Scare Crow (32 page)

When Frances and I walked to one of the clerks at the counter, I handed him my passport
and the piece of paper that Henry Grimes had written on. The clerk had what seemed
like fourteen extra letters after his name—bachelors, masters, doctorate—and I could
have sworn all the clerks were wearing matching gray Armani suits. These clerks were
not the minimum-wage, cleavage-busting clerks of Callister City Bank. Still, they
looked just as b
ored.

“There’s a password on the account, Miss,” the clerk told me, trying to withhold a
yawn.

“What do you
mean?”

“There’s a password on the account,” he repeated, because saying exactly the same
thing twice was enough explana
tion.

“You need me to tell you the pass
word?”

He arched his brows and forced a smile, as though I shouldn’t have been let outside
my padded
room.

“How many tries do I
get?”

He looked at me stran
gely.

I stepped away and found an empty seat so that I could t
hink.

Frances scanned around and sat next to me, grabbing my elbow. “What’s the password,
E
mily?”

It was hard to think when she was pressing me like that. “Give me a mi
nute.”

I put my face into my hands, closed my eyes, and let the images flash through my brain.
My childhood. My unorganized, immature, fart-jokes big brother. The feeling of isolation,
of abandonment after Bill died. The feeling of having that last bit of laughter stolen
from me with his last breath. Being angry at him for leaving me (for dying). Being
angry at him for leaving me a stupid pendant, as though it was supposed to be enough
to replace him. Feeling guilty for feeling all that I was feeling and for not having
been there to hold him, to comfort him when he
died.

I went back to that day—that last day, that last hour, that last minute—Bill trying
to smile as he handed me the stupid angel pendant. Bill telling me, telling me, telling …
What the hell did he tell me again? I searched my brain, trying to find a small needle
hidden in a stack of painful memories. “Hold on to this and don’t ever forget about
it,” he had said. I took the pendant into my hand and pressed it in until it left
an imprint in the skin of my palm. But that wasn’t what he had meant. We were sitting
on my bed, and he had brought something else of his from his room. Something else
that was totally valueless. A stinky, disheveled bear. It only had one eye. And my
brother had named it Bo
oger.

My eyes shot
open.

I sprang from my seat and got to the desk of the excessively educated clerk just as
he was pulling out his closing sign. “Booger. The password is bo
oger.”

The guy at the counter scoffed, swung his head to the screen, and typed in the word
he had probably not said aloud since he was five years
old.

I could see that the screen had changed color from the reflection that bounced off
his
face.

He cocked his head to the side. He looked at me, he looked at the screen, he looked
at me a
gain.

“Please excuse me for a minute.” He hopped away and into an office, where he took
a seat and spoke to a man in an even more expensive suit. They both glanced back at
me simultaneo
usly.

“You got it wrong,” Frances whispered feverishly to me, as though I hadn’t already
figured this out my
self.

“What’s going to happen now?” I wond
ered.

Frances glanced around her, her eyes stopping at the front entrance. Two men were
on alert, watching us. They were dressed in jeans and suit jackets, as though this
was supposed to make them look like regular Joes who were supposed to blend in with
us, the other regular Joes. They reminded me of mystery shoppers or undercover rent-a-
cops.

“Miss Sheppard?” a voice disrupted our worst thoughts. The man from the office had
come out to the desk. With an open palm, he bade me to follow him. Frances and I marched
a
head.

“I’m sorry. We only allow the account holders in the safe
room.”

Frances held on to my arm protectively. But I couldn’t turn back now. It was like
driving for months to get to the Grand Canyon and keeping your eyes closed when you
got there. My eyes were wide-
open.

“It’s okay. I’ll be okay,” I told her. After all, a room that was dubbed “safe” couldn’t
be too dangerous—coul
d it?

She held on to me for a second longer, then let m
e go.

The so-called safe room consisted of a beige-walled room with a table and a chair.
I was left alone for a few minutes until the man came back with a metal
box.

He placed it in front of me and opened it to reveal a container made of some kind
of
foam.

“The box is sealed. Once the seal is broken, all contents must be removed. We are
not responsible for any forgotten items.” He said this mechanically. A speech prepared
by overpaid lawyers. “Do you recognize the signature, Miss Shep
pard?”

I smiled as he pointed to the signature on the seal. “I do.” It was Bi
ll’s.

He cracked the foam as though splitting open a thoracic cage. He left, closing the
door behind
him.

Inside, there were two envelopes. I ripped open the first one—the thicker one. I would
have deemed myself a rich woman had it not been filled with pieces of paper. Parking
receipts, movie tickets, a bubble-gum wrapper, a piece of paper with a telephone number
and the name Brandi with a heart over the “i” written on it. I pulled each piece out,
one by one, until I came to a letter-sized, sealed envelope. It was addressed to C
arly.

I gritted my teeth and opened the second envelope. Two more sealed, skinny envelopes
lay inside. One was addressed to me, the other to Cameron. I immediately opened
mine.

It wasn’t money. It was a letter. In Bill’s messy, half-illegible handwri
ting.

“
Emmy
,” it sta
rted.

I hungrily started drinking in his words, knowing that the bank was about to close.
Each word, each revelation sank me deeper into my brother’s mind and into his screwed-up
w
orld.

I didn’t even hear Frances come in until she grabbed my arm and shook me a
wake.

“How did you get in?” I asked, stuffing the letter back in the enve
lope.

“I snuck in while they were busy with a rush of customers. Looked like all the local
business owners wanted to do their ridiculous insignificant money deposits before
the weekend,” she said with a smirk. “Did you get our m
oney?”

I saw her. For the first time, I saw her. The wench. The goddamn greedy, deceitful,
murderous b
itch.

“There is no money. Just letters. Sentimental s
tuff.”

The man who had let me into the room appeared in the doorway, throwing annoyed glances
in Frances’s direction. “Only the account holder is permitted in this room. I’m calling
security to have you escorted
out.”

“We’re leaving,” I sna
pped.

“Please ensure you have collected all your belongings before exiting the room. We
are not responsible for forgotten i
tems.”

I left nothing be
hind.

“My cell phone died while I was talking to my mom. Can I borrow yours?” Frances asked
me as we made our way back to the front of the bank. The face of an angel. A wolf
in lamb’s clothing—designer clot
hing.

She glanced at the two envelopes in my hand. I gave her my cell phone, knowing that
she would be grabbing for the envelopes
next.

I could have screamed. I could have yelled, “
There are bad people after me!”
The police would have been called. People would have been questioned. I would have
been questioned. More time would have been wasted. In the meantime, the underworld
would be looking for me, and the first place they would go searching would be the
last place the whole world had seen me: on television, hugging Griff the Grappler
Connan. After Griff had hopped out of the ring, it had made headlines across sports
news networks the next day—our faces splashed everywhere as the joke of the
day.

The more time I spent answering questions, the less time I had to get back to Griff
before they did. And I definitely didn’t want the police involved in my and my big
brother’s nefarious aff
airs.

“How could you?” I asked Frances as I held my hand over the baby inside me. I wasn’t
crying. I was steaming, raging mad. Like an angry sea ready to swallow an entire
ship.

I looked Frances in the eye. She glanced longingly at my belly and let her hand slip
down to her own empty womb while she gripped my wrist even harder with her other hand.
She said, “Imagine having one of your limbs ripped from you and watching it,
feeling
it
grow on someone else like it was never yours in the first place. Then imagine being
handed the opportunity to get it
back.”

“You mean, buy it back. With Bill’s money. With me and my c
hild.”

Her mouth stretched thin. “You don’t know what it’s like to have your child taken
from you. Love for your child being used against you, making you do the very worst
just on the promise of being able to see your baby for a few minutes every week. Years
go by, and your child doesn’t even know you’re his mo
ther.”

“Victor did that to you. And now you’re making it happen to me? Is this some kind
of retribu
tion?”

“You’ll do anything for your child. I’m no different than
you.”

“I don’t deserve this, Frances. My baby doesn’t deserve
this.”

She sneered. “Have you ever even had a cavity, Emily Shep
pard?”

It always came down to that, didn’t it? My so-called charmed life. The life that would
make me deserve misery for the rest of my days. And now make my unborn child deserve
this same mi
sery.

I followed Frances’s gaze to the front of the l
obby.

The two jeaned mystery shoppers I had seen earlier had their eyes fixed on me. They
didn’t work for the bank, I realized. They worked for Frances; rather, they worked
for Victor. I noticed the hint of a gun peeking through one of the men’s suit jac
kets.

The bank was about to close. Most of the doors of the bank had been locked, except
for the one in the middle where the old guard stood, ensuring that no one else came
in. Outside, past the windows and doors, traffic went to and fro, as though everything
were fine. I stopped and turned to face Frances. Her features were cold and determ
ined.

“How many men are with you?” I asked
her.

“I had no other choice, Emmy. Someday, you’ll understand
that.”

As she called me Emmy, I wanted to spit in her face. “How
many?”

“Other than the two waiting for us at the door, there are two more waiting by the
car outside. There’s nowhere for you t
o go.”

“And Vi
ctor?”

“He was in Canada when you came around and couldn’t make it back on time. He was afraid
you were going to disappear with the money if we didn’t stay close. Besides, there
are too many cameras in the bank and at the airport. He couldn’t risk being seen when
this happened. But he’s waiting for you in Calli
ster.”

“He likes to get pretty girls to do his dirty work. That man is all bravery,” I said
with an indignant s
mirk.

The same knowing smirk came to Frances’s
lips.

“At least you’ll have a good alibi,” I told
her.

A quizzical look came over her face, right before I yanked my upturned hand to her
expensive nose, feeling it break under the pressure of my palm. I followed this by
twisting my whole body, the way that Griff had showed me, to get my wrist out of her
g
rasp.

While Frances tried to recover, I ran toward the sole exit, directly in the path of
the two men. They took a few steps forward and smiled apathetically a
t me.

“Oh my God! Those men have guns! Everybody get down,” I shouted at the top of my lungs,
pointing my dainty finger at the men out front. There were screams from the patrons
in the
back.

My voice was so loud that the old security guard was already running on his slow feet,
pointing his gun at the two men before he had even fully woken. An alarm went off
just as I got to the door that was being held open by a customer—who had probably
been happy to see the guard leave so that he could sneak in and get his banking done
before the bank closed but was now standing in a stupor at the action unfolding in
front of his eyes. From my peripheral vision, I could see that two more guards had
come to take down my intended abductors. Once I was on the street, I did a quick glance
to my left and right. A woman was stepping out of a taxi a few feet away. Two men
were running toward me, and I was already winded from my run out of the bank. But
I ran, mustering up every inch of breath I possibly could. I was within the men’s
grasp as I reached the taxi, barreling onto the back
seat.

“I’m out of service,” the driver tried to tell me. But I had already thrown my last
two hundred dollars at him after locking the passenger
door.

“Airport. Quickly. Please,” I said, holding my pregnant sto
mach.