Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3) (16 page)

Listen to yourself,
said Hux.

He was right. She was a princess, and princesses don’t date cops. I wasn’t some white knight who could rescue her—if she even needed rescuing. I was the goddamn stable boy with a crush.

Chapter 18

Jasmine

The police station was the scariest place imaginable.

All around me, men and women in uniform hustled people just like me from the open air and freedom of the streets into interrogation rooms and holding cells. That shoplifter, cursing and demanding to see a lawyer? That could have been me, aged 15. That hooker, staggering across the floors in her heels? That could have been me just months ago, when I’d joined an escort agency to pay my rent. If my client had turned out to be a cop. If Karen hadn’t brought me to my senses.

Breathe. Just breathe.

I forced myself to relax and, after a while, I slowly began to see the cops as people. It was a little like...did you ever sneak into the teacher’s lounge at your school? Or maybe see one of your teachers at the mall or a restaurant? That sudden realization that they too had lives and partners and kids. That there was a person behind all the shouting and the red ink. It was a little like that.

Most of them, I saw, were with their partners. They never seemed to leave each other’s side for long, whether they were filling out paperwork or yelling at a suspect or bitching about the coffee. I wondered what that must be like, to be that close to someone day in, day out. Few people work that closely—in an office you’re surrounded by people, not isolated with just one of them. It must be almost like being in a relationship. That’s what Ryan had had with Hux. That’s what he’d lost.

I still got the impression there was something he wasn’t telling me. I’m pretty good at watching people and there was definitely something different about how the other cops reacted when they saw Ryan walking by. They were friendly, sure, but slightly on edge. Maybe they’d heard about the TV show and were jealous.

I tore my eyes away from him. If he looked around and saw me staring, I’d have some explaining to do. I was meant to be there to study cops, not him. I searched around for something else to focus on.

And stopped on the missing person’s board. A wall of faces, some young, and some old. Most of them likely sleeping rough.

My heart stopped. One of them was Nick.

I stumbled over there and studied the photo. After a few long minutes of second-guessing myself, I was certain: the guy had the same desperate eyes and similar threadbare clothes...but it wasn’t Nick.

I waited for the rush of relief but it never came. All I felt was sick, twisting fear. Suddenly, I was back on the subway platform two years before, glimpsing him across the tracks. He was out there somewhere, just like all the guys on the board. I knew it. Only he wasn’t a missing person because there was no one left to miss him.

You don’t know he’s on the streets,
I thought.
Maybe he’s doing just fine.
But I didn’t believe it. He’d relied on my dad, back in Chicago, who’d alternated between slipping him money and beating him up. He’d treated Nick like a starving dog, doling out just enough food to keep him hungry, hitting him enough that he knew never to rebel. My brother had dealt for him, even going to jail for him. And by the time I’d left Chicago, he’d been using the heroin he was selling—another way for my dad to maintain control.

After two years of holding it back, the guilt finally broke free, like a dam bursting inside me.

He must have finally rebelled and fled Chicago a year or so after I had. My stomach lurched. What if he’d
followed me? What if my leaving had given him the confidence to run as well, and he’d guessed or somehow found out that I’d picked New York as my new home? What if he’d come here hoping he could find me, hoping he’d find the one person who still loved him, and I’d turned my back on him?

Since I saw him, I’d spent every day trying to forget that sudden, heart-stopping glimpse. I’d thought at the time that I’d been protecting myself: that getting on the train was the only safe course of action. What if I’d been wrong? What if he really needed me? He’d been in New York for at least two years. I couldn’t imagine him holding down a job—not unless he’d gotten clean. So he must be either on the streets, or working some hustle to pay for his habit. Either way, he needed help.

But contacting him—if I could even find him—would bring it all back. Everything I’d run away from, everything I’d built walls in my mind to hold back...it would come spilling out, as soon as I saw him. Everything I’d achieved in New York would be put at risk. And what if I was wrong? What if he hadn’t fled from my dad? What if he was still close to him, and what if getting in contact with Nick helped my dad find me?

But even that wasn’t a reason to turn my back on my brother, and I hated myself for even thinking it.

“I’m a selfish bitch,” I said aloud.

“I hope not,” said Ryan. I’d been staring off into space, and he’d come to stand right next to me. “Don’t know if I want to be in love with you, if you’re a selfish bitch.”

I stared at him.

“In the show,” he told me. “You were talking about your character, right? Isabel?” But his eyes weren’t asking that at all. They were asking
are you okay?

“Yeah,” I managed. “Isabel. Listen, sorry, but I have to run.”

“Classes?”

I shook my head. “No. Just something I have to do.”

***

Nat had told me that, after he saw her dance for the first time, Darrell tracked her down in the space of one night. One woman in a city of eight million.

Of course, Darrell had millions of dollars and enough computer knowledge to rewire the internet in his sleep. I had neither of those things. What I did have was determination. I had a lot to make up for.

I didn’t know how to hack Facebook or whatever the hell it was Darrell had done to find Nat, but I did have another sort of knowledge. I knew the hidden world that decent people don’t even know exists. The one where the currency is strictly cash and the main things for sale are drugs, sex, and favors. Of course, I’d left that world behind when I’d left Chicago, but the funny thing about crime is that it’s pretty much the same everywhere. It’s the same drugs being sold from a different street corner. It’s the same designer clothes being ripped off in a different sweatshop. It’s the same girls from the same backgrounds standing on different street corners. Once you have a feel for it, you can navigate that world in any city you want.

I got off the subway one stop before my normal stop and walked the rest of the way, tuning in to all the things I’d been shutting out for years. The guy in the alley whose eyes never stopped moving, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. The streets, just a few turns from the respectable thoroughfares, where the blinds were permanently drawn or the windows boarded up. The bars that you didn’t see advertised on any flyers or mentioned on any websites.

At the subway station where I’d seen him, I took a deep breath...and started to search.

I spiraled slowly outward, taking my time. I stuck to the back streets and the alleyways, the places where rent was low and the doors were solid sheets of metal covered with graffiti. I was looking for a particular sort of bar: a bar with TVs showing football and basketball games. Places that would be sports bars, in a more upmarket neighborhood. We’d both hung around those places with our dad for years. They were where gamblers found bookies to take their ill-advised bets, and foolish gamblers were prime targets for my dad’s money lending. If felt like half my teenage years had been spent in those bars, avoiding the hands of men who wanted to cop a feel, collecting the greasy rolls of bills for my dad. I’d hated them, but my brother had developed a kind of grudging affection for them, over the years, spending hours watching sports of dirty TV screens while shooting the shit with the customers. He might still gravitate to them here.

And that meant I had to go back in and face the past.

I hauled open the door of the first bar. Heads turned—most likely, I was the first woman to enter in years. The smell of stale cigarette smoke and spilled beer brought it all back.

I froze up and swayed a little. For a second, I wondered if I was going to faint. It wasn’t just the memories of the bars my dad had taken me to. He ran his own bar. A bar with a dirty, smoke-filled back room.

“You lost?” asked the owner.

I blinked in the darkness. They keep these places dark so they don’t have to clean the floor.

I could feel eyes crawling over my body, every man in the place trying to work out why I was there. There were limited reasons why a twenty-something woman would be in a place like that. I was glad that I’d worn my sweatshirt and jeans. If I was in my normal Jasmine get-up, I’d have been asked “How much?”

“Looking for someone,” I told him. And I showed him the only picture of Nick I had—three years out of date.

He hadn’t seen him. Or if he had, he wasn’t saying. I moved on.

Six hours, fourteen bars, three coffees and a street vendor hot dog later, I got lucky. A fat, balding guy in a stained tank top stared at the photo on my phone for a long moment before looking back at me.

“He owe you money?” the guy asked.

I took a deep breath and wrote my phone number on a scrap of paper. “He’s my brother,” I said. “It’s time we talked.”

Chapter 19

Ryan

I’d finally gotten to sleep at about 4am, only to be woken by the heavy thump of something hitting my doormat. I rolled over and tried to cling onto sleep for just a little longer.

I was just dozing off again when my phone rang. I groped for it and answered it without opening my eyes.

“The script’s arrived,” said Jasmine.

I sat up so fast I got a headrush. “Uh huh?” I said, trying to sound awake.

“Is yours there?” asked Jasmine.

I remembered the thump. “Wait,” I told her, and padded in my jockey shorts to the door. Sitting on the doormat was a padded envelope an inch thick. “Yeah,” I said.

“We should get together and go through it,” she said.

I felt the first, distant pricklings of hope. She sounded eager, for someone who thought I was an idiot. Maybe she
did
like me.

Or maybe she just wanted to see how bad things really were. My stomach tightened. She was about to find out that I couldn’t act at all.

“I’m sort of busy,” I lied. “Gotta call in at the station. Check on a...car.” I winced.

“No problem,” she said. “I’ll catch you there.”

At any other time, just the thought of seeing her would have made me dance around the goddamn kitchen. But now, all my lies were catching up with me. “Uh…”

She ended the call, probably so I couldn’t back out.
Great.
Now what?

Chapter 20

Jasmine

I stabbed the “end call” button and sat there glaring at the phone. I knew exactly what was going on: he’d got the script and was panicking because he knew he couldn’t act and he thought I was about to find out. The question was, just how bad was he? Was I going to be able to coach him, or was this whole thing doomed?

It worried me, and I clung onto that worry like a life preserver. I
wanted
to focus on Ryan and the script and whether he could act, because it stopped me thinking about that morning.

The reason I’d been awake when the mail arrived was that I’d screamed myself awake from a nightmare at a little after 5am, and hadn’t dared go back to sleep. I’d turned on the TV and cooked a big breakfast and then cleaned the entire apartment—anything to keep my mind off my dad’s face and the feeling of his fists slamming into my stomach, his boots kicking my ribs.

People think of violence and they think of physical wounds. But the real damage is on the inside. It’s the change in self-worth that kills you. It’s coming to believe that you’re so worthless, you’re only good for kicking.

The nightmares had faded, since I’d been in New York. Hearing Nick’s voice, or being around that world of cops and criminals again, had brought them back to life. Hence me wanting to stay busy. I’d counted the minutes until it was a respectable time to call Ryan. Then, as soon as I’d done that, I made myself a travel mug of coffee and headed out.

I started reading the script on the subway, and focusing on it calmed me a little. Reading the script for the first time is a big deal. Until that point, you don’t really know your character...or the limits of what she has to do.

First impression: the series was
good.
Right up there with
Foxtrot Company
, Dixon’s previous show. He’d obviously hired the best writers and they’d polished the dialog like hell. The plot was good, too. It was an ensemble piece, with a good mix of cops and “civilians,” several overlapping plot lines about drugs, corruption and loyalty, and some romance.