Shade Me

by Jennifer Brown

  I froze. What more do you want me to do about her? What did that even mean? What had Gibson already done?

  They all stood around staring at one another, and then Gibson sighed. “Would you two stop acting like such babies? This is our big break. Don’t even think about Peyton. She’s nothing.” I thought about the photos I’d seen—the ones where Gibson was watching Peyton, where his arm was crooked around her neck. She hadn’t been nothing to him then.

  “Gib,” Vee said. “She’s in the hospital.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” he snapped. “Of all people, don’t you think I’m very well aware that Peyton is at death’s door right now? But I can’t let it tank my one shot. I can’t let her do that to me. Do you want this or don’t you?”

  “Of course I—” Vee started, but the door opened again, and Zach came back into the studio.

  “So I called Leo Powers,” he started, and I didn’t wait to hear the rest before I was moving, gold adrenaline flashes bursting in my brain. I scanned the room for a place to hide, afraid that I was stuck and would have to fight my way out of Clear Lake. I grabbed a bottle of coffee just in case I should need to improvise a weapon.

  Fortunately, there was a door on the back wall. I raced to it and ducked through, just as I heard the drummer say, “What do you mean, canceled? His assistant’s in the booth.”

  The door opened into a different hallway than I’d originally come down. I wasn’t sure where to go, but I didn’t have time to waffle about it. I speed-walked, hoping I had chosen the right direction.

  I could hear voices coming from the other side of the sound booth door. “Hey, Angie?” I heard Zach call to me. I dipped my chin into my chest and walked even faster.

  I was just turning the corner to the original hallway Zach had taken me down earlier when they came through the sound booth door I’d just come out of.

  “Dude, is that the chick from your apartment?” I heard the drummer say.

  “I know who that is,” Vee piped up, before Gibson could respond. “That’s not Leo Powers’s assistant. That’s Nikki K—” I didn’t wait for her to finish. I sprinted, my car keys already in hand, the bottle of coffee falling to a broken mess in the Clear Lake lobby.

  I WAS SO glad to get home, I skipped steps up to my room. I dropped my backpack, grabbed my cigarettes, and threw open my window in one clean motion. I smoked three in quick succession before I felt satisfied enough to climb back into my room, the outside air still clinging to my skin.

  The conversation among the bandmates raced through my mind on a loop. Something had happened with the song lyrics, and Gibson was definitely pissed about it. So pissed he’d had a plan. So pissed he thought Peyton was nothing.

  So pissed he wanted her to die? It seemed possible.

  Yet I could find nothing in the clues Peyton had left that answered my questions. Was Gib more to her than a bandmate? Was it about more than the lyrics?

  I had so many things to do, I didn’t know where to begin. I started by going through the photos I’d stolen from Peyton’s suitcase. There were three of them, all snapshots that looked to be taken without the knowledge of the people in the photo. The first was of a couple, hidden deep in the shadows of what looked like a home office, a door partially obscuring the camera lens. They were leaning against a glass-topped desk, kissing. Only they were kissing kissing, the woman’s hand fisted around a tangle of the man’s hair, which went nearly to his shoulders, her leg curled around his hips. His face was completely shadowed, as well as the top half of his body. Really, the only thing visible about him was one arm, curved around her backside, a bracelet glinting under the soft light of the lamp behind them. Whoever they were, they looked well past the point of no return. And why Peyton had a photo of them was beyond me.

  Another photo showed the torso only of a young woman, her hand extended toward a hairy man’s hand, her fingertips splayed with a delicate charm dangling from the tip of one. In the girl’s outstretched palm was a rainbow of pills, each stamped with a different image—a Buddha, a crown, a Pac-Man, a ghost.

  A drug deal? It didn’t make sense. Why would Peyton be taking a photo of a drug deal? And where?

  The third photo was a blur, a partially rolled-down car window in the foreground, as if it had been taken from a moving vehicle. It was mostly lights—the lights of a building front and what looked like a front door, the back half of a well-dressed man disappearing inside. I squinted, searching for clues, but there was nothing. This, like the others, looked more like a mistake than an actual photo. Maybe they weren’t so much hidden in the suitcase as forgotten there. Maybe these were simply the errors of a budding photographer.

  I tossed the photos onto my bed. None of this made sense, and I was beginning to think that maybe I had been “finding clues” where there had been none. I’d gotten lucky with the apartment, but to be fair, Jones had helped me out with that. I still knew nothing more than I’d known before.

  I rubbed my eyes. There had to be something more. Something I was missing.

  I wondered if Dru was at the hospital tonight, keeping vigil by Peyton just as he had been before, or if his arrest, and his parents’ return from Monaco, had changed things. Was Peyton alone in there now, surrounded by the sea of gifts and a marching squadron of efficient nurses?

  . . . all she had on her were her keys . . .

  I remembered the nurse saying that as she checked Peyton’s wires and tubes, squishing the IV bag between her stout fingers, her voice morphing into Bill Hollis’s voice, as he pulled away in a glittering lilac cloud: It’s bad enough that we’ve lost your sister’s car.

  Of course. Even if the photos made no sense, I still had keys to solving Peyton’s attack. Literally.

  I raced downstairs to find my jacket, which I’d left on the hook by the front door. I hadn’t realized how late it had gotten until I reached the bottom of the stairs and smelled the tomatillos.

  Shit. Dad’s promise of dinner.

  I stood at the bottom of the stairs for a few moments, then, with a sigh, decided to get this over with.

  “Chilaquiles?” I asked, coming into the bright kitchen. Dad was standing at the black granite countertop, so polished it reflected the kitchen spotlights onto his glasses so that I couldn’t see his eyes from some angles. His fingers expertly pulled cooked chicken into shreds.

  “Which came first?” he asked, just as he always did when he made my favorite dish of quartered tortillas, green salsa, shredded chicken, and fried eggs.

  “The chicken, of course,” I answered, the way I always did. In Dad’s chilaquiles, the eggs always came last, sitting on top, lovely and jiggling, the last thing placed before serving.

  Dad grinned. “Age-old mystery solved.” I could have recited that line with him. If Mom were alive, she’d have been able to recite it, too. “Are the totopos soft?”

  I poked at one of the tortilla triangles. It broke apart. I nodded. He reached across me and let loose a handful of cheese, then broke two eggs into a separate pan.

  “Sunny-side up?”

  “Yep.”

  Our shoulders bumped, and the proximity combined with the rusty peach banners of nostalgia waving in my mind started to make me feel queasy, so I crossed the kitchen to get two plates out of the cabinet, turning my back to him so I could breathe.

  I scooped half of the chilaquiles onto each plate. Dad slid an egg on top of each one. I took mine and headed for the table, fumbling for the remote that we kept in a basket in the middle of the table.

  For years, this was how Dad and I had eaten dinner together—to the drone of early evening newscasts, to make us feel less alone.

  A car commercial was just ending as the TV flicked on, some idiot prancing around a dealership lot in a suit and a pair of those giant plastic sunglasses. I concentrated on eating my food and was so into it I didn’t even notice that the news had come back on until Dad spoke.

  “That family,” he mumbled. The steam from his plate had clou
ded his glasses.

  I glanced up at the screen, and there was a video of Dru Hollis being escorted into the police station by Detective Martinez. Obviously from yesterday, when he’d been arrested.

  “. . . say that the film producer’s son was arrested in connection with his sister’s brutal attack, which took place late Monday night. Sources say police were alerted by an anonymous caller, who reported finding a woman severely beaten in an elementary school parking lot. . . .”

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  Dad looked startled, almost as if he’d forgotten I was in the room with him. “Oh.” He tried to wave it off. “I said that family thinks they’re untouchable. It was just a matter of time before one of them ended up in trouble.”

  I pressed the mute button on the remote as the news switched to another story, about an apartment fire in a nearby town. “You know the Hollises?”

  He stuffed another bite into his mouth, keeping his eyes rooted to his plate. “Not really. I did a shoot with Bill Hollis once. He was an arrogant asshole. Thinks if he throws around a few dollars, he can own the whole world. And his wife is a real piece of work.”

  While that assessment of Hollis certainly fit with what I’d witnessed that morning at the police station, there was something about Dad’s reaction that seemed . . . off. “That’s it?”

  He finally looked up. The steam cloud had cleared from his glasses. “Yeah. That’s it. Why? Do you know something about that?” He gestured toward the TV, and his face blanched. “Is that the friend you’ve been visiting in the hospital? What’s her name? Peyton? The daughter?”

  I didn’t answer. I could tell he wasn’t going to be happy with the truth.

  He pointed his fork at me. “Nikki, you stay away from that family. Okay? No more visiting the hospital. You want nothing to do with that mess. You hear me?”

  “How do you know it’s a mess?” I asked.

  He moved his fork so it was pointing at the TV now. “That’s how I know. And, like I said, I worked with those people. I don’t want you putting yourself in some kind of danger. Not for that family.”

  “I’m not in danger,” I said, but he cut me off.

  “Stay out of it, Nikki.”

  “Okay, sure, whatever,” I mumbled, even though I knew it would be impossible for me to stay away at that point. I was already too far in. Plus, the truth was, if I wanted to keep going to the hospital, there wasn’t anything he could do about it, and we both knew it. We finished our meal in silence—the news rolling along on mute—and then I took my plate to the sink.

  “I have to run out real quick,” I said. “Is that okay?”

  “Is your homework done?” he asked, which was cute, but totally not believable from a dad standpoint. He sounded like he was reading from a cue card. A tired, over-read one.

  “I’ll get it done.”

  “You’re not going to that hospital,” he said.

  “No,” I answered honestly. “Nowhere near it.”

  He seemed to think this over, his lips pursing in displeasure. “Just be home at a decent hour.”

  “Sure thing,” I said.

  “And Nik?” he asked. I turned. “You sure there isn’t anything you need help with? Homework? Or any other problems? I know you’d rather have Mom help you, but I’m a good stand-in. You seem to be . . . struggling with something.”

  I went over and kissed him on top of the head. “Everything’s fine, Dad,” I said. “Promise.” I felt a little bad for him. He had to know I was lying.

  I GRABBED MY jacket from the hook by the door and headed out to my car, digging out Peyton’s keys as I walked. Where was her car? Was it truly lost, as Bill Hollis had said it was, or was it simply left?

  The news had said the anonymous caller had found Peyton in an elementary school parking lot. There were probably a dozen elementary school parking lots in Brentwood. Maybe more, who knew? And I had no clue in which parking lot Peyton’s body had been found.

  But I had an address on the back of a Hollywood Dreams flyer.

  And it seemed like a good start.

  14

  IT WAS ALREADY dark outside by the time I reached the address. It was no elementary school. I pulled into a severely neglected parking lot, my headlights sweeping over what looked like an abandoned supermarket. Damn it, I had gotten the address wrong.

  I turned on the dome light and inspected what Peyton had written again, which was difficult with the bumpy gray and black undulating under my fingers. Golden. Golden. Golden. My heart beat in time with the word, getting stronger and faster with every propulsion of blood through my veins. Golden. Golden. Fear. Fear.

  I looked at the building again, and the screen on my GPS, which showed that I was at the end point. This was definitely the address she had written down.

  Peyton had met someone here? At eleven o’clock? Morning or night, that was the question. In the morning, it would be sketchy enough, but at night, it would have been downright terrifying. I had assumed I was coming to the place where she’d met her attacker, but if she’d been attacked at an elementary school, then this wasn’t it. She’d had an appointment here for something else.

  Golden. Golden. Golden.

  Slowly, I pulled around to the back of the building. My headlights revealed drifts of detritus shifting around an old loading dock—trash and old clothing, broken bottles, the kind of stuff the derelicts sometimes dropped behind the dojang on summer nights. I pulled up to the dock and let the lights shine on it, trying to take in every detail, trying to imagine Peyton Hollis standing ankle-deep in the muck in the middle of a fall night, frantically pushing buttons to call me.

  I couldn’t get there in my head.

  I turned off the car and got out.

  It was impossibly dark behind the building now, adding to the ominousness, and immediately goose bumps popped up on my arms. I was in full alert mode. I heard fast-food wrappers rustle in the wind, or possibly shifted by a rat, I smelled the exhaust from my own car, I saw the letters on a Dumpster pulsate with a dull glow. Slowly, as I settled down, my eyes adjusted and I was able to make out the parking lot better. A cloud drifted away from the moon, and I could see individual pebbles on the ground.

  And, at the foot of the steps leading up to the loading dock, a pool of dark pebbles. I switched my phone to flashlight mode and shone it down onto them.

  Blood. A lot of it.

  I shone the light in a circle around them.

  The darkened stones trailed off toward the middle of the lot, and I followed them until they abruptly ended near a set of tire tracks.

  My hand shook.

  Jesus. She had been here. This was where it had gone down, whatever “it” was. Peyton hadn’t been attacked in an elementary school parking lot. She’d been attacked here and moved to an elementary school parking lot. But why? And by whom? Did the police not know this? Or had they been withholding it, hoping someone would slip? Either way, it was probably something they should know. Something I should call Detective Martinez about as soon as I got back to my car.

  Shaken, I held up the light and stood up straight, trying to take in everything I could see, wishing the light would penetrate farther across the parking lot so I could stay near the safety of my car. But my phone could only light up so far, and I found myself crunching through the gravel toward the Dumpsters and the tree line behind them. I felt a familiar lump try to edge its way into my throat. A panicky constriction settled in there. My eyes kept trying to pull back to that pool of blood. Kept trying to see it, to feel it under my shoes, slipping, slipping, Tootsie Rolls soaking up the red, the numbers of a watch pulsing slower, slower, slower. Cool it, Nikki, I told myself. It’s not your mother’s blood.

  I caught a flicker of something through the leaves, far back in the trees. I swept the light back and forth a few times, trying to catch it again. Nothing but foliage, rustling in the night breeze. I had almost convinced myself that it had just been my imagination, when suddenly the light caught i
t again. A flash. Or more like . . . a reflection?

  I walked all the way across the lot, until I’d finally hit grass. Holding the phone out in front of me, my entire body on high alert, I slowly arced the light across the woods.

  There it was. Again.

  Red. It was definitely a red reflection.

  “A taillight,” I whispered to myself. “There’s a car in there.”

  For a moment, my body was seized with fear. Was there someone back there, watching me? Maybe the same person who had attacked Peyton, just waiting for me to get close enough? I took a deep breath. Clenched and unclenched my fists. Closed my eyes and tried to imagine Kyo Sah Nim Gunner standing by my side. He would be calm, ready to defend.

  I wanted to run. To turn around, get into my car, and drive straight to the police station, find Detective Martinez, and tell him what I’d found. Admit to myself that I was in over my head and this was best handled by the police now. But I couldn’t not go into those trees. Bill Hollis had been yelling about having lost Peyton’s car. The reflected taillight was hers. I just knew it down deep in my bones. I had to go in. I could find the answers I was searching for. The answers I would probably never get if I turned this over to the police.

  Deciding that I might need my hands, just in case my theory about the car being Peyton’s was wrong and someone was waiting for me inside, I pocketed my phone and plunged into the tree line, feeling somewhat protected by the same dark that had frightened me. The brambles wrapped around the toes of my shoes and tried to keep me back, but I kept to the flattened and broken areas where the car tires had gone through.

  Although it seemed like I was completely cut off from the rest of the world back here in the woods, it was no time before I was on top of a cherry-red Mustang convertible with vanity plates reading FNFAIR—the car that everyone who was anyone knew was Peyton Hollis’s car.