Dare You

by Jennifer Brown

  “Okay, so here’s the deal. I found out some really bad shit about my parents. And since Brandi gave this to you, I’m guessing you know about it all too. All about Daddy Dearest and the step-monster’s little side businesses? Selling drugs, selling girls, whatever. And all the while Vanessa trying to get her own stepson into bed, which . . . don’t even get me started. Joke’s on me. I really thought I was going to be an actress. Maybe in one of my dad’s movies. I was convinced I was going to be famous one day.” She chuckled darkly. “Yeah. That’s not happening. Unless I’m famous now. I guess that’s possible. In the news and everything. Just shows you should be careful what you wish for, huh?” She paused again. “Oh, and then, of course, there’s the matter of a little baby stealing. Stealing! Can you believe it? Who steals a baby, right? Someone who is as power hungry as my father. He gets what he wants. And the rest of us have to live with the consequences. Speaking of which . . .” She waved her fingers in the air on each side of her face and singsonged, “Sisters.” And then in a regular voice, “We’re sisters. As you know. Anyway. I found out all this shit about my family and now I’m pretty sure they’re going to kill me. Well, have me killed. Same difference.”

  She glanced down and then back. “You know, there’ve been so many times I’ve said I would rather die than be in this stupid family anymore. But now that it’s coming true . . . I don’t know. I wish I’d had the chance to see what we could have been like.”

  She shrugged, glanced down again. Then took a breath and blurted out the rest. “Okay. So here’s the thing. My family has this place. It’s like a secret hideout or something. Only that’s not what they would call it. But that’s exactly what it is. A place where they put things they don’t want found. I’ve been there, but I don’t actually remember where exactly it is, because I wasn’t driving the one time I went there, and some gross client had made me do Molly with him before and I was seriously out of it. And I don’t think I have time to figure out where it is now. Dru might know, but I’m not entirely sure I can still trust him. Which is sad. He’s a pretty good guy. He’s just all wrapped up in our shitty family. He doesn’t even know yet about who his real mother is. I’ve tried to tell him, but he’s in some serious denial. Do me a favor? Be there for him when this all goes down? He’ll need you.” Another pause, during which I felt miserable. Peyton saw what was coming to her, but she never expected Dru to get caught in the crossfire. “But anyway, the hideout. I know this much for sure. You know where it is. You’ve seen it. Hopefully you have the key by now. You’ll put it together. And I’m not saying any more than that, just in case Daddy Dearest or the step-monster somehow got ahold of this. If you’re watching, Vanessa, I have a message for you.” She raised both hands and flipped off the camera, the same way I had done with those girls on the beach. I smiled. I couldn’t help myself. She was my sister, all right. “Anyway, Nikki, I’m hoping you’ll find evidence there. Not a what, but a who, if you know what I mean. Well, and also some whats.” She smiled, a pair of perfect dimples appearing in her cheeks. “I’ve been watching you. Not in a creepy way. Just . . . I don’t know . . . learning. You seem cool. Sorry I didn’t notice that before now. I kind of think I bought into the Hollis elite thing for so long, I forgot that I was just a girl like everyone else, and I kind of wish we could have had the chance to get to know each other. I think it would be safe to say that we’d be a great combination.” She thought for a few seconds. “We probably have all kinds of strange things in common. Like, the last two digits of your locker number and the digits of my birthday month both add up to eleven or something. That kind of stuff that only sisters care about.” She laughed, pushed her hair behind her ear again. “Who knows? Maybe I’m making a huge deal out of nothing and we still can be sisters. If this all goes the way I want it to, I’ll be living in like, some cornfield in Iowa or something, and when the coast is clear I’ll have you out for a picnic or a hoedown or whatever it is they do in Iowa. Let’s hope, right?” She held up a pair of crossed fingers and wrinkled her nose, and then reached forward and the picture blinked out.

  Detective Martinez clicked to start the video over. “Let’s listen again and then we can turn it over to Blake.”

  But I didn’t need to listen again.

  Everything my sister had said made perfect sense.

  A place where they put things they don’t want found. . . . You know where it is. . . . You have the key . . . Not a what, but a who . . . Well, and also some whats.

  Scarlet. Avocado. Maroon.

  A white van.

  A purple haze. One of the few phrases that looked exactly like what it said it was.

  You have the key.

  You have the key.

  “Holy shit,” I said, clutching at Detective Martinez’s arm. “It’s been right under my nose this whole time.”

  He stopped, mid-click. “What?”

  “I know where Arrigo Basile is.”

  34

  I HAD DETECTIVE Martinez drop me off at home so I could find a few things. Because Dad was home, I made him leave, with the promise that I would join him at his apartment in an hour.

  “Hey, Nikki,” Dad called when I came in. I was already halfway up the stairs, but I stopped and came back down. I found him in the den, reading, wearing the T-shirt and shorts he used for pajamas.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Did you eat something?” he asked without looking up from his book. “I made a salad. It’s in the fridge if you’re hungry.”

  “I ate,” I said. Detective Martinez had picked us up some sandwiches at a gas station in Bakersfield on our way home. We ate them, partly because we were hungry, but mostly because we didn’t want to have to talk about what Brandi had said more than absolutely necessary. It was a lot to take in, and I think even Detective Martinez knew I needed time to digest it. “I’m actually only here for a few minutes. To change clothes. I’m heading back out.”

  Dad carefully folded the book closed, using his finger to keep his place. He rubbed his eyes patiently, one by one. “Who is he?”

  “Huh?”

  He tipped his head to the side. “Well, you’re not out all day by yourself. And I ran into Jones this afternoon, so I know you haven’t been with him. So who have you been with?”

  I let out a breathy laugh, trying to stall. I supposed I should’ve been grateful to Jones for not volunteering the information. Jones could get mad at you, but he’d still never betray you. That was just the way he was. “Honestly, it’s my business.”

  “The last time I left you to your business, you were almost killed.”

  “Dad—”

  He held out his hand. “No. Nikki.” He took a steadying breath, but I could see a film of sweat on his temples. I didn’t see Dad get angry very often. I didn’t see Dad show emotion very often, period. “Now I know I haven’t been the best father in the world. I can’t be a mother and a father, and knowing that I had to be both made it very difficult for me to figure out what to do most of the time. But I’ve always kept you safe. Always. Until a few months ago.”

  “Dad, you can’t hold yourself responsible for that—”

  “But I do. I wasn’t able to keep your mom safe. I should be able to at least keep you safe. If for nothing else, for your mother. And if you had died that night . . .” He shook his head, and I thought maybe I saw some sweat break out on his upper lip as well. “But part of why I couldn’t keep you safe was because you were lying to me. About everything. Keeping me totally in the dark. It’s unacceptable, and I’m not going to let it happen again. You have no right to lie to me.”

  Starbursts the color of Arizona dirt surrounded me, my breath coming out in indigo butterfly wings. I was swept up in it before I even knew what was going on. The anger had pounced over me like an azure lion, drenching me in fury.

  “I have no right to lie to you?” I said, my teeth clenched. “Are you kidding me with this right now? I have no right to lie to you. Well, what about your lies, Dad? Huh? Since
we’re being so goddamned honest around here now, why don’t you fess up about the things you’ve been hiding?”

  “I have no idea what you’re even tal—”

  “Right! You have no idea. You pretend you are so worried about not being there to protect me from the Hollises, and the whole time you’re telling me you’ve never had anything to do with that family.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “I’ve seen it, Dad! I’ve seen the pictures and the video. You knew Bill Hollis very well, and so did Mom. But something happened and Mom ended up dead and you pretend Bill Hollis is a complete stranger, and I can’t . . .” I scrunched up my forehead and held it in my hand. “I can’t for the life of me get rid of the feeling that those things had something to do with each other. Am I wrong? Tell me I’m wrong.” I was breathing heavily, my chest rising and falling, my forehead still in my hand, and it wasn’t until I’d said the words out loud that I realized that was exactly what I’d been thinking—that Dad might have had something to do with Mom’s death. The realization brought tears to my eyes. I blinked and they ran down my cheeks. “Tell me I’m wrong,” I repeated.

  Dad had gone stony. “You’re wrong,” he said.

  “So correct me. What’s right?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. Robotic. Party line. So fucking frustrating.

  “Of course you don’t. And I don’t have anything to hide, either.”

  We stared each other down for a long, silent moment.

  “Did you and Jones break up?” he asked, still using that robot voice.

  I wiped my cheeks. “Unbelievable. Yes, okay? We broke up.”

  “And you’re not going to tell me who you’re spending all your time with now?”

  “Why would I? It’s not like we’re open and honest with each other, is it?”

  He tapped the book on his leg a few times. “I think you owe me a name at least.”

  I rolled my eyes. “His name is Chris, okay? But you’re never going to meet him, because it’s not like that.” A flash of rainbow made me flush. He didn’t say anything. “I’m an adult now. I can take care of myself. You’re just going to have to trust me.”

  “It’s not you I don’t trust.”

  “The Hollises are gone,” I said. “So what is there to worry about? I guess you would know better than I do, though, huh? I’ll be home in a couple hours.”

  Truth, I didn’t know exactly how long this was going to take. Or if I’d come home at all. But I just needed to get away from him.

  “I don’t like it.”

  I stood and headed for the stairs again. “Noted.”

  “Nikki?”

  I leaned over the railing, but couldn’t see him from where I was.

  “Promise me you’ll be safe?”

  “I can take care of myself just fine.”

  Now I couldn’t see him because of the gray.

  “TOOK YOU LONG enough,” Detective Martinez said when he opened the front door. Again he ushered me in, and again he swept a look along the sidewalk behind me.

  “I had to run interference with my dad.”

  “And?”

  “And he doesn’t believe a word I tell him, and I can’t blame him.” I pushed my way through the door and into Detective Martinez’s hallway. “Unlike some people, I’m not great at hiding things.” I shot him a you know what I’m talking about look, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “Well, hopefully this’ll be over real soon and you won’t have to run interference anymore.”

  “Yeah. Hopefully.”

  He let us into his apartment. He’d cleaned it since I was last there, and there was a scent of pine cleaner and bleach in the air.

  This time the TV was off, but the radio still played softly in the background. Some sort of R & B that might have been old-fashioned if it weren’t for the sexiness of it.

  “So what do you have?” he asked, sliding onto a bar stool, where a beer sat sweating on the counter.

  “These.” I pulled out the stack of photos I’d had printed at the pharmacy and slapped them on the counter in front of him. “I forgot all about them.”

  “Pictures?” he asked, leaning over them. “This is what you’re so excited about?”

  “I’ve led us to most of our answers using pictures,” I said. Or more like Peyton had, but it was the same thing, really.

  He swigged his beer. “You ever going to finish telling me how you do that?”

  “I tried to. The answer was in a file folder in Peyton’s car, which I handed to you on a silver platter. You didn’t take it. You snooze, you lose.”

  “I could always just get the file from evidence and give it a once-over,” he said.

  I swiped his beer out from in front of him and took a swig of my own. “You could, but you won’t.”

  “You’re awfully confident that you know how I work.”

  He reached for the beer, but I refused to let it go. A long moment went by, both of us holding on to it, both of us refusing to look away, a comet trail of roiling fire expanding between us. “Oh, I definitely know how you work,” I said. I opened my fingers and let him have the beer.

  “Please. Do tell.”

  “I think it’s better to keep a little bit of mystery between us, don’t y—what the hell is this?” I’d spied a packet of paper laid neatly on the counter by the microwave, familiar colors screaming out at me in bold across the top. I stretched across the counter and picked it up. “Police academy application? Are you freaking serious with this? I told you no.”

  “How do you know it’s for you, Miss Center of the Universe? Maybe I’ve picked it up for someone else.”

  “Bullshit. But you might as well throw it away, because it’s not happening. Here. I’ll do it for you.” I started around the counter. “Where’s your trash can?”

  But Detective Martinez caught me by the wrist when I walked by. “I don’t think so.”

  “Let me go,” I said, straining against him, the papers falling out of my hand and fluttering to the floor.

  “You’re so tough, get out of it,” he said, tightening his grip.

  “Not a problem.” I twisted my arm to the side, putting pressure against his thumb so that he had no choice but to let go. “Challenge me next time.”

  “Fine, you win. I’m not really in the mood for challenges right now.”

  I stacked the papers back where I’d found them on the counter, and then, unsure what else to do, sat on a bar stool, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it.

  “Somebody kick your white horse in the shins?”

  “Very funny.”

  “No, I’m serious. What’s the deal?”

  He pulled the cigarette out of my hand and dropped it into the beer bottle. “If you must know, Blake and I broke up a few minutes before you got here, okay?”

  “Oh.” A flutter, like flags in the wind, all colors, snapping at me. I flicked them away. “I hope it wasn’t because of me?” I remembered what Blake had said when I was in her office. That he needed to let go of his past, and there was no way he could do that when his present was so wrapped up in saving people. Particularly in saving me.

  “In a way, yes. But in a bigger way, no. It’s stupid for a cop to try to date a DA. And she was way too mature for me, I guess. Or I was too immature for her. Stuck in my past. Wanting to save the world. Whatever.” He laid his hands flat on the counter. “I’d rather be trying to save the world than trying to put away an innocent person. And that is probably why it never would have worked for us in the first place.”

  If I were a decent person, I would have gone back to Blake’s office and told her that he wasn’t out to save me. That he was so not stuck in his past, I could hardly ever get him to talk about it. I would tell her that she had nothing to worry about with me—that I didn’t fall in love, ever, and that I wasn’t going to be getting involved with anyone, given my current status and my uncertain future. And even if I was going to get involved with someone, it wo
uldn’t be a cop, for God’s sake.

  And if I were a decent person, I would have told him not to let her go so easily, because despite the fact that she was a DA, she seemed to be pretty honest. And she seemed to be in love with him. And someone honest with a future and a heart full of love for him was definitely not worth throwing away to save my sorry ass.

  But I didn’t do it.

  Either I wasn’t a decent person, or I didn’t believe those things were true.

  So why was it easier for me to accept that I just wasn’t a decent person?

  Because of that weird pulsing rainbow, Nikki. That shit freaks your ass out and you know it.

  So instead of going there, I silently fired up a second cigarette.

  “Put that out,” he said, taking it out of my hand and dropping it into the bottle with the other one.

  “Hey! Do you know how expensive cigarettes are? That’s seriously uncool, dude.”

  “Not as expensive as cancer.” He scooted the bottle to the other side of the counter. “You need to quit anyway.”

  “Okay, thanks, Dad. Should I eat my veggies too?”

  “Let’s just get to work,” he said, picking up the stack of photos again. “So what are we looking at here?”

  Conversation over. I stood and leaned over his shoulder.

  I tapped the picture. “That building,” I said.

  “Okay?”

  I flipped through the rest of the photos—Jimi Hendrix, synesthete, staring out at us from different angles in each one—until I got to the last one. Half of Jimi’s face was blocked. I waited for him to see it.

  “You recognize something?”

  “The van,” he said.

  I’d wondered where I’d seen that van before. It wasn’t until after I’d seen Peyton’s video and I’d gone through the photos again. There it was, nearly drowned out by the purple of Jimi, the scarlet-avocado-maroon I knew so well now. “Notice anything familiar about it?” I asked.