Crow’s Row

by Julie Hockley

  “You must have gotten in a lot of trouble because of me,” I mused guiltily.

  He nodded. “We had to enlist one of the local gang leaders because leaders aren’t allowed to hunt on each other’s turf without permission. But, for the most part, I tried to keep everything as quiet as possible so that no one would know about you. That’s why I brought Rocco along to keep watch, and, well, you know how that turned out.” He smiled with pain at the memory his little brother. “When we got back to the farm, I held an emergency meeting with all the leaders and gave them my version of events before Shield got to them. I let them vote on my fate. They all hate Shield, so I got a unanimous vote of support right away.”

  I turned to him. “What was your version, exactly?”

  He smiled slyly. “Strictly what they needed to know—that Shield was still trying to go after the money, even after he was told by all the leaders that it didn’t belong to him, and that the financial controller of Bill’s estate had been targeted for kill.”

  The memory of the day that I had heard Cameron coldly talk to Manny about me in his office resurfaced. “And that you had taken care of the insignificant girl who had witnessed everything,” I added. I couldn’t hide the hurt in my voice.

  Cameron cupped my face in his hands. “Emmy, if I told them the truth about my feelings for you, the word would get out really quickly, and you would become a target—not just because of your money but because they would know they could control me if they had you.”

  He reassuringly pressed his lips against mine—but then he stopped himself and pulled away.

  We went to grab lunch at a small diner that Cameron knew about. Then we made our way back to the cabin where Meatball was waiting for us, his fur still wet from a recent swim. Cameron convinced me to join him for a swim in the pond. Although I didn’t enjoy getting the slimy lily pads stuck between my toes, being alone in the water with Cameron was well worth all the ickyness of the weeds.

  When the sun went down, we crawled into bed, and I looked for a distraction. What I found surprised me.

  “Why can’t you just kill Shield?” I asked him, before I realized that I had just suggested that someone get killed.

  Cameron wasn’t shocked by my question. “I wish I could just get rid of him that easily, but he’s got too many connections. When someone like that goes missing or turns up dead, people start asking questions and pry into our stuff. Anyway, any decision like that needs to be made by all the leaders, not just me. They would never risk attention from the Feds just so that I can protect the girl that I love.”

  His voice trailed off and he fell asleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Three:

  Normal?

  Rocco’s face came back to haunt my dreams. I woke up, but there were no tears or cold sweats this time—just a great sense of loss. The room was almost completely dark, with the only light coming from the moonlight that shone through the small cottage windows. I knew that Cameron was still asleep—his heavy breathing was tickling the back of my neck. I spun around without making a noise to make sure that he was really there, and not just something else that my ailing mind had made up.

  He was definitely still there.

  I watched him for a while and tried to breathe as quietly as possible. I was afraid of waking him up. This was the only time that I could look at him as much as I wanted to without having to look away, embarrassed when he discovered me. I watched his stomach heave up and down, his fists still clenched, readied while he slept.

  But Cameron’s alarm system was much more in-tune than mine. His eyes snapped open like he could hear my stare. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” he gasped. He threw a glance around the room and stopped back at me, ready to jump up and grab the gun that he left next to him.

  I was caught off-guard. The blood came rushing through, my face was boiling hot, I stopped breathing. It was already too late—as soon as his eyes had opened, my brain had turned itself off. I wouldn’t have been able to speak even somewhat coherently, let alone conjure up some lame excuse as to why I was staring at him in the middle of the night. I gave into the impulse, and, without an inch of reserve, I kissed him … more forcefully than I thought myself capable.

  Cameron was startled by my attack and remained still. He patiently let me kiss him, like he was waiting for the punch line.

  After a few seconds, his body relaxed. And then it tensed again, his hands grabbed hold of my face.

  All of a sudden, he pushed himself away, keeping me at arm’s length. “Emmy … please stop …”

  I shook my head. “No,” I told him without waiver. “I love you, Cameron. I won’t stop.”

  This was enough.

  Everything happened in fast and in slow motion. Our clothes indiscernibly made their way to the floor—yet I could smell every inch of his skin, hear his every breath, and feel every part of him that touched my skin like time stood still.

  The gray light of dawn brought a natural smile to my face. I had secretly and guiltily imagined this moment the instant I met Cameron—what it would be like to be with him in that way. Turned out the real thing was a million times better.

  I was blissful.

  It was still very early. Not even the birds were up. The cottage was so quiet that I thought I could hear Cameron blinking. He was awake too. I turned around. His cheeks were blotted red, but not in a good way, not like mine. He was glaring at the ceiling.

  “Was I that bad?” I joked, though I was afraid of the answer.

  He was startled out of whatever dark corner of his mind he had been in. “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you too,” I said shakily, carefully, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “I took advantage of you.”

  Huh? I was pretty sure that I had attacked him. “Then can you do it again? Because I’m starting to get cold over here,” I said, confused. I had meant that in every sense of the word. His odd mood was making me shiver.

  Cameron searched my face with worry, looking for evidence of whatever crime he thought he had committed. “Are you okay? Did it hurt?”

  He was too close for me to try to lie. “A little. At first,” I admitted. “It was wonderful.”

  But he wasn’t really listening to me. “I shouldn’t have let this happen. I really messed things up.”

  “If you’re planning on telling me that I was just another one of your mistakes, don’t bother. I’d rather live in ignorance of it.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” he said with frustration. “That’s just it. Everything is different because I love you. Now I was your first on top of that. I don’t think I could have screwed this up anymore than I already have.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t let some frat boy mount me before I got here,” I mumbled heatedly.

  “That’s not funny,” he said.

  “I’m not laughing.”

  His eyes turned to the ceiling and his voice trailed off. “I warned myself that this might happen if we were alone together for too long. I definitely set myself up to fail this time.”

  “You’re acting like you were the only one there making the decision. As far I remember, I was around for the whole thing too. Cameron, I wanted this. I made up my own mind a long time ago.” My eyes were tearing up.

  “Emmy, I’m worried that we won’t be able to go back to the way things used to be.”

  “Good.”

  “You’re being impossible about this,” he argued.

  “Why would I want things to go back to the way they were? Until a few minutes ago, I was smiling so much my cheek muscles were burning.” When I looked away, a drop fell from my eye.

  Cameron enveloped me into his naked arms. “I’m sorry. I completely ruined the moment as usual. I just don’t know how to fix this.”

  “You can start by not talking about this anymore.”

  “No, I mean I don’t know what we’re going to do when we have to go back out there. We can’t stay hidden here forever.”

  I st
ruggled out of his arms and glared at him. “Why do you over-think everything? Can’t you just turn your brain off, even for just a little while? It works for me all the time.”

  He chuckled. “I don’t think I can do that. My brain has had too many years of practice at constant juggling.”

  I leaned toward him and kissed his cheek. “How about now? Still juggling?”

  His eyes smothered me. “Still juggling—a mile a minute.”

  I kissed him on the lips. “And now?”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, his voice croaking slightly.

  I shrugged and proceeded to get up. He had tackled me back into bed before my toes ever touched the floor.

  Whatever dilemma was raging inside him would be pushed aside, for a while. I was grateful for this, even if it would be short-lived.

  In the late morning, Cameron grudgingly got up to let an impatient Meatball outside. His cell phone started ringing as soon as he got back into bed. He nuzzled in close to me and sighed.

  After a minute of incessant ringing, the phone went quiet. Then the ringing started up again.

  Cameron didn’t move.

  “Um, are you going to get that?” I wondered.

  “No,” he said sleepily.

  The ringing eventually stopped … and started again a few minutes later.

  He huffed, whipped the blankets off in annoyance, and stomped toward his jeans. He dug his cell phone out, looked at it, threw it back in his pocket, and rushed back, closing his eyes.

  I waited.

  Not a word from him.

  The suspense was killing me. “Do you have to call anyone back?”

  “I turned it off so it’ll stop bugging us,” he said.

  “Won’t you get in trouble for doing that?” I asked ingenuously, avoiding the real question.

  “I’m the boss, remember? If I don’t want to pick up the phone, I don’t have to.”

  “Oh,” I said, disappointed.

  Cameron chuckled and finally quenched my curiosity. “It was Spider, no big deal. Whatever’s going on, he’ll have to handle it himself.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Don’t know. Somewhere with Carly, I suppose. They’re doing the same thing we are,” he explained.

  I raised my eyebrows and he blushed. “Not that. I meant that they’re hiding out too. Everybody is. We have a rat in the gang. Nobody’s safe until we figure out who the traitor is.”

  “What makes you think someone sold you out?”

  “Someone told Shield where you were, when we’d leave for the city, and that half our guards were out of commission because of the flu. It was all a little too convenient for him to decide to attack that night. Somebody from the inside warned him.”

  “You have doubts about Spider and Carly,” I said matter-of-factly.

  “No, of course not.” Cameron looked confused. “Why would you say that?”

  “They’re hiding from us, we’re hiding from them. Why would we need to hide from them unless you suspected them or they suspected you?”

  His cheeks grew deep crimson. “I was looking for an excuse to be alone with you, for once. This was as good of an excuse as I was going to get. I told Spider that you needed some quiet time to recover.”

  “He bought that!”

  He smiled sheepishly. “Not at all, but I wasn’t asking his permission either.”

  I thought about what Frances had told me about Spider trying to take over the business after my brother died. “Do you like being the boss?”

  He looked at me curiously. “I don’t know. Never really thought about it.” He pondered for a moment, and then said, “Most of the time, it’s just a pain. Everyone wants you to make all the decisions so that they have someone to blame if something goes wrong.”

  “Why doesn’t Spider just do it then?”

  “I wish he would. He did do it for a little while, after Bill died. But the bosses decided that I was going to manage everything, and we had to go with what they wanted. If they don’t like or trust the big boss, everything falls apart really quickly and the turf wars start up again.” Cameron was rolling a lock of my hair around his finger. “It doesn’t matter much because Spider doesn’t want to be the big boss anyway.”

  “Seems to me like he would love that power,” I mumbled.

  “You’re under a lot more scrutiny when you’re the boss,” he said. “Whatever decision you make is made for the good of the business, no matter what. You can’t have any weaknesses that could affect your ability to manage the business and to make the right decision. For some bosses, it’s things like drug addictions or gambling. For Spider, it’s Carly. He knows Carly is his weakness—if he had to choose, he would put her before the business, which would be bad for all of us. The bosses only care about the money that goes into their pockets. Anything that threatens their bottom line would get all of us killed and replaced.”

  I looked away and asked, “Wouldn’t your relationship with Manny put you at risk of making bad decisions?”

  He chuckled at my tactless insinuation. “If she had meant anything to me, and if the bosses had found out, then it could have been an issue. But none of that happened. It never will. The leaders don’t care what you do on your spare time, so long as it doesn’t affect your judgment.”

  “Have you ever had any weaknesses then?”

  “Nope. Never. And I don’t plan on it,” he said coolly.

  I looked at him in shock. He laughed and pulled me into his arms.

  “My addiction to you is definitely a catastrophic weakness,” he softly said.

  “Oh, dear! What are you going to do?”

  His face turned glum for a second. “I haven’t figured that part out yet.” With a smile, he added, “Right now I’m planning to just keep you here as my prisoner. We’ll pretend that the rest of the world doesn’t exist and that no one cares that I love you.”

  My heart flapped. That sounded like the best plan I had ever heard. “So, Sherlock, do you have any suspects in mind as potential traitors?”

  “Could be anyone. We have a lot of people who work for us.”

  One shady character came to my mind. “What about Roach?”

  “There’s no way.”

  “You seem pretty sure about that.”

  Cameron shifted uncomfortably. “You think I would let him live after what he did to you?” he asked with the bitter voice that I hated. “He was gone before he could betray us.”

  I was taken aback. It wasn’t that I was sad to hear that there was one less maniac like Roach roaming this earth, but I was shocked that someone else had lost their life because of me.

  “Cameron, can you try to not kill anyone else on my behalf? No one will want to even come close to me anymore if they think that one wrong glance in my direction will get them on the chopping block.”

  “Good. No one should come near you anyway,” he said and looked at me intently. “He was dead, no matter what, Emmy. I can’t have an animal like that hanging around in my crew. He was too much of a liability.”

  He brushed my hair aside and started to kiss my neck. I was a little winded.

  “What’s it like doing what you do?” I wondered.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, his voice like velvet.

  “I mean having to make decisions like you did for Roach and having to act like a different person.”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’ve been doing it for so long that I don’t really notice a difference.” His interest was piqued. “How do I act?”

  “You’re just different. You don’t smile, you don’t laugh; you become distant—and sometimes you’re, well, scary.” My face went red.

  His brow furrowed. “I forget sometimes that what I do is scary to normal people like you.”

  “I’ve never heard anyone call me normal.” Apparently I was doomed to be abnormal in everyone’s world.

  He halfheartedly chuckled, then eyed me. “Are you scared of me now?”

  I looked into his brown ey
es. My face was still burning, my fingers were still tingling, and my heart had still not regained its normal pace since I had attacked him that night. “I’m terrified,” I answered truthfully.

  He smiled.

  When I got out of shower, he was sitting at the kitchen table, engulfed in the paperwork strewn in front of him and mumbling into his phone. I ate my cereal and listened as he rhymed off numbers to Spider’s voice. “Forty, ten, eighty …” These didn’t seem like big numbers, but I expected that several zeros probably followed the double digits.

  Cameron grinned when he caught me peeking at his papers. I couldn’t make anything out anyway. I found it odd that they would have any kind of records. I didn’t know much about criminal enterprises, but I had watched enough TV to know that leaving any kind of evidence behind was a really bad idea.

  “Aren’t you afraid that those papers are going to fall into the wrong hands?” I asked when he finally got off the phone.

  He slid the papers over the table to me. “Here. You can look if you want.”

  Though the papers were now right in front of me, I still couldn’t make out anything. All I could see were jumbled letters, numbers, and symbols—nothing that made any sense.

  “We have an encryption system,” he explained. “Carly came up with it. Every letter, symbol means something else.”

  “Wouldn’t someone eventually figure it out if you gave them enough time? Like the FBI?”

  He shrugged. “Sure they would. But we take extra precautions, like changing the meaning of codes every couple weeks and only writing down what we absolutely need to. Once we’re done with the paperwork, we destroy it right away.”

  “So how do you keep track of everything if you don’t keep any records?”

  He smiled deviously and tapped on his head with one finger. “I’ve got everything I need in here.”

  One smile from Cameron, and I had already forgotten what I had eaten for breakfast a few seconds ago.