Shade Me (16 page)

How had I even ended up on her radar in the first place?

Just as I flipped back through the pages, I heard a noise.
This time it was no small animal in the woods beside me. This time it was the distinctive crunch of car tires on gravel. The telltale hum of an engine. I gazed through the trees. There were no headlights. Quickly, I dropped the file back into the trunk and softly shut it.

I heard the sound of a car door shutting, followed by the scuff of footsteps on gravel.

I had a bad feeling, the paint of Peyton's car turning bumpy gray and black under my hand.

I needed to get out of there.

S
ILENTLY, QUICK AND
fluid, I swept through the woods toward the parking lot, trying to formulate a plan, but none would come when I didn't know what the threat was, or even if there was one at all. When I'd almost reached the gravel, I veered off toward the Dumpsters. I found them and crouched behind, ignoring the stench of who-knew-how-old garbage that lined their insides.

Squinting through the crack between the two Dumpsters, and past the gold sparkles that were now blooming in the air like fireflies, I was able to see my car. It wasn't that far away. I could close the gap in just a few long strides. I moved to the far end of the Dumpsters and poked my head around the corner. I didn't see another car anywhere.

I no longer heard footsteps, either.

I let out a breath and eased out from behind the Dumpster.

Two steps away from it, someone slammed into me from behind. A hand closed over my mouth, an arm snaking around my throat, forcing out a muffled grunt. I was instantly paralyzed with surprise and fear.

“Don't fight me,” a man's voice said right behind my ear.

There was something about the word
fight
that must have kicked my subconscious into motion. The part of me that had been kicking the shit out of sparring dummies for five years took over.

I stomped the arch of his right foot with everything I had, then immediately followed it with a mule kick to the groin. A burst of air flew past my ear as his grip loosened around my mouth. I could just about hear Gunner in my head, shouting,
Move, move! You have the momentum now, don't give it up!
Without giving the man even a second to recover, I jammed my elbow into his ribs, hard, then peeled his hand off my mouth.

“Fuck!” he wheezed.

But he was saying this on the way down. I twisted his hand into a wrist lock, popped his jaw with my elbow, and dropped him to the ground.

That was when I saw who I was dealing with.

Gibson Talley.

My insides turned to jelly, but I didn't stop. Instead, dread gave my muscles an extra burst of energy. Growling, I forced his arm into an arm lock and flipped him over to his stomach, leaning into him with every ounce of body weight I had.

He yelled again, struggling against me. I jammed the arm up higher, using pain to equalize our size difference.

I was out of breath but felt strangely invigorated. “What do you want?” I panted. My eyes darted toward my car. The scuffle had taken me several feet away from it, and what was worse, my keys were still in my pocket. I didn't know if I could outrun him. I would have to fight him if I let him go.

He turned his face to the side, his eyes squeezed shut in a wince, blood wetting his lips where I'd elbowed him.

“Answer me,” I said, giving his arm an extra shove. I thought I might have felt a pop in his shoulder. “Why are you here?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” he said. “And why were you at the studio? And my apartment? Stop! Stop!”

I laughed in his face. “You attack me from behind, and now you want me to stop? I don't think so, dude. You're lucky I left you conscious.” I thought I could probably knock someone unconscious, but I'd never done it before, which made my threat mostly bravado, but he had stopped squirming, so it must have been believable. I supposed any threat was believable when someone had your shoulder half out of its
socket. “Now answer my question. Why did you come here? Did you follow me?”

“Okay, okay,” he said, going completely limp. “Yes. I followed you.”

“Were you going to beat me up like you did Peyton?” I shifted my weight so that my knee was on top of his twisted wrist.

“No.” He stopped, swallowed, squeezed his eyes shut with pain, opened them again. “I was going to threaten you. I didn't touch Peyton. I had nothing to do with what happened to her.”

I laughed again. “You expect me to believe that? I saw what you said on Facebook. I saw Peyton's email. I heard what you said about her. ‘She's nothing'? ‘What more do you want me to do about her?' Sound familiar?”

“I know,” he said. “You sicced the fucking cops on me, too. Vee told me all about it after that detective showed up at my apartment. Storming in all questions and bullshit.”

“Martinez arrested you?”

“No, man, he didn't have anything on me. I didn't do it. I have an alibi. Two of them, actually. I was at band practice that night.”

I considered this. “Vee would give you a false alibi. She's in on the threats, too. Besides, I saw you at the hospital. I heard the conversation at the studio. I know you want Peyton out of the picture for some reason. And I have the guitar
strap with the blood on it. How did that get in her car?” His arm had begun slipping down again, so I renewed the grip, shoving it up farther and eliciting a new roar of pain from him.

“What the fuck are you talking about? Yeah, I showed up at the hospital. So did all her other friends. And I gave Peyton the guitar strap to celebrate her first tattoo. It's got blood on it because the tat was fresh when she first tried it on. I'm telling you, why would I want to hurt Peyton?”

“She did something to you,” I said. My breath was coming slower now, and the gold fireworks had begun to subside, but the gray and black were still there, still undulating in the gravel. I still didn't feel like I had the upper hand. As much as I hated to think it, even to myself, his story made sense.

“Yeah.” He spit a wad of blood onto the gravel next to his face. I leaned in on him harder. “God! Bitch! Yeah, she walked out on us, okay? She was our songwriter. And when she left the band, she took the songs with her. Even the ones I cowrote. Those are half mine—she had no right to take them. And I haven't been able to write since. We have no singer, no songs. We had a meeting with a producer, and she fucked us. The guy worked for her dad. Big money. Huge. She said she didn't want anything to do with blood money, and she walked away. We were going to make it to the big time, and she left us hanging. And now I'm stuck being a nothing in a shit apartment, and it's all Peyton's fault. So,
yeah, I've been pissed. But not pissed enough to want her dead, man.”

“When?” I asked. “When did this happen? When did she take everything and screw you over?”

“I don't know, about two weeks ago. Right around the same time she cut her hair and got the tattoo. She moved into my apartment complex, too, but she wouldn't even fucking answer her door when I tried to talk to her. It was like she had this enormous freak-out all of a sudden. A nervous breakdown or something. I knew she was nuts. Should've never let her into the band. I have video of our band practice the night she got attacked. Time-stamped video. I was at practice. And now we don't know what happens to those songs if she dies. Maybe it seems selfish or some shit, but I don't want to be where I am right now forever. Dude, I was pissed, but I didn't want her dead.”

It didn't make sense. None of this made sense. But then again, it made total sense. Everything he said added up. Added up into blazing orangish-pink innocence.

“Jesus,” I whispered.

“Let me up,” he said. “My arm!”

“But what about the bracelet?” I asked, more to myself than to him at that point.

“What bracelet? What are you talking about?” he said, his voice laced with equal parts agony and anger.

“I found your bracelet in Peyton's car. It's got blood on
it, and the clasp is smashed. You moved her car, didn't you?”

“I've never owned any fucking bracelet!” he roared.

“Don't lie to me,” I said. “I've seen it in the photo. . . .”

But as I said the words aloud, I flashed onto the photo that I'd seen the bracelet in. It wasn't one of the band photos after all. It was one of the photos from Peyton's suitcase. The man and woman embraced in a deep kiss, the man's hand cupping low on the woman's waist, his bracelet the only thing about him visible.

He might have been only a silhouette in the photo, but there was one thing about the man that was clear. He didn't have a Mohawk. Gibson Talley's signature look.

“Shit,” I said.

“Yeah, shit,” Gibson cried with another agonized grunt. He wriggled again, almost getting out of my grasp. “Now let me go.”

Someone else had been in Peyton's car the night of her attack. Someone else had hidden it, had lost his broken bracelet in the backseat while removing the memory card from her camera. Someone else had moved her.

That someone else was the man in the photo.

But how on earth would I ever figure out who he was?

“I said let me up, goddamn it!” Gibson shouted, wriggling with such force now I could barely hang on. If I didn't make a move soon, he would be out of my grip. And pissed. And gunning for me.

I resituated myself and put all my weight on my knee, which pinned his wrist in the high middle of his back. With my free hand, I reached over until I found a good-sized chunk of concrete that had been chewed up at the edge of the parking lot.

“Sorry,” I said. I swung the rock down on the side of Gibson's head, making him go limp.

I
WAS STILL
sore a couple of days later, but I was guessing I was nowhere near as sore as Gibson Talley, who'd most likely come to with a monster headache and a jaw full of loose teeth. Not to mention super pissed off at me. Even more so than before.

In a way, I was surprised that I was sore. I'd sparred against more competitors than I could count, and I felt like I never held back. But on the other hand, this was my first actual fight-or-flight encounter, and there must be a difference between not holding back in the
dojang
, and actually not holding back.

Either way, it was Saturday morning, the
dojang
would
be open until noon, and I felt a need to work out some of the kinks.

Gunner took one look at me hitting the heavy bag and excused himself from a new kid he had been showing some basic blocks. He came around to the other side of the bag and held it, peeking around at me.

“Come on, Nikki, you gonna hit it or you gonna play tiddlywinks with it?”

I clenched my teeth and hit the bag harder, wincing as my sore pecs twinged.

“That's not a hit. I've seen six-year-olds work harder,” he taunted. “Come on.”

I whaled on the bag again, letting out pained grunts as my punches landed. The bag barely moved. I just didn't have the muscle behind it today. But all I could see on the face of that heavy bag was Gibson Talley's face. All I could hear was his voice behind my ear as he pressed his hand over my mouth. If he were to decide to surprise me again, I would be ready.

“What is this? You're hitting like a girl,” Gunner said, shoving the bag toward me. “You here to play around or be serious?”

I was used to Gunner's taunts. Telling me I couldn't do something was the best way to ensure that I absolutely would do it. I was just built that way.
Oppositional
, my dad used to call me.
Determined
, my mom used to correct him.
Maybe she was oppositional, too.

I'll show you how a girl hits,
I thought.

I hopped back a step, my whole body readying itself into a parallel stance. Light on my toes, muscles flexed, lips pulled taut. With a growl, I went at the bag, hitting it fast with both fists, with elbows, and then lunging in for a kick that went wild and knocked me off my feet. I hit the mat with an
oomph
.

“Whoa,” Gunner said, coming around the bag and reaching out a hand. “Never seen that happen before. Not with you, anyway.”

I started to lift my head, then flopped back onto the mat to catch my breath. After a moment, I took his hand and let him pull me up. I felt nauseated, my shoulders aching.

“Seriously, Nik, everything okay? What's going on?” Gunner asked. He placed his hand on the small of my back and led me to a spectator's chair off the mat. “You are definitely not yourself today.”

I collapsed into the chair. “Got in a fight last night,” I said.

Gunner raised his eyebrows at me. “I assume you came out on top?”

I nodded. “But it was a guy. Bigger than me. My muscles are shredded.”

Gunner rubbed his index finger down one side of his goatee, and then the other. “Sure, sure,” he said. “A guy, you
said? You okay?” He leaned over, grabbed a water out of the mini fridge next to the front desk, and handed it to me.

I took the water and gulped it. “Yeah. Just sore. And sc . . .” I trailed off.
Scared.
I was scared. Scared of Gibson Talley, sure, but more than that. Scared of whoever had hurt Peyton. Scared because I was now pretty sure Gibson Talley hadn't been the one who did it, and scared because that meant that maybe Chris Martinez was right and Dru had been the one. And scared because, no matter who it was, I was definitely caught up in it now. Admitting fear was not one of my strengths. I hated feeling weak. Weak girls stood in their mother's blood and trembled and sobbed and pounded at the crimson in their eyes. Weak girls didn't get out of bed for weeks. Weak girls were afraid to be home alone, afraid to go to bed at night. Afraid of the murderer who had never been caught. “Scraped up a little,” I finished instead.

I lifted the leg of my
dobok
and showed him the scabbed knee, where I'd knelt against gravel while subduing Gibson. There was a bit of bruising around the scrape, but it was the part of me that hurt the least.

Gunner inspected my knee, and then sat next to me, stroking his goatee and nodding, as if he were contemplating what all this meant.

“You were attacked,” he said, matter-of-factly.

I nodded.

“Did you contact the police?”

I took another drink and shook my head, ignoring the guilty feeling that wanted to press in on me. “I left him unconscious in a parking lot.” In truth, I'd also dropped his guitar strap on top of his back. A message that if he was guilty, I could prove it.

“Do you know this guy?” I could sense irritation in Gunner's voice. We'd known each other for a lot of years. We'd trained together. We'd sweated together. We'd bled together. He was protective of me. Of all his students, actually. Gunner was single and in his early thirties. Tae kwon do was his life.

“Yeah, I know him,” I said. “But it's taken care of now.”
I hope,
I added internally.

“I can give him a visit, send a message.”

“No,” I said. “Leave it alone.”

“He'll never know.”

“Of course he will.”

Gunner leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees, his fingers tenting together. He turned his head toward me. “What are you in the middle of, Nikki?”

I pressed my lips together. Squeezed the water bottle so the plastic crackled under my fingers. “I'm not sure,” I said honestly. “But I'll be okay.”

“Can you guarantee me that?”

I felt a familiar wave of steel wash over me, driving out
the fear that had tried to set up shop. Gibson Talley had come after me in the worst possible way—by surprise, from behind, in an abandoned parking lot. And I'd taken care of it. I'd been fine. Nobody could defeat me. Not Gib, not Vee, not the shadowy man in the kissing photo. I believed that. I had to. I was too far in to ask for help now. “Yes, I can,” I said.

To prove that I knew what I was talking about, and to shut Gunner up, I went back out onto the mat and spent the next hour pummeling the sparring dummy with everything I had. Elbow strike. Mule kick. Elbow strike. Mule kick. Mule kick, mule kick, mule kick—the moves from the night before rolling off me over and over again until I could feel the crunch of Gibson Talley's ribs, hear the wheeze of him taking my foot to his groin. My arms and legs groaned from all the work, and I was covered with so much sweat it dripped down into my eyes and off the end of my nose. But the soreness was gone. The fear was pushed away.

Gunner put his hand on my shoulder just as I geared up for another elbow strike. I whirled on him, grabbing his hand and turning, angling my body so that his arm was stretched, palm up, his elbow resting on my shoulder. One sharp tug downward and I could have put some serious hurt on him.

“Whoa, I tap, I tap!” he said, patting my back with his other hand. “
Dojang
's closing for the day. Time to call it done.”

I let up. “Next move, broken elbow,” I said, bowing.

He bowed in response, then cocked his head at me. “You sure you're okay?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Better than ever.”

He looked unconvinced. “Go on in and get changed. I'll see you next week.”

“Yes, sir.” I bowed again on my way out, feeling much better.

I made my way to the changing room and grabbed my things out of my cubby, sliding my taxed limbs into my clothes.

Gunner was waiting for me by the front door, ready to lock up, when I was finished.

“Have a good afternoon, Nik,” he said as I slipped through the door past him. “And be careful, okay?”

I turned and gave him a devious grin from the sidewalk. “I don't need to be careful. I just need to be deadly.”

He chuckled. “Be a little of both, you hear?”

“Of course,” I said, and headed for my car.

I stopped in my tracks when I saw who was leaning against it. I rolled my shoulders back and kept walking reluctantly. Chris Martinez was apparently not on duty. He was wearing a Stussy baseball tee—white with blue sleeves that made his skin glow. A pair of mirrored aviators kept me from seeing his eyes. I couldn't see one, but I imagined a gun was tucked into the waistband of the relaxed jeans he was
wearing. Two violet wisps danced across the yellow I'd come to associate with him. I blinked, hard. That violet was not okay. I was clearly going crazy.

“Detective,” I said. “I wish I could say I was surprised to see you here, but you seem to be showing up everywhere.”

He pushed away from the car and slid his hands into his pockets. “Miss Kill. Have a good workout?”

“I did okay in there,” I said, stopping a few feet away from him and crossing my arms. “But something tells me you didn't come all the way over here to ask me about my fitness.”

He smirked, and I wished I could see his eyes so I could know what he was thinking. “Nope, you're right, I didn't. I just wanted to talk to you.”

Of course he did. He was always
just wanting to talk
to me. I held up my car keys. “I would love to, Detective, but I really have to go.”

He took a side step away from my door, and I moved around him.

“Really interesting coincidence happened the other night,” he said to my back. I stopped. “That guy you were telling me about? Gibson Talley? Showed up in the emergency room with a laceration to his head.” He paused to assess my reaction, so I was careful to keep my face guarded. “Twenty-six stitches on his scalp.”

“Wow,” I said. I swallowed, sure he was going to reach
around and pull out a pair of handcuffs. “That's too bad.”

“Yeah, said he got drunk and fell, hit his head on an amp.”

I let out a breath, white specks floating in front of my eyes. “Really?”

Martinez snapped his fingers and pointed one at me, shaking it up and down. “That was exactly what I said. I mean, this guy's had a hell of a week, you know? His bandmate gets beat up, he's questioned about that by me, someone breaks into his apartment, and then he has this . . . freak accident.”

“That's a crappy week,” I agreed. “But why are you telling me about it?”

He rubbed his chin with his palm, his other hand on his hip. “I don't suppose you were anywhere near the amp he fell on, were you, Miss Kill?”

“Why would I have any reason to be near him?”

“You don't appear to need a reason these days, it would seem. Did you know that he gave a description of the person who broke into his apartment?” I didn't answer. “Tall, thin girl. Long, dark hair. Dark jeans, black jacket, black boots. Very familiar style, wouldn't you say?”

“Sounds pretty generic,” I said. “But I'll keep a lookout. If I hear anything, I'll let you know.”

He nodded, then leaned against my car again, crossing one leg over the other. “I'm warning you again, Miss Kill. You
need to back out of this. Let me do my job. If I keep having to watch after you, I can't watch for Peyton's attacker.”

“Then stop watching after me,” I said. “I don't need your protection.” My mind briefly flashed to Gibson coming at me from behind, and how, for a moment, I was sure I was in real trouble. How I'd kept thinking maybe I needed to let Chris Martinez know what I'd found, until things got so complicated.

“That's not going to happen. What you're playing with here, it's not a game. Whoever attacked Peyton meant business.”

“I thought it was Dru who attacked her. Isn't that why you arrested him? You should probably make up your mind, Detective. Either Peyton's attacker has been arrested, or I'm in danger.”

“Or both,” he said, his voice taking an annoyed edge. “Just because we didn't have enough evidence to hold him doesn't mean he's innocent.” He bit his bottom lip. “Listen, I can't sit by and watch you get hurt. I can't go through that aga—” He broke off.

It was the first time I'd seen his cool crack, even a little bit. I'd suspected before that there was more to the detective's past than he wanted me to know. Now I wondered if maybe my guess was right.

He pulled out a pen and placed it in my palm. My heart skipped a beat. I recognized it—shiny black with silver trim.
The penknife I'd left in Gibson's apartment. He pulled his sunglasses down so that our eyes locked. “I'm doing you all kinds of favors right now and you know it,” he continued. “But I will take you in if I have to do it to keep you safe.”

I rolled my eyes, as though his threat didn't worry me in the least. “Thanks for the warning,” I said, curling my fist around the pen. He was doing more than favors; what he was doing could get him in trouble. But why? “Now if you don't mind . . .” I motioned for him to get off my car.

Reluctantly, he did, stepping up onto the walk as I got in.

“Be careful, Nikki,” he called just before I shut the door.

I gave him a wave, tossed the penknife back in my glove box, and turned the key in the ignition.

I backed out of my parking space and threw my car into drive. Just before I started moving, my phone buzzed with a text. It was from Dru.

I'm out. Want to get together tonite?

I chewed my thumbnail, Detective Martinez's warning still fresh in my mind. Maybe he was right and I'd be wise to just ignore that I'd ever gotten Dru's text. Stay away from Gibson, stay away from Dru, stay away from this whole thing.

But that would mean staying away from Peyton. And if I did that, I might never know what she had wanted from me.

Sure. Where and when?

There was a pause while I waited for him to respond—long enough for Gunner to come out of the
dojang
and give me a long, questioning look as he locked the doors and went around the building, where his bike was parked. He had his phone tucked between his shoulder and his ear, so thankfully he couldn't give me the third degree about why I hadn't left yet. Gunner was a good friend, a big brother, almost, but he could be a little overprotective sometimes. And I wasn't the biggest fan of overprotective.