“Thank you,” I said, taking the notepad from her.
I walked to the front door, but Cam lingered. “You have until tomorrow,” he said. “I didn’t want it to go down like this.”
“Nobody did,” she said.
He followed me back out into the hall, down the stairs, and onto the street. The new car smell made me almost sick as I sat slumped back in the passenger seat.
“It wasn’t my choice, you know,” he said, staring at the steering wheel.
“You run the crew,” I said. “It’s your call.”
He shook his head. “I could’ve ordered Linc not to do it, but he would’ve killed her anyway. That would’ve been a real problem. And if he did listen, he would’ve resented me for it, and the guys would’ve thought I was going soft.” He looked at me then and his eyes were hard. “I had no choice.”
“I guess you’re in a bad line of work,” I said and turned away.
He started the car and pulled out.
12
Cam
The night was heavy with humidity. Cam looked like a panther sitting in the front seat of the sedan parked across the street from a small park, barely more than some swings and some grass.
“What are we doing here?” I asked.
“Getting revenge,” he said and didn’t take his eyes off the night. I tried to follow his gaze, but I couldn’t tell which building he was watching.
I knew his whole crew was out there. We met at a bar after talking with Kira and went over the names she gave us. They started making calls, talking to the girls, but Cam kept me away from it. I sat alone in a booth and drank a beer and tried to think about what I was going to do with all of this.
I hated that Luiza was dead. I understood Cam’s position in the crew and knew he likely couldn’t have stopped it even if he wanted to, but the way he talked about the girl’s death made my spine tingle. I had a sick lump in my throat and in my gut, and I wished I could do something, anything, to make that whole day not happen.
If I could bring back Omar, I would. And he probably wasn’t a great guy. But I knew how much his death hurt Cam, and maybe then Luiza wouldn’t have been killed, either.
So much death already, and everything had barely begun.
“There it is,” Cam said, nodding up ahead.
I saw a car park at the far end of the block and flash its light twice.
“What is that?”
“The signal,” he said. “Watch.”
Figures converged on the car. Five of them, all dressed in black. It was late, ten past two in the morning, and the streetlights were all out. The block was pitch black, and we were deep in the heart of West Philly. This was Healy territory, and whatever was about to happen would be very, very bad.
The figures approached a bar tucked into the corner of the block. It had big glass windows out front and a bright green door. Above it, apartments peered out like insects.
One of the figures took out a gun and started shooting.
The glass shattered. I leaned forward, breathing hard, staring as flames suddenly lit up.
“What is that?” I hissed.
“Molotov cocktails,” Cam said simply. “Crude, but effective.”
The men threw the flaming bottles of gasoline in through the shattered windows. More fire spouted as they exploded inside the building. The men lit another round and threw more fire inside before they turned and scattered again.
The flames caught and thick black smoke plumed from the front of the bar.
Cam started the car and put it in gear. Around them, figures scattered into the night. I thought I caught one of their faces: Linc’s scars, grinning wide.
“It’s not enough,” Cam said, pulling out into the street. He slowly rolled past the burning building. People were pouring out of the apartments all around it wearing their nightclothes and pajamas. “Not nearly enough.”
“Are those people Healy?” I asked.
“Some might be,” he said, shrugging. “Doesn’t matter. They’ll live.”
The flames roared inside the bar, eating the furniture, the alcohol, whatever else was back in there, hidden away.
“Who owned that place?” I asked.
“Ronan,” Cam said. “That was just a warning though. A little message for him.”
He pulled around the block as the sirens started up in the distance. We didn’t speak as he parked a few blocks away. We could see the smoke twisting up into the dark night sky, blocking out the moon and the stars, and Cam watched with a strange, satisfied smile.
“What now?” I asked. “You burned one of his bars. So what? Do you start killing them?”
“I’ve been killing them,” he said, not looking at me. “Now I start destroying them.”
I leaned back into my seat. I was so frustrated and angry, and all I wanted to do was scream at him or run away, but I was trying to be better, trying to ignore my worse impulses. I spent two years hiding out and avoiding my problems, and now I wanted to try to do better—even if that meant staying in this car with Cam when really what I wanted was to bite off his ear or scream down his throat.