Stone Crows: A Crow’s Row Love Story - Book 3

By Julie Hockley

The three people twenty-year-old Emily Sheppard loved the most have been lost to the underworld. Although two of her loves were murdered by psychopath Victor Orozo, Emily’s first love, Cameron Hillard, has been living another life without her. But now, despite Cameron’s best efforts, she has found her way back to him and given birth to his only child: a daughter named Billy.

Billy stands to inherit the entire underworld, a dark place that unfortunately wants her dead, and Cameron is desperate to keep Emily and Billy hidden before his world knows of their existence. While Emily tries to make sense of Cameron’s return from the dead, he disappears, leaving her to fend for herself and their child. As the underworld prepares to implode, Cam and Emmy must find a way to get out before it does.

Stone Crows is a tale of terror and love as Cameron and Emily immerse themselves in the ultimate battle for each other and the survival of their love child.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781663217011

Julie Hockley

Julie Hockley, a lawyer by trade and a writer by love, is the author of the bestselling series Crow’s Row. She currently resides with her family in Ontario, Canada. Stone Crows is her third novel. For more about Julie and her writing, visit www.juliehockley.com.

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Copyright © 2022 Julie Hockley.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2022907206

ISBN: 978-1-6632-1702-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-1701-1 (e)

iUniverse rev. date:     07/12/2022

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Part 1: Emily

Chapter 1 Airless, Air Born

Chapter 2 Mirrors

Chapter 3 Strange: The New Normal

Chapter 4 Burrito Gone

Chapter 5 Cuts like a Knife

Chapter 6 Tongue-Tied

Chapter 7 The Sheppard Way

Chapter 8 Satan

Chapter 9 Saffron

Chapter 10 Nightmare, Not Dream

Chapter 11 Asylum

Chapter 12 Blinded

Chapter 13 The Before

Chapter 14 Plain Sight

Chapter 15 Ghosts

Chapter 16 Old-Growth Tree

Chapter 17 Cure to Curse

Part 2: Cameron

Chapter 18 Evaporated into Darkness

Chapter 19 Another Day at the Office

Chapter 20 Fallible Humans

Chapter 21 Ice Cream Freezer

Chapter 22 Take a Bow

Chapter 23 The Ogre

Chapter 24 Caged Animal

Chapter 25 The Cloth Doesn’t Bind

Chapter 26 Lights-Out

Chapter 27 More Fucking Ghosts

Chapter 28 Everyday Heroes

Chapter 29 Shells and Bangers

Part 3: Emily

Chapter 30 Free Fall

Chapter 31 Éblouie

Chapter 32 Diamonds in the Sun

Epilogue

For my mom and dad

But I spoke a woman’s name,

And the darkness of a thousand nights

Leaped from the past,

And dug between us

A chasm of aching distance

I called to you;

But only the years answered.

You faded, faded,

And were lost.

—Richard Butler Glaenzer, The Chasm

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank you, my reader. You took a risk many years ago. Perhaps you hesitated at the time, or perhaps you seized the opportunity. But in the end, you picked up a book called Crow’s Row by someone unknown. A small voice in a world of many louder voices. A self-published author, no less. You picked up that book, you read it, and you recommended it to others. Then they took that risk, and that small voice began to grow. You were patient and kind, and that voice grew into another book and another. Now that voice sometimes whispers to that French Canadian girl she once was: I did it. I am an author. Thank you for giving me this. Thank you for taking the risk with Crow’s Row and with me. Thank you for nurturing my voice so that I felt confident enough to keep writing and keep sharing Emmy and Cam’s story. I hope you will continue to take those risks and to seek out those small voices and listen to their stories so that those small voices can grow too.

PROLOGUE

The walk along the trail was getting more and more arduous. Crooked fingers curled around the handle of a cane. The cane’s dulled tip skidded against dew-slick stones on a path that, in his youth, he would have covered in one breath. Nowadays he was breathless just walking to and from the washroom at night. In his heart, he was still young, of course.

Old and young: a duality he had in common with the woods he trekked every day. Where an old tree stood with leaves to the sun, a new sapling grew in its shadow, ready to replace it in a moment of weakness—against a high wind, against a bolt of lightning, against its own age.

His feet slowed. He noticed a majestic tree had fallen during the night. The severed trunk revealed its wood rotten under the bark. The sight reinvigorated his step. Not dead yet!

But the burst was short, and he was finally resigned to stop for a rest. When had he come to rely more on this fickle cane than his own two legs? As though it could hear his thoughts, a fat crow cackled and hopped from branch to branch, mocking him, atop the highest of the trees.

Pompous bastard, Pops mumbled as he pulled a piece of bread out of the pocket of his coat. He took a bite and, with an accusing eye, pointed the bread at the bird. You just wait. Soon it’ll be your turn to feel the hands of time strangling your bones. He threw the remaining bread onto the ground. When the bird flew down to steal what he’d discarded, the old man flung a rock at it. The crow flew away, rattled but uninjured, with the bread in its beak. Damn crows. Too busy flying high. They forget about those of us prowling on the ground.

A low grumble escaped him as he bent to pick up one of the black feathers that had fallen from the crow. With his treasure, he limped his way back home.

Last week, it had been a little red bird’s feather. Poor thing, his wife, Margaret, had said when he’d told her about it. The bird was not usual in the northeastern United States. It had appeared out of nowhere. For a few days, the skinny thing had followed him during his early morning trek, watching longingly as the old man dined on crackers at his resting spot. It had been too young and inexperienced to be so far out on its own. The old man was not soppy about these things. Nature was a cycle in which things lived and things died—feelings were futile, a foolish human construct.

Yet as the old man had considered this, most of his snack had mysteriously found its way to the ground closest to the fledgling. The same mysterious thing had occurred the next day and the next, until one morning, the old man had started his trek unaccompanied by the young bird. He’d arrived at his rest spot and found the bird, or what had been left of it. The head had been pecked off, as had most of its body. Probably a damn fat crow! Only a carcass and disheveled wings had remained.

The old man reckoned the red bird, unable to feed itself, had left him at the forest’s edge the day before and then come back to that spot and pecked the ground to see if any morsel had been forgotten.

This is what happens when man meddles in nature’s affairs. The old man had chastised himself as he’d plucked a red feather from the leftover wing. He’d always known this, of course, but for far too long a moment, he had thought—what? That he could change nature’s course? Defy what fate had long ago decided? Time and age had turned him into an emotional, silly old man.

He had left that morning conflicted but accepting of his little red bird’s destiny—and with his pockets still full of crackers. By the next morning, the bird’s carcass had been gone. Mother Earth had reclaimed what had always been hers, and he had made amends with her decision.

Once he returned to the house, the old man eased himself into his chair with the black feather in hand.

Did you find what you were looking for? Margaret asked, signing with her hands above the sewing resting on her lap. As he did, she often lacked energy to complete the simplest of tasks now. Like his, her skin was creped and translucent. Their bodies were fading together with time.

When they’d met some fifty years ago, how spirited and ravishing she had been! Her hair had been as dark as the woods in the night. In her eyes, he had seen the color of the forest floor after the rain. Her lips had been the color of ketchup chips. He once had been a sturdy chap able to carry her from the kitchen to the bedroom while his hands were still covered in suds from the unfinished dishes. Ah, but what fire they’d had! That fire still burned all these years later, though now it was more the steady flame of a candle than the erupting and unbridled blaze of a parched field, as it had been in their youth.

Yes, sweetheart, he wheezed as he added the raven’s feather to the bundle with the red fledging’s feather, linking the two in life and in death.

From one of the bedrooms came a familiar wail, one that made them feel young again but also very old.

His wife pushed herself off the couch, and he watched her leave the living room. Margaret was still ravishing. He longed to be able to carry her to the bedroom once again.

In the next life, he promised himself.

PART 1

EMILY

CHAPTER 1

AIRLESS, AIR BORN

When I was a child, after my stepbrother, Bill, died, I would practice at night. I’d time myself. I’d put one minute on the clock and go, putting a mess of thoughts, memories, and feelings together into words, as though I would someday get one more minute with him.

I would write down all the things I would have told him—and Rocco and Cameron. The love. The pain of their absence in my world, as if their tombstones were tied to my heart and weighing it down.

If I could have had one more minute with Bill.

One more minute with Rocco.

One more minute with Cameron.

These three people I had loved most and had lost to the underworld. Their names replayed in my head, each time deepening the pain, with their graves being dug deeper inside me.

Except one of those graves was empty.

While Bill and Cameron’s brother, Rocco, had been murdered by psychopath Victor Orozo, a.k.a. Shield, Cameron—my first love and the father of my baby girl—had been living another life without me. Without us. Hadn’t I seen Spider turn against Cameron in order to take over Cameron’s rule of the underworld? Hadn’t I hung over Cameron, watching him bleed after being shot by his best friend, Spider? I’d heard the last bullet being fired, killing him. Hadn’t I? For months, I’d executed a plan to avenge Bill’s, Rocco’s, and Cameron’s murders. For months, I’d put my unborn child and myself in danger; I’d planned to rid the world of Victor and Spider once and for all before they killed anyone else and before they came after my child next.

But Cameron had not been murdered. He had simply chosen to leave me in the most pathetic way: by faking his death. A breakup by text would have been gentler.

I should have been used to people leaving me. As sole heir to the Sheppard dynasty—or whatever was left of it—I’d grown used to having absent parents and being raised by a revolving door of hired help. I’d taught myself not to get attached to people, because people inevitably left at the earliest opportunity. Before Cameron had happened upon my life, I’d broken from my parental money trap and moved out on my own to attend the most nonprestigious school possible: Callister University. I’d toughened up; hardened through; and taught myself to live a normal, heirless life.

But even the most callused hearts could be pierced, and Cameron had somehow pierced mine.

Now I had given birth to Cameron’s child. Now I was in a bedroom that had been turned into a hospital room at a farmhouse somewhere in New York. My recovery was being overseen by a drunkard doctor named Dr. Lorne, a crony on Cameron’s speed dial who smelled as if sewer seeped from his pores. How I’d gotten there was still a mystery to me.

Wasn’t this what I’d wanted? Wasn’t this what everyone who had lost wanted and wished for: one more chance to be with the one he or she loved, no matter the circumstance? Yet I was there with the one I loved—or had loved—and I could barely stand to look at him, as if he were a creature awakened from the dead. Which he was.

There were nights when Cameron and I were alone in my so-called hospital room. Time was a blur because I was so unwell. How are you still alive? Why did you leave me? I would ask, looking into his dark eyes. My voice did not sound like my own. It was as though I were whispering to someone a farm field away.

When I asked these questions, he would hold my gaze, take my hand between his, and bring it to his lips. Could he even hear me? Was this really Cameron? This man I once had known was now pale. He’d lost at least ten pounds since I last had seen him alive. Gaunt was the word that came to my mind when I watched him. Still, he was striking, more so than ever. Weariness suited him.

I hated him. Or I wanted to hate him. It seemed I didn’t really know him after all. I barely even knew who I was anymore. Who was Emily Sheppard? Perhaps the problem was that I didn’t know who I was without him, whether he was dead or alive. Who was Emily Sheppard without Cameron Hillard? Cameron hadn’t just pierced my heart; he’d become my anchor, something I’d grabbed a hold of to keep myself moored as the waves of my desolate Sheppard world crashed into me. However, he really had been sinking me deep to the bottom of his dark world.

****

When I woke up in the room that had become my own at Dr. Lorne’s farm, Cameron was gone. There were no nurses. The foul-smelling doctor was out. Spider and Carly, Cameron’s best friends, were also, mercifully, out of sight. Finally, I had a moment to myself. To be myself by myself.

My eyes rested upon the bassinette at my bedside, where Billy was asleep. It was as though she had always been there, as though a world without Billy suddenly was implausible.

Billy; my dog, Meatball; and I had been in this room for at least a couple of weeks, though it was hard to tell how long exactly. The days seemed to run into each other, and Cameron’s constant presence yet lack of information sharing was taking a toll. The only positive aspect of being locked up in the room-cum-monastery was that the silence allowed my memory to gradually come back to me.

I remembered the normal life I’d built for myself in Callister, New York, and I remembered that like a Ping Pong ball catching an edge, my life had shot in a completely different direction once Cameron came crashing into it. I remembered being taken by Cameron in his effort to keep me safe from my stepbrother’s uncle Victor. I had been kept at a farm, where I’d become immersed in Cameron’s life with Carly, Spider, and Cameron’s brother, Rocco. Victor’s men had forced their way into the farm and murdered Rocco, and then Victor had abducted me from Rocco’s funeral. Over the years, Victor had developed an obsession with my mother and a grudge against my father. I had managed to escape before Victor could rape me, but Cameron had let Victor go because Victor was a dirty cop and head of the police union, so his ties to law enforcement and to the underworld ran too deep.

After Spider had murdered Cameron (or so I’d thought), I had spent the next nine months trying to take out Spider and Victor before they took me out and reestablish the drug empire that had been stolen from my brother. Quite pregnant, I’d flown to the Cayman Islands with my stepbrother’s ex-girlfriend Frances to access the money he’d left me. But Frances had fooled all of us; she had always been working for Victor. Shortly after my brother had been murdered, she had given birth to Victor’s child, a boy named Daniel, who, until that point, we’d assumed was my brother’s child. I’d slipped from Frances’s grasp at a bank in the Cayman Islands and flown back to the United States.

I could not remember anything after that, and interspersed in those memories was Griff. His face, like Cameron’s, peppered all the memories to the point where it was difficult for me to distinguish their involvement from mine, as though their presence in my memories only left more unanswered questions in their wake.

Cameron wouldn’t talk to me about anything more upsetting than opening a bottle of water. He, like everyone else at Dr. Lorne’s compound, tiptoed around me as though I were a window on the verge of shattering.

During the few short minutes when he wasn’t around, I had to pry whatever information I could from the nurses and Cameron’s friend Carly.

Through small trickles of information, I unearthed that Cameron had found me bleeding out in his cabin. My heart rate had dropped to nothing while he rushed me to Dr. Lorne’s compound. Cameron supplied Dr. Lorne with enough cash to run a small but fully resourced hospital out of his farm.

Somehow, following my travels to the Cayman Islands, my placenta had separated from the uterus. They’d delivered Billy via an emergency C-section so that she might have a chance to survive me. I’d lost a lot of blood, and Dr. Lorne and his team had had a hard time controlling the hemorrhaging. It had been touch-and-go for a while. My condition had been stable at first and then unstable.

Spider had been the only one close by with my same blood type and had donated more blood than was advisable.

None of us thought you were going to make it, Em. And Cameron was just— Carly was never able to finish that sentence. Her head would stoop, and the share circle would evaporate.

The rest I had to fill in myself through the blurred memories of waking up to the room floating around me with shadowy thoughts and an inability to string words together. Cold and sweating, I could feel the warmth of blood running down my legs, or Cameron would put his hand to my forehead when infection set in. He would jump to his feet and call out to the army of medical staff and Carly and Spider, who seemed never to be far behind. Then I was in and out of consciousness for however long, calling out for Billy and, despite myself, for Cameron.

Luckily, Billy was healthy and strong—much stronger than I was.

We need to be strong together from now on, I thought after awakening from yet another medical episode.

The word mother was such a big little thing now that I thought about it. Those six letters and two short syllables represented someone’s entire world. There was a being who was part of me yet lived outside of me and depended entirely on me for her survival. Twenty-year-old Emily Sheppard was Billy’s mother, and despite my heart racing every time I considered that, I held on to that big little fact like a life preserver.

I flipped my feet over the edge of the bed and stretched to Billy. I stroked her hot cheeks with the back of my fingertips. She stirred but did not wake.

I held on to the stitches at the bottom of my stomach out of habit. The physical pain was subsiding, while the mental torment was mounting. I stepped over Meatball, who was snoring on the floor immediately next to Billy’s bassinette. He and Billy were on the same sleeping and eating schedule now. The love handles at his sides proved it.

I went to the French doors that opened from our room to the porch. Nowadays it seemed that as soon as I opened the doors, Cameron and everyone on Cameron’s payroll closed them up again. It was stifling in there. Claustrophobia was stealing my breaths.

I opened the doors—again—as wide as they would allow and looked back once more at my sleeping, bundled baby girl and her snoring, hairy mate before taking a step out for the first time in a number of days.

The sun was setting where the pasture met the sky, and I felt as though I were inside a box, watching the corners of the world I would never reach. The horses were still out, and the farm was quiet. I saw no humans. There were lots of humans there, of course—Cameron’s guards always watched from the shadows. A year ago, when Cameron had abducted me to keep me safe from Victor, he’d taken me to Vermont, to a mansion on hundreds of acres of wooded land that had been dubbed the farm. There he’d had an army of men hiding in the woods so that no one could enter—or leave—without his authorization or knowledge. Now I was at an actual farm, Victor was still after me, and I could feel Cameron’s men—these strangers—surrounding me, watching me once again.

Abduction. The act of taking, of concealing, of holding someone against her will. It was one of those slippery words my lawyer father would have spent hundreds of billable hours arguing in court—that was, before being indicted on fraud and embezzlement charges and likely getting disbarred. It was a word that failed to consider all the gray matter in between. What if a person was taken for her own good? What if a fate worse than being held and concealed by a drug lord awaited the victim and her child?

What if the so-called victim didn’t know her own will anymore? My past was repeating itself; my life was a carnival ride I couldn’t jump off of.

Yes, Cameron’s guards were out there, but my sanity required me to ignore them.

I took a few steps around the corner of the house—the farthest I had been since I’d been brought there—and let my hand slide along the railing as I made my way to the steps. I tried to breathe, but despite my being outside, the air could not fill my lungs.

I took one step down and winced as my stitches pulled a bit, but I remained undeterred.

Escaping before the sun has even gone down? Bold move for someone who can barely walk.

I didn’t have to turn around to know whom the voice belonged to: Griff. In my peripheral vision, I could see that he was leaning against the house, not far from my room.

I need some air, I said, and I kept going down the stairs. I did not turn around, despite the fact that I’d barely seen him since I’d come to Dr. Lorne’s farm. I’d seen him for just a few minutes here and there when Carly snuck him in to see Billy and me when Cameron was momentarily gone. But I hadn’t asked for Griff to come, and when he did come, I kept silent and wished he would leave. My anger wasn’t reserved only for Cameron.

Griff caught up with me as my feet touched the dirt driveway, and he took my arm without asking. I made it eight more steps before everything hurt, and I got dizzy.

You have exactly one chance to explain yourself, I said as I tugged my arm from his and crouched to the ground so that I wouldn’t pass out or puke. I wasn’t going to give him the benefit of telling him I knew that he too had lied to me—that he had known Cameron was alive. That had been clear to me when he had driven up to the farm in a torrent and shown not a single ounce of shock at seeing Cameron with me. In fact, he’d barely glanced at him.

They all had been in on it, even Meatball, though Meatball was the only one I had forgiven. I understood now why he hadn’t been sad when he came to live with me. For him, it had been just a change in scenery. He also hadn’t had a choice in the matter. Everything had been decided for him. We had that in common.

When I’d first given birth to Billy, all I’d wanted to do was cry. I couldn’t even look at Cameron without tearing up. It’s the hormones, Carly had told me, even though I’d never consulted her. Now I demanded the answers no one wanted to give me.

Griff stood a few paces off. I glanced up. He was still wearing the same clothes I had last seen him in, and there was something sticking out of his hair. When he crouched down, I saw that it was hay.

On the outside, I was calm, completely stoic, but something inside me was surging. My skin was the wall of a dam. On the outside was the stagnant, human-controlled water; on the inside was the wild, raging river pushing against the dam, threatening to take it all down.

Let’s start with how long you’ve known that Cameron was alive.

He left you, Em. Isn’t that enough for you?

How long?

When you told me that you needed to kill Spider and Victor because Cameron was dead and they were going to come for the baby. When you told me you still loved Cameron, he said. His voice faltered. His death surprised me because even though I’m a nobody in terms of the underground ranks, I knew I would have heard something about the change in command if Spider had taken over Cameron’s reign. And yet your news was the first time I had heard of any of that. I had a strong feeling someone was fucking with you. I also had a strong feeling that if that bastard changed his mind and came back, you would drop everything for him again.

The horses stood by the fence with their tails swaying in the breeze. The sun was falling in the field behind them, making the grass turn gold. I was so goddamn sick of this beautiful place.

Are you? Dropping everything for him? Griff asked.

So you never went home to England like you said you did, I said matter-of-factly, keeping on topic.

Yes, I did. As soon as I left you, I went to the airport, got pissing drunk, and got on a plane to England. I couldn’t deal with the fact that you still loved that piece of shit. But then I sobered up. I realized that none of this was fair to you. That if that asshole were still alive, he would keep messing with you until he was dead. I knew I needed to protect you if he wasn’t dead. So I used the bit of money I had left to pay for information from guys I know are connected. My suspicions were confirmed: the big boss was still very much alive.

And you didn’t care to share that information with me?

He lied to you and then he left you. Pregnant. Broke. Grieving. In danger. He left you for dead.

I forced myself to stand and brushed myself off. He’s not the only one who has been lying to me.

Do you love him? Still? Griff stood too close and held my gaze. His expression was frantic. I had to look away. How can you still love him after everything’s he’s done to you?

Everything is a mess. I feel like everything I knew was a lie. Is a lie. I don’t know anything anymore. Like being taught fiction as fact.

Griff took me into his arms, his fold. "You do know something. I love you. That hasn’t changed. That will never change. You and Billy are all I care about in this world."

Cameron is Billy’s father. That won’t ever change, no matter what I do.

He’s fathered your child, yes. But that’s it. He wasn’t there to see your belly grow with her. It’s my voice she knows, not his. Billy should be nowhere near this motherfucker. Or this place. Or these people. He pushed me at arm’s length so he could look me in the eye. Don’t put Billy through that. Don’t put her through what he put you through.

Billy started whimpering. Before I could leave, Griff pulled me back into him, forcing my head into his chest. He smelled like a human horse. Have you been sleeping in the barn? I asked.

I love you, Emily Sheppard, he said.

Billy was now fully awake and wailing. Meatball sprinted onto the porch and barked at me, alerting me to the screaming baby, just in case I hadn’t heard her. Cameron stood on the porch with a T-shirt in his hand; his chest was bare and wet. His momentary escape from me had been to have a shower.

I took my time in letting go of Griff and lumbered back to the porch. Billy had stopped crying, so Meatball had stopped barking at me.

If you wanted to go for a walk, you could have just asked me. I would have gone with you, said Cameron. He reached out for my shoulder, but I shoved past.

Griff sleeps in the house from now on, I said. He’s not an animal, and he’s not one of your employees.

You need rest and relaxation. You don’t need the stress of having everybody else’s issues put on you, he said.

And you think it’s relaxing to have you lurking around me, pretending not to hear me when I ask you to explain why the hell you abandoned me?

When I found Carly cooing and cuddling with my baby on the rocking chair, something inside me burst. Can’t I just have one moment to myself? Give her to me! I grabbed Billy from her arms. Billy started to wail, and Carly sat stunned.

I sat on the bed and rocked Billy to ease her cries. I hadn’t meant to startle her. She wasn’t responsible for any of this, yet she was already paying for it. I couldn’t do anything right. I brushed my hand against her silky, spiked hair. We need to get out of here before I lose my mind, I whispered to her while Carly tiptoed out.

****

It was the middle of the night, and I had just finished feeding Billy. The night lamp was on. Cameron was at his post on the chair next to my bed, snoring in tandem with Meatball. The room was large enough to fit a whole other bed. A couch and a comfy chair were at the other end. But Cameron slept on the chair that seemed the most punishing, a leathery old antique office thing that was more for show than use. I had awoken to find him like that. For the first time ever, he had slept through Billy’s waking cries, as well as through two diaper changes and a feeding.

I watched him while he slept. His head was leaning at an awkward angle between the wall and the lamp. The muscles of his face looked tender; his broad shoulders were relaxed; his fists always were clenched; and his breaths were steady, slow, and deep. When he was like this, almost childlike, it was hard to imagine what lay beneath the skin’s surface. It was hard to imagine that under that tuft of chocolate hair and that smooth, pale skin, within that shell of youth, beauty, and seduction, was a murderer—a man who had directly and indirectly taken thousands of human lives. This man, who was still only in his late twenties, was the controlling mind of the largest crime organization in American history. Many would have called him a monster—that was, if they had known he even existed. He was a ghost, the most important man in the country whom no one knew or ever would know about. That was how he wanted it. Cameron Hillard was a blank wall painted midnight black with crimson red soaking through.

Yet as he slept next to our child, I saw a different man, one who was capable of good and whose steady expression could, in turn, steady me. In that moment, Cameron Hillard seemed almost human, like the man I had fallen in love with a few months prior.

I reached out and brushed his hair off his forehead. I wanted him to wake up in this, his human form, the one I remembered from before. I wanted to see the dark eyes that were sad and strong. The eyes of the boy who’d been neglected and turned to the underworld for a place to belong.

My hand lingered by the side of his face while the other was cradled around Billy, when someone came in and flipped the light switch on, sending the bright beams from the lights on the ceiling to the back of my eye sockets. My hand went from Cameron’s face to cover my eyes. I tucked Billy close. I heard drawers and zippers opening while my eyes adjusted to the light.

Carly was putting stuff—some of my stuff and some of Billy’s stuff—into a diaper bag.

What are you doing? I asked.

She looked up as though surprised I was there. Packing. She lingered over the bag with two different diaper creams.

Okay. And why are you packing?

Space. She picked one of the jars for the diaper bag; the other went into the small suitcase.

You need this specific space right now? Out of all the space in the house? Maybe they were moving us into the barn with Griff.

Not this space. Your space. You’re stuck. I’ve been there. Feeling like everyone is deciding your fate for you. For you, it’s Cam and Griff. For me, it was Spider and your brother. All hovering over you, trying to pretend as though they are not forcing you to make a decision. Not understanding that not everything is black and white. Her hands quieted in the midst of stacking diapers, and she turned to me. I heard you earlier. If you don’t get out of here, away from them, you will lose your mind. Time. Distance. Space. It was the only thing that helped me make sense of everything. So I’m giving you what Cam and Griff won’t: space.

Spider came in, swearing under his breath, wiping sweat from his brow.

Where have you been? Carly demanded.

Putting the baby seat in the van like you asked me to.

That was three hours ago.

The thing had fifty pages of instructions, and I had to attach it to seven different seat buckles. You couldn’t have found an easier one to install?

That one came as highest recommended by the Pediatrics Association.

Yeah, I saw the price tag too. Could have bought a whole house in Detroit for that price. I liked the picture of the army tank rolling over the car and the baby seat coming out without even a dent on it.

I tucked Billy even closer to me.

Cameron, who still hadn’t woken up despite the commotion, inhaled a snore that sounded like a vacuum cleaner sucking up mud. Spider kicked Cameron’s foot, and Cameron’s mouth fell open as his head dropped to the back of the chair. Christ, Carly, Spider said. How much did you give him? He’s out to lunch.

Carly rammed the diaper bag into Spider’s chest, and he let out a groan. As much as I gave to Griff. As much as they needed to not get in my way. Carly winked at me. I like Griff. He’s a sweetheart.

She is psychotic, I thought.

Good thing Cameron can’t hear you, said Spider.

For what it’s worth, I never agreed with Cam and Spider when they decided to fake his death. I thought it was the most idiotic and cruel thing to do, she said.

Cameron let out another muddy snort. We all looked at him. Spit had leaked from the corner of his mouth down to his neck.

Hard to believe he’s worse without you than with, Spider said to me.

Carly opened the doors to the porch, and Spider carried the bag out. Fresh air swept across the room, beckoning me. I took a breath and thought of freedom, of space, remembering what it felt like to be alone with one’s thoughts.

My head turned from the doors to Cameron, who still was sleeping so humanly.

Billy, in my arms, had her eyes open. Someone—perhaps a nurse or Carly—had told me that Billy could only see blurry shapes. But I didn’t believe that. I knew she could see me then. She was examining my face, waiting to see what I would do.

I had to leave.

I shifted Billy into one arm and placed my palm against Cameron’s chest, mostly to ensure his heart was still beating after Carly’s cocktail. I wiped the pooling of spit off the corner of his mouth.

Billy stirred, and then Cameron’s finger kind of twitched.

I got spooked.

And I left, not looking back.

****

We were standing in the driveway by a black cube van with black tinted windows. There was no wind, but the air was chilled. I shivered in my short sleeves and tucked Billy’s blanket tighter around her. Meatball had followed us out of the house, yawning and heavy-pawed. Carly had just announced that Billy and I were leaving with Spider.

I couldn’t even look at Spider; when I did, I saw only a man holding a gun after shooting Cameron in the shoulder. That had been part of Cameron’s ruse to disentangle from me. After Spider had shot him, Cameron had insisted I not be there to watch the final blow—the alleged final blow. I had been dragged away so that I could hear but not see the second shot that had led me to believe Cameron was dead and Spider was responsible.

All of it had been bullshit. Yet I couldn’t see Spider as anything but Cameron’s murderer, even if Spider’s blood coursed through my veins.

I don’t need an escort, I said to Carly.

That’s nonnegotiable, Spider said. I’ll be lucky if Cameron doesn’t come after me with an ax. If he wakes up. The least I can do is keep you safe during your escape.

You’re just happy you won’t need to deal with the wrath of Cameron and Griff tomorrow when they wake up, said Carly to Spider.

Why don’t you come instead of him? I asked Carly.

Someone has to be here to explain to Cam and Griff what we’ve done and reassure them that you’re both safe.

What Carly means to say is that they are less likely to strangle her when they wake up.

Carly went to the van and detached the baby carrier from the car seat. Spider’s jaw dropped. That thing comes out?

Carly extended her arms, and after a moment, I let her take Billy.

Carly cooed something I couldn’t hear as she buckled Billy into her carrier. She zipped a shell around her so that only Billy’s eyes poked out—the eyes that could see everything. While Meatball inspected Carly’s work, I made a mental note of everything she’d just done, hoping I’d be able to replicate it later. Spider hadn’t been kidding when he’d said there were a lot of buckles.

Listen, Spider said to me, I know this isn’t what you want and that you have every right to doubt me, but I think we’ve established that I didn’t kill Cameron and that if I’d wanted you dead, I would have just needed to run away before they sucked all my blood out to give to you. I also think it’s clear that if anything bad happens to either of you, I will have every one of my limbs cut off one at a time.

And I’ll be first in line to do that, Carly said.

At that moment, I looked back. Back at the porch and the doors that were shadowed under the moon. Back at the house where Billy had been born. Back at the rooms beyond, where Cameron and Griff slept and hopefully were not dead.

Carly put a hand on my shoulder.

I turned to Spider, finally acknowledging him. I want your gun.

His eyebrows arched. Pardon?

Your gun. Give it to me.

Oh, for God’s sake, just give it to her, Carly said.

He pulled it from the holster across his chest and handed it over as though it were a bomb. I don’t know what good this is going to do you. It’s not like you know how to use it.

I looked him in the eye. You’d be surprised.

What’s that supposed to mean?

It means that things have changed. There was a gust of wind, and a terrible memory came on its coattails. I’d gotten off the plane in Callister after escaping Frances in the Cayman Islands. I’d attempted to go home to the house I shared with student roommates, only to find the house surrounded by Victor’s cop friends. I had been running out of gas and going into labor. I’d barely made it up the driveway to Cameron’s cabin before my car stalled. There had been so much blood.

I shivered and wrapped my arms around the gun and myself. I turned to Carly, who had gone back to fussing over Billy. When Cameron wakes up, ask him to get my car.

You mean the car you left at the cabin Cameron thinks I don’t know about?

What cabin? asked Spider.

Sh, Carly said to him. She turned to me. What about your car?

There’s something for you. Inside. On the front seat maybe. A letter from Bill.

Carly pulled off her flowered sweater and handed it to me.

I’m fine, I said.

Take it. I’ve got five more exactly like it.

She’s not kidding, said Spider.

While I struggled to put the sweater on, I also struggled to find the words that could ultimately change everything for her. Carly and Bill had been together for some time before his death, but when Frances had shown up after his death claiming to be pregnant with Bill’s child, everyone had assumed the worst of Bill. Carly had assumed the worst, and her heart had been broken. The child had the same shaggy blond hair as my brother. The child’s parentage had been another of Frances and Victor’s lies. The truth was, my brother had always been in love with Carly. She needed to know that.

There’s something important. Something you need to know, I said.

What does she need to know? Spider said as Carly pushed me toward the van.

I’ll get the letter, Carly said to me, and the baby carrier clicked in place. Take care, Emily. She reached over Billy and squeezed my arm. Then she stepped back and slid the side door shut.

Spider turned on the ignition, and we took