Shade Me (23 page)

“. . . much does she know exactly?” a woman's voice asked.

“Enough. She knows about Hollywood Dreams. She got
hired there, Mother. You really need to fire Brigitte.”

A sigh. I snuck closer to the kitchen doorway. “Prism. I knew I'd seen her before. Okay, but that's it? We can handle that.”

“I don't know. She's relentless. Always at Peyton's bedside. Sleeping with Dru. She needs to be stopped, Mother.”

I took a chance and craned my neck around the corner. Luna stood with Vanessa Hollis in a shadowy corner of the state-of-the-art kitchen, the morning sunlight doused by blackout shades, the stainless steel appliances dully gleaming, the marble countertop looking like wool to my foggy eyes, my still-confused colors smearing across everything I looked at. Luna's back was to me. Her mother, wearing a skintight pink satin minidress and leopard-print heels, leaned backward against the wooden cabinet behind her.

“Luna, we have to be careful about these things. We can't just—”

“Shush, did you hear something?” Luna interrupted.

Quickly, I ducked my head back around the corner as the two of them listened for me.

“You didn't leave her there, did you?” Vanessa asked. “For God's sake, Luna, of course she's going to run.”

“She can't run; she's too out of it,” Luna said, her voice moving closer to me.

I dropped low and crab-walked behind an easy chair, which dwarfed a corner. I watched between the arm of the
chair and a ficus tree branch as the two bolted through the living room toward the hallway. It was now or never.

But there was no way I would make it to the front door without them spotting me from the hallway.

As I clawed my way out from behind the ficus, I was struck with a realization. I was in Peyton's house. She'd lived here until just a few weeks ago. Dru had said she'd barely taken anything when she moved out. She might have left behind a clue. If Luna had her way, I would never step foot into this house again. Now was my chance.

The spiral staircase waved and dipped beneath my feet, making me sick to my stomach as I tried to quickly navigate it. I stopped, gagged, covered my mouth, and kept going, churning my leaden feet as fast as I could until I was on the landing up top. I dropped to my knees and peered through the wooden railing, listening as Luna and Vanessa yelled at each other about where I might be and whose fault it was I was now missing.

I closed my eyes and took two deep breaths to clear my head and my stomach, and then opened them and looked down the hallway ahead of me. It was dotted with doors on either side. I got up and headed toward them, holding my breath and praying for an empty room each time I opened a door. Bathroom, another office, boutique, some room with a giant pink couch, generic bedroom, generic bedroom. And then a bedroom that looked like a tornado had hit it.

I knew right away I'd hit pay dirt when I saw the Forgotten Rebels poster stapled to the far wall. It had been half ripped down and seemed to dance in front of my eyes, but it was still unmistakably punk. Unmistakably Peyton. There were also boxes strewn across her bed and floor and stacked in the closet. These must have been the things Bill Hollis had cleaned out of the apartment.

I stepped into her room and closed the door behind me. I wanted so badly to take my time, to pick through her things methodically, discover her one piece of memorabilia at a time. But I could still hear doors being slammed downstairs, and I felt like I was moving through quicksand. I pushed myself to move faster.

I pulled open boxes and checked the bottoms of each and every dresser drawer. I felt behind the half-affixed poster. I rummaged through books on her bookshelf. Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Dru had said Peyton had barely taken anything when she moved out, but that wasn't quite the truth. She'd taken everything important. She only left behind the pieces of her life she didn't want anymore.

I was just about to give up and make my way back downstairs, when I saw a rainbow-colored box tossed haphazardly into the bottom of one of the moving boxes in her closet. Somehow I'd missed it when I'd searched the apartment.

Rainbow.
Live in Color.

I opened it, and there inside were mementos—the kind
of things kids keep from elementary school. Field day ribbons, burnt birthday candles, photos of classmates. Nothing that made any sense to me. I sat on the closet floor and dug through, using every ounce of concentration I had to understand what these things meant. I had been hoping the rainbow was significant, the box a clue, but I guessed I was wrong. It was just a conglomeration of childish crap.

And then my hands landed on something solid on the very bottom, beneath an old, folded Girl Scout vest. I pulled it out.

It was a cell phone.

My heart leaped into my throat. This wasn't a childhood memento—I was sure of it. This was what Peyton had wanted me to find. This was the cell phone everyone had been talking about—the old one she ditched right before moving out. This was why she'd left the rainbow box in her apartment. I pushed the power button, but nothing happened. Dead. I would just have to take it home and—

“There you are,” I heard. “I should have known you'd be too stupid to listen to my warning.”

My head whipped up to find Luna standing outside the closet door, her legs spread wide, her arms outstretched to come after me. From my vantage point, and to my drugged head, she looked like a giant standing there. A big, bulging, terrifying giant.

I didn't wait for her to make a move. I already felt slow
and stupid. I only hoped my training would kick in automatically.
Take her down and get out,
Gunner's voice said in my head.
Use what you have on hand.

I only briefly glanced down at Peyton's cell phone—Luna's eyes following mine—and then I wrapped it tight in my fist, reared my arm back, and drove it into the side of her knee with everything I had. She let out a surprised squawk, her leg buckling, and I used the moment to then drive the edge of the phone down onto the arch of her other foot.

She squealed, so loud I felt my eardrums vibrate, and I knew then I had to move. I jumped up, the top of my head catching her chin, and used my arms to push her back like a football player hitting a dummy. She went flying, and I raced out of the room, running for the stairs.

I could hear Vanessa calling out Luna's name from somewhere downstairs, getting closer with every step. I missed one of the stairs and hit my knees, sliding down several steps, but got up again and ran, my shins and ankles crying out with dull pain.

“Luna?” Vanessa's voice was coming from the entryway as I hit the living room floor.

“She's upstairs!” I heard Luna shriek, and I turned just in time to see Vanessa storm into the living room. There was no way I was going to get to the front door, and the last thing I wanted was to have to fight Vanessa. My muscles were already screaming. My hand that had hit Luna's leg and
foot throbbed. And my knees ached from falling down the stairs. The rainbow that had swirled my confusion before was now mostly the green of a bruise.

Instead, I turned through the kitchen. Surely, there had to be a door somewhere.

I found it, behind a long blackout shade. A set of French doors that led out to the patio. A pool, and pool house, straight ahead. The door squeaked as I pulled it open. I wasted no time slipping through the tiniest opening I could manage and ran like hell out of there.

I didn't stop until I was two blocks over, which was precisely when I had to bend forward and vomit again.

MY HEAD WAS
much clearer by the time I got to Dru's, though my stomach still cramped in on itself over and over again. I burst through the door the moment he opened it.

“She's crazy,” I said, panting.

“Whoa, what?” he yelped, shutting the door and trying to catch up with me. I was already pacing his living room, back and forth, back and forth. In the light, his apartment was all bachelor opulence—browns and grays, tribal artwork, a kayak standing on end in one corner.

“Luna. She's insane,” I said.

He came to me, a worried crease in his forehead. “What happened this time?”

I stopped pacing. I was hot. So hot the sweat felt like
it was pouring off me. And my mouth was drier than ever. “She drugged me.”

He stepped back, looking incredulous. “Drugged you? Are you sure?”

“I'm positive,” I said. “I passed out, and when I came to, I was in the mansion. She said it was a warning. She's going to kill me if I don't stay out of your family's business. What is this business, Dru? What is going on that I haven't figured out yet?”

He shrugged, shaking his head, palms up, as if he were as in the dark as I was, but I could sense that familiar wall going up between us, just as I had before. He was shutting down, closing out the parts of himself he didn't want me to see.

“Come on, Dru,” I said, throwing my hands up. “You'll sleep with me, but you won't tell me why your crazy sister wants me dead?”

“I don't know why,” he said. “Did she say anything else?” He licked his lips, and if it had been anyone else, I would see chipped slate that meant nerves. But Dru wasn't anyone else. Dru was a mystery. Instead I saw slate marbled with turquoise.
Cheater blue,
my mind singsonged.
Cheater blue, cheater blue
.

My stomach cramped in on itself again and I doubled over. He wrapped his arms around me from behind. “You okay?”

I gasped, gulped. “I need to use the bathroom,” I said.

“Okay, I'll get you some water.”

I headed toward the bathroom, passing Dru's office on the way. Because his apartment was so open, everything was in view. Had it been in a shut room, I might not have even seen a color jump out at me as I walked by. On his desk, tucked half under a paper, maroon and black shiny letters—the color pattern I associated with electronics. I looked back over my shoulder. Dru was still in the kitchen area, an open cabinet door shielding his face. I crept toward the desk, my stomach forgotten.

The desk was littered with papers, books, electronics, and cords. It all looked like the usual household paperwork—travel website printouts, a couple of résumés, some bills. But when I moved an application for a modeling school that had a Post-it stuck to it (
You have an interview Monday. GO TO IT.—V
) the maroon and black blazed out at me.

I picked it up and turned it in my fingers. SanDisk. Just what I thought.

A camera memory card.

Suddenly the ailments from the poisoning were such a distant memory I didn't even feel them anymore. Dru had a camera memory card here. Peyton had a camera memory card missing from her car. Was it the same one?

I was just about to pocket it, take it home, when Dru came up behind me, silent as a cat.

“I thought you were going to the bathroom.”

I jumped, gasped, nearly dropped the card. “Oh. Yeah. It passed.”

His eyes landed on the card. He handed me a glass of water and took the card from my hand. “What's going on?” he asked, his voice slick and cold. Again, I had a sense of Bill Hollis lurking under there somewhere.
Cheater blue,
Nikki
.
Slate with cheater blue—you can't ignore it.

“I just didn't realize you like photography,” I said, trying to keep the water in the glass steady.

He turned the card over. “I don't. This is just from a trip to Vail. Did some hiking there last summer. It was really beautiful, so I took some pictures.”

His face gave away nothing. My legs started to shake, since I wasn't allowing my hands to do so. “I'd love to see them,” I said, offering a small smile.

“Sure,” he said, offering one back.

“Now?”

He frowned. “Maybe not. You're pretty pale. You look sick.”

I looked sick, or he was hiding whatever was on that disk from me? I put the water on his desk. “You're right. I should go. I don't feel very good.”

“You sure? Sounds like you've been through a lot today. You can stay. You can tell me more about what Luna said. Sounds traumatizing.” He brushed his palm down the back
of my head, threading his fingers through my hair on the way down. Sparks flew up the back of my neck as his fingertips touched it.

I disengaged myself and headed toward the front door. As tempting as it was to spend some time with him, my head was way too foggy to even consider it. I had to do some thinking about who Dru Hollis really might be.
Slate and cheater blue! Slate and cheater blue!
“Maybe next time,” I said, stepping out into the hallway and pushing the elevator button.

“Okay, if you're sure,” he said. The elevator opened and I stepped inside. “And, hey, let me deal with Luna. I'll take care of it.” He slipped the camera card into his front pocket as the elevator door slid closed.

I
HAD TO
see Peyton again. I wasn't sure why I felt so compelled—only that sitting next to her bed was now familiar to me. I understood why I was doing this, following these clues to nowhere, a little bit better when I was staring at her rainbow tattoo. Not to say that I understood fully just yet.

Funny how attached I'd grown to someone who'd literally never spoken to me, except through photographs. But somehow I felt connected to Peyton, and it wasn't just the Dru connection.

It was Saturday, so I didn't have to deal with Luna at school, which was a good thing. But not being in school meant I had no idea where Luna was at any given moment, which was a bad thing. It was hard to protect yourself against
someone when you didn't know where in the city they were. I felt like I was on high alert every second.

I had the whole day, so I decided to stop at the
dojang
first thing. Gunner was standing at the front desk.

So was Chris Martinez.

Gunner took one look at my bruised face—the cut on the cheek from Stefan's hit a week ago scabbed over and fading, and a fresh blackish splotch above one eyebrow from falling in my kitchen, along with a faint yellowing along my jawline where Luna had repeatedly hit me—and dropped the pencil he was holding.

“What the heck happened to you?” he asked, hurrying around the desk. He was in his
dobok
but was wearing flip-flops. A junior instructor was assisting the kids on the floor.

“I'm fine,” I said, but even I didn't believe me. Detective Martinez didn't react, but I could see him studying my face from where he was standing, too.

“What's he doing here?” I asked, though at this point I wasn't really all that surprised to see him pretty much anywhere in my life. That seemed to be his specialty—always being right in my way.

“Open gym today,” Gunner said. “He wants to work out. Why? Is there a problem?” He looked from my bruises to Detective Martinez, and back again.

It was only then that I noticed Detective Martinez was wearing a pair of navy sweatpants and a white tee so tight it
showed off the shadow of a tattoo across the left side of his chest. I shook my head, resigned. “Of course not. It's open gym. I didn't know you were into martial arts, Detective,” I said.

“I'm into protecting myself,” he answered. “But yes, I do okay in the
dojo
, too.”

“Good,” I said, grinning. “I won't have to worry about you getting in my way too much, then. But just in case, the junior instructors are over there.” I pointed to where the kids were practicing their moves.

I thought I heard a low chuckle come from Detective Martinez. He looked down at his shoes, and then back up at me, nodding. “I'll keep that in mind. But just out of curiosity, where is the sparring mat?”

“Got to have a willing partner,” I said. “Sometimes hard to come by someone who can keep up on open gym day. But maybe one of the nine-year-olds will go easy on you.”

He stepped forward, folded his arms across his chest, and looked down at me. “Or maybe I'll go easy on you.”

We locked eyes for so long, wordlessly challenging each other, I almost forgot Gunner was standing right there until he cleared his throat. “Nik? You sure you're up for sparring today?” he asked. “You look like you've taken some shots already.”

I answered him but refused to take my eyes away from
Detective Martinez's. “Would love to spar the detective.”

Ten minutes later, we stood in the middle of the mat in our sparring gear—padded headgear, gloves, shoes, shin guards.

“Okay, you two, try to keep it civil,” Gunner said. We bowed to him, and then to each other, and then dropped to our fighting stances, hands up at the ready, as Gunner backed off the mat.

“Just so you know,” Detective Martinez said, “these marks on your face are not fine, Nikki. I thought we talked about you being safe.”

I shrugged, tried to make a lame attempt at lightness. “I can't always promise safe. I can only promise trained.” I threw a high kick—a roundhouse, but he saw it coming and backed off.

“Who did it? Who hit you?”

“Which one?” I threw another high roundhouse, faster this time. He got his arm up just in time to block it. I sank back into my fighting stance, hopping on my toes, determined not to let him distract me.

“Jesus, you are stubborn,” he muttered under his breath. I threw another roundhouse. He ducked, blocked it with his arm, and shot out with a quick left jab, tagging me in the mouth. I felt the sting on my lip. “Does your dad know what's going on?”

“Cute,” I said. “And no. He's in San Diego.”

“So you're alone. Don't you have anyone you can stay with?”

“I'm fine,” I repeated, only more strongly this time. More believably, or at least I thought so. “I've got the house all locked up. Nobody can get in. Plus, I'm here, right? A little fight is nothing.” I chose to ignore the tiny detail about Luna getting in before, drugging me, and hauling my passed-out ass to her house so she could warn me off. Remembering my confrontation with Luna, combined with my stinging lip, irritated me. I swung my back leg high in an inside crescent. He ducked, just as he'd done before, but I was ready for it. I let my toe touch the mat, then, as if on a spring, arced my leg back around the other way. Outside crescent to the jaw. His hand went to his face, surprised, and then we both dropped back to our fighting stances.

“Not bad,” he said. “But you're all up top. What happens if someone gets you on the ground?”

I jabbed at him with my left hand. He blocked it, so I jabbed again. And again. “I seem to do okay,” I said. One more jab, and then I spun around on my left heel—wicked fast—and hook kicked him right in the ribs.

Air escaped through his teeth with the impact, and for a second I thought I had him. But he was faster than I'd bargained for, and when I advanced on him with another inside crescent, he grabbed my leg and yanked it up against his
hip, pulling me in. “What if ‘okay' isn't good enough?” he asked, his face inches from mine. He grabbed my lower back, stepped behind me, and leaned forward so that we both tumbled to the mat. He was on hands and knees on top of me, my leg hooked over his arm so that my calf was draped over his shoulder. He had a smug look on his face. “This is what I'm talking about, Nikki. You're tough, but you're not invincible.” He got a serious look on his face. “I wasn't always a cop in Brentwood, you know. I grew up on the east side of South Central. I know what tough is. And I know there's no such thing as invincible.”

For a moment, we just breathed, staring into each other's eyes, the connection between us reminding me of spilled wine. Reminding me of when my mother curled me up tight, rocked me, and sang into my hair, still wet from the bath.

If crimson scared me, spilled wine terrified me.

I wriggled under his grasp, at first unsure what to do. He was right about me—I was trained to fight standing up, using my legs, my feet, and distance. This close, I was going to have to rely on gut instinct, or I was going to lose.

Damn it, I hated to lose.

I wrapped both of my arms around his neck, pulling his face in close. I could feel his sweat on my skin, but had no time to let it distract me. I wrapped my left leg around his back, pushed hard with my right leg—the one he was holding—and rolled with all my might. It worked—Detective Martinez
flipped and suddenly I was the one on top—but I refused to show my surprise that I'd been successful. I held his wrists down on the floor, both of us panting. A drop of sweat fell from my nose onto his chest. We stayed that way for just a beat, and then I got up and held out my hand to help him up.

When he was standing, I bowed to him and left the floor.

My arms and legs still felt stiff and unusable this morning. My head still felt unclear. But at the moment I felt like I could conquer anything.

“I'm as close as you're going to come to invincible, though,” I said over my shoulder. I tossed a wink at the detective as I sauntered away.

He shook his head. “You are definitely the hardest-headed woman I've ever met.”

“I'll take that as a compliment.”

TWO HOURS LATER,
my muscles were warm and taut from work, and I had a faster roundhouse than ever. Powerful. Aimed just right, I could knock someone out cold with that kick.

I'd come home to clean up, the exercise and the shower chasing away the last of the drugs and making my head crystal clear. I even wrote the word
CRYSTAL
in the fog on the bathroom mirror just to see what happened. Almost
immediately, it blinked at me like a diamond hit with sunlight. I was back to normal.

I pulled on a pair of my most comfortable jeans, a worn black T-shirt, and my Chucks—the ones with the scrape on the toe from my fight with Gibson Talley—clothes I could move in. I felt stronger than ever. Let Luna come at me. She would be a challenge I would gladly accept.

I spent the afternoon Googling everything I could find about Bill and Vanessa Hollis. Vanessa, perhaps not surprisingly, turned up almost nothing. A couple of photos from a celebrity party, Vanessa on the dance floor, a drink in hand. A piece on interior decorating, where Hollis Mansion was featured. A photo accompanying the article showed the office Luna had dragged me into, and I was shocked at how many details I'd missed while I was in there. Pieces of furniture I hadn't seen, art on the walls. In some ways, it looked like an entirely different room from the one I'd been in the day before.

But there was still something about it that bugged me. A familiar itch that tugged at the back of my memory.

On the other hand, there were more articles about Bill Hollis than I could even count. No way could I read them all, so I skimmed a few. For the most part, it seemed like the features about Bill could all be summarized like this: Bill Hollis, the most amazing movie exec to ever grace Hollywood, might actually be the second coming of Christ. He
was to be loved—no, revered—and every move he ever made was either (1) groundbreaking, (2) genius, or (3) so astoundingly philanthropic it was a wonder that the Hollises weren't living in a dirt hut so that others might live in the lap of luxury. And, speaking of the lap of luxury, Bill Hollis actually was the physical lap of luxury. Every suit he wore became the must-wear suit of the century, every cigar he smoked was notable to anyone who knew their ass from a cigar, and every bottle of wine he touched must be hundreds of years old. Maybe thousands. I rolled my eyes as I scrolled through the articles. Photos of him with his arms around Angelina and Scarlett, photos of him shaking hands with Bono and drinking scotch with Seth Rogen. A photo of him leaning against a Lamborghini, the license plate on that one screaming out at me in neon blue,
HLYWD
.

I sat back. So he had two cars, their vanity plates reading
HLYWD
and
DREAMS
. He was flaunting his dedication to an escort service to the whole world, and everyone was too busy kissing his boots to notice.

There was not one mention of him having a connection to an escort service. I even plugged in the search terms “Bill Hollis” and “scandal.” Nothing. He appeared untouchable.

Except for the most recent news entries, of course. The ones about him bailing his son out of jail. But all those articles spun Dru to be the unappreciative son of a devoted
father. One headline even dared proclaim, “When Rotten Apples Fall Far from the Tree.”

Ugh. More like rotten tree.

The thought of how very untouchable this family was chilled me. Was there a prayer that I could come near someone like Bill Hollis, or would he crush me like a bug? There was something that Peyton knew—Luna had made that clear, and it wasn't all about her—and look what happened to Peyton. I shuddered at the thought that Bill Hollis might have had something to do with his own daughter's attack.

I shut my laptop, rubbing my face with my palms. I'd plugged in Peyton's phone before falling down the rabbit hole of researching her parents. I was eager to find what clues it might hold.

I turned it on, unsure what to expect.

Peyton's wallpaper was the SOS photo, which told me she'd meant for me to find her phone. She'd left it as a clue. But a quick look inside told me that it was not much of a clue to have. The phone was wiped totally clean.

There were no contacts in her list. No photos. No videos. Not a single app. Her call history had been deleted, as had her voice mails. Had she deleted everything, or had someone else done it when they cleaned out her apartment? It seemed unlikely that they'd found the phone at all, given that it was buried under all those childhood mementos.

I closed my eyes and tried to remember the night of
her attack, the phone call that I'd gotten, letting the color orange that I'd seen on the numbers lead me back there.

I remembered thinking it might be Jones calling. Being impatient when I answered. But then I remembered the impatience being whisked away when I heard shallow breathing on the other end. “Hey,” a voice said, childlike, frightened. Peyton. “Listen, I . . .”

But then there'd been something else. A voice in the background. I hadn't been able to make out what it was saying.

“Nikki,” Peyton had said. Definitely calling me. Not just reaching out blindly in fear, but reaching out to
me
in particular.

The voice in the background spoke again, and this time I could make it out clearly. “Put the phone down,” it had said.

It was a man's voice. The significance didn't sink in until that moment. It was a man's voice threatening Peyton, not Luna's.

I looked again at the SOS in the background, but I was confused. How was this supposed to lead me to anything? There was nothing left on this phone.

I switched over to her texts. To my surprise, there was one, sent to a phone number I didn't recognize.