Crow’s Row

  Three hours later, the clock rang. I waited and let Meatball back inside.

  But Griff never showed.

  Chapter Sixteen:

  Scar Tissue

  The house was filled of people and yet unnaturally, densely quiet, like the woods would get right before a storm came crashing down.

  I could have sworn Cameron had seen me trotting down the stairs, but he kept walking like he hadn’t. When I called out to him, he paused at the front door without looking back. Carly did turn, and she glared … at me?

  Cameron murmured to Carly and Spider that he would catch up with them. They left, he finally turned around, and I was almost in tears. His face was impenetrable, robotic. He forced a smile—it was thin and bloodless. This only made it worse.

  “What’s wrong?” I managed to ask as I slowly walked toward him—I was sure he had taken a minute step back when I had.

  “Nothing … Just work,” he said with the same strained smile. “I’ll be gone most of the day. Can you keep an eye on Rocco for me?”

  “Of course,” I softly agreed. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”

  “Everything’s fine,” he answered with an automated tone. “Have a good day.”

  He swiftly spun and left the house. I stood in the foyer, befuddled as usual.

  I wondered how bad things had gotten the night before between Spider, Tiny, and Cameron for Cameron to still be so upset. I found myself being angry at Griff—for refusing to follow orders, for ruining my sleep and my perfect moment with Cameron, for causing a rift in the family.

  Rocco was in his room, lying in bed, looking at the ceiling.

  His face was wrenched in pain.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked him.

  “I’ll be fine in a few minutes once these green pills kick in,” he said through gritted teeth.

  I noticed the bag of rainbow tablets next to his bed. “What does your prescription say?”

  Rocco laughed, with difficulty. “Dr. Lorne isn’t the type of doctor who gives prescriptions. Who knows what these pills are, I just know they make me feel a lot better … once they work.”

  “Can I get you anything?” Like a drug dictionary or a stomach pump …

  “You can come keep me company,” he suggested, still focused on the ceiling. “I’m getting really bored lying here by myself.”

  I scooted next to Rocco, and we watched the ceiling together.

  “You didn’t have to shoot yourself in the foot just to get out of doing homework.”

  He chuckled, and then loudly inhaled as the pain hit him again. I took his hand and he squeezed it hard.

  “I think I told you some stuff about Cameron that I wasn’t supposed to tell you last night,” he said.

  “You weren’t making much sense. I didn’t pay any attention.”

  “Just don’t tell Cameron I told you, okay?” he pleaded. “He’ll be really upset if he finds out.”

  I hated being the bearer of bad news. “Actually, you weren’t exactly discreet about it.” I played it down a bit, “I think Cameron might have overheard you.”

  He swore under his breath. “Was he mad?”

  “I don’t think so.” I struggled to keep the burning localized to the back of my ears.

  “What did he say?”

  My cheeks were getting hot. I was trying to find something to answer without telling Rocco anything. “Not much.”

  A full-toothed grin formed on his face. “I guess he had a hard time talking when he was sticking his tongue down your throat.”

  “You saw?” I gasped in horror. “I thought you were sleeping!”

  “Actually, I thought I had dreamt the whole thing,” he narrowed his eyes, “which would have been really weird if I did dream about my brother kissing some girl … Yuck! But you just confirmed that I’m not going nuts. Thanks.”

  I reached over and punched him hard in the arm. “How much did you watch, pervert?”

  “Don’t worry,” he said lightly, “I just saw a couple of arms thrashing around in the dark. And then, of course, there were the kissy sounds.” He puckered his lips together and made exaggerated kissing noises near my face to remind me that he was definitely just fifteen years old.

  I pushed his face away. “You got Griff in a lot of trouble yesterday for shooting yourself.”

  Rocco’s grin was replaced with a pout. I was a little smug.

  “Cameron promised me a rank position. I was the only one who didn’t have a gun. How am I supposed to get any respect from the guys if he keeps treating me like I’m a kid?”

  I was going to remind him that he was a kid, but changed my mind. “I think Cameron was just trying to keep you safe.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Maybe. But you obviously can’t take care of yourself when you have a gun in your hands,” I pointed out.

  He sulked for a bit … And then he wondered, “How much trouble is Griff in?”

  “I don’t know. Cameron was pretty upset last night. He still looked really angry this morning.” My voice quaked a bit.

  “I bet Griff is pretty upset with me too.”

  “I don’t think so. But he’s definitely scared.”

  “Scared? Why?” He looked as incredulous as I had been.

  “I don’t know. He came into my room last night and kept saying that they were going to kill him,” I edited, deciding it was better to not tell Rocco everything that Griff said. It was too painful.

  “He went into your room!”

  “He climbed up the deck in the middle of the night,” I said.

  “Wow! He must have been really freaked. Have you talked to Cameron about it? I mean, Griff is being pretty ridiculous about this. He’s not going to get killed just because I shot myself in the foot.”

  I was glad to hear that I wasn’t the only one who thought that Griff was being ridiculous—but at the same time I didn’t want to tell Rocco about Griff’s notion that he was going to get killed … because of me. Had I led Griff to think that there had been something more than friendship between us?

  “I haven’t said anything to Cameron about this yet … he wasn’t in a very good mood this morning.”

  “I’ll talk to Cameron,” he stepped up. “This is my fault. Griff shouldn’t get in trouble because of me.”

  The moment of maturity was short-lived … Rocco started giggling.

  “So you finally sucked face with my big brother. Hallelujah! I think I deserve a prize for that one.”

  “I wouldn’t go advertise the fact that you can’t keep your mouth shut, Rocco,” I snapped.

  “Looks like we have something in common then,” he said, disgustingly flicking his tongue at me.

  I punched him in the arm, even harder this time but he was quite numb now and didn’t feel a thing.

  “You’re gross,” I muttered. Irritated, I got up and stepped on something sticky on the floor. “And your room is gross.”

  I thought about it and announced, “I think I’m actually going to clean it today.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” he said, his eyes round.

  I started picking up dirty clothes from the floor and throwing them out into the hallway. “You’re going to be spending a lot of time in here, and you can’t lie in this disgusting smell all day,” I lectured and gave him an ultimatum, “You can watch me go through all of your stuff, or you can tell me where I can and can’t go, but either way, I’m cleaning your room today.”

  I fixed him a couple of sandwiches. With a full belly and incapacitated state, Rocco agreed to guide me through his maze of a mess. It took us a long time to dig our way out. In the end, I had stacked three large bags of garbage on the front stoop, had filled the dishwashers to the brim with newly discovered dirty dishes, and we had five more loads of laundry to do.

  Supper came. His room was close to spotless, and I helped him limp into the living room to eat and watch TV, which, as he explained, was his treat for working so hard all day—talking while
I worked away had been an exhausting task for him.

  I knew that Rocco was feeling better when his needs became more extravagant. At some point, he complained that his voice was getting tired from having to make so many demands and suggested that I get him a bell so that he could just ring it instead of moving his mouth. I respectfully declined. I refilled his juice cup one last time and went to bed.

  I still hadn’t talked to Griff since the night that he had broken into my room. I threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and went to check on Rocco before going down to confront Griff. The kitchen was empty. The house was still hushed. I peeked into Rocco’s room—he was still snoring. I groaned quietly when I noticed clothes already piled on the floor.

  It was sunny out and the guards were out and about, but Griff was not. I could feel their stare as I walked toward the garage, but I didn’t care if they saw me. I was determined to clear the air.

  I opened the side door into the stifling hot garage and walked past the lineup of cars. The Maserati had been dug out of the mud and dragged back in. It was hard to tell because of the extreme amount of mud, but it looked in pretty bad shape: clumps of grass were stuck under the crooked front wheels, the front fender was also bent and scratched, the driver’s-side mirror was missing.

  I tiptoed up the stairs and could feel the choking humid air get worse as I climbed. Upstairs, there were half a dozen floor fans running in tandem, which caused the makeshift curtains to fan in and out of the window sills and sporadically cast rays of light onto the room. A handful of night guards were sprawled on top of their beds, uncomfortably sleeping in the heat.

  From the end of the room, I couldn’t see Griff in his bed. I tiptoed over to be sure. What I found when I did get to his bed shocked me—not only was he not there, but his bed was completely empty—devoid of any pillow, sheets, or blankets. There was just a naked mattress. The areas around and under Griff’s bed had also been cleaned out of his personal effects. Griff had already left … I realized this in horror … but he hadn’t taken everything with him—still tucked under his bed was his box of fighting magazines—the nonessentials.

  I didn’t care much that he had left me behind or that he had broken his promise to come and get me before he did leave, but the thought of him walking around in the woods by himself concerned me greatly.

  I dejectedly sat on his bed and ruffled through a magazine, looking for an explanation, until my peripheral interrupted my train of thought. The garbage bag curtain next to Griff’s bed had moved with the wind of the oscillating fan. From the second-story window, I noticed someone walking on the grass by the forest line below. I looked closer and saw Carly walking by herself, carrying her usual stack of files. She strolled toward the woods, turning onto a shoelace of a beaten dirt path and disappearing through the tree brush.

  A booming voice abruptly raised me from my meditation. “What do you think you’re doing in here, girl?”

  It was one of the line guards, the same one who had informed me that Griff had left with Cameron a few days before, the same scary one who liked to glare at me. He was standing by the top of the stairwell, a tall and grossly skinny man. His hair was greased, like it hadn’t been washed in a few days. Adding to my luck, all of the night guards had been awakened by the man’s roar.

  In the moment it took the angry guard to stomp toward me, it occurred to me that coming here alone, without Griff, had been a really bad idea.

  “I was just looking for Griff,” I stammered.

  The man approached the bed. “Your boyfriend’s long gone, honey,” he sneered. “Finally got what was coming to him. Acting like he was better than us … .maybe if he hadn’t been so high and mighty we would have told him to stay away from the boss’s latest girl. Playing that game will always get you wacked.”

  “Griff ran away,” I insisted, my shaking voice failing to convince either of us.

  “The only place that guy is running to is hell.”

  He grabbed me by the arm and tried to pull me off the bed. “Girls like you come and go around here all the time, you ain’t nothing special, and I ain’t gonna get killed for some prissy little girl.” He twisted my arm and yanked me from my seat. “Now get the hell out of here before you get another one of us killed.”

  “You’re hurting me!” I told him.

  He twisted harder. I yelped.

  “Roach! Let her go!” one of the bigger night guards commanded.

  “Mind your own business, Brick. Go back to bed.” Roach was dragging me away from the bed.

  Two night guards swiftly jumped off their bed and made their way toward us. Roach immediately chickened out and let me go.

  “Go,” the guard ordered me as he pushed Roach out of my way and kept his eyes on him.

  I ran from the garage without protest, without looking back. Outside, nothing was different. The sun was still shining. The armed guards were still stalking the property, still doing their best to ignore me. But, to me, it was all a little different, like Griff’s absence had shaded it all in various shades of gray. I loved Cameron. And Cameron loved me. Of this I was sure—I couldn’t have imagined that feeling. Everything else was now gray.

  I didn’t stop running until I was back in the house. My heart was pounding through my chest, and Rocco was shambling down the stairs.

  “I was looking for you. Where were you?” he asked me.

  “Just walking around,” I lied. I knew that I wasn’t supposed to be hanging around Griff or looking for him either. My head was buzzing too much to give Rocco a better excuse.

  I had to admit that Rocco looked funny standing in his swim trunks with a plastic bag over his injured foot.

  “I’m going for a swim,” he announced. “Coming?”

  “You really shouldn’t be going in the water with your foot injured like that. It’ll get infected.”

  “No, it won’t,” he squeaked and pointed at his plastic wrapped foot, “My foot will stay dry in this.”

  My expression was laden with doubt, but he ignored me. “So are you coming or not?”

  I shrugged and didn’t waste time changing my clothes and my frame of mind. I desperately needed to be with a friendly face while I cleared my head. When I got to the pool, Rocco was in the water, and the plastic bag had already been thrown to the side.

  “It didn’t work,” he explained before I could ask him. I raised my eyebrows in a “told-you-so” way and plunged into the pool.

  When I came back up for air, he was looking at me oddly.

  “What’s on your arm?”

  I followed his gaze and looked at my upper arm—five finger-sized bruises were surfacing where Roach had grabbed me.

  “I think I’m getting a rash,” I said.

  He swam away from me.

  I tried to forget Roach, count my blessings, and focus on what Roach had said, not what he had done. I could tell that he wasn’t the most reliable source … but he had seemed so sure of himself that Griff was … I couldn’t bring myself to believe him.

  “Did you talk to Cameron about Griff yet?” I asked Rocco, trying to sound as cool as possible.

  “Yeah. I talked to him about it last night.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. Cameron said the same thing I did. Griff is being stupid—no one’s going to kill him or anything like that. I’m the one who screwed up, not Griff.” His voice was slightly bitter.

  “One of the guards told me he was gone,” I mentioned innocently in passing.

  “I know,” he admitted. “Griff was sent away yesterday.”

  I wondered if sent away was a code for … something else. “Why would he be sent away if shooting yourself in the foot was your fault?”

  “Because he doesn’t follow anyone’s orders. I guess him breaking into your room was kind of the last straw.”

  I was mortified. “You told Cameron that Griff climbed into my room!”

  “No, I didn’t!” Rocco whimpered. “They already knew. Spider caught Griff climbin
g down.”

  I knew this couldn’t be good.

  “Where was Griff sent away to?” I asked, acting as casual as I could.

  “Cameron found him another job with one of his distributors.”

  “And you believe him?” I questioned, too quickly—what was I insinuating?

  He looked at me strangely. “Why wouldn’t I believe him? That’s a stupid question.”

  I left it alone. Rocco was getting upset, and so was I.

  After a while, the patio door opened. Spider and Carly walked right to the pool house, completely ignoring Rocco and me. A short while later, Cameron also appeared and tensely sat on the edge of the lounge chair.

  He surveyed me.

  “What’s on your arm?” It had sounded like an accusation.

  “Rash,” Rocco explained for me, thankfully.

  Cameron continued to stare at my arm with suspicion. I swam away, grabbing the piece of bandage that floated by and throwing it at Rocco.

  He mumbled a curse, stumbled out of the pool, and hopped on one leg back into the house to go fix his foot.

  From the opposite end of the pool I was suddenly brave. “Why didn’t you tell me Spider saw Griff climb out of my room?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that Griff climbed into your room?”

  “You weren’t in a good mood, and I didn’t want to get him in trouble. He was already pretty scared,” I answered right away.

  “He didn’t follow orders. He had reason to be scared.”

  His voice chilled me and I was less brave now. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

  Cameron chewed on his answer. “You and this Griff fellow seemed to have grown … close over the past few weeks. What you and he were up to in your room is none of my business. I won’t stop you from being with who you want to be with. What I can’t have is an employee who refuses to follow my orders.”

  It had all sounded too rehearsed.

  “You think that Griff and I were doing something up in my room?”

  “Like I said, you can be with whoever you want, and I’m sure the two of you probably have a lot in common. I still have a job to do and that includes keeping you safe. We have rules for a reason around here and someone who doesn’t follow rules is a danger to you and the rest of us.”