Scare Crow (18 page)

“This place is going to hell,” the old lady mumbled to me, or to her
self.

Little did she know that we—or rather, our company—owned the whole building and that
we were the slumlords of this hellhole. It made for a great cover. There was no such
thing as a nosy neighbor in these types of pl
aces.

The old lady got off on the second floor, and I went all the way to the top. The hallway
to our apartment looked exactly like all the other hallways in this building. It was
dimly lit, with a dozen brown doors on each side of the elevator and a carpet that
might have once been of a purple shade. The smell was the only thing that was slightly
be
tter.

But once I unlocked the door, gone was the decrepit. Our apartment took up the whole
top floor. It was clean and bright, draped in a lavishness that the people living
in our building would never know in their lifet
imes.

Carly was sitting on the arm of the couch, and Spider was leaning against the back
of it. They were waiting for me, ignoring each other. The weird thing about Spider
and Carly was that, even when they were fighting (or whatever
this
was), they couldn’t stand to be more than a few feet a
part.

When I saw Carly’s face, I realized that she was waiting for me more as a warning
than a wel
come.

I barely had time to shut the door behind me before Spider expl
oded.

“
That
was your answer!” Spider shouted. “To kick me out of the business because some idiot
painted a spider on a car? We both know only Shield would be stupid enough to do something
like
that.”

“I agree,” I said, slumping into an armchair. “But until we can prove that, I have
to show the captains that their business is safe, that the Coalition is safe. This
spider painting could push the feds to start looking for someone who calls himself
spider. Who knows what that could lea
d to?”

Carly found a seat on a couch cushion. I waved my hand at Spider so that he would
do the same. A quiet, rational caucus was better than wherever he was heading. Spider
sat on the edge of the coffee table not too far from C
arly.

“And what exactly am I supposed to do in the mean
time?”

“For the time being, for the good of the business,” I said, “I need you to work from
a remote loca
tion.”

“How re
mote?”

I arched my eyeb
rows.

“Nowhere near you or any of the captains,” he answered himself. “You know this puts
you in a dangerous spot. You can’t just go out on your
own.”

When it came to business, Spider was never without me, and I was never without Spider.
We had each other’s back, always. At least, we used to. Our work together had been
slowly dwindling as I had been going after Shield and his
men.

“I’ll have guards with me,” I
said.

Spider eyed me. “You know that’s not enough. You need someone who’s on the inside
with you. Someone who’s your eyes and ears while you make m
oney.”

“That’s all we can do right now. You’ll have to do what you can without actually being
t
here.”

“I’ll go with you,” Carly volunteered. Her tone suggested that she was actually ser
ious.

Spider looked at her in horror. I tried to not start laughing, because I imagined
that Spider’s insides had just deton
ated.

“Pardon?” Spider asked
her.

“I can be your number two, Cameron,” she said t
o me.

Carly was tough and smart. She could handle pretty much anything. She had seen more
in her childhood than most men would ever see in their lifetime. But doing what Spider
did would take years of creating relationships and building a sixth sense, being able
to sniff out tro
uble.

Even on her best day, Carly wouldn’t be able to simply waltz into meetings with me
because people were too paranoid for that. And I had to admit that Carly hadn’t been
at her best since the miscarr
iage.

Carly kept her eyes on me. I had seen that look a lot lately; it was wild, like a
madness that was growing inside of her. What she had lost in the miscarriage was being
filled by this black
ness.

“I know you can do it, Carly,” I started, and Spider shot up like a ro
cket.

“Absolutely
not!”

Carly shot up too and faced Spider. “It’s not up to you, Spider! You can’t make that
decision for me. I’m just as capable as any of
you.”

“But,” I added, raising my voice to interrupt them before they got too deep into another
shouting match, “this may not be the best time for you to take on that kind of
role.”

I had garnered the attention of both of
them.

“Not the right
time
?” Carly questioned, her arms crossed over her c
hest.

I knew I was treading on unsteady waters, so I took my time trying to explain myself.
“Well, with everything that’s been going on, with the Coalition
…
and with you and Spider, I just don’t think that it would be a good time for you
to take on something new like
this.”

Spider’s eyes were round. He was standing behind Carly, shaking his head at me. Begging
me to
stop.

“What do you
mean?”

I was going to no-man’s-land. “I’m just saying that with your emotional s
tate—”

“My emotional state?” she ba
rked.

Spider winced. I had always wondered how Carly, a five-foot-nothing girl, could all
of a sudden look monstrous enough to spit fire. She stared me down with all her emot
ions.

In the end, I had managed to alienate both Spider and C
arly.

At least they stormed off toge
ther.

I hoped that they would use the time to figure things
out.

Of course, Manny was the real instigator of their departure. Viper’s performance at
the table had been laughable at best. He was new to the Coalition, easily tagged by
Manny’s beautiful venom. Manny had been trying to find a way to get Carly and Spider
out so that she would have direct access to me. What she didn’t know was that she
had done me a favor. I had also been trying to find a way to get them away from me,
albeit for different rea
sons.

The Coalition was fractured. I had felt cracks forming for some time, even before
Emmy got swept into the underworld, causing such a stir. I noticed the small things
at first, like Johnny, captain for the Italian Mafia, and Dorio, captain for the Asian
triad, sitting next to each other at the table. A long history of violence, of family
members getting sent back in pieces, would have made these two leaders undying enemies.
Bringing them into the Coalition and having them in the same room without killing
each other had been one of Bill’s greatest feats. And now they were rubbing elbows.
My suspicions were further raised when, together, they had convinced the captains
that Ignazio and Seetoo, their counterparts in Canada, be brought forward as candidates
for underworld leadership in Canada. They wouldn’t have been my first or my second
choice. One was too flamboyant, the other too sadistic. But all the captains had agreed
that they were the only two in the running, and I hadn’t insisted because I wanted
to test out my th
eory.

Johnny and Ignazio were second cousins; their great-grandfather had a town named after
him in Sicily. The American captains were not in Canada and didn’t know what had gone
down until I told them after the fact. One would have expected that when I advised
them that I had killed Ignazio in favor of Seetoo, Johnny would have at least put
up a
fuss.

He barely blinked at the
news.

Apparently, as long as either of their kinfolk was at the Canadian helm, they wouldn’t
bat an eye. Though I was pretty sure that Ignazio and Seetoo didn’t know that their
American brethren had had big plans for them. Not yet, an
yway.

As far as I knew, they were the only two who were colluding. But it would be enough
to overthrow the Coalition, and I knew who was behin
d it.

Shield had the so-called real world wrapped around his dirty little finger, but that
wasn’t enough for him. He wanted both worlds to himself. If his power were allowed
to grow, if he were allowed to rule the underworld, I shuddered to think what that
would mean for the rest of the world. War. Chaos. Destruction. Shield wouldn’t stop
until he was king of all, and he would kill anyone who stepped on his highway to total
domination. The real world, the world where my Emmy lived and breathed, would become
one with the underw
orld.

But I wouldn’t be there to see it. I would be dead before I ever let that happen.
Emmy’s world would remain beautiful and safe for as long as possible, for as long
as I was a
live.

What Manny didn’t realize was, in entertaining discussions with the Mexican president
and estranging the three families of the Mexican cartel, she had set off an earthquake
the size of the San Andreas Fault. One that would eventually divide the Coalition.
The minute Manny had told me of her discussions with the Mexican president, I knew
that the stage for change had been
set.

The captains wouldn’t let me kill Shield, and my suspicions, I knew, wouldn’t be enough
to change their minds—and going against the Coalition was a suicide that I wasn’t
ready for, yet. In the end, it would be a North versus South type of showdown, underworld
style. Shield had already allied the Canadians and two of the biggest crime families
to him. I would have to ally myself to Mexico and anyone else who followed. But this
decision would have to come from the captains, something that Manny was probably already
workin
g on.

This was why I wanted Carly and Spider to leave. They were my biggest allies. They
were the people who would always have my back when I needed them. But like Emmy, they
were my family. Things were about to get volatile, and I didn’t want them—any of them—to
be around when the Coalition finally broke a
part.

How long did I have before this happ
ened?

I could only hope that, like Emmy, Spider and Carly would be out of the picture long
enough for the other captains to be too busy fighting each other to try to go after
them. Eventually they would go after them—no loose ends get left behind. But by then,
I would have them safely hidden, somewhere, with Emmy. Hopef
ully.

Every move I made from hereon had to be precise and not appear to be of my own de
sign.

CHAPTER NINE:
EMMY

CAN’T BEAT THEM

Griff was teaching me how to fight. Nix that. Griff was teaching me how to defend
myself, as he kept remindin
g me.

He had insisted upon it after I came back from spray-painting Victor’s car. I was
pretty scraped up and bruised and limped for a week. We never talked about what happened
to me. I knew he wanted to ask me, but he didn’t. And I appreciated
that.

We tried out a few tactics back at the house, but after I almost went flying down
the stairs, I asked Hunter to find us a safer spot to train. Because in my mind, that
was what I was doing. Training. I was being as careful as I possibly coul
d be.

Hunter got the school gym to lend us their workout room. It came with lots of padding
on the f
loor.

Unfortunately, it meant that Hunter and his friends got to come
too.

What Griff tried on me, Hunter and his friends practiced on each other. It wasn’t
every day that a prizefighter was showing off his stuff for free. Though I doubted
that Hunter and his buddies were as careful with each other as Griff was with me.
Of course, the first thing I asked him to show me was how to get out of the body hug
he had done to me to prove his point that I couldn’t defend myself. He still had no
idea that his antics had almost sent me running right into Victor’s
lap.

My spray-painting exercise had merited me front-page news in the
Callister City Standard
. But all the reporters referred to me as the thug kid, and Victor was quoted as saying
that the incident simply showed how much Callister’s street kids were in need of guidance.
It made bile creep up my throat. The story quickly died after that, and I never heard
from Mike again. Why he had let me go, I didn’t know. But I kept his watch on me just
in case he ever came back for it. It was cheap, but at least it wo
rked.

Griff and I were walking back from the gym, our arms rubbing between strides. His
eyes darted every which way, from the face of a passerby to a car across the street.
Ever since my secret escapade, I had seen a weariness grow on him, one that pulled
bags under his eyes and left his shoulders tensed to his ears. He was rarely off his
g
uard.

I could feel the darkness in my life spreading to him, and this made me ache all over.
I needed Griff, but I didn’t want him to feel the way I
felt.

I tugged at the sleeve of his shirt to get his attention and smiled when he turned
to me. His eyes searched my face for a second, then he chuckled. In a sweeping movement
that had come so naturally, he grabbed my hand in his and squeeze
d it.

“Did Joseph find anything
yet?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, not even attempting to hide the disappointment in my v
oice.

“What are you planning to do with all that money when you ge
t it?”

“Us
e it.”

When Griff asked me why I needed Joseph to find that accountant, in one breath I had
confessed that I had a brother who had died and left me money and that the guy on
the business card was the only one who could get it for me. I could see the question
marks in Griff’s eyes. What? Why? When? What?
What
! “Okay,” was all he said, very calmly, as though he knew how difficult it had been
for me to reveal this momentous information to him. I had spent most of my life doing
everything I could to hide myself; or rather, trying to hide who my parents were.
Coming from money was one thing, but coming from stinking-rich Sheppard money was
a whole other ball game. Add two well-to-do Sheppard kids entangled in the underworld,
and you had enough material to support all gossip magazines worldwide for three y
ears.

Griff and I crossed the street. “You have a plan for it,” he said matter-of-fa
ctly.

“Kin
d of.”

“What does that
mean?”

“It means I don’t know
exactly
what I’m going to do with the m
oney.”

Griff slowed our pace. “
But …”

“But until Joseph can find the guy I’m looking for, I need to keep moving.” I swallowed
hard. “There’s someone else I need to
find.”

“I’m not going to like this, am I?” he wondered aloud as we rounded the corner to
our st
reet.

“How much do you know about the people you were working for when I saw you last time,
in the
barn?”

Griff looked to the sky in exasperation. “Enough to know that I never want to see
them a
gain.”

We got back to the house, and Griff led me to the front porch. It was late November
and freezing out, but he scooted me close to him to keep us
warm.

“As far as I knew, I was guarding a heap of hay.” He turned to me. “You know me, Em.
I don’t ask questions if I won’t like the an
swer.”

“Do you think you would be able to take me to the
barn?”

“I have no idea where the barn is. I was taken to and from it blindfolded. The only
people I talked to were the guy who came around to blindfold me, the other guards
back at the bunker, and the creep who ordered me to open the trap
door.”

I knew that remark had been at Cameron’s expense. Griff had never concealed his dislike
of Cameron, but he had been more careful lately to keep his feelings to him
self.

I kicked at the frosted gr
ound.

“Why do you need to go back to the
barn?”

“Because I need to talk to the people I met when I was underground. Actually, one
person in particular. His name was Pops.” I propped my head up. “Do you know
him?”

“Never heard of
him.”

“I think he’s a significant drug dealer … distributor,” I corrected, as Cameron had
once corrected me. “He’ll be able to hel
p me.”

“Why on earth would a brute who puts drugs on the streets just to make a couple bucks
want to hel
p us?”

It hadn’t escaped my attention that Griff had changed the “me” to “us.” He was doing
a lot of that too, as though it were second nature now, and I kept testing him, sometimes
not on pur
pose.

“He’s not like the others,” I said. I knew this would sound ridiculous to Griff, so
I took a moment before divulging another major piece of information I hadn’t told
him before. “He hates Spider … and he knew my brother when he was a
live.”

Griff’s eyes rounded. “
Your
bro
ther?”

“Before he died, my brother was one of those brutes you dislike so much. Actually,
he wasn’t just a brute; he was
the
b
rute.”

While we looked over the street, I told Griff everything I knew about my brother’s
business, everything that Cameron had told me about
him.

“You’ve already seen my brother. A picture of him, anyway. In the car garage, back
at the Farm. My brother’s fake ID was in the plastic bag, and you called him a
thug.”

Griff reddened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Why didn’t you say anyt
hing?”

“It was a pretty big revelation, even t
o me.”

“And you didn’t know if you could trust me,” he accepted. “So, this Pops person hates
Spider. I like him already. What is he going to do to hel
p us?”

“It was something that you said. You told me that I couldn’t fight the whole underw
orld.”

He grinned. “Yes, I did say that, didn
’t I?”

“And you were r
ight.”

He grinned even harder. “Say that a
gain.”

“You were right. I can’t fight the whole underworld.” I gulped. “But I can join
them.”

Griff winced as though I had just hit him with a stick behind the head. A small s
tick.

As the idea settled in his brain, I felt his arm go rigid against mine. “So you’re
telling me I’m responsible for this … this …” He couldn’t find the
word.

“This madness?” I found it for him because I knew this was what he was thinking. And
he was right—if it hadn’t been for him pushing me to prove my point (and almost getting
myself killed in the process), I wouldn’t have realized that I needed a better plan.
“Have you ever had a feeling that you need to do something even if you don’t know
why?”

He chuckled very lightly. “I’m still here with you, aren
’t I?”

“I can’t just walk into a room and kill Spider and Shield, not yet, even if that’s
what they deserve. But I can make them pay. I can make them crawl. I can take away
what they love
most.”

“Whic
h is?”

“Money. Power,” I said, clamping my f
ists.

“And this Pops the drug dealer will somehow help us achieve all of
this?”

There was that “us” again. I wanted to kiss Griff a million times
over.

“How?” he a
dded.

This was where my plan went a little murky. “He liked, respected my brother, and I
think he liked me too. I’m not sure exactly how he’s going to help us, but my gut
tells me that he’s the one who can make it all ha
ppen.”

Griff remained quiet. I knew he wasn’t in love with the idea. Far from it. But he
hadn’t walked away ei
ther.

“You’ve made a lot of contacts in the underworld. Do you have anyone who would know
how to get to the barn or how to find Pops?” I asked
him.

Griff thought about it and shook his head. “You can’t ask those kinds of questions
without more questions being raised. Whatever we decide to do, I don’t want it advertised
to hell before we even get t
here.”

“Do you have any
friends
who would be able to tell us how to find Pops … without asking more quest
ions?”

Griff scratched the back of his neck as his mouth stretched thin. I could see it in
his eyes. I had seen this look before whenever someone asked him for an autograph,
asked him to talk about figh
ting.

“Nobody is ever really a friend in that world,” he said. “The type of
friends
who would know anything would want something in re
turn.”

This I understood. What Griff didn’t know was that it was in every world—under, over,
and whatever illusory world my parents live
d in.

We both took a breath, huddled on the porch. The deadness of a forthcoming winter
left a silence on the streets of Callister’s slums that was tantamount to being buried
in cold mud. Ergo, there was nothing to kill the insatiable sound of my growling stomach.
I tried to ignore it initially. We both did. But it only got louder, to the point
that neither Griff nor I could even hear ourselves think any
more.

Griff bellowed a laugh. There was still some joy left in him. This made me laugh
too.

“Let me guess. Hungry? A
gain?”

I hadn’t stopped eating since the doctor had prescribed me those magic pills. I had
even put on weight, so much so that my pants were getting a little tight. Finally.
My energy levels were incredible. I couldn’t stop moving until I fell into a deep
coma at night. Truly magic p
ills.

Griff and I left the porch. While I headed up the stairs, he went straight to the
kitchen to make us something nutritious. Of course I would eat whatever he would make,
but honestly, I just really wanted a Big Mac and a dozen ninety-nine-cent t
acos.

I still hadn’t told Griff that I was pregnant. I was gearing up for it because if
I didn’t do it, nature would. I just hadn’t found the right time. Was there ever going
to be a right time for releasing that kind of bombshell? There had been a few moments
when I had thought about telling him. Moments when we were silent. Moments when we
were … just together. But then he would look at me and smile his Griff-smile, as though
I were the first human he’d seen in the months after the apocalypse, and I would chicken
out. I wanted him to keep looking at me in that
way.

The look that he would afford me after he learned that I was carrying Cameron’s offspring,
I wouldn’t be able to bear. To say that Griff didn’t like Cameron was like saying
that Cujo was a bad
dog.

While I outgrew my jeans and opted for frumpy sweaters and elastic pants, I was left
with restless butterflies in my swelling belly. Butterflies that were becoming more
anxious with every opportune moment that passed between Griff an
d me.

I was scared. I couldn’t bear to lose anyone else, especially not G
riff.

When I got to the top of the stairs, I poked my head in Joseph’s room. He was at his
computer, as usual. But his hair looked like the skin of a dragon fruit, and he was
mashing the keyboard as opposed to his habitual quick-rat clicks. I was holding a
wrecking ball over his head, and it was getting to
him.

I took a chair to his desk and sat down. Meatball had followed me in and sat between
Joseph an
d me.

I had assumed that Joseph hadn’t seen me come in because his eyes never left his computer.
But his hand found its way to Meatball’s head and behind his ears. Meatball’s eyes
rolled to the back of his head, and his tongue hung limp. I had noticed Meatball come
in here on his own lately. Now I knew
why.

“It’s like this guy doesn’t even exist,” Joseph said, his voice winded, eyes still
on the sc
reen.