Crow’s Row (47 page)

Please keep walking, I internally begged. He was taking a ridiculous amount of time to cross the street, or was I just imagining that he was? Time had seemed to stop. I started to shake … I knew. But what I didn’t know was that he had just been a diversion while his cohorts approached the car from behind. The back doors opened, and I yelled … didn’t I? An arm grabbed me from behind and held my body against the seat while a burlap sack was being thrown over my head. I couldn’t breathe, and I started flailing my hands, scratching the skin off the arm that was suffocating me. Something pricked my neck. There was a rush of warmth. My heartbeats slowed. Was I still breathing? A gurgled moan in my throat, and then it was all nothingness.

Surely I was dead. My eyes were open—I had to bring my fingers to my face to confirm this. Yes, they were open. But I couldn’t see a thing.

I groaned, but the sound that came out was not my own. It was the sound that a sixty-year-old chain-smoker would make. My head was pounding against my skull. My clothes were drenched with what I assumed to be my own sweat. Spit had leaked out the corner of my mouth and dried on my cheek.

I was lying on something soft.

There was a slit of light streaming in a few feet ahead. Good. I wasn’t blind either.

I struggled to turn my body on its side—everything was numbed. I was a marionette, with my brain pulling on strings to make my body move. I rolled to the ground in a thump. There was carpet, but it was too rough and cheap, the kind that was sold by the acre. I could feel the coldness of the cement seeping through it. I was suddenly thankful for the numbness—the tumble would have hurt otherwise.

I dragged myself across the floor like a rabid dog toward the light. My breaths were shallow.

It took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to the light. My elbows were too weak to hold me up. I had to slump to my side, with my cheek against the smelly carpet. All I could hear were the cymbals that were clashing between my ears.

Through the slit under the door, there was nothing to see but a white wall and an expanse of more bargain-basement carpet. I willed myself back onto my elbows and used the door to hold my weight while I struggled to sit up. The blood rushed to my head. With a dozen deep breaths and my back against the door, I inhaled and exhaled the nausea away, while clumsily fingering above for a door handle. I hit something cold—the door was locked. I was focusing on breathing … but the panic was slowly setting in. I needed to move. Crawling on my hands and knees, I slid my hand against the wall and felt my way around. Wherever I was, there wasn’t much to it: a square room of maybe ten-by-ten feet with a bed—nothing else.

The room was so hot. There was no exit. I was having difficulty breathing, and I was sweating buckets. I started to dry heave and finally threw up on the floor next to me. I rested my head on my wobbly knees.

I must have fallen asleep or passed out. When I awoke, I was curled up in a ball on the cold floor. Someone had opened the door and pulled on the string that hung from the ceiling to turn the single lightbulb on. It was still swinging back and forth when I looked up. The light hurt my eyes, but a bit of air had strewn in from the opened door.

A man stood in front of me, staring with his arms crossed and his legs spread in a guarded stance. His head was shaved to the skin, and a pistol hung on a holster across his chest—like a soldier awaiting his marching orders.

“There’s a bed right next to you. You don’t need to sleep on the floor,” he said, his voice robotic.

I sat up at a snail's pace, rested my elbows on my knees, and held my head in my hands. My lips were quivering uncontrollably.

“Eat,” the man commanded. He kicked over a tray of food that was on the floor: a juice box and a sandwich with what appeared to be bologna. The nausea hit me again. I brought my trembling hands to my mouth.

“I’m a vegetarian,” I said coarsely through my fingers. A lie.

“Eat the bread then,” he grunted impatiently. “It’s the only thing that will make the nausea go away.”

“What did you inject me with?”

“Just a mild sedative.”

I pulled my right hand away from my mouth and held it flat in front of my face. It was still trembling, more than a mild sedative should make me tremble. I scowled at him. He didn’t flinch. I noticed the scratch marks on his arms. This made me grin—at least I had gotten a piece of him.

“You’re Shield, right?” I asked with a matter-of-fact tone.

“I’m not leaving here until you eat.” His stare was unremitting.

“Where’s my uncle?”

He looked at me strangely. “You mean the guy who was in the car with you?”

I stared in response. “He’s fine. Now eat,” he said.

I couldn’t tell if he was lying, but assumed he was.

“I want to see him,” I said with difficulty. The room was spinning, and a bead of sweat was forming on my forehead.

“Eat,” he commanded again.

“I’m not … eating till I … see … my … uncle.” I leaned over and threw up.

The soldier-man swore. The walls of the room shook as he slammed the door behind him. I heard the lock on the doorknob click. His footsteps echoed down the hall and eventually dissipated into silence.

Afraid of passing out in my own vomit, I climbed onto the dirty mattress, turned to my side, and brought my knees into my chest. I was worn out.

The door burst open. The hanging lightbulb was still on. I had no idea how long I had been out. The soldier-man was holding Uncle Victor by the collar and, with frustration and impatience on his face, pushed him into the room. The door slammed and locked as he exited again, leaving Victor and me alone.

Victor ran to my side and held me at arms’ length. “You look terrible, kid,” he said, inspecting my face.

“I’m so sorry I brought you into this, Uncle Victor,” I sobbed. I was everybody’s bad-luck charm.

Victor shushed me while I cried on his shoulder. But I didn’t have enough energy to cry more than a minute.

“Did they hurt you?” he whispered and did a quick glance of the room.

“I think I’m okay. They drugged me. You?”

“I’m fine,” he said distractedly. Victor looked down at the tray on the floor. “Is this what they brought you to eat?” he asked with disdain. I nodded.

He picked up the tray, stuck the straw in the juice box, and handed it over to me. “Here,” he said, “you need some liquids.” While I gluttonously slurped the juice, he investigated the sandwich, smelling it first and pulling it apart. Satisfied, he ripped the bread into pieces and handed them to me one by one, like I was a child or a bird.

“Have you eaten?” I asked.

“I’m fine. I don’t need to eat.”

I glanced over his face. He did look fine. A lot better than me, I assumed.

“Do you know where we are?” he wondered. I was just about to ask him that question. At least he had been outside the room.

I shrugged. “No, but I have a good idea who’s behind this.”

He searched my face. “Who?”

I lowered my voice so that it was barely audible. “This guy named Shield. A sleaze-ball drug dealer.”

“Drug dealer? How do you know this?” Victor’s voice was alarmed.

I realized how much life had changed for me in the matter of a few months. The old Emily would have never known about drug dealers named Shield.

“Cam … the people I was with told me.”

“What else did they tell you?”

I hesitated. Cameron had told me things in confidence—and definitely would not have wanted me to share any of these things with a police officer, even if he was my almost-uncle.

Victor, sensing my uncertainty, leaned in. “Emily, I need to know everything if I’m going to get us out of here.”

I knew he was right, but I decided to keep Cameron out of it. “Bill had gotten himself involved in drug trafficking. Shield thinks that Billy stole his business. He’s after me because he wants the money that Billy left behind when he died.”

“You think all this is about money?”

“I know this is about money.”

Victor seemed interested by this. “Where’s the money?”

I couldn’t see how I would tell Victor about the money without bringing Cameron into the picture. I had to improvise. “I don’t really know. I haven’t seen any.” This was technically the truth—numbers on a pendant were all I had seen.

Victor looked a little disappointed but continued, “What about the people you were with?”

“They had nothing to do with us being here.” I said this too quickly. Victor caught scent that something was not right.

He raised an eyebrow. “How involved were you with these people, Emily?”

The way he was blankly staring at me made me feel like I was in his interrogation room back at the police station. I could feel the bead of sweat building on my brow again.

“Barely knew them,” I lied.

From the look on Victor’s face, he didn’t buy it. “Were they involved in drugs?”

“I don’t know. We never talked about that,” I lied again.

Uncle Victor was getting angry. “Come on! You can do better than that!” He wasn’t whispering anymore. He was the interrogator. I was the criminal.

“Uncle Victor, I don’t know what you’re asking me. You would know more than I would from talking with the DEA.” I could feel the tears surging.

His face went pale. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Yes, you’re right. I do know what they’re capable of. I was just afraid of what they might have put you through. That’s all.”

“They’re not bad people, Uncle Victor.”

This made him angry. “How can you say that? They’re lowlifes. Thugs. Mere children.” His voice was harsh and loud. I was taken aback.

He then recomposed and smiled. “These people have no class, Emily. Not like you and me. We’re from a different world.” He reached over and stroked my cheek with his thumb. “You look so much like Isabelle.”

It was the way that, unlike me, his head did not have one hair out of place and his clothes looked freshly ironed. And it was how he looked right through me, as though he saw someone else, that made something flicker at the bottom of my gut.

“How was my mother when you saw her?”

He smiled dreamily. “She was very worried about you. She cried when she found out that those thugs had taken you.”

This was my first hint. My mother wasn’t the crying type. It ruined her makeup. “How did you know I was missing?”

“Your mother called me after she had been to your place. All your stuff was gone, and you weren’t there.”

Second hint: my mom would never go to my place unless she was dragged kicking and screaming, and she would definitely have no idea where my stuff was, or what my belongings would even look like. “How long have you been looking for me?”

“A few months now.”

Nope, she was still in France then—and barely thinking about me. My dear Uncle Victor was lying through his yellowing teeth.

Cameron had told me that Shield could not be killed because of his connections, because someone like him could not turn up dead or go missing without too many questions being asked—as would be the case with a police officer. I then understood that Shield was just a nickname for the police badge that he used to shield his crimes.

I glared back at my uncle Victor, who had abused our family ties to lure me away from Cameron, and who I now understood was also called Shield.

Tears were building up in my eyes. I cleared my throat in an effort to keep them at bay and not arouse his suspicion that the game was up.

“How are we going to get out of here?” My croaking voice betrayed me.

Shield’s eyes twinkled. His hand had moved to the top of my head and he was petting my hair, lovingly.

“Did you know that I saw Isabelle first? Before Burt even knew that she existed?”

I was shaking. He smiled.

“We were all at the same party. One of those work parties that your father used to drag my sister to. Isabelle came through the door, and all eyes were on her. She was a stunning woman. Still is. But, out of all those people, she smiled at me first.” His face then turned grim. “Back then, your father had a lot more money than me. I was just a beat cop. I couldn’t compete. But things are different now.”

He snapped out of his daydream and winked at me. A chill went down my spine. I yanked his hand away. The tears were rolling down my cheeks but my glare was unyielding.

“You’re still a cop,” I reminded him spitefully.

“Yes,” he said, like his treachery had been a major feat. “And you’ll make me rich again.”

I knew the minute I admitted to the money, I was no longer going to be of use to him. “I don’t have my brother’s money.”

His eyes were on fire. “That money was my money, not Bill’s. It should have been given back to me when he died,” he said harshly. “I taught Bill the business, treated him like my own son. Together, we were going to rule the underworld. Then that ungrateful bastard stole it all from me and joined forces with those motherless street kids. Bill owed me a lot more than the dollars he left behind.”