Shade Me (18 page)

Luna had tried to convince me that Peyton was selling drugs
.
But if that were true—if Peyton had been the one doing the selling—why did she have a photo of Luna's hand, full of pills?

“I'm sorry about her,” Dru said, sitting where Luna had just been. “She's a pain in the ass.” He assessed the look on my face. “Do I even want to know what she had to say before I got here?”

I took a drink of my water, trying to get control over my thoughts, tamp them down. My mind was spinning. I needed to look at the photo again, be 100 percent certain that I was right before I said anything to Dru about what I'd seen. But there was no nonchalant way to go about that, not with him sitting right there, gazing at me like I was behind zoo bars.

“She wanted to know how I knew you and Peyton,” I said. “I didn't tell her about . . .” I trailed off, unsure how to put it. Using my forefinger, I gestured between us, leaving a violet trail in the air, which was quickly flooded over by a wave of pine-colored embarrassment.

He smirked. “You mean what happened at Peyton's apartment?”

I nodded. “Yeah, she doesn't know. She thinks we're dating.”

He reached across the table and took my hand. A jolt of the same chemistry I'd felt at the apartment ran through me, the white suede rippling purple, the pine gone. “It doesn't matter what Luna thinks. I don't regret it.” I ducked my head and he tipped his lower to catch my eyes, looking devilish.

Purple. Turquoise. Orangish pink. Crimson. It was never-ending when I was around these people. My feelings, my intuition, my curiosity, everything. It all swirled together into an impossible tornado, and I no longer knew what exactly I was doing here. First it was Gibson and then not Gibson. It was Dru. It was the shadow man with the bracelet. It was one of Peyton's johns, it was Luna. Every moment it changed. I was confused, and I hated the way my gut twisted every time I looked at Dru Hollis, every time I caught his scent on the air. Every time I touched him. And I hated the way Chris Martinez's warnings crept into my head every time I was with Dru. And I especially hated how somewhere deep down it was those warnings—that possibility of danger—that made me want Dru even more.

I knew the things that I knew. I was certain about them. But they were right and then wrong. I was learning that I couldn't trust myself; how could I trust anyone else?

“She had a good question, Dru. Why am I here?” I waved over my shoulder. “Obviously this is not my usual hangout. I'm so out of place here, and you have your own special table.”

“We can go somewhere else,” he said.

“No, it's not that. It's the bigger question. Why me? That seems to be the one thing I can't answer when it comes to your family.”

He wrapped his fingers solidly around my hand and used
the fingers of his other hand to trace lightly up the length of my arm and down again. I shivered. “Because you're different. You care about Peyton, and you weren't even friends with her. You don't fit in here, and that's exactly why I like you. I don't fit in here, either.”

With horribly poor timing, the waitress reappeared. “Mr. Hollis? Bourbon neat?”

“Not now, Liv,” he said, without looking at her, his voice cold and robotic, somehow reminding me of Hospital Bill Hollis, and she vanished like mist. The tingle in my arms moved up my neck as he kept the longing gaze.

As much as I was learning that I detested everything the Hollises—and everyone like them—stood for, I would be lying if I said the control that he exhibited didn't turn me on just a little. Funny, the thing that made me stay arm's distance from Peyton, the thing that scared me about Bill Hollis, the thing that put me off Luna . . . made me want Dru.

Even though I desperately did not want to, I pulled my hand free of his. It shook as I picked up my water and took another drink. “Luna said some things about Peyton.”

Dru's expression clouded as he leaned back, just as Luna had leaned back minutes before. “Such as?”

“She said Peyton was an escort and that she sold drugs.”

“She said that?”

“Is it true?”

Dru raised an arm to get Liv's attention and made a motion with his finger. She nodded and hurried to the bar. I guessed he'd changed his mind about that drink. He folded his hands, tapping his thumbs together contemplatively. When Liv arrived with his drink, he pushed it a few inches away from him and shifted in his seat again.

“Listen, Nikki. My family is anything but perfect. Everybody thinks it would be so great to have Bill Hollis for a dad, but there's a lot of pressure. The bastard can't just let us be who we are. We have to make him look good. We have to show the world how important we are. It's unrelenting, and he doesn't care about us as anything more than accessories that support his image. Sometimes, when the pressure gets to be too much, you . . . do things you aren't proud of. My sister understood that. She got the same pressure, and even more from our so-called mother.”

“So it's true?” I asked. “Peyton was a prostitute?” I tried to imagine the girl who lorded over the hallways of our school selling her body at night. I couldn't do it. Peyton was too perfect for that. But, like Dru had just said, pressure made people do strange things.

He made a face, waved me off. “Who knows? Luna is a liar, and you never know what kind of bullshit is going to come out of her mouth next. If Peyton was an escort, and selling drugs, like Luna says, she did a hell of a job covering it up. I was the only one close to her, and if I didn't know, I
don't know how in the hell Luna would.”

“I thought you said your dad was the one closest to her.”

He gave me a blank look.

“At the hospital. You said your dad was going to be shattered. You said he was super close to Peyton.”

He let out a snort. “My dad. No, my dad isn't close to anyone. That's just not the way the Great Bill Hollis gets ahead in this world.”

My hands instinctively pulled away from the tabletop and the white tablecloth that stretched over it, and reached across the booth bench and curled protectively over my purse. I couldn't pinpoint what it was I was picking up on. The way his eyes flicked to the side while he was talking. The fine mist of sweat that edged along his sideburns. The slight tremor in his hands while he rested them on the table.

For the first time since this all started, I saw gray tinging the corners of my vision, smoldering in like the filter of a burning cigarette. I wanted so badly to believe that Dru was innocent. But I was beginning to suspect he was also lying.

H
ALF AN HOUR
later, Dru led me to the parking lot behind Lujo, his hand between my shoulder blades.

“You got your Spyder,” I said, pressing my back against the driver's side. The evening light made Dru's tan skin stand out even more against his pink shirt. He'd loosened his tie, and it hung seductively around his neck, the first two buttons of his shirt undone.

“Yeah,” he said, moving in close. “My dad was flipping out about it being in an apartment building parking lot. He's already had Peyton's apartment emptied.”

“Already?”

He nodded. “Cleaned out. After the cops got done with
it. Her living at a place like that was an embarrassment to him, I'm sure.”

“Yeah, but how'd he find someone to clean it out so fast?”

Dru laughed, but there was something sharp behind the laughter. “He's Bill Hollis. He can find anyone to do anything at any time. For the right price. You would be amazed at what, and who, can be bought in this world.”

“You are not your father's biggest fan,” I mused. I reached forward and fiddled with his tie. I couldn't help myself.

“Not at all.” He leaned in closer to me, putting his weight on his hand, which he'd rested on the car just above my head. I could feel his thighs near mine and smell the bourbon on his breath. “Don't get me wrong. I like a person who's tough.” He palmed my side with his free hand. “But with a little softness, too.” He moved his hand up my side so tenderly my insides melted.

“You're in luck,” I said, but I didn't get to finish before his mouth was on mine, his entire body pressed up against me.

“Come home with me,” he whispered against my mouth.

I wanted to. I really, really wanted to. But I knew that going home with him would mean falling into bed with him, and I couldn't help hearing Chris Martinez's warnings in my head again. And seeing that gray.

Plus, I really needed to look at those photos again. Needed to see the one of the hand full of pills again, just to be sure. And not just those. I needed to look at the ones on
Peyton's photo-sharing site again. Things were needling the back of my brain. Things that I'd seen but couldn't quite pinpoint. Answers were in those photos. I knew it. I just had to find them. I gave Dru a soft shove.

“Not right now,” I said. “Maybe I'll come by later?”

He groaned, pulled away from me. “My apartment. Tonight? We'll be alone.”

“Deal,” I said. “I'll text you.”

THE HOUSE WAS
quiet when I got home. Dad was out, and as the night wore on I began to wish more and more that he was home. I hadn't heard a word from Gibson Talley since our altercation in the parking lot, but I was still sort of waiting for him to come exact his revenge for what had gone down out there. Gibson Talley didn't seem like the type to let things go easily. He definitely didn't seem like the type who would let a girl get the best of him and then just brush it off as if nothing had happened. He had face to save.

I realized I hadn't eaten, so I grabbed a bowl of cereal and headed upstairs, the whole time trying to make sense of the things I'd learned at Lujo. Trying to clear my mind of my encounter by the car with Dru and my promise to meet up with him later. Not an easy task. I could still feel his feathery finger brushes against my side.

But I had to focus. I shoved a spoonful of cereal into my mouth and chewed.

There were secrets, that much I believed. But whose secrets were the deadly ones? That was the question. Who was telling the truth and who was lying? Who was covering up for what?

And was it possible that a Hollis was behind Peyton's attack?

The thought had begun to whisper to me.

Luna had guessed it could have been a john who'd beaten up Peyton. She'd said she thought Dru was being framed. Dru had made it sound like Bill Hollis was power hungry enough to possibly be the culprit. Detective Martinez had seemed to be pinning it, at least in part, on Arrigo Basile, Dru's alleged puppet thug. And, of course, I couldn't forget the mystery man with the bracelet. And the claim Luna had made about Peyton selling the Molly while it was her hand full of pills in the photo.

All the arrows seemed to be pointing in opposite directions, but one thing had continued to come up again and again: escorts.

Arrigo Basile was known for his involvement with prostitutes. Luna had said Peyton was an escort. Bill Hollis's license plate read
DREAMS
, which just happened to be part of the name found on a flyer in Peyton's apartment. Hollywood Dreams Ranch. The word
Dreams
glittery lavender. I looked at the flyer for the thousandth time.

The glitter reminded me of something.

I had seen something else recently that had stuck out to me because of its glitter and glitz. Yes . . . glitz. The thought made it click. The color I'd associated with it was something about the word
glitz
.

Glitz. Glitzy cherrybomb. That was the phrase that had come to mind.

I logged on to Peyton's Aesthetishare site and scrolled to the photo of her and Luna. They were standing in front of a sign that promised
SEXSEXSEXSEXSEX
and were both seriously flirting up the camera. Luna had her lips and hips pushed out. Peyton was wearing a T-shirt with a dollar sign on it.

I scooted away from my desk, staring at the screen as it all became so clear to me.

The dollar sign. The
SEXSEXSEXSEXSEX
. The way they vamped for the picture.

Maybe Luna hadn't been full of shit. Maybe Peyton really was an escort.

Why? Why would someone who had it all need to accept money from strange men for God-knew-what? It made no sense.

But again, it made all the sense in the world. Peyton, wearing the dollar-sign T-shirt in front of the window advertising all that sex. It was so obvious it was almost too obvious.

I scrolled to the post details. Peyton had titled the photo
Double Rainbow
. Was this a play on her new tattoo?
Was she trying to say something more?

Live in Color
.
Double Rainbow
, only not regular rainbow colors. Glitzy cherrybomb
Rainbow
. Call-girl-colored
Rainbow.

I sifted through papers on my desk until I unearthed the Hollywood Dreams flyer. I picked up my phone and dialed the number, chewing on my lip while it rang. This was an outside chance, but . . .

“Dreams,” a voice purred on the other end.

“Um, hi, I'm looking for Rainbow?” I asked, my voice sounding way too high-pitched and nervous. I tried to lower it, sound more confident. “Is she working tonight?”

“I'm sorry, Rainbow's not available for a while,” the voice said. “Can I help you with something?”

I hung up, silver squiggles I associated with excitement wriggling in the air.

It had been an outside chance, but now it all made sense. The clues added up perfectly.

Rainbow was Peyton's call-girl pseudonym.

I lit a cigarette, pushed up the window with one hand, and then rolled back to my desk. Pieces of the puzzle were clicking into place.

The photo above
Double Rainbow
—the first photo of Peyton to catch my eye—filled my computer screen. Black and white, Peyton looking like a starlet as she stood, sultry, so angular she looked broken-boned, in the water, a life
preserver dangling over her arm. The first time I'd looked at the photo, I'd noticed the yellow-and-pink
SO
written on the preserver. But now I knew the rest.
S
. The preserver had
SOS
written on it
.

What was it her Facebook status had said? The one right before she moved away?
Must get to the bottom of things.

I gazed at the photo again, noticing something else for the first time. Her other hand was clutching the life preserver, mostly covering tiny writing—what was maybe the name of the company that made the preserver. All that was showing was
nik
.

My cigarette trembled between my fingers as I squinted at it, the copper that I usually associated with my name there, but just slightly off. It wasn't
nikki
. . . it was just
nik
. Brownish, but not quite copper. Something that would stand out to me.

Something that someone else with synesthesia would have known would stand out to me.

She wanted me to know she was making changes. But she wanted more than that.
Must get to the bottom of things.

Nik. Must get to the bottom of things. SOS.
Separately, each had their own colors. But together they were one. All in orange.

It was a colored banner that might as well have read,
Help me, Nikki
.

I WAS STILL
puzzling over the photos—looking for more of Peyton's clues, something I might have missed in the
SOS
photo—when my phone buzzed. I'd been lost in the photos for hours now. But I felt like I was on the edge of figuring it out. So close.

“Hey.” It was Dru. “I thought you were going to text.”

“Yeah, sorry. I was busy.”

“Any progress?”

“Huh?”

“You're still working on Peyton's case, right? Have you made any progress?”

I rubbed my eyes. “She knew she was in trouble,” I said. “She was reaching out to me. But I still don't know why exactly.”

“You two must have some connection,” he said, but his voice sounded distracted—almost as if he was talking to himself, rather than to me.

If only you knew,
I thought. I tabbed back to Peyton's photo site and found the family photo on the pier. I liked this photo. Dru looked amazing. Damp and sculpted, sun-kissed.

You could tell by looking at the photo that this was one powerful family, and you could tell by looking at Dru that he was comfortable with his power. He stood at the opposite end from his father—not a surprise, given what I'd seen—but also at the opposite end from Peyton. Luna and Vanessa
were pressed in close to him, the small blond woman's arm wrapped around his waist. He wasn't reciprocating the hug. He stood confidently apart, even while being together.

There was something else about the photo that I couldn't quite pinpoint, but his unbuttoned shirt distracted me. I couldn't help it. And hearing his voice on the other end of the phone only made it worse.

“Hello?” he asked, jarring me away from the photo. I closed my laptop to shut out the distraction.

“I'm still here,” I said.

“So it's gotten pretty late. You coming tonight? I really, really want you to. We can pick up where we left off earlier.”

Still in my skirt, I slid my bare legs over the windowsill and sat in the night air. I lit up a cigarette. A part of me wished that this was a normal night. That Dru Hollis was calling me to come over just as Jones had always done, and that I was about to go over for a good time, without all the drama and nerves of this weird shit I'd gotten into.

But I feared that longing for my relationship with Dru to be normal bordered on having feelings for him. I didn't want to go there. He was a hot guy. A guy who wanted me as much as I wanted him. That was it. Who wanted normal when the drama and nerves amped up the sex all the more?

“Give me half an hour,” I said.

I smoked the cigarette down to the filter, and then lit another just to keep him waiting.

DRU'S APARTMENT WAS
almost as big as my house, taking up the entire top floor of a ten-story loft-style building on Sycamore Square.

It was also pitch dark inside.

“Hello?” I said as I pushed open the door. The elevator door slid shut behind me, stranding me there. “Dru?”

There was no response, so I stayed in the doorway, blinking to try to adjust to the darkness. I heard a noise—a thump—off to my left. I jumped, flexing my arms protectively in front of me as I faced that direction.

“Dru?” I asked again. No response.

There was another thump, and I flinched again. Could the same person who hurt Peyton have hurt Dru, too? Could the person have known we were meeting here and had been waiting for him?

I thought about how Luna had read his texts earlier in the evening and had intercepted me at Lujo. Maybe she was playing the same game twice.
Dru, Dru, Dru. You have never been good at being on time.
Maybe she knew he was going to be late. Maybe she knew I'd figured out about the drugs. Maybe she was here to hurt me.

There was no way I was going to let a skinny, entitled bitch like Luna Fairchild scare me off. I walked toward the sound. “I hear you,” I said, holding my fists out in front of
me. Now there was a noise at my back and I swiveled. “Come on out. Why are you hiding?”

A louder thump this time, closer. I turned again.

Someone hit me hard, wrapping me up and knocking me backward onto what felt like a couch. I let out a gust of air, but immediately pulled my legs into my stomach to put distance between me and my assailant.

“Hey, hey, hey,” the figure who'd just tackled me said. It was Dru's voice, so close I could feel his breath tickle my cheek. “Why so feisty?” He grabbed my wrists and pinned them to the cushions on either side of my head. He leaned into me, full force. “You look amazing in shadow, by the way. Your hips curve just right.” He ran one hand down my hip, hooking his thumb into my waistband.

“Goddamn it, Dru,” I said, ripping one hand out of his grip and punching him in the chest. “You scared the hell out of me.”

He laughed, pulling away from my punch and rubbing his chest, allowing just enough slack for me to free my other hand and hit him with it, too.

“It's not funny,” I said through gritted teeth. “You're lucky I didn't kick your head in.”

He groaned, leaned into me again. “I love it when you talk tough,” he said. “So hot.”

“It's not talk,” I said, hitting him again and again.