
job.

I must have thanked him at least twenty times in a row before Jeremy finally stoppe
d me.

“No big deal, Em. I saw on a bulletin board that they were looking for a scholarship
student. I called them and gave them your name. You’ll just need to keep your grade
point averag
e up.”

I had no idea how I was going to keep my grade point average up or how long it would
take for the school to notice that I had stopped attending classes, but I was thankful
nonetheless. I had really underestimated Je
remy.