Shade Me (9 page)

His lips were soft and warm up against mine, and moved more in strokes than in the full-on attacks that I was used to with Jones. They were feathery light—the kind of kisses that pull sighs out of parted lips—and insistent. His breath tasted sweet, and there was an underlying strength in his grasp that should have been frightening, but when he wrapped his
arms around my waist, I was the calmest I'd felt since getting that first phone call two nights before.

Maybe it wasn't wrong. Maybe it was exactly what needed to happen.

“We don't . . . ,” I said, but trailed off as his lips moved down the side of my neck.

“It's okay,” he whispered into my hair. He pulled back and brushed a finger down my cheek, staring deep into my eyes. “You amaze me a little, you know that?”

I shook my head. “I'm not amazing.”

He rested his thumb on my chin, tilting my face up with his forefinger so he could look into it. I could still feel the ghost of his lips against mine. I bit my lower lip to keep it steady. “Look what you're willing to do for someone you don't even really know,” he whispered. “It's amazing. It's brave. I've never known anyone as brave as you, Nikki Kill.” He bent so that his lips were right up against mine. “It's so sexy.”

I closed my eyes and fell into him, pulling at the buttons on his shirt. We paused only long enough for me to unzip my boots. When he pushed me back onto the bed, I barely even registered that we were lying across Peyton's mattress. I was only aware of my desire.

He paused, held himself above me. “Do you want this?” he asked, the kind of question I would never have guessed Dru Hollis would ask. I wondered if it was earnest; if he'd
ever had a woman tell him no. I wondered, if I were to shake my head, would he have handed me my shirt and gone on with searching Peyton's apartment? Maybe. Dru Hollis seemed full of surprises. Full of colors I couldn't quite read. Colors that confounded and frightened and exhilarated me.

But I wouldn't test the theory that he would stop if I asked him to.

Because I did want him. Despite my mind nagging at me with doubts brought on by my conversation with Chris Martinez just that morning, I wanted him.

I reached up and curled my arm around his neck, pulling him down toward me.

ONLY AFTERWARD DID
it start to feel a little strange. The violet had blinked out, all at once, just as it always did, and then we were left in Peyton's stark room, the door to her closet yawning open a mouthful of colorful textiles. I lay next to Dru, trying to read him, but it was impossible.

I traced some yellowing bruises on his ribs. “What happened here?”

He flinched, touched them with his own fingertips, without looking. “Same basketball game,” he said.

“You sure it wasn't football?” I asked, noting a scrape across his elbow, thick with a crusted scab. Once again, Chris Martinez pushed into my mind. Would he have thought
these bruises somehow proved that Dru had something to do with Peyton's attack? I could feel the awkwardness in my own voice.

He studied me, his eyes almost black in this light. “You're not thinking . . .”

I shrugged. “The timing is pretty weird, wouldn't you say?”

“Ah, I see,” he said, leaning his head against the wall. “Well, I can assure you it's not at all unusual for me to have bruises. I'm not as pampered as they make me out to be. I play hard. And these are no big deal, even by my standards. Nothing like the bruises my sister has right now. Not even close.”

I supposed he was right. I'd seen plenty of photos. Dru was always doing something rugged, something dangerous. He was physical. And besides, if someone started combing my body for bruises after a long sparring session at the
dojang
, I'd shudder to think what they'd find.

He let out a dark chuckle. “One thing you should know, Nikki. Hollises leave it all on the court.” He shifted so that he was lying on the bruises, facing me, and kissed my forehead. “You strike me as the kind of girl who knows what it means to play all out.”

“Every day,” I said, thinking about the way I'd pummeled the heavy bag just yesterday. “But remind me never to play basketball with you.”

Dru gazed at me for a long while. So long, I started to get uncomfortable. I fumbled for the sheet, which had been kicked to the far side of the bed, and pulled it over my chest, surly. “What?”

“I'm just wondering who you really are.”

“What do you mean? This is who I am. No mystery here.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Oh, I disagree. You're a hell of a mystery. You're a girl who shows up at a hospital for someone you don't really know, and then goes on a hunt to solve a crime that has nothing to do with you. And”—he pulled himself to sitting, his back propped against the wall—“on your first attempt to follow a clue, you're remarkably good at it, with no explanation of how.”

I gathered myself up, keeping the sheet pulled around me as I turned so I was facing him. The green was back, only this time it had morphed into wisps of mint green. Dru was suspicious of me. I had seen it before—when I was talking to Detective Martinez that night at the hospital, it had tried to edge in around us, but I'd been so shaken by the crimson bleeding out of Peyton's bay to pay attention to it.

“What are you getting at?” I asked.

He shrugged, the protective wall he liked to hide behind coming up again. “Nothing. I'm just saying it's a little crazy how you figured out so fast where Peyton lived.”

“So?”

“So . . .” He looked away, his hands twisting against each other. “So I think there's more to your story than you're telling me.” He grinned and leaned in toward me. “I'm not saying a little mystery isn't sexy.”

My mouth dropped open and I edged away from him. “You think I had something to do with Peyton's attack?”

His jaw tightened. “I'm not saying that,” he said in a low voice.

I slid out of bed and pulled my jeans on. He wasn't saying that outright, but it was clear that was what he'd meant. He thought it was possible that I was somehow responsible for Peyton being in that hospital bed.

Of course, it wasn't lost on me that there actually
was
more to my story than he knew. Especially when it came to figuring out where Peyton lived. But he didn't need to know that.

And that was exactly why it was such a bad idea for the two of us to have hooked up in the first place. Neither of us would ever be able to trust the other. Not truly.

I slipped into my bra and tugged my shirt over my head, swatting at my flyaway hair. “I should have known better than to do this,” I said.

“Nikki, come on, that's not what I meant,” he said.

“I know exactly what you meant. And getting me naked is not going to get me to let my guard down, you know. I'm
not going to curl up in your arms and baby-talk you all my dirty little secrets.”

He grinned. “You have dirty little secrets?”

“This is a game to you?” I was shouting now. “You're cracking jokes while your sister is dying? What the hell is wrong with you?”

He winced, putting his hand over his bare chest. I could hear myself breathing in the silence.

“Of course it's not a game,” he said. “Nothing about this is funny.”

“No shit,” I said, but the fire had gone out of my words. A part of me felt bad for hurting him, even though I was stung by him.

Just as he reached for his shirt, there was a pounding on the door. My heart jostled. We'd gotten so caught up in our own personal stuff, we'd completely forgotten that we were in Peyton's apartment. That we were trying to find an attempted killer. This was no game.

Of course, my mind immediately returned to Gibson Talley. Jones thought that Gib lived in this complex. I had definitely not searched the whole place—maybe we missed the part where all his stuff was.

Dru and I looked at each other, wide-eyed. He was as surprised by our visitor as I was.

The pounding continued. I put my finger over my lips
to shush Dru and crept, still barefoot, into the hallway. I could see nothing through the front window, so I kept going, thinking maybe I would stop in the kitchen and find a knife on the way.

I had reached the door and placed my ear against it, Dru right at my heels, when we finally heard a voice.

“Open up! Police!” We exchanged confused glances. Why were the police looking for Peyton? And then the voice came again, this time all too familiar. “Come on, Miss Kill, I know you and Hollis are in there. Open the door.”

I
STOOD RAMROD
straight, my mind searching for a plan. Dru had gone white, the swagger zapped from him. He shook his head at me, a slight movement that might have actually been my imagination.

The police were looking for us? But why? We didn't break in. We had a key. Dru was family. This was no crime.

“What the hell?” I whispered. Dru shrugged, at a loss, but the pale edges around his lips told me otherwise.

Maybe the police were only looking for clues here, just like we were. But they knew I was inside. Which could only mean . . .

I whipped open the door. “Oh my God, are you following me?”

Detective Martinez stood on the other side of the door, one hand pushed into his pants pocket, the other still raised to knock again. He edged past me into Peyton's apartment, a uniformed officer trailing behind him. “Excuse me, Miss Kill,” he muttered.

I shut the door and whirled on him. “I mean it. Are you following me? You obviously knew I was here. How?”

He bowed his head and rubbed his top lip contemplatively. “No,” he said. “I'm not following you. Though I do find it pretty curious that you're here. With the person I
am
following. Funny that you didn't mention you were meeting up with him when I was just talking to you this morning.”

“It wasn't planned yet,” I said. “What business is it of yours who I meet up with, anyway?”

“It's my business when you're meeting up with a suspect in an assault and battery case.”

It took me a minute to process what he was saying. I glanced up at Dru, who looked as surprised as I felt. “Dru's officially a suspect now? Why?”

Detective Martinez turned toward Dru, pulling something out of his waistband. I caught a glimpse of shiny metal, and recognized the rattling sound of handcuffs. The silver rippled with bumpy gray and black. “Dru Hollis, you're under arrest for the attack on Peyton Hollis.” The other officer took two steps toward us.

I gasped as the rest of the color left Dru's face. “I didn't
hurt her,” he said. “I didn't touch her.”

“What's going on?” I asked. When nobody responded, I shoved between Detective Martinez and Dru. Detective Martinez might have thought he was Scary Hero Officer, but I wasn't frightened of him. I'd dealt with plenty of cops over the years, and I wanted answers. “Hello? Tell me what's going on.”

The other officer made a beeline toward me, but Detective Martinez held out a hand to stop him. “Get out of the way, Miss Kill. You don't want to get involved in this.”

I threw my hands up in the air. “In case you couldn't tell, I'm already involved in this.” I flashed on my fingers trailing the bruises on Dru's naked side and realized I was involved even deeper now than before. I'd managed to complicate things for everyone, especially me.

“I didn't hurt her,” Dru repeated. “And I want my lawyer.”

Detective Martinez stepped toward me. “I don't want to have to arrest you too, Miss Kill,” he said. “But if you don't get out of the way, I will do it.” As if on cue, the other officer produced a pair of handcuffs as well.

“What do you have on him?” I asked, knowing I was pushing my luck. How brave was I, exactly? How far did I think I could push Detective Martinez? Was I willing to spend the night in jail? Was I willing to have to explain things to Dad?

“You have ten seconds to get out of the way,” he responded.

“They have nothing,” Dru said. “It's not possible for them to have anything on me.”

“Eight . . . ,” Detective Martinez intoned.

“This is crazy,” I said, though I didn't just mean Dru's arrest. I meant all of it, from the phone call to the
silver, brown, pink
numbers leading me here to the violet and mint green of lust and suspicion to watching Dru get arrested just minutes after being in bed with him.

“Six . . .”

My mind swirled with color. Sunshine yellow, bumpy gray and black, the orangish-pink innocence I often saw when I was in the same room with a baby. It was too much. I didn't know which colors to trust, and which were just my own wrong interpretation. I took a deep breath. “Fine,” I said, and stepped aside.

“Mr. Hollis, you have the right to remain silent,” Detective Martinez said, squeezing the handcuffs over his wrists. They made the clicking sound I'd heard a million times on TV and in movies, but never had it sounded so loud, so real, so final as it did in that moment. I didn't hear anything else the detective said. My ears were ringing from the noise of the handcuffs. My mind was blinded by the rainbow.

None of this made sense, and for the first time since getting that phone call that night, I had a feeling of being in
over my head. Who could I believe? Dru Hollis? Detective Martinez? Neither one? My own gut instinct that there was more to this than any of us knew?

Dru's guard had dropped when we were in bed. I'd felt it. Yet he still had those bruises.

Detective Martinez seemed so up-and-up. But for ten years I'd been waiting for the cops to find my mom's killer. And for ten years there had been nothing.
No concrete evidence
were words I practically lived my life by. I'd heard that phrase more times than I could count. Did that mean he had concrete evidence against Dru?

And what if there was concrete evidence against Gibson Talley instead? Would he even bother to look for it if he was so sure it was Dru?

I still didn't know who was behind Peyton's attack. But I knew that my intuition was telling me there was more to this case, and I was going to have to have more than a few vague Facebook threats to go off of.

Otherwise, I would never know the truth. Not so Detective Martinez could get his concrete evidence. I wanted to know the truth for myself.

“Nikki,” Dru said. I looked at him. Detective Martinez had opened up the door, but had paused. “What happened today . . . I wanted it to happen. I know you had nothing to do with this.”

I nodded, mute, while Detective Martinez walked Dru
through the front door. I raced to the window and watched as they walked through the complex toward the parking lot. A few of Peyton's neighbors had gathered on their balconies to watch. “Drama whores!” I shouted at the window, but none of them heard me.

The apartment seemed even emptier now that Dru was no longer in it. And since I had seen that Gibson Talley definitely didn't live here, I didn't really have any reason to keep searching. Going through Peyton's designer clothes only made me feel like a creepy snoop. Not to mention it reminded me of all the reasons why someone could hate Peyton Hollis, including me.

I walked back to the bedroom to retrieve my boots, which lay unzipped and collapsed like a monster with its belly flayed, next to the bed. I could still smell Dru in here. I wondered if I would be another number on his list of conquests. I wondered if I'd see him again, and, if I did, what would happen. Most of all, I wondered if he was guilty.

I sat on the edge of the bed and stuffed my feet into my boots, then bent to zip them. My eye caught a flyer lying halfway under the bed. I pulled it out.

Junk. The kind of crap somebody handed you as you walked by a strip club. It was advertising someplace called Hollywood Dreams Ranch, an instant scandalous
glittery, shimmery lilac
connection
.
There was an expensive-looking, leggy blonde in a plunging neckline promising an evening
with an escort to “rival even the most luxurious of dreams.” Gag.

I dropped it back on the floor and went back to zipping, but the flyer turned over as it fluttered to the carpet. I stopped, mid-zip. Peyton had written something on the other side.

I picked it up and studied her handwriting, trying to concentrate on just the words and numbers.

There was an address that I didn't recognize, followed by a time—
11:00
.

And then, in the lower left-hand corner, a doodle. A simple drawing of a sun, just a circle with lines coming off it, sunglasses and a big smile plastered across it—the kind of picture a kid might draw. Or someone who was doodling while on the phone. Above the sun, she had written, in whimsical letters,
Mr. Golden Sun
.
Golden
was underlined three times.

I squinted at the word. I especially hated reading color words, because the color never matched the word, and it was confusing.
Golden
wasn't golden to me. It was—

I sat up straight. I had had this thought before, not that long ago.

I racked my brain, trying to remember when. So much had happened recently, everything was starting to meld together.

Maybe it was something on Peyton's Facebook page. Or
something Martinez had said. Or maybe . . .

The photo. Yes, I had thought it while looking at Peyton's photos on Aesthetishare. The ominous one, the one with her address graffitied above an ad for these apartments. She'd titled it.

Fear Is Golden.

And I'd had the thought that it wasn't. Fear was bumpy gray and black, like asphalt, but the only person who would know that was me.

Forgetting my partially unzipped boot, I stood up, like someone had zapped me with electricity.

I avoided color words. I despised them. They were confusing and distracting, and I would never say something like “the sky is blue” because
sky
was definitely white, or “grass is green,” because green didn't really describe the word
grass
specifically. No synesthete would ever utter a sentence like “Fear is golden,” because that lie would be so frustrating.

Unless, of course, to them, fear really was golden.

I stopped in my tracks and stared down at the flyer.

Mr. Golden Sun.

It was a message.
Fear Is Golden; Mr. Golden Sun
. Two sentences, using that same color word. My heart pounded in my chest like I was running a marathon. If I was reading this correctly, then whatever was going down at that address at eleven o'clock had Peyton afraid. But was I reading it correctly, or was I reading into it as a synesthete?

A synesthete would use a sentence like that if they were actually describing the color of a word.
Sadness
is brown.
Cheating
is turquoise.
Fear is golden.

Live in Color.
A neck tattoo, with a black-and-gray rainbow, and words, also inked in black and gray.

But they were beautiful, colorful words to someone like me.

Jesus.

Was Peyton Hollis a synesthete?

I paced through the apartment, looking for more clues. More words that might stand out. I found none. In fact, I found almost no words, no letters or numbers at all. Which was as much of a sign as anything.

If Peyton was a synesthete . . . was that why she had my number in her phone? Was she reaching out to me because she knew I suffered the same color issues she did? But how? Nobody knew about my synesthesia. Nobody.

Yet it made so much sense. And I couldn't explain it any more than I could explain how I knew that the 412 graffiti meant Peyton lived in this apartment.

Peyton Hollis had synesthesia. Somehow she'd found out that I did, too. She must have known someone was trying to hurt her.

And she left me clues.

Peyton Hollis wanted me to find her attacker.