My face goes warm at the word date. It’s a mix of anger and shameful pleasure, but as usual I don’t know what the ratio is.
“I am not your date for anything, ever,” I snap.
I can practically hear him roll his eyes. “Just pretend, Red. I heard Dorsey might show tonight, is all.” He drops his voice. “I know I screwed up. Let me make it up to you.”
The thought of being alone with him again ties my gut up in knots. But if I have a chance to eavesdrop on Dorsey, I can’t pass up the opportunity.
“Fine,” I mutter. “I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”
“It’s a date.” He hangs up before I can protest.
I exit the bathroom and keep walking toward my gym class. How much can I trust what Valentine told me? He could still be holding stuff back, feeding me just enough new information to make me think he’s finally on my side for real.
I turn down the hall and spot a familiar pair of broad shoulders walking ahead of me.
I hustle to catch up. “Hey, Austin.”
He walks faster. So do I.
“Austin, I think you might be in danger.” I didn’t consider it before, when I thought he might have been the one who hurt Paige, but Austin’s the one who let Molly’s name slip in the first place.
He doesn’t slow down. “No idea what you’re talking about.”
“I saw what happened to Paige. They know you’re the one who told me about Molly, you’re not safe—”
He stops walking and bends close to my face. A vein pulses in his temple. “Look, you crazy bitch, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Everyone knows you’re a lying psycho who makes shit up for fun. Stop following me. I don’t need anyone to see me talking to you.”
He stalks off, throwing open the door to the boys’ locker room and disappearing inside.
I hesitate for a moment. I could follow him into the locker room. It’s not like I haven’t done it before, and I don’t think it even matters if he’s seen talking to me at this point. Lots of people heard him yell Molly’s name in the middle of the hallway. Whoever wants her kept quiet has to be gunning for him already.
But he’s obviously terrified. I don’t need to torture him with a public confrontation—he’s not going to listen to me anyway.
I turn and head down the hall. I’m running late. The girls’ locker room is basically empty. I start pulling gym clothes out of my bag.
I’m pulling my shirt on when a bone-shattering scream cuts through the air. It goes on and on.
I run back out into the hall, still pulling my arms through my sleeves. It’s coming from the weight-training room. Everyone in the gym must have heard it, too, because they’re all stampeding in the same direction. There’s a bottleneck at the door. Several people taller than me are looking into the room with horrified expressions on their faces. I fight my way to the front.
Austin is lying on his back on one of the weight machines. His neck is crushed under the weight bar. His terrified eyes dart around the room like he’s an animal with his paw caught in a trap. He struggles, but he can’t lift the bar.
“That’s fucked up,” someone says from behind me.
“Nasty,” someone else agrees.
I rush forward and pull at the weight, but it’s too heavy for me to lift. “Someone help him! He’s going to suffocate like that.” Everyone looks at me like I’m speaking in tongues.
Coach Rieger pushes her way through the crowd. “Everyone get back! Carson, Walker? Get that bar off his neck!”
Two guys do as she asked. The weight lifted, Austin lies on his back and pants for breath.
Someone must have sabotaged his machine. I crouch beside it to look. There’s a safety-lock mechanism that’s supposed to click into place when you set the bar down. It’s been taped over with duct tape.
Austin sits up slowly. His neck is already swelling with the beginnings of a huge purple-red bruise.
He looks right at me. “You. This is your fault.”
The whole school knows Austin’s injury wasn’t an accident, especially after what happened to Paige. The whispers pick up momentum, which only makes my omnipresent headache worse.
Cass and I make a pit stop at her place to pick up supplies, then head to my house to get me ready for my mission. I sit on the edge of my bed while she applies my makeup.
Cass turns my chin from one side to the other, evaluating my face. “Okay, so this date. What kind of look are we going for?” Her tone is brisk, but she’s blinking a lot.
“Not a date,” I remind her.
She grabs her makeup bag. “I’m thinking Leather Sandy from the end of Grease meets Imperator Furiosa from Mad Max.”
I groan, but Cass is a genius with wardrobe stuff. Whatever she says, goes. Plus, a disguise might not be so bad. I wouldn’t mind being someone else for a night.
Cass grips an eye-shadow brush so hard her knuckles turn white. I know she’s really rattled about what happened to Paige and Austin, and now it’s harder to pretend the text we got yesterday was just an empty threat. I wish I knew how to reassure her.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She smudges black glitter over my eyelids. “I don’t know.”
I try to think what she would say. “Things have seriously escalated in the last twenty-four hours. You can be scared. I am.”
It strikes me as I say it—this is the first time I’ve admitted that out loud since the night Ava died.
Cass concentrates on removing every last clump from her mascara wand. “I am scared. The more we investigate, the more people will get hurt, and it could be me or you, but it could also be some totally innocent bystander. I hate thinking we could be responsible for that.”
The makeup is already making my face itch. “I know. That scares me, too.”
She tilts my chin back and begins coating my lashes. “I know, but you make it next to impossible to talk to you about any of this stuff, and it’s not like I have anyone else. So I just end up freaking out on my own.”
It always amazes me. How effortless it is for Cass to just say how she’s feeling. I want to be more like that.
It’s easier when I don’t have to meet her eyes. “I know I’m a train wreck. I get all obsessive about the case so I don’t have to deal, and I end up shutting you out in the process. I’m sorry.”
Cass snorts. “Well, at least you’re a self-aware train wreck.” She switches to my other eye, pausing for a long time before she says, “But the thing is, I really think we’re on to something. I want us to bring this person down, no matter how scary things get. Right?”
I lean back to meet her eyes. “Right,” I promise. “You and me, together.”
She caps the mascara and chews her lip. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come?”
Elliot called yet another rehearsal tonight, theoretically to help the band bond, but I suspect it’s at least a little bit so he can hang out with Cass again. More than anything I wish she could watch my back tonight, but I remember yesterday at the memorial. How hesitant she was to commit to extra practice, because she was afraid to leave me on my own.
I give her my best stern face. “You are going to rehearsal, young lady, and you will have inappropriate thoughts about your bandmate and you will tell me about them after.”
Cass gives me an impatient look. “That’s pretty rich, considering you’ve told me more or less nothing about your guy.”
He’s not my guy, I almost say. A reflex.
When I try to talk about how I feel, sometimes it’s like there’s something physically blocking the words from coming out of my mouth.
For Cass, though, I can try.
“I don’t know. I trust him, and then I don’t, and then I do, but he screws it up.” I lie back on my bed while Cass rifles through her makeup bag. “Plus, it’s too weird. I only met him because Ava was murdered.”
Cass shoots me an exasperated look. “You’re right. If you ignore your feelings entirely, they’ll definitely go away.”<
br />
I throw DeeDee, my stuffed monkey, at her but miss.
What she’s saying sounds right, but there are actual consequences to trusting him. He’s sold me out once before, and I know there’s someone after me. Valentine could be dangerous if he wanted to be.
Cass holds up an electric-purple wig.
I sit up. “What the hell is that?”
“Your new Barbie dream hair.” She combs her fingers through it, primping and fluffing the ends.
It must be her mom’s. It’s clearly expensive, not some cheap, ratty thing you buy at the mall.
“I’m not wearing that,” I say.
Cass gives me a sharp look. “Don’t be stupid. The last time you went there, they sent VT after you, and things have only gotten more dangerous. You can’t be recognized tonight.”
I scowl at her.
She’s unmoved. “Now, go get me some bobby pins.”
I stomp over to my desk, but my pins aren’t in their usual drawer. I hunt through the chaos of papers—it’s been a while since I’ve bothered to tidy up. My eyes snag on something that wasn’t there before.
Newspaper clippings. Two of them, stapled together.
I glance over my shoulder at Cass. She’s texting someone. Probably Elliot, from the smile on her face.
I pick the clippings up. The first one is Lucy MacDonald’s obituary. In the accompanying photo, her eyes have been scrawled over with Sharpie, leaving nothing but black, staring voids behind. Something cold trickles down the back of my neck.
The second page is Ava’s obituary. Her eyes are scratched out, too. Over her face someone wrote in thick, dark letters:
YOU’RE NEXT
They were here. In my room. The papers rustle slightly in my shaking hands.
The makeup Cass just applied feels hot and tight on my face. I can hear her behind me, tapping away on her phone. She’s probably still smiling. The shaking gets worse.
“Where are those pins?” Cass asks.
Without turning around, I slide the clippings underneath the other piles on my desk.
“Olive must have borrowed them. Be right back.” I walk out quickly, before she can get a good look at my face.
In the bathroom, I bite down on my knuckles to keep from crying out.
Did they do it while I was at school? Or was I here, maybe sleeping? Did they stand over me, watch me? Smile with satisfaction that they could violate me like that, stand in my private room with me curled up and vulnerable? Powerless to do anything, even if I woke up.
I stand there, teeth embedded in my own fist, eyes squeezed shut, and ride out the wave of terror and panic.
When the shivers finally stop, I’m left feeling empty again. I stare at myself in the mirror. The sparkly black raccoon makeup makes it hard to tell I just had a complete mental breakdown. In efficient, mechanical movements, I grab a fresh packet of bobby pins from Olive’s stash and head back to my room.
My grandfather is passing through the hall. We both pause. We haven’t talked much since our conversation in the car yesterday.
He looks me over. “Where are you off to?”
I still don’t know exactly where we stand. I have no idea how he’ll react if I tell him where I’m going.
He sees my hesitation, and I don’t miss the flash of sadness in his eyes.
“Recon,” I say. “I have a lead on Dorsey.” I leave out the part about the fight club.
He knows it’s not the full truth, but he only says, “Please remember to bring your Taser, and your cell phone must be on you at all times.”
My heart expands in my chest. We’re both struggling. But we’re trying.
Valentine’s smoking next to his car in the parking lot. His eyes trace over the wig, the tight, high-waisted jeans Cass picked out for me.
“You dress up for me?” He gives me one of those wolf grins.
The sight of him has me furious all over again, especially because that aching pull hasn’t gone away, either. I pull my jacket tighter. These clothes so aren’t me, but they make me feel a little safer. It’s like armor, pretending to be someone else.
“A boy can dream,” I say tartly.
“Nah.” Valentine steps into my space. He runs his fingers through the purple ends of my wig, watchful eyes waiting to see if I pull away. “In my dreams, you’re never anyone but Red.”
It’s so tempting to listen to Cass on this one. To give in and stop worrying about it.
But people are getting hurt, and someone was in my room, and what I really need right now is answers.
I step back. “Let’s do this.”
Valentine leads me around the side of the building to a different entrance. Employees only, I guess. When we reach the bottom of the stairwell, he slips one arm around my back.
I tense. “What are you doing?” His hand rests underneath my jacket, and I can feel the heat of his palm through the thin cotton of my shirt.
“Playing the part.” He quirks one eyebrow.
A door opens to the left, and a man in a gray suit appears. Valentine pulls me tighter to his side. I can feel the press of each of his fingertips through my shirt.
The man approaches with an easy, slouchy gait, hands casual in his suit pockets. Medium-brown hair, a little gray around the temples, average height. He looks familiar, but I can’t place him. Then again, all middle-aged white dudes kind of look the same to me.
“VT. I was about to call you.” The man turns his attention to me. “And who is this?”
“My new girl, Violet,” Valentine drawls. “Violet, this is Mr. Boyd. He runs the place.”
During our conversation under the bleachers, Valentine said it was Boyd who gave him the orders to throw me off the case. This guy knows exactly who Flora Calhoun is. He might even be the one following me. The one in my room.
I resist the urge to tug on my wig. Suddenly, it seems like a pretty weak disguise. It’s cold in the dank tunnel, but a bead of sweat drips down my spine.
I shove my fear away. I’m here, and he’s seen me. It’s too late to run.
Tonight I’m Violet, and I’m not afraid of him.
I pout and offer him a limp hand. He shakes it with a tight-lipped smile.
Valentine turns on the smarm. “I want my girl to see the action from the good seats.” He stage-whispers, “You know how the girls are with the blood and violence. Gets them all agitated.”
Gross, but Violet just giggles inanely.
Like he can read my thoughts, Valentine looks back at me and winks.
Boyd’s expression remains neutral. “Martin didn’t show. I need you to take his slot.”
Valentine’s lazy smile falters. “C’mon, man. It’s my day off.”
The two of them maintain their casual posture, but Valentine’s fingers have tightened on my hip, and Boyd picks a piece of lint from his suit jacket with too much precision.
Something’s wrong here.
Boyd says, “I’ve done a lot of favors for you, VT, and now I’m asking you to extend me that same kindness.”
The implied threat gets my hackles up.
I turn to Valentine and use my brattiest Violet voice. “It’s date night. You can’t just abandon me!”
Valentine gives me a tight smile, but there’s a warning underneath. “It’s fine,” he says to Boyd. “Let me get her set up at a table, and I’ll come back.”
“Excellent.” Boyd gives me another lukewarm smile and walks past.
I have a million questions, but I hold my tongue while Boyd is still within earshot. Valentine’s unease sets my own nerves on edge.
The clamor of the crowd thunders through a set of metal doors. I step through into the throbbing darkness of the club. The air is a thick, gritty fog of smoke and body odor. We’re standing on a raised platform area behind the ring. A dingy velvet rope separates this section from the commonfolk.
Valentine leads me over to a table and sits. He stares at me like he’s about to say something, but nothing comes.
He’s making me nervous, so I inspect the room. There are a few people seated at the other VIP tables, but Dorsey is nowhere to be seen. I peer out into the crowd. A couple faces stand out. Two girls from my math class drinking by the bar. A whole cluster of kids from the lacrosse team standing in line to place bets. And there are other people our age I don’t recognize. Kids from other schools.
Valentine drums his hands on the tabletop, but every time I make eye contact he looks away.
I have to shout to be heard over the laughs and swears of the crowd. “What’s wrong?”
Blue shadows pool in the hollows of his cheeks. “Don’t like the thought of leaving you alone in the lion’s den.”
I’m getting that feeling again like he’s not telling me something. And I’ve been horribly right every other time.
He props his elbows on the table and leans closer. “I need you to promise me something. You stay here while I’m gone. No rogue missions, okay?”
“You can’t expect me to sit here and do nothing if—”
He cuts me off. “There’s scary people here. What they did to that girl, Paige? They’d do worse to you in a heartbeat. I know people who can keep an eye on you, but you have to stay put. Don’t go off by yourself. This is real, Flora. Promise me.”
If the seriousness in his voice didn’t do it, the use of my real name certainly gets my attention.
“If we’re in this together,” I tell him, “I have to know what this is really about.”
He picks at a scab on his knuckle. “I don’t like it, the fight getting switched at the last minute. Boyd’s up to something.”
“So why did you say yes?”
He shakes his head. “I walk out, I burn bridges. Bridges I need, yeah? For Annabelle.”
Right. His sister. I can understand that. If it were Olive, or Cass, I’d do anything. Is that all this is, though?
Whatever he’s hiding, he’s not going to leave me alone if I don’t agree to his rules, and I need to be here when Dorsey arrives.
“I’ll stay here. I promise.”
“Thank you.” He touches my hand, the barest brush before he pulls away. “I better get back there.” I watch him put that anxious part of himself away. Now he’s the same guy I first met, all slick, sideways smiles. That’s my cue, too.
You’re Next Page 18
