Shade Me

by Jennifer Brown

  I wanted to. I really, really wanted to. But I knew that going home with him would mean falling into bed with him, and I couldn’t help hearing Chris Martinez’s warnings in my head again. And seeing that gray.

  Plus, I really needed to look at those photos again. Needed to see the one of the hand full of pills again, just to be sure. And not just those. I needed to look at the ones on Peyton’s photo-sharing site again. Things were needling the back of my brain. Things that I’d seen but couldn’t quite pinpoint. Answers were in those photos. I knew it. I just had to find them. I gave Dru a soft shove.

  “Not right now,” I said. “Maybe I’ll come by later?”

  He groaned, pulled away from me. “My apartment. Tonight? We’ll be alone.”

  “Deal,” I said. “I’ll text you.”

  THE HOUSE WAS quiet when I got home. Dad was out, and as the night wore on I began to wish more and more that he was home. I hadn’t heard a word from Gibson Talley since our altercation in the parking lot, but I was still sort of waiting for him to come exact his revenge for what had gone down out there. Gibson Talley didn’t seem like the type to let things go easily. He definitely didn’t seem like the type who would let a girl get the best of him and then just brush it off as if nothing had happened. He had face to save.

  I realized I hadn’t eaten, so I grabbed a bowl of cereal and headed upstairs, the whole time trying to make sense of the things I’d learned at Lujo. Trying to clear my mind of my encounter by the car with Dru and my promise to meet up with him later. Not an easy task. I could still feel his feathery finger brushes against my side.

  But I had to focus. I shoved a spoonful of cereal into my mouth and chewed.

  There were secrets, that much I believed. But whose secrets were the deadly ones? That was the question. Who was telling the truth and who was lying? Who was covering up for what?

  And was it possible that a Hollis was behind Peyton’s attack?

  The thought had begun to whisper to me.

  Luna had guessed it could have been a john who’d beaten up Peyton. She’d said she thought Dru was being framed. Dru had made it sound like Bill Hollis was power hungry enough to possibly be the culprit. Detective Martinez had seemed to be pinning it, at least in part, on Arrigo Basile, Dru’s alleged puppet thug. And, of course, I couldn’t forget the mystery man with the bracelet. And the claim Luna had made about Peyton selling the Molly while it was her hand full of pills in the photo.

  All the arrows seemed to be pointing in opposite directions, but one thing had continued to come up again and again: escorts.

  Arrigo Basile was known for his involvement with prostitutes. Luna had said Peyton was an escort. Bill Hollis’s license plate read DREAMS, which just happened to be part of the name found on a flyer in Peyton’s apartment. Hollywood Dreams Ranch. The word Dreams glittery lavender. I looked at the flyer for the thousandth time.

  The glitter reminded me of something.

  I had seen something else recently that had stuck out to me because of its glitter and glitz. Yes . . . glitz. The thought made it click. The color I’d associated with it was something about the word glitz.

  Glitz. Glitzy cherrybomb. That was the phrase that had come to mind.

  I logged on to Peyton’s Aesthetishare site and scrolled to the photo of her and Luna. They were standing in front of a sign that promised SEXSEXSEXSEXSEX and were both seriously flirting up the camera. Luna had her lips and hips pushed out. Peyton was wearing a T-shirt with a dollar sign on it.

  I scooted away from my desk, staring at the screen as it all became so clear to me.

  The dollar sign. The SEXSEXSEXSEXSEX. The way they vamped for the picture.

  Maybe Luna hadn’t been full of shit. Maybe Peyton really was an escort.

  Why? Why would someone who had it all need to accept money from strange men for God-knew-what? It made no sense.

  But again, it made all the sense in the world. Peyton, wearing the dollar-sign T-shirt in front of the window advertising all that sex. It was so obvious it was almost too obvious.

  I scrolled to the post details. Peyton had titled the photo Double Rainbow. Was this a play on her new tattoo? Was she trying to say something more?

  Live in Color. Double Rainbow, only not regular rainbow colors. Glitzy cherrybomb Rainbow. Call-girl-colored Rainbow.

  I sifted through papers on my desk until I unearthed the Hollywood Dreams flyer. I picked up my phone and dialed the number, chewing on my lip while it rang. This was an outside chance, but . . .

  “Dreams,” a voice purred on the other end.

  “Um, hi, I’m looking for Rainbow?” I asked, my voice sounding way too high-pitched and nervous. I tried to lower it, sound more confident. “Is she working tonight?”

  “I’m sorry, Rainbow’s not available for a while,” the voice said. “Can I help you with something?”

  I hung up, silver squiggles I associated with excitement wriggling in the air.

  It had been an outside chance, but now it all made sense. The clues added up perfectly.

  Rainbow was Peyton’s call-girl pseudonym.

  I lit a cigarette, pushed up the window with one hand, and then rolled back to my desk. Pieces of the puzzle were clicking into place.

  The photo above Double Rainbow—the first photo of Peyton to catch my eye—filled my computer screen. Black and white, Peyton looking like a starlet as she stood, sultry, so angular she looked broken-boned, in the water, a life preserver dangling over her arm. The first time I’d looked at the photo, I’d noticed the yellow-and-pink SO written on the preserver. But now I knew the rest. S. The preserver had SOS written on it.

  What was it her Facebook status had said? The one right before she moved away? Must get to the bottom of things.

  I gazed at the photo again, noticing something else for the first time. Her other hand was clutching the life preserver, mostly covering tiny writing—what was maybe the name of the company that made the preserver. All that was showing was nik.

  My cigarette trembled between my fingers as I squinted at it, the copper that I usually associated with my name there, but just slightly off. It wasn’t nikki . . . it was just nik. Brownish, but not quite copper. Something that would stand out to me.

  Something that someone else with synesthesia would have known would stand out to me.

  She wanted me to know she was making changes. But she wanted more than that. Must get to the bottom of things.

  Nik. Must get to the bottom of things. SOS. Separately, each had their own colors. But together they were one. All in orange.

  It was a colored banner that might as well have read, Help me, Nikki.

  I WAS STILL puzzling over the photos—looking for more of Peyton’s clues, something I might have missed in the SOS photo—when my phone buzzed. I’d been lost in the photos for hours now. But I felt like I was on the edge of figuring it out. So close.

  “Hey.” It was Dru. “I thought you were going to text.”

  “Yeah, sorry. I was busy.”

  “Any progress?”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re still working on Peyton’s case, right? Have you made any progress?”

  I rubbed my eyes. “She knew she was in trouble,” I said. “She was reaching out to me. But I still don’t know why exactly.”

  “You two must have some connection,” he said, but his voice sounded distracted—almost as if he was talking to himself, rather than to me.

  If only you knew, I thought. I tabbed back to Peyton’s photo site and found the family photo on the pier. I liked this photo. Dru looked amazing. Damp and sculpted, sun-kissed.

  You could tell by looking at the photo that this was one powerful family, and you could tell by looking at Dru that he was comfortable with his power. He stood at the opposite end from his father—not a surprise, given what I’d seen—but also at the opposite end from Peyton. Luna and Vanessa were pressed in close to him, the small blond woman’s arm wrapped around his waist. He wasn’t rec
iprocating the hug. He stood confidently apart, even while being together.

  There was something else about the photo that I couldn’t quite pinpoint, but his unbuttoned shirt distracted me. I couldn’t help it. And hearing his voice on the other end of the phone only made it worse.

  “Hello?” he asked, jarring me away from the photo. I closed my laptop to shut out the distraction.

  “I’m still here,” I said.

  “So it’s gotten pretty late. You coming tonight? I really, really want you to. We can pick up where we left off earlier.”

  Still in my skirt, I slid my bare legs over the windowsill and sat in the night air. I lit up a cigarette. A part of me wished that this was a normal night. That Dru Hollis was calling me to come over just as Jones had always done, and that I was about to go over for a good time, without all the drama and nerves of this weird shit I’d gotten into.

  But I feared that longing for my relationship with Dru to be normal bordered on having feelings for him. I didn’t want to go there. He was a hot guy. A guy who wanted me as much as I wanted him. That was it. Who wanted normal when the drama and nerves amped up the sex all the more?

  “Give me half an hour,” I said.

  I smoked the cigarette down to the filter, and then lit another just to keep him waiting.

  DRU’S APARTMENT WAS almost as big as my house, taking up the entire top floor of a ten-story loft-style building on Sycamore Square.

  It was also pitch dark inside.

  “Hello?” I said as I pushed open the door. The elevator door slid shut behind me, stranding me there. “Dru?”

  There was no response, so I stayed in the doorway, blinking to try to adjust to the darkness. I heard a noise—a thump—off to my left. I jumped, flexing my arms protectively in front of me as I faced that direction.

  “Dru?” I asked again. No response.

  There was another thump, and I flinched again. Could the same person who hurt Peyton have hurt Dru, too? Could the person have known we were meeting here and had been waiting for him?

  I thought about how Luna had read his texts earlier in the evening and had intercepted me at Lujo. Maybe she was playing the same game twice. Dru, Dru, Dru. You have never been good at being on time. Maybe she knew he was going to be late. Maybe she knew I’d figured out about the drugs. Maybe she was here to hurt me.

  There was no way I was going to let a skinny, entitled bitch like Luna Fairchild scare me off. I walked toward the sound. “I hear you,” I said, holding my fists out in front of me. Now there was a noise at my back and I swiveled. “Come on out. Why are you hiding?”

  A louder thump this time, closer. I turned again.

  Someone hit me hard, wrapping me up and knocking me backward onto what felt like a couch. I let out a gust of air, but immediately pulled my legs into my stomach to put distance between me and my assailant.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” the figure who’d just tackled me said. It was Dru’s voice, so close I could feel his breath tickle my cheek. “Why so feisty?” He grabbed my wrists and pinned them to the cushions on either side of my head. He leaned into me, full force. “You look amazing in shadow, by the way. Your hips curve just right.” He ran one hand down my hip, hooking his thumb into my waistband.

  “Goddamn it, Dru,” I said, ripping one hand out of his grip and punching him in the chest. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  He laughed, pulling away from my punch and rubbing his chest, allowing just enough slack for me to free my other hand and hit him with it, too.

  “It’s not funny,” I said through gritted teeth. “You’re lucky I didn’t kick your head in.”

  He groaned, leaned into me again. “I love it when you talk tough,” he said. “So hot.”

  “It’s not talk,” I said, hitting him again and again.

  My fists slowed as he began to nuzzle my neck.

  “Don’t be mad,” he said into my hair. “I just wanted to have a little fun with you. You’re so serious all the time. A mystery.” He pulled my earlobe with his teeth. “I love mysteries.”

  I let my hands drop at my sides, let him glide closer and closer, the heat of his mouth against my skin leaving pulsing violet drops across my shoulders. Soon I was pushing my hands through his hair, kissing him back.

  He straightened his arms, pulling up above me. I still couldn’t see his face, but I could make out the angle of his silhouette.

  “What?” I asked, impatient.

  I saw his silhouette move, as if he were shaking his head. “You are something else, that’s what,” he said. “Any man would want you.”

  And as he leaned in to kiss me again, I knew what move I needed to make next. Any man would want you. Just as any man would have wanted Peyton. Nik.

  Must get to the bottom of things.

  SOS.

  I felt Dru tug at my shirt, but in my head I was already at Hollywood Dreams.

  I was already following Rainbow’s trail.

  I was already going to find the john who’d hurt Peyton.

  19

  TURNED OUT, THE hardest part about getting a job at Hollywood Dreams was finding it. But once I located the nondescript glass front door and pulled it open, I knew I was in the right place, because I’d seen it before. This was the same door in the blurred photo I’d found in the suitcase at the bottom of Peyton’s closet. Whoever the man was who had been in that photo, he’d been entering here. I got goose bumps following in his steps. What if that man had been Peyton’s attacker?

  The door opened onto a staircase—just as unremarkable as the door—and I climbed it slowly. I felt so uncomfortable in my hastily bought outfit—a stretch royal-blue dress a size too small, so tight and short it felt like I was wearing nothing at all. I wobbled on six-inch sequined heels. I was all legs and boobs and pissed-off awkwardness. Whatever connection Peyton and I might have had, this was not it. I would have made the worst call girl ever.

  I tried to imagine what Dru would think if he saw me dressed like this. Or even better, Jones. Jones would probably have a heart attack and die.

  I tried not to imagine how on earth I would defend myself in something so uncomfortable. My only solace was that one of my heels would jab out an eyeball nicely. Gunner would have been proud of that line of thinking. That knowledge made me more comfortable.

  At the top of the stairs was yet another ordinary door—this one wooden with mailbox number stickers adhered to the front. I tried the knob. It was locked. I knocked, wiped my sweaty palms along the (not long enough) length of my dress. I considered turning around and leaving, thinking of another way to get the information that I needed. I had to bite my lip hard and remind myself that nothing was ever going to get anywhere near an actual transaction just to get myself to stay there. I would bolt if anything weird happened. I would punch and then I would run. And this blue dress was as naked as I was going to get, period.

  After some time, there were footsteps, and then the door opened. A statuesque girl with doll eyes and perfect skin stood on the other side. She wore a simple black tunic and impossibly clingy jeans, the cuffs rolled to reveal a towering pair of cork wedges. Her long red hair swished over one eye seductively. When she moved, I could see a scar that had cut a line through her eyebrow.

  “Can I help you?” she asked in a voice I recognized as the voice that had answered the phone when I’d called earlier that day.

  “I think I talked to you,” I said. “I’m Nikki.”

  She stepped aside, opening the door wider. “Yep, come on in. I’m Brigitte.” I followed her down a short hallway into a perfectly plain reception area—a pockmarked wooden desk, a basic computer, a printer, a coffeemaker on top of a scratched file cabinet. This was anything but Hollywood. Or dreamy. “Actually, I’m Sarah,” she said over her shoulder. She motioned toward a chair and I sat. “But the boss likes us to have special names. Something sexy or mysterious or playful, you know. Brigitte, Celestia, Cinnamon. The clients are in it for the fantasy—they don’t want to be wi
th a plain Jane girl, even if that’s who we really are off the clock.” She flashed a smile that was anything but plain Jane. I pondered anyone accusing Peyton or Luna of being plain Janes. I couldn’t get there. “So, Nikki Kill, is that what you said your name was?” She opened a file with one sheet of notebook paper in it. I nodded, she made a note. “Almost good enough on its own, right? Maybe Killgirl or something super tough-sounding. You look the type.”

  “I’m a type?” I asked, pulling the front of my dress up over my cleavage for the millionth time.

  Brigitte assessed me, biting on her lower lip. One of her front teeth was slightly crooked, a flaw that somehow managed to make her even more gorgeous. “Definitely. Black fringe, thigh-high boots, bustier, the whole nine. I could see some of our clients going for the bad-girl vibe. You could really play it up. You know, when you’re alone. But I could see a lot of them wanting that innocent bad-girl thing. You know, the juxtaposition, like with a slutty librarian. That kind of thing.”

  “Okay,” I said, although I had no idea what she was talking about. I could do the bad-girl vibe with no problem. But I had no intention of playing anything out while alone with a client. I still had yet to figure out how that was going to go.

  Brigitte continued looking me over. She must have liked what she saw, because she finally gave a definitive nod. “Yeah, you’ll be popular. We just lost an escort whose image was sort of a punk rocker type. The guys loved her. Constantly calling for her. More requests than she could possibly take.”

  I sat forward. “She quit?”

  Brigitte wrote a few notes in my file. “Yeah,” she said absentmindedly. “Was too bad. She was one of our best. The boss had been grooming her for a while.”

  “The boss?”

  “Don’t worry, she’s not as intimidating as she sounds. Come here, I’ll show you her office. But she’s out today. She’s been out of town. And having some . . . family problems.”

  She plucked a set of keys off a hook on the side of the file cabinet and I followed her down the hallway, past a modest kitchen and supply area, to a door at the other end. Brigitte opened it. It was like opening a portal to a whole other world. Thick pink carpet flowed across the floor, a shining ship of a desk taking up the back, flanked by bookcases filled with crystal figurines. A zebra-print chaise lounge took up one corner, next to a Tiffany floor lamp, which bathed the room in a comforting amber light. There was a night-and-day difference between this office and the one Brigitte occupied out front. Whoever this madam was, she definitely wanted to let the support staff know that she was in charge.