“Did Shield do this to you?” he shouted, shooting his arm straight out and pointing at
Victor, who was on the floor face down. Suddenly Cameron noticed the pants around Shield’s
ankles. His face went pale. “Jesus, did he—”
“He hit me. That’s it. I got to him before …” I couldn’t finish. Before what? The could-
have-been was too hard for me to admit.
Cameron was enraged. He lunged for Victor, spinning him around, mounting him, and punching him
in the face, over and over again. Victor cowered in a ball, covering his bloodied face with his
hands. Spider came running up behind them, yelling.
“Cameron, stop! You’re going to kill him!”
“Good!” Cameron yelled back.
With Spider’s order, the guards pulled Cameron off of Victor. It took four of them to finally
manage to get him away from Victor. Spider made the guards drag Victor away from Cameron’s
sight, while a seething Cameron watched from the sideline. I rushed to him and threw my arms
around his neck. I whispered that I was fine over and over while I held on.
He calmed down after a while and crushed me in his arms.
“How did you find me?” I asked, trying to wiggle out enough to look at him.
He smiled, almost to his eyes. There were bags entrenched under them. He looked twenty years
older. “The guards caught Norestrom a couple days before Rocco’s funeral. We were going to
sell him back in pieces to Shield for what he did to my brother, but when you went missing, I
tried to beat the location out of him … before we killed him. He wouldn’t talk fast enough. I
let him escape, knowing that he would be stupid enough to come find Shield and lead us to you.”
His eyes were locked on mine, but mine started tearing up again. “Cameron, I didn’t mean to
abandon you at the church. Uncle Victor convinced me to go with him. They started shooting
outside. The window exploded. I thought—”
“One of Shield’s men shot at the church window when he heard you warn me through the radio.
They weren’t shooting at us. They couldn’t. If they killed us in an ambush like that, the
leaders would have hunted all of them down. It took us a little while to figure out that they
were shooting at anything but us. They were warning Shield. I should have known it was a trap
and never left you. I completely screwed up.”
He held me, and then pushed me away, holding my shoulders in his hands. “I had no idea Shield
was your uncle. If I did, I would have warned you.”
“He was my brother’s uncle.” I really didn’t feel like explaining my family’s history at
that particular time, but Cameron didn’t push for more.
“That explains a lot, like where Bill got all his ideas from and his extreme dislike for
Shield,” he said. “Though, I wished Bill would have told me.”
I smiled up at him, and he gently kissed me, on the good side of my mouth.
When we turned around, the warehouse was practically empty, except for Spider and Tiny, who were
standing by Victor. Tiny was holding Victor up by the shoulders while Spider was waving his
finger at Victor and speaking to him with a low voice. Victor looked terrified.
We made our way toward them. Victor glared at me, and I glared back.
“Let him go,” Spider, who had his back to us, said to Tiny.
“What?” Cameron yelled out. “Tiny, keep hold of him.”
Tiny held onto Victor and looked confusedly from Spider to Cameron.
“We’re letting him go, Cameron,” Spider said as he turned on his heels to face us.
“After everything he’s done? No, he’s a dead man.”
“We’re letting him go, Cameron,” Spider repeated with more force.
Cameron dragged Spider away from us, and, in arguing whispers, they decided Victor’s fate. I
watched Cameron’s face turn ashen in the midst of their argument. After a while, Spider was
doing all the talking, and Cameron was listening with his head bent in defeat.
“Let him go,” Cameron said dejectedly to Tiny when they had returned. He was blanched. I
swallowed hard.
Tiny held onto Victor for a few seconds, to see if Cameron was going to change his mind. When he
didn’t, Tiny let Victor go. Victor’s knees buckled under him as he fell back to the ground,
and he rushed out of the warehouse. Spider meaningfully glanced at me and Cameron, and then he
walked out with Tiny at his side.
“Why are you letting him go?” I wondered accusingly as I turned to Cameron. What I saw in
Cameron scared me more than anything Shield could have ever done to me … tears had welled up in
Cameron’s eyes.
“Cameron …” I had lost my breath.
He grabbed me in a hug and whispered, “Emmy, you need to run. Now.”
I pushed him away. “What? No. I’m not going anywhere without you.”
He was in agony. Pain had carved deep fissures in his forehead.
“Tell me what’s going on. Right now,” I demanded and bit my lip, trying not to cry, trying to
fight the dread that was swarming in.
“Please,” he begged, “you need to go. Don’t look back. I love you.”