Crow’s Row (37 page)

Cameron looked deathly panicked. He was holding me by the shoulders and talking to me, possibly shouting, but I heard and felt nothing.

After several failed attempts at communicating with me, he took out a short-wave radio and hastily spoke into it. With one last frightened glance at me, he turned his back to me, grabbed my arms, threw them over his shoulders and around his neck. He hoisted me onto his back and started running.

Meatball was ahead of us and led the way home. We trekked for what seemed like miles. I hadn’t realized that I had run so far out into the woods.

Slowly, I started hearing again, starting with Cameron’s rapid breaths. I also started feeling the cold through my body. By the time we reached the property, my teeth were chattering, and my naked feet and fingers were burning.

Cameron carried me toward the house. It was chaos everywhere on the property. Some of the high-rankers were carrying bodies into parked vehicles while others frantically walked around, surveying the land, looking for an enemy.

“Don’t look,” Cameron softly warned me as we walked past two guards placing a body in the back of a pickup truck. I concentrated on how good it was to hear Cameron’s voice again.

Cameron carried me into the house and immediately up the stairs, not giving time to think about glancing toward the kitchen doorway. The bedroom was complete disarray. Drawers, my clothes, my stuff were strewn on the floor, the mattress had been flipped off the bed, and my ballerina lamp was shattered on the ground. Cameron released me from his back and made me sit on the mattress on the floor.

“We need to get you packed quickly,” he explained as he started taking the clothes on the floor and piling them up by my feet. In a nightmarish haze, I got up and walked over to the curtains. The duffle bag was still hidden there, untouched. I dragged it out a few inches.

Cameron looked at me curiously for a second.

Then he threw the bag’s strap over his shoulder and simultaneously grabbed a blanket from the messy bed. He wrapped the thick blanket around me and picked me up in his arms again. We headed downstairs and out the door. Cameron placed me onto the passenger-side seat of his car, kneeling in to put the seatbelt around me and closing the door.

He went to Spider, who was wearily standing by the front stoop, engrossed in a conversation with Tiny. I watched them, and I watched a puffy-eyed Carly walk out of the house with a bag. She threw her things in the back of Spider’s truck, and climbed in.

Cameron, Spider, and Tiny spoke with haste, then they all dispersed. Spider climbed into his truck—his tires spitting rocks as he raced away. Meatball climbed in the back while Cameron grabbed another T-shirt from his own bag on the backseat. I hadn’t noticed until then that his T-shirt had been drenched in blood. Then Cameron and I sped away from the farm too.

He drove us down the gravel road, faster than he had that day when we took the Maserati out. When we had turned onto the main road, he had grabbed hold of my hand. Though I was wrapped in a thick blanket, my teeth hadn’t stopped vibrating. I stared at the road ahead, semi-conscious that Cameron was worriedly glancing at me every other minute.

We drove for hours with neither of us speaking, with me never breaking my stare with the road. Cameron didn’t let go of my hand.

Eventually I recognized the Callister city limits, but we continued to drive past the city. Cameron finally veered onto a dirt road through a cluster of trees. We arrived to a small log cottage that had a sunken front porch. He stopped the car and sighed.

We got out, and Meatball excitedly led us to the door.

Inside, the cottage was simply furnished. There was a small kitchen table with two chairs in the middle of the room, a tiny kitchenette on one side, and a black woodstove on the other. A narrow wooden staircase led to a small square loft at the top. Through the railing that surrounded the loft-square there was a single bed. All of the barren walls were made of exposed wood. It smelled of Cameron. It all made me feel a little warmer.

Cameron took me by the hand and led me into a minuscule bathroom that was off the kitchenette. He pulled the blanket away from my shoulders, stood me in front of the mirror and started the shower. I didn’t recognize the person who was staring back at me through the mirror. This girl had a horrifying, petrified look to her. There were scratches all over her face, and her hair and skin were muddied and red. Her eyes were wild and shocked. This couldn’t be me, I told myself.

Cameron’s reflection appeared behind mine. He didn’t look like himself either. I noticed that his face was as muddied and scraped as mine and watched through the mirror while he pulled the leaves and dry brush from my hair. His gaze caught mine, but this time, he didn’t look away.

The steam from the shower started to fog up the mirror. Cameron went to grab a towel and told me to get undressed.

“I promise I won’t look,” he said with a weary smile, trying to recall a more carefree time when we had stripped out of our soaking clothes at the farm.

I undressed and entered the shower as Cameron left the room. For a while, I just stood there while the water burned my frozen skin. The water hit my head, and I watched the remaining debris from my hair wash down the drain. Slowly, the feeling came back, inside and out. I could feel the throbbing in my bruised and bloodied legs. I could also feel the fear and the pain that were lingering deep, slowly rising to the surface.

I wrapped myself in the towel that Cameron had left for me and walked out to the kitchenette where Cameron was waiting by the small table.

“Here,” he said as he gently handed me a stack of his clothes. “These will keep you warm.”

Like a robot, I dressed myself while Cameron took his leave for the shower. The clothes he had given me smelled like him. By the time I was dressed, Cameron was already out of the shower, dressed in jeans and shirtless. I noticed him and his tattooed bullet wounds. I could feel my drowned emotions bubbling up.

Always keeping an eye on me, he went to the stove where the kettle was now boiling and poured hot water into two cups. He walked back, placed the cups on the table, and sat in the chair next to mine.

I picked up the mug, cupped my hands around it, and looked up at him. He kept my eyes. When I tried to reassuringly smile back, my vision blurred with the tears that had been dammed up for too long. I had trouble breathing, and I could feel something erupting inside of me.

The cup started to shake in my hands. Cameron pulled it away like he had been expecting what was happening to me.

I started quivering. “Rocco was right there …,” I whispered. “I didn’t know what to do … I lost him …” And I started to fall.

He lunged out of his chair and took me into his arms while long, hard sobs escaped me. Cameron hushed me and held me tightly while images of Rocco’s grinning face and his dead body lying on the floor flashed through my head in a swirl. My heart felt like it was being squeezed into a rock-hard fist.

Leaning into Cameron, I cried until the tea grew cold and the room dark. I cried until my shoulders, my arms, and my lungs ached and until the tears had long dried. When I was done, and all I could do was whimper, Cameron carried me to bed. My head on his chest, he stroked my hair until I fell into a dreamless sleep.

It was the middle of the night. My throat was throbbing, and Cameron wasn’t next to me. The pain that was in my heart was unbearable. The cottage was quiet, and I could hear the crickets lamenting their lullaby outside. I heard a chair creak down in the kitchen, and I tiptoed to the edge of the loft. Through the rails I saw Cameron sitting at the table with his head in his hands and his fingers raking in and out of his hair. His shoulders were heaving in quick sequences. It took me a moment to realize that he was sobbing, silently, alone.

I knew I was witnessing something never seen. I thought about going down there. But then I let Cameron grieve the loss of his little brother in peace.

After a while, the chair pushed away from the table, and the wooden stairs groaned. Cameron crawled back into the single bed and lay next to me. Feigning sleep, I exhaled, took his arm, and brought it under my arm to my other shoulder, fitting myself into him. Cameron didn’t push me away. He clasped his fingers through mine and pulled me even closer to him. He stuffed his face in my hair and sighed, and we fell asleep as we became one skin.

 Chapter Twenty-One:
 I Never Said It Was a Good Plan

I had no idea where I was or what time it was when I woke again. Disoriented, I glanced around the barren room, looking for a clock and suddenly remembered. Disarrayed images of what had happened started filtering through in pieces—gunfire, a wicker chest, the guard’s dead eyes, Rocco … I gulped to force back down the knot that was growing in my throat and got up.

From the small, downstairs windows, I could see that the sun was up and that Cameron was gone. I climbed down the creaky stairs just as he was walking through the door, grocery bags in hand.

“The corner store didn’t have much, but it’ll do us for a while,” he announced, breathless. He placed the bags on the table and rushed to meet me at the stairs.

He cradled my face in his hands and surveyed it with worry, passing his thumbs over my puffy and scratched cheeks. I forced a cheering smile.

“Mornin’,” he whispered, kissing me on the forehead without reserve.

He went to put the groceries away while I worked to get my bearings back. I made my way to the table, tightly holding onto the falling waistline of his pants and almost tripping on the hems that were dragging on the floor. Cameron chuckled at the sight of me and nodded his head toward the bathroom door. “I brought your bag in if you want to change,” he said, simultaneously glancing at me with questioning eyes.

We sat over breakfast. Even after Cameron’s insistence, I couldn’t eat anything, but I did manage to guzzle down a glass of milk, which soothed my raw throat. The stillness at the table was making me self-conscious, particularly when Cameron kept intently staring at me the whole time. I could tell that something was bothering him—with my damaged face, my untamed hair, I must have looked like I had walked off a safari. I swallowed the rest of my milk and went to shower. When I strolled out of the washroom, Cameron was sitting on the stairs, waiting for me. Whatever was bothering him hadn’t been satiated with my slightly improved appearance.

I took a seat a few stairs below him and struggled to get my wet locks into a ponytail. Cameron didn’t wait another second before scuttling down to the stair behind me, his legs to my side, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and pulling me in. Something had changed. His emotions had become … unrestrained. I couldn’t explain it. Whatever the reason for the change, the new, uninhibited Cameron disarmed me. The ache in my heart still throbbing, I found it to be what I needed most.

I closed my eyes and let my head fall back.

“Emmy,” he murmured into my ear.

“Hmmm …”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Uh, huh …”

“Yesterday, when we went back into the house to pack your stuff and leave, how come you had a bag already packed?”

My eyes shot open. With everything that had happened, I had completely forgotten about the eavesdropped conversation between Cameron, Carly, and Spider.

“What is it?” he asked when I wasn’t answering. “Your body just went stiff.”

I’d forgotten who I was talking to. “I don’t want you to be mad.”

“Why would I get angry?” His body had stiffened too. I hesitated saying anything else.

“I promise I won’t get mad,” he told me finally. “Can you please tell me what’s going on?”

While I was playing with my hands, trying to find a way to not ruin the moment or the change in him, he was growing impatient.

“Emmy, you’re making me nervous—”

“I know you were going to let Spider kill me,” I blurted under his pressure.

“What?” He jumped so high that he almost sent both of us tumbling down the stairs. “… What are you talking about?”

Cameron looked at me in disbelief, like he genuinely didn’t know what I was talking about. It was easy for me to forget all the bad stuff when I was cocooned in his arms—perhaps it had the same effect on him?

Turning my face to his and taking one immense inhalation, I told Cameron everything I had overheard, word for word, without emotion. All of it seemed like a dream now. While the story progressed, I watched his facial expressions change from confused to incredulous to deeply disturbed.

“I can’t believe that you actually think I’m capable of doing that,” Cameron said, shaking his head in amazement. He moved me to the side so that he could see me clearly. “Emmy, no matter what you did or said, no matter how bad things get, that would never happen. No one would ever be able to convince me that getting rid of you is the solution. Not Carly or Spider. Not even you.”

“I didn’t imagine it,” I quickly defended, heat building behind my ears.

“What you overheard had nothing to do with you.”

“I snuck around … I talked to the guards … I didn’t follow orders …” I wasn’t exactly sure why I kept arguing with him. Was I trying actually trying to convince him that getting rid of me was a good plan?