Chapter Twenty-Seven:
Old Emily
“Uncle Victor?” He wasn’t really my uncle. Not by blood anyway. He was my brother’s uncle, but I had always called him Uncle Victor, and, even though I was kind of an adult now, it seemed weird and maybe a bit disrespectful to say his name without the word uncle preceding it.
“What are you doing here?” I asked—almost accused—him.
He was nervously glancing around the church, and his voice was hurried. “I’m here to get you out.”
“How did you find me?” Even I didn’t know where I was.
“Your parents—” He jumped as one of the rambunctious children dropped or threw a book or a bible on the floor out front. “It’s a long story. We need to leave now.”
“What? No, I’m not leaving,” I yelled, louder than I intended.
The deacon stopped his sermon. And then, with a look of annoyance, he continued.
Victor was beside himself. “What do you mean you’re not leaving? I’m risking my badge to come rescue you!”
“There’s nothing to rescue me from. I want to stay here.”
He grabbed my shoulder as he leaned in and hurriedly whispered, “Kid, in about five minutes the DEA is going to come storming through here and shoot anyone who gets in their way. They won’t ask any questions first. If you’re lucky, they’ll just arrest you, but I won’t be able to help you then.”
Frances looked like someone had just sucker-punched the air out of her lungs. “They’ll take Daniel away from me if I get arrested,” she distractedly whispered. Her face was pale and terrified as she turned to me. “Em, I can’t get arrested. I’ll lose my boy.”
Victor looked at both of us and impatiently sighed.
“I’ll take her too,” he conceded, “but we have to leave now.”
“Take Frances with you,” I ordered. “I’m not leaving. They can arrest me if they want. I don’t care.”
“I promised your mother I would get you out of here unscathed. If I come back without you, she’ll have my head and my badge. Either you both come, or we all get arrested or killed.”
Frances’s eyes were pleading with me. My thoughts were a mess—express decision making was not my forte. I looked toward the door that Cameron had exited, hoping that if I stared at it hard enough, he would walk back in. He didn’t … but I knew how to make him come back. Without glancing down, I pressed on the red button of the shortwave radio and guilelessly turned to Victor.
“Uncle Victor, let me talk to them,” I said with my voice just loud enough for Cameron to, hopefully, hear me but not enough to arouse Victor’s suspicion.
“Who?” Victor looked confused.
“The FBI … or the DEA,” I almost yelled, but recomposed myself. “I’ll tell them the truth. That I’m fine. There’s no need for them to come here.”
I was a horrible actress. But, thankfully, from behind the bench, he couldn’t see my hands or the fact that I was trying to send a message to Cameron. This I was sure of. What I hadn’t planned on was a naïve Frances curiously looking down at my hands—and Victor following her gaze. I thought the pulsating vein on Victor’s forehead was going to explode when he caught me.
“What the hell are you doing? I could go to jail for coming here, and you’re warning them?” he shouted as he knocked the radio out of my hands. It went crashing to the floor, and this time everyone in the church was looking back at us. Cameron’s mother noticed our presence for the first time.
I was thinking, readjusting my strategy when a loud pop was heard from outside.
The stained-glass window at the front of the church exploded, and the deacon fell to his knees and covered his face to shield himself from the shards of glass that had come flying down around him like a cutthroat blizzard.
Gunfire then erupted outside, and everyone at the front of the church was screaming.
“Everybody get down!” Victor yelled with experience and authority. He adeptly jumped over the bench. “Emily, keep your head down and don’t stop running.” He grabbed me by the shoulder of my shirt and forced me to run with him. Frances had grabbed my other hand and followed us out to an emergency exit at the side of the church.
Outside, an empty white sedan was waiting. Victor forced me into the front seat, ordered Frances to get in the back, and climbed into the driver’s seat. As he sped away through the cemetery road, I was frantically glancing back, trying to locate Cameron. I couldn’t see anyone, but could still hear the gunfire that was bursting on the other side of the church. My heart was thumping so hard that my vision was thumping with it, causing the passing graves to pulsate like neon signs in video-store windows. I was trying to talk, yell, but couldn’t catch my breath.
We turned onto a dirt road, and Victor slid the car into high gear.
“Turn back,” I finally shouted, using up the miniscule amount of air that I had managed to accumulate.
“There’s nothing you can do for them now,” he said coldly.
My cheeks were wet. I could hear Frances whimpering in the back.
Victor looked over at me, and his face faintly softened. “If it’ll make you feel better, I promise to bring you to the DEA as soon as your parents see that you’re okay. You can tell the police whatever you want them to hear. I won’t interfere.”
This didn’t make me feel any better. There was no doubt in my mind—I had abandoned Cameron, on one of the worst days of his life. Talking to the police would never change that. I tried to tell myself that maybe my warning had come soon enough. Maybe he had been able to escape on time. But then there was all that gunfire … all of a sudden I found myself actually hoping that he would get arrested. It seemed like the safer alternative. The mere possibility of the other alternative made me want to throw up. I put my head between my knees, willing myself to focus on keeping the vomit down, and figure out how I was going to help Cameron.
The car came to a stop. I looked up. Victor had pulled the car up to the sidewalk. We were in a small town outside the city. The town consisted of a stop sign, four corners, and a cluster of tiny houses with big yards—the kind of place nice parents wanted their nice children to grow up in.
Victor peered at Frances through the rearview mirror. “There’s a convenience store around the corner. The bus comes every hour on the hour. It’ll take you back to the city.”
Frances looked embarrassed. “I dropped my purse in the church. I don’t have any money.”
Victor was growing impatient. He huffed and aggressively dug out his wallet. He emptied it of its cash content and gave it her. Frances got a lot more than she needed for a bus ride. As soon as she closed the door, Victor sped off, not waiting to ensure that she knew where she was going.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“My place,” he explained. “Your parents are waiting there.”
I had no idea where Uncle Victor even lived, though we had lived in the same area for over a year now.
We turned a corner and came to a stop sign. I had been wrong about this one-stop-sign town—apparently there were two stop signs. Victor impatiently tapped on his steering wheel as a man slowly crossed in front of us. The man was wearing a suit that was two sizes too big for him and walked with a strut. I couldn’t see his face, but I was on high alert. Not just because he didn’t fit in this town for nice people—but he was purposefully avoiding eye contact.
Please keep walking, I internally begged. He was taking a ridiculous amount of time to cross the street, or was I just imagining that he was? Time had seemed to stop. I started to shake … I knew. But what I didn’t know was that he had just been a diversion while his cohorts approached the car from behind. The back doors opened, and I yelled … didn’t I? An arm grabbed me from behind and held my body against the seat while a burlap sack was being thrown over my head. I couldn’t breathe, and I started flailing my hands, scratching the skin off the arm that was suffocating me. Something pricked my neck. There was a rush of warmth. My heartbeats slowed. Was I still breathing? A gurgled moan in my throat, and then it was all nothingness.
Surely I was dead. My eyes were open—I had to bring my fingers to my face to confirm this. Yes, they were open. But I couldn’t see a thing.
I groaned, but the sound that came out was not my own. It was the sound that a sixty-year-old chain-smoker would make. My head was pounding against my skull. My clothes were drenched with what I assumed to be my own sweat. Spit had leaked out the corner of my mouth and dried on my cheek.
I was lying on something soft.
There was a slit of light streaming in a few feet ahead. Good. I wasn’t blind either.
I struggled to turn my body on its side—everything was numbed. I was a marionette, with my brain pulling on strings to make my body move. I rolled to the ground in a thump. There was carpet, but it was too rough and cheap, the kind that was sold by the acre. I could feel the coldness of the cement seeping through it. I was suddenly thankful for the numbness—the tumble would have hurt otherwise.
I dragged myself across the floor like a rabid dog toward the light. My breaths were shallow.
It took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to the light. My elbows were too weak to hold me up. I had to slump to my side, with my cheek against the smelly carpet. All I could hear were the cymbals that were clashing between my ears.
Through the slit under the door, there was nothing to see but a white wall and an expanse of more bargain-basement carpet. I willed myself back onto my elbows and used the door to hold my weight while I struggled to sit up. The blood rushed to my head. With a dozen deep breaths and my back against the door, I inhaled and exhaled the nausea away, while clumsily fingering above for a door handle. I hit something cold—the door was locked. I was focusing on breathing … but the panic was slowly setting in. I needed to move. Crawling on my hands and knees, I slid my hand against the wall and felt my way around. Wherever I was, there wasn’t much to it: a square room of maybe ten-by-ten feet with a bed—nothing else.
The room was so hot. There was no exit. I was having difficulty breathing, and I was sweating buckets. I started to dry heave and finally threw up on the floor next to me. I rested my head on my wobbly knees.
I must have fallen asleep or passed out. When I awoke, I was curled up in a ball on the cold floor. Someone had opened the door and pulled on the string that hung from the ceiling to turn the single lightbulb on. It was still swinging back and forth when I looked up. The light hurt my eyes, but a bit of air had strewn in from the opened door.
A man stood in front of me, staring with his arms crossed and his legs spread in a guarded stance. His head was shaved to the skin, and a pistol hung on a holster across his chest—like a soldier awaiting his marching orders.
“There’s a bed right next to you. You don’t need to sleep on the floor,” he said, his voice robotic.
I sat up at a snail's pace, rested my elbows on my knees, and held my head in my hands. My lips were quivering uncontrollably.
“Eat,” the man commanded. He kicked over a tray of food that was on the floor: a juice box and a sandwich with what appeared to be bologna. The nausea hit me again. I brought my trembling hands to my mouth.
“I’m a vegetarian,” I said coarsely through my fingers. A lie.
“Eat the bread then,” he grunted impatiently. “It’s the only thing that will make the nausea go away.”
“What did you inject me with?”
“Just a mild sedative.”
I pulled my right hand away from my mouth and held it flat in front of my face. It was still trembling, more than a mild sedative should make me tremble. I scowled at him. He didn’t flinch. I noticed the scratch marks on his arms. This made me grin—at least I had gotten a piece of him.
“You’re Shield, right?” I asked with a matter-of-fact tone.
“I’m not leaving here until you eat.” His stare was unremitting.
“Where’s my uncle?”
He looked at me strangely. “You mean the guy who was in the car with you?”
I stared in response. “He’s fine. Now eat,” he said.
I couldn’t tell if he was lying, but assumed he was.
“I want to see him,” I said with difficulty. The room was spinning, and a bead of sweat was forming on my forehead.
“Eat,” he commanded again.
“I’m not … eating till I … see … my … uncle.” I leaned over and threw up.
The soldier-man swore. The walls of the room shook as he slammed the door behind him. I heard the lock on the doorknob click. His footsteps echoed down the hall and eventually dissipated into silence.
Afraid of passing out in my own vomit, I climbed onto the dirty mattress, turned to my side, and brought my knees into my chest. I was worn out.
The door burst open. The hanging lightbulb was still on. I had no idea how long I had been out. The soldier-man was holding Uncle Victor by the collar and, with frustration and impatience on his face, pushed him into the room. The door slammed and locked as he exited again, leaving Victor and me alone.
Victor ran to my side and held me at arms’ length. “You look terrible, kid,” he said, inspecting my face.
“I’m so sorry I brought you into this, Uncle Victor,” I sobbed. I was everybody’s bad-luck charm.
Victor shushed me while I cried on his shoulder. But I didn’t have enough energy to cry more than a minute.
“Did they hurt you?” he whispered and did a quick glance of the room.
“I think I’m okay. They drugged me. You?”
“I’m fine,” he said distractedly. Victor looked down at the tray on the floor. “Is this what they brought you to eat?” he asked with disdain. I nodded.
He picked up the tray, stuck the straw in the juice box, and handed it over to me. “Here,” he said, “you need some liquids.” While I gluttonously slurped the juice, he investigated the sandwich, smelling it first and pulling it apart. Satisfied, he ripped the bread into pieces and handed them to me one by one, like I was a child or a bird.
“Have you eaten?” I asked.
“I’m fine. I don’t need to eat.”
I glanced over his face. He did look fine. A lot better than me, I assumed.
“Do you know where we are?” he wondered. I was just about to ask him that question. At least he had been outside the room.
I shrugged. “No, but I have a good idea who’s behind this.”
He searched my face. “Who?”
I lowered my voice so that it was barely audible. “This guy named Shield. A sleaze-ball drug dealer.”
“Drug dealer? How do you know this?” Victor’s voice was alarmed.
I realized how much life had changed for me in the matter of a few months. The old Emily would have never known about drug dealers named Shield.
“Cam … the people I was with told me.”
“What else did they tell you?”
I hesitated. Cameron had told me things in confidence—and definitely would not have wanted me to share any of these things with a police officer, even if he was my almost-uncle.
Victor, sensing my uncertainty, leaned in. “Emily, I need to know everything if I’m going to get us out of here.”
I knew he was right, but I decided to keep Cameron out of it. “Bill had gotten himself involved in drug trafficking. Shield thinks that Billy stole his business. He’s after me because he wants the money that Billy left behind when he died.”
“You think all this is about money?”
“I know this is about money.”
Victor seemed interested by this. “Where’s the money?”
I couldn’t see how I would tell Victor about the money without bringing Cameron into the picture. I had to improvise. “I don’t really know. I haven’t seen any.” This was technically the truth—numbers on a pendant were all I had seen.
Victor looked a little disappointed but continued, “What about the people you were with?”
“They had nothing to do with us being here.” I said this too quickly. Victor caught scent that something was not right.
He raised an eyebrow. “How involved were you with these people, Emily?”
The way he was blankly staring at me made me feel like I was in his interrogation room back at the police station. I could feel the bead of sweat building on my brow again.
“Barely knew them,” I lied.
From the look on Victor’s face, he didn’t buy it. “Were they involved in drugs?”
“I don’t know. We never talked about that,” I lied again.
Uncle Victor was getting angry. “Come on! You can do better than that!” He wasn’t whispering anymore. He was the interrogator. I was the criminal.
“Uncle Victor, I don’t know what you’re asking me. You would know more than I would from talking with the DEA.” I could feel the tears surging.
His face went pale. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Yes, you’re right. I do know what they’re capable of. I was just afraid of what they might have put you through. That’s all.”
“They’re not bad people, Uncle Victor.”
This made him angry. “How can you say that? They’re lowlifes. Thugs. Mere children.” His voice was harsh and loud. I was taken aback.
He then recomposed and smiled. “These people have no class, Emily. Not like you and me. We’re from a different world.” He reached over and stroked my cheek with his thumb. “You look so much like Isabelle.”
It was the way that, unlike me, his head did not have one hair out of place and his clothes looked freshly ironed. And it was how he looked right through me, as though he saw someone else, that made something flicker at the bottom of my gut.
“How was my mother when you saw her?”
He smiled dreamily. “She was very worried about you. She cried when she found out that those thugs had taken you.”
This was my first hint. My mother wasn’t the crying type. It ruined her makeup. “How did you know I was missing?”
“Your mother called me after she had been to your place. All your stuff was gone, and you weren’t there.”
Second hint: my mom would never go to my place unless she was dragged kicking and screaming, and she would definitely have no idea where my stuff was, or what my belongings would even look like. “How long have you been looking for me?”
“A few months now.”
Nope, she was still in France then—and barely thinking about me. My dear Uncle Victor was lying through his yellowing teeth.
Cameron had told me that Shield could not be killed because of his connections, because someone like him could not turn up dead or go missing without too many questions being asked—as would be the case with a police officer. I then understood that Shield was just a nickname for the police badge that he used to shield his crimes.
I glared back at my uncle Victor, who had abused our family ties to lure me away from Cameron, and who I now understood was also called Shield.
Tears were building up in my eyes. I cleared my throat in an effort to keep them at bay and not arouse his suspicion that the game was up.
“How are we going to get out of here?” My croaking voice betrayed me.
Shield’s eyes twinkled. His hand had moved to the top of my head and he was petting my hair, lovingly.
“Did you know that I saw Isabelle first? Before Burt even knew that she existed?”
I was shaking. He smiled.
“We were all at the same party. One of those work parties that your father used to drag my sister to. Isabelle came through the door, and all eyes were on her. She was a stunning woman. Still is. But, out of all those people, she smiled at me first.” His face then turned grim. “Back then, your father had a lot more money than me. I was just a beat cop. I couldn’t compete. But things are different now.”
He snapped out of his daydream and winked at me. A chill went down my spine. I yanked his hand away. The tears were rolling down my cheeks but my glare was unyielding.
“You’re still a cop,” I reminded him spitefully.
“Yes,” he said, like his treachery had been a major feat. “And you’ll make me rich again.”
I knew the minute I admitted to the money, I was no longer going to be of use to him. “I don’t have my brother’s money.”
His eyes were on fire. “That money was my money, not Bill’s. It should have been given back to me when he died,” he said harshly. “I taught Bill the business, treated him like my own son. Together, we were going to rule the underworld. Then that ungrateful bastard stole it all from me and joined forces with those motherless street kids. Bill owed me a lot more than the dollars he left behind.”
And then he half-smiled. “But none of that matters now. With you here, I will get all that back, and more. We’ll do great things together.”
“I’m not doing anything with you,” I spat back.
This amused him. “I thought you had a penchant for drug dealers? No? Well, seems they like you a lot.” He laughed and shook his head in disbelief. “I couldn’t have planned this better myself. We can use this to our advantage. With the pull you have over that boy, we’ll control the leaders, the distributors, the shipments, everything.” He added with a sickly smile, “Though I wish I would have stuck around to see you blossom into your mother before that boy ever got a chance to pull you in. We could have been much further along by now.”
He reached over to stroke my cheek.
The nausea was coming back, but it had nothing to do with the sedatives. I got up and, turning my back to him, glanced around the room looking for a way out or a weapon. Apart from a plastic tray and a juice box, I didn’t have much to work with. I walked to the wall and turned around, sliding my back down the cold surface and sitting on the floor with my knees curled into my chest. For the first time, I noticed that he had a gun tucked into the back of his pants. I felt like an idiot for having missed that earlier—but there was no time for beating myself up. Something that Victor had said had piqued my interest.
“So, he’s alive then.” My voice was steady and uninterested, like I had heard Cameron do so often.
“Who? That Cameron boy? Yes, he’s fine.” He searched my face. I was a statue, though my insides were churning at the sound of Cameron’s name being attached to the word fine.
Victor’s eyes were smoldering. I needed to keep him talking … and away from me.
“What do I need to do for our partnership to work?” I asked with a businesslike tone.
He was excited. “Well, by now I’m sure the kid has figured out that I won and that I have you. We’ll let him think about that for a few days, then start the negotiations for sending you back. It’ll take a while to convince the leaders to let me take control again, so I’ll control the business behind Cameron until the change in management is made official.”
“What if the bosses don’t agree to you taking over?”
“You’ll make sure that Cameron does a good job at convincing them when I send you back to him.”
My heart leapt at the thought of seeing Cameron again, but my face remained unchanged. “What’s in it for me?”
He chuckled. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I’m impressed, kiddo. I thought you’d gone soft on me. But your parents taught you well, I see. People like us have to stick together.”
The fact that he was putting me in the same basket as him and my parents made me want to scream.
Victor continued, “Once I gain full control again and get rid of the boy, you and I can live happily ever after together.”
The partnership was starting to sound more like a one-sided business deal—he would get to lead the underworld, and I got to live and become his Isabelle-look-alike concubine. I undetectably shuddered and cheerfully responded, “Sounds great.”
Victor strolled over to me and, pulling me up by the shoulders, made me stand in front of him. With his rough hands, he drew my face into his, whispered my mother’s name and forced his leathery lips against mine. But I couldn’t kiss him back. My lips automatically squeezed together, shutting him out. Victor pulled away and eyed me. He was slighted.
“Kiss me,” he ordered as he tried to kiss me again. No luck—my lips were uncontrollably pursed again. I was quickly losing his trust and had to think of something before he caught on to my game and my complete and utter revulsion of him.
“I need to use the washroom,” I said, and, leaning close to him, I whispered in his ear, “I threw up earlier. I would really like to rinse my mouth out before I kiss you.”
He examined my face, and I gave him my sweetest smile, one that I had learned from my mother. I was relieved to see him return it.
“Oh yes, of course,” he said. He elatedly walked to the door and knocked three times. The latch clicked as it was unlocked and the door opened. Soldier-man guardedly peered in.
“Escort the young lady to the washroom,” Victor commanded.
I batted my eyes at Victor. “I really don’t need an escort. I think I’m old enough now to find the washroom by myself.” My voice oozed like honey.
Victor looked thrilled with my attention. “Yes, you’re certainly not a child anymore,” he said, and then added as he gently rubbed my arm, “But I want to keep you safe, so please humor me and let Mickey walk you to the washroom?”
“All right,” I agreed softly.
Mickey the soldier-man and I walked down a white hallway. Up ahead was a wide open space. We were in a warehouse, I realized. The cheap carpet came to an end and was replaced by concrete floor and concrete walls. The empty warehouse was dimly lit, with the light of day coming in from the dirty, frosted windowpanes up above. There were more armed guards standing by exits, and more were playing cards, with empty boxes as their game table. Our footsteps echoed as we made our way to the washroom. The picture on the door indicated that this was a men’s washroom. I glanced along the cement wall—no women’s washroom. Mickey confirmed my suspicion as he opened the door to the men’s washroom.
“Get out,” he ordered a guard who was standing by the urinal. The guard quickly zipped up and rushed out.
The washroom was everything I expected a men’s washroom to be—disgustingly dirty and smelling of urine, among other things. Mickey followed me in while I quickly fled into one of the stalls. There was no point in asking for time alone to think—this was all the privacy that I was going get. Up to that point, I’d had a faint hope that the bathroom would have had a window and that I would be able to ruse soldier-man away long enough to escape. That was what usually happened in the movies, right? But there were no windows—just yellowing, staggered subway tile and someone’s inscriptions as to who to call for a good time. If Victor had his way, my name would soon be added to the stall’s wall of fame.
I was out of options, and I had to prepare myself for what I would have to do next. I let a few tears silently drop from my eyes as I prayed to the gods on the stained concrete ceiling. At soldier-man’s urging to hurry up, I wiped the tears, put a smile on, and bounced out.
I couldn’t look at myself in the splattered mirror. I was too afraid of who I might find staring back—for the next while, I would have to be anybody else but me. I splashed water on my face and rinsed my mouth out, as I had pledged to do. When we walked out of the washroom, my teeth were tightly clenched into a smile, and I was breathing short shallow breaths—just enough to keep me standing. In my head I was signing a tune from The Sound of Music to keep myself from crying.
Doe, a deer, a female deer. We walked past the staring card players.
Ray, a drop of golden sun. We reached the threshold of ugly carpet.
Me, a name, I call myself. We were back in the office that had been converted into my prison—where Victor was eagerly waiting. As he approached me, he ordered Mickey to close the door and give us some privacy. My only means of escape slammed behind me, taking the cheery show tune with it. There was nothing in my head now but inescapable fear. I wished that Victor would turn the lightbulb off. This, I thought, would make it easier for me to imagine that I was anywhere but here.
Victor was smiling, benevolently. I was shaking uncontrollably.
“You don’t have to be scared. I won’t hurt you,” he whispered as he wrapped his hand around my ponytail, pulling my head back, forcing me to look up at him. He looked like a much older wrinkly version of my brother. This thought only made things worse. I started crying. I knew that I wouldn’t be able, under any pretense of willingness or otherwise, to go through with it.
His face was coming closer to mine.
“Uncle Victor,” I pleaded, “I can’t …”
This made him smile. “I’m not really your uncle. You know that, right? This would be wrong if we were actually related. But we’re not. So, it’s okay. Just relax.”
He pressed his lips against mine, but I didn’t respond.
His smile was fading.
“Kiss me back,” he ordered coldly.
I started sobbing. “Please don’t. I don’t want to do this. I’ll do whatever you want me to do, but not this.”
He laughed chillingly and shook his head. “You’re just a tease, aren’t you? You think I’m going to let you go back to that boy without some kind of assurance that you’ll do what I tell you to do? You’ll be mine before I send you back to finish the job.”
He pushed me up to the wall and held his hand at my throat while trying to push his tongue into my mouth.
“Open your mouth,” he commanded.
I was paralyzed with fear. My lips remained sealed. He pressed his hand against my throat harder this time, until my mouth finally gasped open for air. He kissed me, and I continued to struggle. His free hand was everywhere—on my face, in my hair—but as it started inching down my neck and closer to my chest, I went into absolute panic. Instinctively, I kicked my knee up between his legs. The effect was immediate. He fell to the ground on his knees, grabbing hold of himself. But he was enraged and, within half a second, was back on his feet. He stomped back to me, pulling his fist back. I closed my eyes and waited for the blow.