Crow’s Row (29 page)

“Did you do that … often?” I asked him.

Cameron didn’t answer.

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Since Bill died.” His tone was still unbearably unruffled.

I gasped. “That was six years ago, Cameron! You’ve been doing this for that long?”

Cameron took his time. “Bill made me promise a long time before he died that I would look after you if anything ever happened to him. I kept my promise.”

I was trying to analyze his intonation again. This was even more difficult when I had nothing but a darkened face to match the voice with. “Is that the only reason?”

Cameron remained silent again and kept his dark eyes fixed on the imperceptible landscape.

“If Meatball hadn’t gotten away from you that day, would you have ever introduced … shown yourself to me?”

Cameron turned and faced me. I couldn’t see his eyes anymore.

“No,” he said without an inch of doubt. “You had your own life.”

“Not much of a life,” I mumbled and pouted.

“Better than this.”

“So you just decided all of this on your own, without consulting with me. You had no right to make that decision for me.”

Cameron chuckled, but I caught a glimpse of his uneasiness. “You would have never known the difference, Emmy. Your life would have gone on without ever knowing that I was there or that this … life even existed. It’s not like it was easy to do, especially after you moved into that hellhole in Callister.”

“It must have been inconvenient for you to have to spy on me in a grubby part of town,” I quipped.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “At least if you would have done what you were supposed to and gone off to a good college, lived in a nice place, and eventually met a good guy, I would have felt a lot better about letting you live your life. But imagine what it was like for me to see you so miserable and not be able to do anything about it.”

“So why didn’t you do anything about it?”

I felt Cameron’s hand move smoothly over my cheek, displacing a strand of hair that had fallen out of my ponytail.

“You and I are just too different.”

I didn’t know if it was the wine that I had shared with Carly or the fact that Cameron and I stood in the darkness, hidden from the world and each other, but I suddenly felt very brave.

“So is Rocco right? Do you love me?” I brazened into the night, though disbelief still encased my voice.

Cameron chose silence.

“Answer me,” I demanded.

But Cameron would not be ordered.

It was surely the wine, because I stood on my tiptoes and searched in the darkness and found his face. He moved his head forward in instinct, and his face all of the sudden emerged from the dark. He looked as nervous as I felt. It was the way he looked at me, like he was searching for something—like he had just found it, that made my fingers tingle with ants. With his face inches away from mine, Cameron paused for an instant, and his darkened eyes stayed fixed on mine. He closed in, my eyes closed themselves, and he parted my lips with his. He kissed me too softly at first, like he was expecting me to break into pieces. But I was quite suddenly strong and inched myself closer to him. I felt his hand loop around to the small of my back while the other gently pushed my head toward his.

I was overwhelmed, too overwhelmed to notice the patio door open—but Cameron noticed. Footsteps approached; he grabbed my shoulders and pushed me away. He rushed past me. I was left blurry.

Griff was standing over Rocco. He was startled when Cameron emerged from the darkness and fleetingly glared at me when I followed Cameron, attempting to rapidly fix my disheveled ponytail.

“Get away from him!” Cameron ordered.

Rocco, who had been awaken by Cameron’s loud voice, sat up and skimmed confusedly from Griff to Cameron and me.

Griff looked terrified and angry. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t see you … standing there. I just came to check on the Kid.”

“You’ve done enough for one day. Leave,” Cameron commanded.

“Sir … I wanted to apologize for what happened earlier today …” Griff stammered.

Cameron’s eyes became crazed. “I said leave! Now!”

Rocco and I both jumped as Cameron lost his cool.

Griff glimpsed at me with fury and quickly spun around, leaving just as Tiny and Spider came running through the doors.

“What’s going on?” a dazed Rocco asked.

I looked through the crowd of panting angry men. Instinct told me that I needed to get out of there—quickly.

So I turned to Rocco, “You need to go to bed. You can’t sleep out here.”

“Out where?” he wondered.

I helped Rocco off the lounge chair and painstakingly held him up as we dragged ourselves back into house. I made sure to close the patio door behind us, sensing that the tension bubble between Cameron, Spider, and Tiny was about to burst.

After I heaved Rocco into his bed, I hurried back to my room to be alone and let the men air out their differences. I was still quite high—though I wasn’t sure whether to dance around my room or lock my bedroom door. I plummeted onto the bed, tracing my fingers over my lips over and over until I drifted to sleep, before I could drift back to reality.

That night, the disfigured monster came back into my nightmares. I woke up screaming, but no sound came out of my mouth—in fact, no air came into it either. A large hand covered both my mouth and nose. I fought back, kicking and punching my unseen assailant. The intruder struggled to switch my tiny ballerina lamp on, knocking it over in the process. The light was on, and Griff was standing over me with his hand over just my mouth now, anxiously scanning the room and shushing me erratically.

“Emily! It’s me! Chill out!” he hushed.

When I could take a few breaths through my nose and my heart had finally slowed to an almost normal tempo, Griff let me push his hand from my face.

“Griff, what are you doing here? It’s the middle of the night!” I demanded in a half-whisper and half-sleep.

He got up and started pacing back and forth, looking at the floor while he collected his thoughts. “How could you do this to me?” He looked up, wretched. “I should have known that when the boss asked for me to go with them today, then he kept glaring at me the whole time, that he meant something by it. I’m such an idiot. I’ve been racking my brain for weeks, trying to figure out what these mongrels want with you and how I was going to get you out of this place, when it turns out that you’re the boss’s concubine.”

I shot straight up in bed. “What did you call me?”

He moved over to me with a look of disgust on his face. “I’ve been putting my life in danger for you while you’re messing with the boss like a concubine.”

Before I knew it was happening, my hand was raised, and I heard it smack Griff across the cheek. “I’m not messing with anyone, Griffin! Not that that’s any of your business. I’ve already told you, I don’t need to be saved, and I certainly didn’t ask you to do anything for me. Don’t pretend that your choice to slack off has been entirely for my benefit.”

Griff rubbed his cheek and glared away.

I tried my best to calm myself down. “What on earth happened out there today?”

He sat on the bed, still rubbing his cheek like a child, like someone who wasn’t used to getting paid to pummel or be pummeled by much bigger people than me. “It’s like I said. I got told last night that your boyfriend insisted I go with them today. Apparently I was supposed to keep an eye on the Kid while he learned the trade. Spider almost blew my head off when I said I didn’t want to go. So I followed orders and went like a good soldier. Your boyfriend stared at me the whole way down. It was getting creepy. Then we get to this house, and all the boys were told to hang back on the street while Spider, Tiny, and the boss went in to talk business. They were in there for almost an hour … the Kid was getting bored and asked to see my gun.” He shrugged defensively. “I gave it to him. I didn’t see any harm in it—it wasn’t like he was going to shoot anyone. But one of the boys thought it would be funny to set off firecrackers to scare him. The Kid jumped and shot himself in the foot. Spider came out of the house, screaming at me, something about no guns. How was I supposed to know the Kid would shoot himself?”

“Roc … the Kid is fine. So what’s with the theatrics?” I said, plunging back into my pillow and breathing with care.

“You don’t get it, do you? These guys have been looking for an excuse to whack me ever since you got here. Now I know it’s because the boss wants you for himself. With the Kid shooting himself today and Spider’s warning last time, I’m done for sure. They’re going to off me.”

“Griff, don’t be ridiculous. No one’s going to do anything to you. I’ll talk to them tomorrow if you want.” I rubbed my tired, burning eyes and yawned.

Griff was incensed and leaned in. “I’m not blind. Even I can see that the boss is a great-looking guy. You probably imagine yourself spending your days at his beck and call, and I’m sure a pretty girl like you could definitely keep him busy for a while. You also probably think that because the boss wants a piece of you, you’ve got some kind of power over him and that you’re safe. Wake up, Emily! The guy doesn’t love you and never will. The minute he gets what he wants, you’re done for too. I won’t be here to save you when that happens.”

His eyes were bloodshot and looked like they were about to bug out of his head. He was panting hotly, and every muscle of his body was tightly knotted and he was very close to me.

“Griff, you’re scaring me,” I admitted, my voice shaking.

He stepped away from the bed and started pacing back and forth again.

“We have to leave tonight,” he thought out loud.

I pulled the warm blankets up to my chin. “We’re not going anywhere—”

“You need to pack a bag. We leave tonight. One of the night guards usually falls asleep against the tree. We’ll sneak past him when he does and follow the road from the woods and flag someone down on the highway. We’ll have to hitch a ride out of here.”

“We’re not going anywhere … tonight. This is ridiculous. You’re upset and paranoid. Everything will be better in the morning. You’ll see,” I assured him.

Griff sat back on the bed and looked at me closely. “Emily, if you don’t leave tonight, they will kill you. Maybe not tomorrow, but they will, eventually. There’s a reason they don’t want anyone to talk to you, makes for less witnesses when you suddenly disappear from the face of the earth. I’ve been looking on the news to see if anyone is looking for you, there’s been nothing at all about you. I don’t think anyone even knows you’re missing. I didn’t tell you this because I didn’t want to scare you.”

I suddenly realized that Griff was right. I had watched enough television with Rocco to know that my face never appeared on any news bulletins. This had upset me for reasons beyond Griff’s grasp.

He took my hands into his. “I’ll come back in three hours. Get your stuff together. Just the essentials. We have a long trek ahead of us.”

I didn’t know what to say to him, except that I wasn’t leaving with him. I looked around for inspiration and noticed that something big was missing.

“Where’s Meatball?” I asked him, when what I really meant was:
How did you get in here without Meatball biting your arm off?

He pointed to the patio door. My guard dog was contently lying on the deck outside gnawing on the gigantic meat bone that was nestled between his paws.

Griff got up.

“Remember, three hours,” he whispered again as he stepped out onto the balcony and climbed down until he was out of sight.

I did set the alarm clock to go off in three hours. In three hours, I would have another chance to convince Griff that running away alone in a dark forest was a really bad idea. I had three more hours to sleep.

Three hours later, the clock rang. I waited and let Meatball back inside.

But Griff never showed.

 Chapter Sixteen:
 Scar Tissue

The house was filled of people and yet unnaturally, densely quiet, like the woods would get right before a storm came crashing down.

I could have sworn Cameron had seen me trotting down the stairs, but he kept walking like he hadn’t. When I called out to him, he paused at the front door without looking back. Carly did turn, and she glared … at me?

Cameron murmured to Carly and Spider that he would catch up with them. They left, he finally turned around, and I was almost in tears. His face was impenetrable, robotic. He forced a smile—it was thin and bloodless. This only made it worse.

“What’s wrong?” I managed to ask as I slowly walked toward him—I was sure he had taken a minute step back when I had.

“Nothing … Just work,” he said with the same strained smile. “I’ll be gone most of the day. Can you keep an eye on Rocco for me?”

“Of course,” I softly agreed. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” he answered with an automated tone. “Have a good day.”

He swiftly spun and left the house. I stood in the foyer, befuddled as usual.

I wondered how bad things had gotten the night before between Spider, Tiny, and Cameron for Cameron to still be so upset. I found myself being angry at Griff—for refusing to follow orders, for ruining my sleep and my perfect moment with Cameron, for causing a rift in the family.