There was so much happening outside and big people walking around that it took a while for
my brain to fully consider what my eyes were seeing. Four white, cubed passenger minivans with
darkened windows were lined up at the far end of the driveway. Men were buzzing around the
property, some leaning against the vans, basking in the sunshine, and others walking about,
intent on some mysterious task. Then there were the men that were away from the driveway, past
the grass clearing, all the way down to the edge of the woods; these men stood in a row along
the property line, about twenty feet from each other, and watched the scene from the shadows of
the trees—their long barreled guns either in hand or holstered over their large shoulders.
I sped to Rocco who was muttering and shaking his head, absorbed intensely in a discussion with
himself.
“Need any help?” I offered keenly, withholding the alarm in my throat.
He glanced up and chewed on my proposal for a minute.
“Better not,” he said, sighing. “I don’t want to get in trouble again for talking to the
inmate.”
“Is that what I am?” I wondered, keeping a corner of my eye on the gun-wielders.
Rocco shrugged. “Apparently.”
While he sprayed some kind of deodorizer on the front passenger seat, I sat on the backseat,
with my legs swinging out the side. I leaned my face forward in the outside air—because it was
really stinky inside the car.
“Who are all those people?” I asked him.
He didn’t look up. “What people?”
I pointed my thumb in the direction of the gunners. “The men with the guns,” I said, to start
with.
“Guards,” Cameron answered as he approached the car with Meatball at his heels. I noticed that
he had showered. His hair was still dripping, and he had changed from jeans and red T-shirt—to
jeans and gray T-shirt.
“What are they guarding?” I managed to ask.
“Precious cargo,” he replied quickly before changing the subject, starting with a cruelly
charming smile. “I heard you got my kid brother back for putting that bump on your head.”
“Whatever,” Rocco mumbled without lifting his head to acknowledge his brother.
Still smiling, Cameron glanced at me, motioning his head toward Rocco, silently asking me what
Rocco’s problem was.
I shrugged in response; though my guess was that Rocco had probably been berated by the one
called Spider for chitchatting with me—the prisoner—earlier.
Cameron wasn’t fazed by his brother’s crankiness. “Come on. I’ll show you around.” By the
time I realized that his hand had grazed the small of my back to lead me back to the house, he
had already pulled it away. Meatball happily followed us.
“Where are we … exactly?” I probed.
“Vermont.”
“Were not in New York State anymore?” I said before I had time to take the shock out of my
voice.
He peered from the corner of his eye. “Vermont is a different state, yes.”
“Okay,” I said slowly and took a breath while he kept his eye on my expression. “And what is
this place?”
He pointed to the house. “It used to be a shelter for forest firefighters back in the day. I
bought it a couple of years ago.”
I was stunned. “This is your house?”
He nodded. “It was basically just a barn, but I had it fixed up. I kept the tin roof and
restored the fa?ade. Everything else is new.”
He led me through the front door, past the archway and through the now familiar kitchen, toward
the hallway where I had been accosted by Carly the night before. We stopped in front of the
washroom.
“I never realized how filthy it was until I actually had to shower in it,” he said, his lips
curled in disgust. He quickly closed the door and we kept moving.
“Spider … Tiny … Rocco,” he pointed out as we passed each of the three doors on the left.
Spider’s room looked untouched. The bed was made up so tight you could bounce a dime off it.
Rocco’s room was a pigsty: the bed unmade, clothes piled on the floor.
“Who’s Tiny?”
“You can’t miss him,” he chuckled, “He’s the fat guy who usually hangs around Spider or me.
”
My eyebrows drew together. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why call him Tiny … if he obviously
isn’t?”
“That’s what makes it so funny,” he said, but I caught him slightly rolling his eyes as he
said this.
“Besides,” he added as he opened one of the double doors at the end of the hall, “would you
be willing to call that guy fat to his face?”
Cameron had a point.
When we walked through the double-doors, Cameron watched as my chin dropped. It was a room of
tall bookshelves and pale suede chairs and couch. The high ceiling had exposed dark wood beams
that ran across it. There was a fireplace between the two long windows that faced the back of
the property, and the opposite wall was layered of soft gray and rose stones.
“It’s gorgeous,” I whispered, instinctively letting my hand slide over the stones as I
strolled deeper into the room.
“Nobody ever uses this room,” he said after a barely audible clearing of his throat.
I folded my arms and investigated the book titles on the shelves, rising up and down on my
tiptoes, while Cameron stood by.
“There’s a piano in the corner. You can come here and play whenever you want,” he told me.
“I wouldn’t put anyone through that kind of torture.”
“Don’t you play?”
There was accusation in his tone and I could feel myself reddening.