Crow’s Row (35 page)

“I have enough to deal with right now without having to think about that,” Cameron barked in reply.

Spider raised his voice. “We’ve waited long enough. All this time and things keep getting worse. She sneaks around here like she owns the place. She gets the guards on her side and they tell her whatever she wants to hear. I can’t control them when she’s around.”

“Why can’t we just order her to stay away from here, away from us?” Cameron offered as an alternative.

“She knows too much already, Cameron. Besides, we all know that she won’t follow any orders you or anybody else gives her. She’s proven that already.”

Cameron spun around and glared. There were deep lines carved into his forehead and his eyes were coal black. “What about Bill? Have you thought about what this would do to him if he heard us talking about her in this way?”

“Bill is dead.” Spider’s voice was cold and to the point. “We’re in this far because of him.”

Cameron turned away from them. “You’re letting your resentment for Bill affect your perspective on this.”

Carly got up and put her hand on Cameron’s shoulder. “Spider’s right. Bill has been gone for a long time, and we have to protect ourselves now. We can’t let someone who has this much information run loose like that. If it had been anyone one else, she would have been dead by now. We’ve waited long enough to try to make this work, but it hasn’t. It’s time to get rid of her for good.”

Cameron stood silently and watched over the grounds. After a while, he let his head drop and sighed. “Fine. Just take care of it. I don’t want to know anything about it.”

Spider stood.

“We’ll take care of it. It’s done,” he said somberly.

Just like that, my fate had finally been determined. Carly and Spider walked back into the house, Cameron was left to ponder over his decision alone, and I sunk to the floor. I knew it had been coming, I knew I should be making a plan fast, but all I could think about was that I didn’t want to leave Cameron. Where would I go? There was nothing for me in Callister or anywhere else. My life was with Cameron and Rocco and Carly. Spider could stay too—if he had to.

I loved Cameron; that hadn’t changed. When Cameron had looked at me and told me he loved me, I believed him without a doubt; the fact that he had also said to me and then to Manny that he didn’t love me, I had decided was made up, like he told me it was. But he had also promised that I would live, that he would send me home with an armed guard. Even if I didn’t want this to happen—the thought of being separated from him made me feel nauseated—and I had planned to convince him otherwise, this had proven to be a lie.

I was so mixed up.

There was a chapter in one of my criminology class books that was dedicated to the story of this rich girl from California who had been kidnapped by a left-wing group. Two months later, she walked into a bank with a gun and helped her kidnappers rob it. When she was arrested, she said that she had been brainwashed by them, she said that she suffered from Stockholm syndrome, a condition where hostages start having feelings, like loyalty and love, for their captors. The girl was convicted but was pardoned a few years later. Apparently, there was such a thing as Stockholm syndrome.

Everything was different between Cameron and me. What I felt wasn’t just mind games or some fabricated syndrome. What I felt for him, I had seen him, felt him feel for me too. I was sure of this … but then there was all the other evidence that I couldn’t refute either: he was a killer, a drug dealer, a crime boss, an expert pretender. He was very smart and too beautiful to fall for someone like me. Frances, Griff, and even Roach had warned me about him. Though I couldn’t deny the existence of any of these things, none of them changed my mind. There were two sides to Cameron—the real side was the one who took my hand and answered my incessant questions about his secret life while I tried to avoid watching the movie he had picked up just for me. The real Cameron was the one who kissed me in the darkness, the one who sat on my bed and admitted that he loved me … and had loved me for a very long time.

The final blow—Cameron’s decision to end my life—I tried to attribute to Spider and Carly’s cunning abilities to sway Cameron. I loved him, and he loved me … but I still needed proof that I hadn’t just imagined it all, that I wasn’t going crazy.

When I got downstairs and didn’t see Cameron right away, I got sidetracked in the kitchen. My belly was grumbling loudly, and after days of liquid meals, I was ready for some real sustenance. I started pulling miscellaneous food out of the cupboards and managed a vague cheerfulness as Carly and Spider walked by.

“Mornin’,” I said.

Spider glanced at his watch and graciously pointed out, “It’s the middle of the afternoon.”

Carly appeared behind him and looked almost genuinely concerned. “Feeling better?”

I nodded my head, stuffed a handful of animal crackers in my mouth and walked to the table, my arms full with cereal, milk, bowl, spoon, cookies, crackers. I noticed that Carly and Spider both seemed to be in a better mood; they were either happy to see me finally go, or the thought of killing someone just brought the best out of them.

“You know you made half of my guards sick with the flu,” Spider charged.

I hadn’t realized that, along with everything else, I was also to be held responsible for getting sick first. “Sorry,” I mumbled through my Oreos.

When Cameron walked through the patio doors, I kept still on my chair. His dark eyes automatically came to find mine, and he slowed his walking pace. Catching himself, he quickly looked away, picked up his pace again, and kept going out through the front entrance. Carly and Spider followed him out, and I heard the front door shut behind them. In that brief moment, I knew what I had to do and immediately started planning over my bowl of cereal.

Rocco hobbled over from the couch and grabbed himself a bowl to help me with my meal. He poured and analyzed.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked me with an accusatory tone.

I wasn’t sure what he was referring to. When I’d looked in the mirror this morning, I thought I looked better—at least I didn’t look like walking death anymore. “Nothing. Why?”

“You’re staring at the wall. Smiling by yourself for no reason.”

I shrugged, removed the smile, and shoveled Captain Crunch into my mouth. I wasn’t going crazy—not anymore.

“I did a bunch of homework while you were loafing around,” he announced. “I’m having trouble with the math homework though.”

I would have offered to help him, but math was my worst subject—I had always found it unsettling that, no matter what I did or how I calculated a problem, there could only be one right answer in the end.

“I was thinking that we could do a bunch of the work while the rest of them leave,” he continued when I didn’t put anything forward. “That way, next time they go, my foot will be better, and I’ll be able to go with them again.”

I wondered if he had discussed any of this with his brother.

“When are they leaving?”

“Tomorrow morning,” he said dejectedly. “With most of the guards down with the flu, it’ll be pretty quiet around here.”

The plan was quickly taking shape.

By the time the diminished troops started pouring in for supper, Rocco and I had dug clean through a second box of cereal, and the Oreos had vanished. The minute I got up, I regretted gobbling down so much food in one sitting. I lay on the couch and spent the better part of an hour focusing on not hurling Captain Crunch. Rocco enjoyed his second supper with Tiny, Spider, and Carly. Cameron didn’t come back for the rest of the evening. When eight o’clock rolled around, Rocco was opening a bag of chips for his mid-evening snack. I’d had enough of the gorging marathon by then and excused myself to go up to bed.

I went to work as soon as I got into Cameron’s room. With Cameron and the rest of the high-rankers gone, with most of the guards out of commission, there was no better opportunity for me to sneak away in the night. In his almost empty closet, I found an old green duffle bag and started packing. The bag looked bigger than it was; I had barely emptied three drawers and the bag was already full. I still had two drawers to go, plus all my stuff that littered the bathroom.

I had two options: run on foot and get to the road, like Griff had planned, or try to steal one of my brother’s cars, try to drive it without crashing, try to drive fast enough to elude the flying bullets … as far as I could see, I had only one option, even if I didn’t take any pleasure in the idea of running through the woods by myself in the dark. I packed, and repacked, and realized I had no idea what I would even need to camp out in the wilderness, how long it would take me to get to the road or what I would do when I actually made it to the road. Once again, my cushy upbringing had come back to bite me … I was full of excuses. I didn’t want to go, but I couldn’t stay either. Maybe I could convince him, change his mind, make him see what I saw. But what if I couldn’t convince him? I dragged the duffle bag to the patio door and hid it behind the heavy curtain. And then I went to the small desk, found a working pen, and pulled out a piece of paper. “Cameron,” I scribbled.

“I love you. I do believe you when you say that you love me. That’s why I have to go. If you do this, you’ll be changed forever. I can’t let that happen.”

I took a breath, gulped, and finished.

“I wish things could have been different. I promise to come find you someday, when things are better. Please don’t worry.” Then I signed it with love.

I didn’t want to risk leaving the letter out until I was ready to leave. I grabbed my
Rumble Fish
book from under my pillow, took my
Rumble Fish
movie off the shelf and coiled them into a pair of jeans along with the letter. I packed the jeans on top of my stuff in the duffle bag.

Spider would keep his word to Cameron—of this I was sure. I just hoped that he wouldn’t come for me that night.

I spent the night listening for any sound that he was coming. Trying to keep myself awake, I sat in front of the TV, with the sound barely audible. Shortly after two o’clock in the morning, I jumped when front door squeaked opened. When I heard the clinging of dishes and cupboard doors in the kitchen, I relaxed.

A few minutes later, Meatball came scratching at my door. In an almost imperceptible voice, Cameron ordered him down—several times. He had to climb up the stairs again to get the dog. Sitting there, knowing that he was so close, just a door between us, knowing that I wouldn’t see him again, it was very hard not running to him. But I had to stay in place for both our sakes.

When dawn broke, I watched Carly and Spider sleepily trudge out of the pool house with their bags. By five o’clock, the troops had left the compound once more, and I finally went to bed.

I was sad when I figured out that Meatball wasn’t coming back, begging to be let in. He had gone with the rest of them. I wouldn’t get the chance to say goodbye.

Knowing that this was my last day at the farm, I didn’t sleep for very long after they all left. I went downstairs to wait for Rocco to get up. How could it be that the Kid would turn out to be my best friend in the whole world?

I would miss Rocco so much. It felt like I was leaving my family behind.

My efforts to spend as much time with Rocco as possible went somewhat wasted; he didn’t get up until well past noon. He lumbered into the living room, grunted and crashed on the other couch. We slept until mid-afternoon. I told myself that, at least he spent his last hours with me doing one of his favorite things: sleeping. As for his other favorite thing—eating—I commemorated by making a really big lasagna. We sat at the table. He wolfed down most of the lasagna. I ate without appetite.

“You know you can come visit me any time,” I told him, spearing my cold lasagna.

He squinted over his fork. “I already do.”

“I don’t mean upstairs. I don’t mean here … I mean when I go back to Callister. Someday.” As I said this I realized that I wouldn’t be able to go back to the city, or back to my former life.

“Okay?” Rocco watched me with awareness.

I dropped the subject. I was giving myself away, getting emotional. He was getting suspicious.

The night pushed forward, and I became more apprehensive about leaving. I had to remind myself several times that I had no other choice. It was time to go—before it was too late.

I had decided that I would follow Griff’s lead and sneak out of my room in the middle of the night by climbing down the two levels of balconies—strolling out of the front door would have been a lot easier, but a little too obvious, even with sparse guards. Climbing down without breaking my neck was as far as my plan went.

I waited for Rocco to go to bed, but after having slept all day, he was going to be up for a while. I closed my eyes to rest before the big escape.

 Chapter Twenty:
 Terrorized

There were firecrackers resounding in the night. Rocco was on his feet before I had even opened my eyes. He ran to the front door just as the off-duty day guards who had been unwinding in the basement bolted past him and ordered him to deadbolt the door behind them. Rocco did as he was told and limped back to the living room, his face white with terror. He had a cell phone to his ear.