Crow’s Row by Julie Hockley Page B

your house?”
    He nodded. “It was basically just a barn, but I had it fixed up. I kept the tin roof and restored the façade. 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.
    “I’ve been subjected to piano lessons my whole life,” I explained dully. “My last piano teacher ran off crying after accusing me of purposefully being tone-deaf. She had a nervous breakdown.”
    Cameron’s eyes widened, and suddenly a full bellowed laugh escaped him. It was so unexpected, that I took a step back.
    I noticed something different about Cameron—something that had been there since he had arrived that morning, something that had only intensified since he had come to meet Rocco and me by his car. His cheeks were slightly flushed. The tired and anxious creases around his eyes were almost gone. He looked decidedly younger.
    It was like a mask had been taken off … or put on—I couldn’t be sure … but I liked it more than I ought to. We headed back through the foyer and down the stairs to the lower level.
    “How old are you, Cameron?” I wondered aloud as we walked into a den.
    “This is where the guys hang out when they’re not working,” he explained. The space had everything to keep overgrown children entertained: a stocked kitchen, ping-pong and pool table, a big screen TV, and a wall of movies and video games. It also had patio doors that opened up onto the pool outside.
    “Are you avoiding my question on purpose?” I put to him.
    “What? Oh, I’m twenty-six,” he answered, distracted.
    While my thoughts were trying to process how my twenty-six-year-old tour guide slash kidnapper could afford the mansion I was sightseeing, we were making our way down another hallway.
    “Some of the night guards sleep in here,” he whispered, pointing at the bedroom doors that were closed. I could hear off-tempo snoring and wheezing through the door.
    At the end of the hall was a