Scare Crow (24 page)

“Congratulations, sweetheart,” she whispered in my
ear.

When I realized what she was doing, I jumped back. “Maria, you’ll get fired if my
mother catches
you.”

She flapped a hand in the air.
“Bah.”

I watched her. And I knew. “She’s firing you too, isn’t
she?”

She kept an unaffected smile and shrugged her shoulders. “I’m just here to help her
through the holi
days.”

“Why? She doesn’t deserve that. She doesn’t deserve you. You’ve been here for her,
for us, all these years, and this is how she repays
you.”

“She hasn’t always been like this, you know. When I first started working here, when
your mother and father were just married, your mother was, well, a lot like you. But
your father’s family, they’re not easy people. My mother used to say that a woman
can only love an ogre so much for so long before it starts to change
her.”

Was my father supposed to be the
ogre?

“Your mother thought she was marrying for love, and she continued to love your father,
despite him, despite who he really
was.”

There was a moment of silence as we realized what Maria was really saying. That my
mother loved my father more than she loved me. That she had been molding me—trying
to mold me—into the perfect Sheppard, so that my father would love her
back.

“So, you’re having a baby,” Maria exclaimed, clapping her hands together. “Let me
guess. The father’s tall, dark, and hand
some?”

“Am I that predict
able?”

“For years we saw that boy coming around, driving around the property, checking on
you. Lansing caught him sneaking into the house on your sixteenth birthday. Darlene
always said he would be the young man who would come to take your h
eart.”

Maria had no idea the bomb she had set off inside of me. On the outside, I kept blank-faced,
but inside, it was a nuclear holoc
aust.

“Where’s the father
now?”

I bent my
head.

I knew that Cameron had been watching over me for many years, because Bill had asked
him to. But Cameron, near my house, under my parents’ roof, on my birthday … I hated
my birthdays without Bill. But my sixteenth birthday was the worst of all. My mother
had put together a huge bash of people I didn’t know. I had been introduced—over and
over again—to the families of potential suitors. Placed on a pedestal, ready to be
auctioned off to the highest bidding family. My father off to the side, talking business,
not even noticing when I had blown out the sixteen candles on my cake. My mother constantly
rearranging me between meetings. The best part of the night was being able to scarf
down some cake with Maria and Darlene in the kit
chen.

Maria had been watching me a little while as I pushed items around Bill’s box so that
I could fit mor
e in.

“Do you remember when you were a little girl and Darlene told you not to touch the
stove because it was hot?” she reminisced. “You touched it anyway and got a nasty,
nasty burn? You didn’t even cry. You walked to the sink and doused your hand under
cold water. It was as though you knew it was going to happen but tried it anyway to
make sure, ready to deal with the consequences a
fter.”

I did remember doing that. My hand hurt like hell for
days.

Maria tittered. “You were the most stubborn, challenging little person I had ever
met. I never knew what trouble you were going to get yourself into next, but I always
knew that, no matter what, you were going to find a
way.”

Tired of waiting for someone to offer him some of my breakfast, Meatball had helped
himself to a piece of bacon. Then he waited to see if he were going to get into trouble.
When nothing happened, he cleaned the p
late.

“Where are you going to go?” Maria asked me while I struggled to slide the flaps of
the overflowing box cl
osed.

“I don’t know. But I have to get out of here.” Because my mother had thrown me out,
because I couldn’t breathe when she was too close. It was amazing how claustrophobic
one could feel in so much s
pace.

“But it’s Christmas Eve. You shouldn’t be alone on Chris
tmas.”

Maria put her hand on my shoulder. “Stay. Your mother and father are leaving for the
city today. They’ll be gone for a few days. We can spend the holidays toge
ther.”

I hadn’t realized it was Christmas Eve. I really didn’t want to be alone on Christmas.
But that didn’t mean that I was ready to ruin Maria’s Christmas either. No one wants
to spend Christmas with their deadbeat boss’s kid. No matter how much Maria loved
me, I would always be Isabelle Sheppard’s s
pawn.

Maria chimed in before I could find a good enough excuse. “I’ve already told Darlene
that you’re here. She’ll be here as soon as your parents leave. We’ll get drunk and
plug in the karaoke machine in the party room. Well, Darlene and I can get drunk.
You can w
atch.”

She was genuinely exc
ited.

I leaped over my box and into her
arms.

I couldn’t wait for my parents to get out. In the meantime, Meatball and I spent most
of the day walking the property. He dug into every flowerbed he could find, and when
I ordered him to stop digging, he dug more fervently. So I let him destroy the
yard.

When my parents finally left, Darlene drove in right away, as though she had been
waiting by the g
ates.

There were lots of hugs and rubbings of my belly. Darlene sent the young kitchen staff
packing and took over the kitchen—
her
kitchen. Darlene and Maria kept their promise. They got good and drunk, digging out
the best booze. I got the virgin vers
ions.

It was as though nothing had changed. Even though everything had changed. Or maybe
I had just never really paid attention be
fore.

I had always assumed that Darlene and Maria were best friends. There was friendship
there. But there was also love. I watched them as they watched each other. Giggled
at things I did not get. By the end of the night, they were dancing together, and
I was smiling so hard my face was going to split in two. I was happy that I had gotten
the chance to see this before they disappeared from my
life.

I excused myself, citing fatigue, which was true. Really, I just wanted them to get
to spend Christmas together without having to babysit me for once in their l
ives.

****

In the middle of the night, there was a knock at my door. Maria opened it before I
had time to say anyt
hing.

“Look who I found lurking by the g
ates.”

Out of the shadows, he walked into my bedroom. Maria gave me a knowing, slightly drunken
smile before closing the door behind
her.

“I just keep fucking up, don’t I?” Griff tol
d me.

Yes, he
did.

I sat up in bed and turned on my bedside lamp. “How did you know I was
here?”

“You left your cell phone on your bed. When I found the house empty and all your stuff
left behind, I was going to try calling the number that said ‘home.’ And if that didn’t
work, I was going to call the cops. Some lady picked up when I called. She confessed
that you were here. She sounded like the same lady who just brought me in
here.”

“Her name is M
aria.”

“It cost me a fortune to cab it all the way here from Calli
ster.”

“You were gone awhile. Where did yo
u go?”

“I got drunk and flew home to Eng
land.”

I sighed. “Your mom and brothers must have been happy to see
you.”

“Never made it out of Heathrow. I realized as soon as the plane took off that I was
making an idiot’s mistake. As soon as the plane landed in London, I went searching
for a flight back. It took me a while. Everything was booked up for the holi
days.”

Meatball dragged himself out of a deep sleep to let his heavy head fall on Griff’s
lap.

“Can you forgive me? Again?” Griff wond
ered.

As much as his leaving had hurt me badly, I knew I wasn’t innocent in the spreading
of pain. “Only if you can forgive me for lying, for keeping the pregnancy from you.
For not telling you about Cameron an
d me.”

Griff watched me. I could swear there was pity in his
eyes.

“Have you changed your mind?” he aske
d me.

“A
bout?”

“About going to the barn and talking to the drug
guy?”

I stared back at Griff. My resolve had only fortified. Pops was my last hope, and
I now had a plan. I knew how he could hel
p me.

“That’s what I thought.” He took my hand and placed a piece of paper in it. “Happy
Chris
tmas.”

CHAPTER 12: CAMERON

THE END IS JUST THE BEGINNING

“Aye,” Slobber annou
nced.

“Nay,” Kostya answ
ered.

The time had come for the Coalition to take a stand, one way or another. We were joining
forces with Julièn, or we were letting the cartel slowly take over our drug trade.
Every captain had his or her reasons for voting one way or another. What they didn’t
realize was that with each vote, their Coalition was breaking. The underworld was
about to detonate. The question was: how much of this would seep into the real world,
where Emmy l
ived?

“Nay,” Johnny
said.

“Nay,” Dorio
said.

The Italian and Asian Mafia. Double-crossing bastards. How much were they snitching
to Shield about what was going on in the Coalition? I had been waiting to see which
way they were going to vote, because it would give me a glimpse into Shield’s demented
b
rain.

Nay
. It seemed Shield didn’t want us to move in with the Mexican president, even though
it would be the death of me. He wanted to pick the captains off, one at a time, from
the shadows, like the underhanded little twerp he was. He wanted to take the Coalition
from me, see me lose everything, then kill me. I would die, but not at his will and
not before I chopped his hands off and watched him bleed to d
eath.

“Aye,” Manny
said.

I hadn’t told the captains that Manny had been the one to screw up the meeting with
the cartel, permanently severing relations. Telling them would have signed her death
warrant—they would have fed her to the cartel, like beef stew, with the tiniest of
hopes that this would be enough to get the cartel back to the table. The cartel had
remained mum about the incident because they had no proof that one of our captains,
Manny, had orchestrated the assault—any witnesses to our presence at the Thai restaurant
were dead, and it was hard to imagine that anyone could have ever survived the blast.
The fact that Manny and I had survived would have been suspicious. But even if they
had found out that we had been there all along, even if one of their men had survived
and told them we were there, having an escape plan “just in case” was not abnormal.
And Manny did have a brand-new bullet hole in her thigh—proof that we hadn’t been
immune. As far as they knew, the Vasquez group—the only family that remained untouched
in this debacle—was behind the whole thing. For now, the Munoz and Castillos stood
down, watched, and wa
ited.

I had never hidden anything from the captains, except perhaps the real story behind
Emmy’s snatching. Because of Shield, the Coalition was on the verge of collapse no
matter what I did. For the good of the underworld and the other world, I needed to
fortify whatever was left of the Coalition before Shield could have control over all
of it. Neither of the worlds would survive
that.

“Aye,” said Viper, eying Manny. He was the last to vote, and with that, we had a tie.
The Coalition was split right down the mi
ddle.

All heads turned to me as the deciding
vote.

“Aye,” I
said.

I had sealed my
fate.

****

Carly slapped a piece of paper in front of me and started pacing back and forth. She
had insisted on meeting with me after the Coalition vote and stormed into the meeting
room as soon as everyone had vani
shed.

“You meant for me to find this,” she acc
used.

I should have known Carly would go snooping before it was time. I knew she had found
it a while ago and wanted to talk to me about it when I was on my way to visit Pops.
But she didn’t really know what to make of it. She had finally put two and two together.
This argument had been meant for her to have with my co
rpse.

“Now I understand what you’ve been doing with all of your money. This must have cost
you a fortune. What else have you been hiding from Spider and me? How long did it
take you to cover your tracks so that it couldn’t be traced back to
you?”

“A while,” I admitted, avoiding her first question and glancing over the aerial pictures
of the property—a small island in the South Pacific. I had purchased it, sold it,
purchased it again through various corporations and charitable organizations, some
fake, some legit. It had cost me a whole lot more than it was worth. And yet it was
price
less.

“The vote today,” Carly said, her tone still biting. “You’re going to be doing exactly
what you said you were never going to do. Work with Julièn when you know what he’s
going to do. What he’s going to get
you
to do. Assassinate the cartel so that you can take over the Mexican trade with him
at your side. He knows only you can get it started for him. And then you’ll die when
all of Mexico’s drug world goes after your top
job.”

“Is that what you t
hink?”

“‘
You kill the heads of the cartel families, and a hundred more are born.
’ That’s what you told me
once.”

Damn Carly’s impeccable me
mory.

“It is a beautiful place,” I told her, pointing at a picture of the sandy beach. “Completely
uninhabited, and you can watch humpback whales go by from your backyard. Though you’ll
need to take good notes. You’re supposed to be there to study their migration. That’s
your c
over.”

I had slowly been making plans, trying to find a safe place for them, somewhere where
they could disappear until the dust settled. I had to move very slowly and keep under
everyone’s radar, with the hope that I would have everything in place before the war
erupted and my life came to an
end.

“This is for us. This island,” she said matter-of-fa
ctly.

“And Emmy. I trust you to get her out when the time is right, when no one is watc
hing.”

Carly looked me in the eye. “But you’re not going to be t
here.”

I wished I would be there with them. I had even let myself imagine what it would be
like, living free on a little island north of Fiji. Emmy sitting on a beach in her
bikini; or better yet, Emmy on a beach without her bikini. But that would never happen.
I would be hunted down with all the manpower the underworld had to offer. Emmy, Carly,
and Spider would be nowhere near me when this happened. They would be studying the
migration patterns of the humpback whale for the Society for Cetacea, the bogus foundation
I had set up as a c
over.

Carly held on to the back of the chair with both hands and narrowed her eyes. “So
how exactly am I supposed to do this? I wait until you’re dead. Until you’re
really
dead. Then I knock on Emmy’s door.
‘Hey, how have you been? I know you’ve been grieving for Cameron for months. It turns
out he wasn’t actually dead. But, yeah, now he really is, so you should be crying
over him now. On the flip side, he bought you an island.’
And then I kidnap her again and force her to go to this place without you there?
So that she can grieve you
for realsies
since you are genuinely dead this
time?”

“Emmy will get over it eventually. This island is gorgeous. She’ll forget me, and
she’ll forget about this mess I put her in. The important part will be to get all
of you out of here and in a safe place before I’m gone. You’ll be able to leave it
someday, when the heat is
off.”

“You’ve lost too many people, Cameron. You’ve forgotten what it’s like to bury someone
you
love.”

Carly glared as she shoved herself away from the back of the c
hair.

“You don’t ‘
forget
,’” she said, fingering quotation marks in the air. “You don’t ‘
get over it
.’ You just find a way to stuff the pain in a pocket somewhere inside. But every once
in a while, something—some stupid, insignificant little thing—triggers it. The worst
pain you have ever felt. And you have to start all over. Feel that same jerking agony
that only comes when you realize, when you remember that you’ll never see his face
again, that you’ll never be able to share that stupid thing that reminded you of him
in the first place. The pain never goes away. It only dulls, waiting for another tri
gger.”

Carly snatched the paper from my h
ands.

“Emmy won’t get over you. No matter how hard you try or how much money you spend,
you’re going to kill her.” She turned on her heels. “You’re a fucking idiot if you
think other
wise.”