That was close.
Stupid, and close.
VIIIM’s message could hardly be more perfect. When I was drowning in fear, desperately fighting a monster that vaporized each time I thought I’d found a way to take my pictures down, help came to me.
And not just help. Holy Hotness in the form of a rock star whose hands thrill me with the slightest touch. Jayce. Justin. The more I think of what he’s done for me already—protecting me even when I fought against him—the more I see him as Justin. One who is just.
I wonder what to make of VIIIM’s name. I don’t know if it’s gang-related, but I do know random graffiti often litters his work as soon as it’s discovered. That’s why it’s so important for me to capture the image before it’s lost to vandals.
I’ve got enough of a photo collection on VIIIM that I could sell a feature to a magazine if they think his work is important enough.
I cross the street to the small lot at the base of the graffitied building, which is surrounded by a chain-link fence. There’s a gate, but when I look closer, I realize that the lock isn’t clicked closed.
Feeling like a trespasser (which I probably am), I push through the gate and step up to the building to get a closer look.
The bottom of the stencil is at least eight feet off the ground. I open my new phone to look up VIIIM’s Twitter feed, my only access to the artist so far.
@VIIIM: West Village People: What kind of music would that band play? #RuinABandName
@VIIIM: Feeling like a giant tonight—my stilt-friends Chris & Hudson hooked me up for some vertical mayhem.
@VIIIM: The difference between a flower and a weed, and between art and vandalism, is your point of view.
@VIIIM: Who are you calling 8,000? I’m a person, not a Roman numeral.
I see how the clues add up—the vertical mayhem is here in the West Village, at the corner of Christopher and Hudson.
VIIIM’s last tweet makes me chuckle. When I started following him, I wondered if his name might be Roman numerals or maybe a date. VIII is eight, M is one thousand. But eight thousand isn’t written VIIIM, it’s just VIII with a line over it. So, no dice.
And yes, I had to Google that.
As I wrap up the last of my shots, my spine prickles with a sense that someone’s watching me. I turn, but it’s nothing. A woman pushing a baby carriage. A uniformed delivery guy hauling boxes with a hand truck. A curvy, tattooed girl with pink hair and headphones at a bus stop.
I watch the delivery guy closely, but I don’t think it’s the same guy who came with my flowers. Then I lock on another guy idling up the street. With his shaggy brown hair and slouch, he looks eerily similar to the man who works the newsstand at the bodega near my apartment—which is on the opposite side of Manhattan.
The unease of being watched hovers over me like a cloud and I beat a hasty exit to the chain-link gate. I hustle down the sidewalk toward the subway without even packing my camera back in my gear bag. The girl at the bus stop gives me a long, slow look but I don’t care if she thinks I’m a tourist.
I cross town on the subway to the police precinct, fill out paperwork and wait. And wait. When a detective finally meets with me and scrolls through the stalker’s texts, our conversation earns me little more than frowns and a few scrawls in his notebook.
I tell him about the flowers.
“So this delivery guy didn’t threaten you? Didn’t touch you?”
I think of the moment when his hand brushed mine as he handed me the vase and shudder. “No—not really.” I think of the million little interactions—the barista at the coffee shop around the corner from my apartment, the clerk at the bodega, and my neighbor. It could have been any of them or none of them.
“Do you think he was the one who’s been sending the messages?”
I point to the text that says he touched my skin. “I don’t know. All I know is someone’s too close.”
“I can trace the number. But if it’s a burner-phone, there’s not much we can do to track him.”
“Can’t you find a credit card he used to buy the phone? Or the location where the texts originated?” I rack my brain for ideas, mostly fueled by cop show reruns. “Can’t you do anything?”
The detective’s mouth forms a hard line. “These texts are aggressive, but there’s no incident to follow, Ms. Chase.”
I hear the subtext. It’s not a priority. “You mean he has to hurt me before you can do anything?” My voice rises.
“We’ll do what we can. But you’ve got to accept your responsibility in this, too. Get your pictures off the Internet. Change your number.”
I tell him I have changed my number. Even moved out of my apartment, but the texts on my old phone—and there were three new ones today—keep coming.
Where have you gone, my sweet Violet? Are you waiting for me? Wanting me as much as I want you?
I try to describe the delivery guy but it’s worthless, like telling an airline your lost luggage is a black rolling bag. There are thousands of thirtyish white men, medium build, just under six feet tall. I don’t know his hair color because he was wearing a baseball cap.
“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?” the detective asks.
“No,” I confess. The delivery guy seemed inconsequential and I was so surprised by the flowers that I barely looked at him.
We go through the same routine with the other guys I spoke to yesterday. I describe Corey, the clerk, and the barista. “Did you interact with any other men yesterday?”
I hesitate, thinking of Jayce. “No.” I’m already afraid my police report will get noticed by a reporter; I don’t need Jayce McKittrick’s name anywhere near mine to expose my secret completely.
The detective closes his notebook. “Go home and get some rest. Stay safe—lock your doors, check before you let anyone in. This should be a matter of course for a young woman like you.”
I hate the condescending tone in his voice, as if I live a life that beckons danger. From my careful existence in my parents’ house to my conservative college lifestyle, I’ve been the model of safety.
Now the only place I feel safe is with Jayce. Strong shoulders, watchful eyes, commanding presence that takes action. I leave the precinct and pull out my phone to text him, but his number’s not in it.
Oh. It’s my old phone. Before I switch it off, I see a red badge indicating that I have voicemail.
I take a deep breath. Considering how many creeps have my number, this could be ugly.
“This message is for Violet Chase. You stopped by Righteous Ink a few days ago and asked about one of our freelance artists. Come by the store or return my call.”
My heart speeds up and my body points me toward that East Village shop where Stella got her crazy, spur-of-the-moment tattoo.
The antiseptic in the air is more intense than I remember it, the store just as quiet. I don’t see the burly, tattooed man I talked to last time, just a girl behind the counter, bent over a sketchpad.
She straightens when I see her, and there’s something oddly familiar about her pink-streaked hair and arms laden with tattoos. A black, scoop neck T-shirt stretches across her ample chest and a piercing above her lip sparkles.
“You’re here for a tattoo?” The girl gives me a once-over, my pale limbs not bearing a single tattoo. Her voice is low and Kathleen Turner sexy.
“Um, not really,” I say. The girl, who is about my age, goes back to sketching. “But I got a call from this shop. I wanted to meet one of your freelance artists.”
I take a couple of steps closer to the counter and she closes her sketchbook before I can see what she’s working on. Her blue eyes, dark at the edges, meet mine. “Which one?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t really know his name. He did this design”—I skip over to the window to point to a stylized daisy, like the one I found with Stella on graffiti around the corner—“and I was hoping to meet him.”
“Why?” Now the girl looks put out.
; “Because … because I admire his work. Because I think he does other stuff, bigger canvases, and I want to know about it.”
“He’s not here.” Her scowl deepens. “And the artist doesn’t do canvases.”
I shove my hand in my hair, tangling in a few curls, trying to keep my composure. “I know. That’s not what I meant. I think he does much bigger stuff. Like walls.”
I wait and watch for recognition in her face. Her lip twitches but she says nothing.
“I think his name is VIIIM,” I say, pronouncing it Vim.
She laughs at this. “Vim. Right. Where do you get that?”
I pull out my camera, desperate to keep her engaged. I click through a few frames that I shot earlier, the silhouetted man hanging from a fire escape ladder. I touch a button and zoom into the corner of the digital image.
“See that? V-I-I-I-M. It’s on all of his work.”
The girl looks surprised. “How much of this work have you seen?”
I smile. “A ton. I have twenty-seven works captured from around New York and Paris, not counting that daisy in the window,” I say.
“Paris?”
“I took a trip to Europe because VIIIM’s Twitter feed said he was going. I found six paintings there, although only four were intact.” My face falls with the memory of being too late to capture two of them. “Vandals got there before me on a couple.”
“Vandals? You don’t think what Vim is doing is vandalism?”
“It’s art!” I say, before I can stop my rush of enthusiasm. “I’ve been tracking him since last fall, trying to figure out why he leaves these perfect little paintings around the city for people to discover.”
“What are you doing with these photos?”
I let out a breath and the cloud returns. “I’m a freelance photographer—well, actually, I was a junior high art teacher, until I got fired—and this is all I have left. This project, and a few assignments from my roommate’s newspaper. I’m hoping to sell the project as a photo feature to a magazine.”
The girl’s eyes harden. “Sell it?”
“Well, yeah. It’s amazing art, and I want more of the world to see it than the few folks who do before taggers ruin it.” I pause, searching her face for an answer. “What do you know about this guy?”
CHAPTER 17: JAYCE
“Let’s take ten,” Dave says, and I can’t drop my guitar fast enough. I escape to the kitchen for a beer and to simply get away from the bad energy swirling in our practice space.
Every fucking thing is a battle today. Gavin’s endlessly contradicting himself, indecisive over the shape of his songs. His songs, as if we have no ownership in them at all. As if the rest of us don’t write them, too.
Tyler’s quiet, his tongue still healing, and a black cloud follows him in the form of a media firestorm after his diabetic seizure and the claims of some slut who wishes he were her baby daddy.
I told him then and I’d tell him again now: he’s too good for that gold-digger. But now’s not the time for told-ya-sos.
Dave’s being a bossy little bitch, but I can’t call him out on it because Chief’s right here, and our current manager seems content to let our ex-manager call the shots.
“I need to know if you’ll be ready by next Friday,” Chief says to Tyler. “I booked studio time for us in LA and I need to know now if you’ll be able to lay it down.”
“Mah fingahs wook fine,” Tyler says, wiggling his digits. “An tung wuh heal.”
It can’t happen fast enough. I need Tyler’s tongue to heal just so he can back me up in these stupid arguments, not to mention nailing the recording session Chief’s proposed.
We’ve got a bunch of songs, a promised album, and our label chomping at the bit to capitalize on the press Tattoo Thief’s gotten with Gavin’s return. Oh, yes, it always comes back to Gavin Slater.
“I know it’s not ideal recording over the weekend, but it’s the best setup we can get with this kind of timeline. I’ve got a charter flight and the rooms booked.” Chief nods to Dave. “You going to have Kristina wrangle the girls?”
“Yep. Beryl’s coming, Gavin?”
“Assuming she can get away from work, absolutely.” Gavin’s never had a nine-to-five job in his life, so it’s pretty funny to see him tamed by his girlfriend’s schedule.
“Tyler?”
“Stella’s in.” Tyler lisps her name but I see a smile stretch his face just talking about her. I never thought I’d want to see him fall like this, but the way he worships Stella makes me rethink everything I told him about keeping it casual.
He really loves her.
Damn.
“Jayce? You bringing a friend?” I don’t like the sneer in Dave’s voice, the taunt that’s always simmering below the surface. It’s no secret that he’s the settled-down one, the guy who’s managed to hang onto a girlfriend longer than we’ve hung on to our place at the top of the charts. But he doesn’t have to rub it in.
“Maybe,” I answer vaguely. “Chief, can you get me a suite, just in case?”
“A suite? Who are you bringing? A whole cheerleading team?” Dave snickers.
“Sure can.” Chief taps notes into his iPad. “Just let me know the name or names before we fly for the passenger manifest, OK?”
I nod, but a chill of panic rests in my stomach. What will Violet do if I take off to LA? Will she try to go back to her own apartment? What if the stalker catches up to her? No matter how much you try to shake your past, in this digital world, someone or something’s bound to catch up to you.
Break’s over. We go back to practice, honing the seventh song in our album set. This one makes me sweat—it’s full of tricky transitions and intricate timing, demanding the way a great song needs to be.
A darker sky, a deeper sea
A midnight hour, she comes to me
I drink her in, her taste, her touch
Intoxication
Sweet elation
I’m closer to heaven when she holds me here
Close to broken when she disappears
It’s the kind of song where things can come apart. You miss a beat, miss a transition cue, and you’re drowning in an ocean of notes with nothing to grab hold of.
In this run-through, we stick together—barely. Chief’s head is bent over his tablet and I can’t tell if he’s ignoring us or listening intently.
I want to yell at him to yell at us, to tell Gavin and Dave to pull their heads out of their asses, buckle down and fix what needs fixing. Even tell Tyler he’s falling behind Dave, that he needs to reconnect with the rhythm.
My brain’s muddled from the late night with Violet, whispering secrets and then stroking her hair. I feel like I left part of me back in my apartment with her, my thoughts still reaching for hers.
We run the song again a dozen times and get tighter, make it work the way it’s supposed to, but there’s still something missing. Gavin finally calls it a day and we wrap up just as Stella arrives at Tyler’s loft.
I’m packing my guitar in its case when Stella approaches me. “You look like shit.”
“Hi to you too, Stella.” I swat at her but she doesn’t flinch. After helping her cope with Tyler’s hospitalization and the shitstorm that came down, we’re pals.
“So what gives? No workout tonight?” Stella crosses her arms and nods to the weight bench.
None of us are in the mood to pump. The tension is too thick, the looming deadline of our next album suddenly too real.
“I’ll just hit the gym at my apartment,” I say, and give Tyler and Stella a wave so I don’t have to watch them suck the faces off each other. Gently. Tyler’s still got a busted tongue.
I blow out of Tyler’s place and my fingers itch to dial Violet. No answer. I hope she’s taking a bubble bath or some girly shit to get her head straight after the stalker-weirdness.
But my apartment is too quiet when I get home, and from what I can tell, she hasn’t been at my place since morning.
No way is she sti
ll at the police station. Even with taking pictures of that graffiti, I can’t imagine it took her this long.
I try her phone again. Again, no answer, so I send a text.
Jayce: Hi. Just checking to see how things went today, if you’re doing OK. Where are you?
I wait, but there’s no text back, or even an indication that my message has been delivered. I’m stymied and restless, and I pace the apartment. Violet’s clothes are all neatly packed away in her gym bag.
I hate that. It tells me she can just pick up and leave at any moment, and I don’t want her to. I pull open a dresser drawer and scoop up my shirts, relocating them to a lower drawer. There. Now there’s space for her if she stays a little longer.
What the hell am I doing? When did I put my no-strings mantra on ice and start playing house?
I call again. Maybe her ringer’s off? Maybe—shit, I hate this the minute I think it—she found a hotel or a friend’s place to crash tonight? But then, wouldn’t her bag be gone, too?
I have to have an answer, or I’m going to tear up the city to find this girl.
CHAPTER 18: VIOLET
I leave the tattoo shop with more questions than answers.
The girl from Righteous Ink wouldn’t tell me much. Just that the artist works on appointment, and only under certain circumstances. She wouldn’t tell me what those are. It seems like a funny way to run a business.
Even if I can’t get VIIIM to reveal more about himself, I want to talk to him so I can build the photo captions before I submit the profile to a magazine. What inspires him? What does he call his pieces? And how did he manage to paint the one on the fire escape?
I gave the tattoo shop clerk my new phone number, but she looked doubtful when I asked if she thought he’d call me.
In a funk, I wander from Righteous Ink to the coffee shop not far from my apartment. It’s comforting and familiar, with the sound of chatter and smells of rich coffee and baked goods. The barista, a tattooed guy with shaggy brown hair and a good smile, winks at me.
Revenge Bound Page 8
