Dare You

  “Speech, speech, speech!” people began chanting, and the next thing I knew, an impossibly young Bill Hollis was coming into the frame, hair dark and slick, body trim and hard. He looked rich and powerful—and dangerous—even then. My throat dried up seeing him there.

  “No speeches,” he said. “Save it for the Oscars.” Everyone laughed, and Dad let go of Mom and slung his arm around Bill Hollis’s neck jovially. I felt tears come to my eyes. My palms had started to sweat and nausea had set in. It was like my brain couldn’t make sense of what it was seeing. Couldn’t make sense of my dad standing there, buddy-buddy with the man who’d tried to kill me.

  You know the Hollises?

  Not really. I did a shoot with Bill Hollis once.

  “Liar,” I said to the TV. It was official. I hadn’t imagined anything. Dad was involved with Bill Hollis, too. But I didn’t know how, and I didn’t know why he would keep it from me.

  “Turn that thing off,” Dad said to Mom in the video. “I want to kiss you. A lot.” They laughed and kissed, and Mom started toward the camera, but just before her arm blocked the entire view of the lens, something caught my eye.

  Or maybe it was someone.

  I backed up the tape and paused it. In the back of the room, so fuzzy it was maybe my imagination, a big poof of platinum hair above a whole lot of cleavage. Hanging on to the arm of a very tan white-haired man. Vanessa Hollis? And where had I seen that man before?

  The camera blipped off and went to snow, but just as I was about to get up to pull the tape out of the machine, it flipped back on again.

  Change of scenery. This time the camera was pointing out over a lake, the sun low in the sky, bouncing sparkles off the water. It looked like a professional shot.

  Mom’s voice, off camera. “Go stand by that rock, will you?”

  Another woman’s voice. “I don’t want to be in one of your weird movies. You’ll probably have me eaten by a lion or something.”

  Mom’s tinkle of a laugh. “I will not. I’m just setting up the shot. It would help to have a body standing there so I’ll know what it looks like. Just do it . . . please, B?”

  B.

  GONE 2 SOON. B.

  Pink. Primary blue.

  I could hear the woman sigh, and then she stepped into the frame. She was short, blond, with an almost comical 1980s tease-out, and very, very pregnant. She stood in front of the camera uncomfortably. “This good?”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the Honorable Reverend Carter,” Mom intoned in a low announcer’s voice. My eyes bugged out of my head. Was this her? Right in front of my face? Not Brandi Courteur; Brandi Carter. Mom’s friend, the escort slash mystery woman. The woman Peyton knew. The woman who started this whole crazy thing. The woman I’d been looking for . . . and not looking for . . . all this time.

  Mom laughed at her own joke and Brandi protested, waving her hands at the camera. She started to walk away. “No, no. I’m just kidding. I need you there. Just stay for a minute. Pastor.” Mom laughed again, and the woman waved her hands again, but her irritated face turned into one of humor as well.

  “Stop it, Carrie, it’s not funny. I’m serious about this,” she said.

  “I know, I know. I’m sorry.” Mom’s voice got somber, but I could tell it was difficult for her to do. “It’s just that you’re a little weirdly serious.”

  “Christ’s love is serious,” Brandi countered. “There’s nothing weird about it.”

  “But it sounds like you’re having church in a seaside shack,” Mom said. Aqua blew up in my mind.

  I paused the screen and studied Brandi’s short stature, her blond hair. She looked so much smaller than I expected her to be. Somehow she’d grown into this huge force in my mind, but here she was, just an ordinary woman. An ordinary woman with an ordinary name: Carter. Someone who was leaving the escort business to find Christ.

  I went to my room, forgetting all about the video, and pulled up my laptop. I tapped my fingers impatiently on the desk while I waited for it to load. As soon as it did, I entered Brandi Carter.

  About a zillion results came up. Of course, with a name like that.

  I tried Brandi Carter and church. Still too many.

  Brandi Carter and Brentwood and church. Nothing.

  Brandi Carter and church and California. Back to too many. I would never get this.

  I tried all those searches again, with different spelling variations: Brandie, Brandy, Brandee . . .

  Nothing.

  Aqua nagged me. Mom had said it sounded like Brandi was going off to worship in a seaside shack. I paired her name with every sea- and ocean-related word I could come up with. Same story—either too many results, or zero results.

  Sea. Ocean. Boat. Ship. Shore. Sand. Buoy. Fish. Shell. Net.

  Lighthouse.

  I got a hit.

  There was a Brandi Carter at a church called Lighthouse Dimensions Chapel. I clicked.

  A website came up. I scanned it until I found an address. Oildale, California. What had Ruby said? That she’d heard a rumor that Mom had gone to a town with the word “oil” in it? Oil Well, Oil Slick, she’d thought.

  Oildale.

  I pulled up Google Maps and plugged in Oildale. Where the hell was Oildale?

  The screen zoomed in, lining in red a small area inside Bakersfield.

  Bubble blue, muted gray, spongy tawny.

  Salinas, Modesto . . . Bakersfield.

  Dad could remove the photo, but I didn’t need it anymore, anyway. Bakersfield had been one of the stops on the monitor behind Mom at the bus station.

  I tabbed back over to the church home page and clicked on Meet Our Staff. I scrolled past a lead pastor and a children’s pastor and more Sunday school teachers than I could count. And then, at the bottom, a head shot. Still blond, still with the crazy eighties tease-out. But the face hadn’t changed. Not much, anyway. She was smiling at the camera.

  Secretary, Brandi Carter.

  I placed my forefinger over her face and pressed, as if that would make her more real.

  “Found you.”

  28

  IN A PERFECT world, I would have jumped in my car and rushed right to Bakersfield. I would have found Lighthouse Dimensions Chapel and walked in and confronted Brandi Carter and gotten the entire story, including why she’d approached Peyton in the first place—and, to that end, why she hadn’t come to me the way she did Peyton, since it was my mom we were talking about.

  But Bakersfield was a good three hours away, and Dad was coming home, and there was this stupid broken window that I was going to have to explain. Not to mention, I wasn’t sure I wanted the answers to those questions. I still wasn’t sure I really wanted to find Brandi Carter at all. Finding her wouldn’t make Peyton any less dead, and it wouldn’t make me any less the suspect, and it wouldn’t make Rigo and Luna any less out there.

  Dad had texted while I was watching Mom’s movies. He was on his way. I’d spent so much time reading up on Lighthouse Dimensions, he was almost home before I even saw his text. I went back to his room, packed away the movies, and took the box back to his office. Dad and I had a lot of secrets between us, and I didn’t exactly know if I could trust his word anymore, but I still didn’t want him to know I’d watched the movies without him. Even if he’d kept things from me, maybe he’d had a good reason for it. He was still all I had in this world.

  Not true. You have Detective Martinez. I stopped in my tracks. Where had that thought come from? I didn’t care—I shooed it away. I had more important things to think about. Like the earring, which was still on Dad’s desk, the BOO taunting me.

  With shaky hands, I palmed it and took it to my room.

  I HAD PUT on makeup to cover the bruises that the Basiles had left on me, pushed the cabinet back in its original place, and was sweeping glass into a dustpan when Dad walked in. The bruises felt like neon signs on my face. My fat lip felt a thousand times bigger than it was. My chest ached where my shirt was brushing up against the knife wou
nd. I’d fitted a bandage over it and put on a dark T-shirt, so Dad wouldn’t see and start asking questions. As it was, I had enough questions to concoct answers for.

  “Hey, what happened here?” he asked, dropping his camera bag and duffel right inside the door. “Are you okay? You didn’t call. I thought we had an agreement that you’d call if anything went wrong. Was it Luna? Oh God, Nikki, if she—”

  I stood and held my hand out. “Stop. I haven’t swept there yet. And nothing went wrong. Everything was fine.” The lie rolled off my tongue so easily. Maybe I had no right to be mad at Dad at all. Like father, like daughter?

  He took the dustpan from my hand and walked it to the trash. “Well, obviously not everything was fine. How did the window get broken?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Stupid middle schoolers. They were jackassing around and a ball came right through. Scared the crap out of me.”

  He stared, first at me, and then at the window, his face scrunched up all mint green like he didn’t believe me. “What kids? What middle schoolers? We don’t have middle schoolers on this street, do we? And what were they doing playing ball in our backyard, anyway?”

  Shit. “I don’t know who they were. I think they were coming through from another neighborhood or something.”

  “What neighborhood? They should be held responsible for this. You could have gotten hurt.”

  I touched his elbow. “Dad. I’m fine. It was just an accident. I’m glad you’re home.” I hugged him. He held the dustpan awkwardly at the small of my back.

  When I pulled away, the mint green on his face had intensified, a mask of disbelief. “You’re lying,” he said. “Tell me what really happened.”

  I felt all my blood rush to my cheeks. My forehead felt so slate gray I wondered if Dad could actually see it, even though he didn’t have synesthesia. I shook my head helplessly, trying to hang on to the lie, because it was all I had. I couldn’t let him know what was really going on. I was way too far in at this point to even consider it. If I didn’t get myself out of this mess, he would find out soon enough when they came to haul my ass to jail for good. “It was the kids,” I said. “I swear.”

  He scrunched his lips together. “Mm-hmm,” he said. “There were no middle school kids, Nikki.”

  “Yes,” I said. “There were.” But even I didn’t sound convincing to myself. An inky finger of outrage threatened to poke through my chest. If he was going to call out my lies, would I be able to stop myself from calling him out on his? Even if I wasn’t quite sure what they were yet? My jaw clenched.

  He took the broom out of my hand and bent to sweep more glass into the dustpan. “So how big was the party?” he asked to the floor.

  Party? Oh my God, I was so stupid. Why didn’t I think of that? Way to go, Nikki. Making things a thousand times harder for yourself, as usual.

  “I didn’t have a party,” I said, just to keep things convincing, but I tried to let it show on my face that he had caught me.

  “You don’t think I was ever eighteen? You think your grandparents never went out of town and left me alone?” He straightened, his face red from having been bent over, but the mint green was gone. “Granted, I never destroyed the house while they were gone. Must have been a hell of a night.”

  This was much more familiar turf that I was in now. Dad being the unattached friend, trying to look like a dad, but failing. We both knew better. He wouldn’t yell. He wouldn’t even get mad. I supposed because of how suddenly Mom had been taken from him, he figured if he ever yelled or got mad at me, and I ended up dead the next minute, he would have all kinds of regrets. He had no idea how close I seemed to come to death on a semiregular basis. And he had no idea that I no longer trusted him enough to let him in.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to look hangdog without overdoing it. “I’ll pay for it.”

  He took the dustpan back over to the trash, his back to me. “Does that mean you got a job?” he asked. “Or are you still carefully plotting what comes next?”

  And that was it. Window discussion over. Just as I knew it would be. And back to the tired Get on with Your Adult Life, Nikki conversation, right on schedule. “No, but when I get a job, you’ll be the first to know, trust me. And I’ll pay for the window. I promise. Somehow. I’ll figure it out.”

  He tucked the broom and dustpan in the pantry and waved his hand at me. “It’s just a window. Not the end of the world. So what else did I miss while I was gone?”

  I shrugged. Dear God, so, so much. “Pretty quiet, I guess. Boring.” Not by a long shot.

  He picked up his bags and headed toward his office with them. “Well, I would much prefer quiet and boring over the alternative,” he said. “Have you eaten?”

  “Frozen pizza,” I said. “But if you want me to make you something . . .”

  He came out of the office. He kicked off his shoes and slumped into his recliner. Had he known that Jones and I had made out in that recliner, would that have finally gotten a rise out of him? Probably not. Knowing Dad, he’d be happy I was busy with something normal for a change. If you could call what Jones and I had normal.

  “Nah, I ate a sandwich in the car. All I want to do is drink a beer, watch some baseball, and go to bed.” He glanced up at me. “You weren’t the only one who had a late night last night.”

  “Oh, really? And her name was?”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. It wasn’t that kind of night. You’re looking a little tired. Your eyes are puffy.”

  It wasn’t why my eyes were puffy, but I was tired. Not up-too-late-partying tired. Not think-I’ll-nap-today tired. The kind of bone-deep tired that comes with months of being surrounded by crimson and asphalt and blood-pumping fireworks that make you want to squint and scream at everyone to watch out, even though you’re the only one who can see them.

  “Yeah. Maybe a little,” I said.

  “You’re still in your robe, so I’m guessing you haven’t been up for long.”

  “Not really.”

  “Lucky.” He yawned. “Listen, you can go ahead. I’ll figure out something about that window.”

  “I’m just going upstairs,” I said. I bent and kissed him on the cheek. “It’s good to have you home.” Truthfully, it was. I felt a little safer with Dad there, whether I could trust him anymore or not. He was still my dad, which meant hopefully he wouldn’t let me get hurt if he could help it.

  Dad smiled. “Good to be missed,” he said.

  When I got back to my room, my phone screen was still lit up from a recent call. I sighed, going to it. Come on, Jones, was it so damn hard to just let somebody have a whole day to themselves? I picked it up and studied the screen.

  Martinez.

  Of course. He’d called six times. I knew him. He would call another six. Or sixty, if that was what it took. The man was relentless. Almost as relentless as I am, I thought. Truth.

  The phone buzzed again while I was holding it and a text came through. Martinez again. Since you won’t answer your phone, I’m coming by. I have something to show you.

  Crap. I pressed the call button. He answered on the first ring.

  “It’s about time,” he said.

  “Sorry. I didn’t realize I was at your beck and call today. I told you I was sick.”

  “Yeah, but you were lying.”

  How was it that everyone just seemed to know when I was lying all of a sudden? “How would you know?” I spat into the phone. “You’re not here. I’ve spent the whole morning puking my guts up. Would you like me to take a picture next time and send it to you, Detective, so you can put the case to rest?”

  “I’ll pass,” he said. “But, regardless, you don’t have time for a sick day. I looked through Blake’s files this morning, and they are moving faster than I thought they might.”

  “You were snooping in your girlfriend’s work files? God, that’s kind of smarmy, don’t you think?”

  “Do you want to go to prison?” he asked. I said nothing. “I didn’t think so. And
it isn’t smarmy. It would be smarmy if that was the only reason I was with her.”

  “Is it?” I knew I was poking him and he would blow up at me soon if I kept it up, but I couldn’t help myself. There was something about his little love affair with the honorable Blake Willis that irritated me to no end. And it wasn’t just about how she was involved in the case against me. If she was being honest, she was doing what she could to help me out, so in reality I should have really liked her. Or at least kind of liked her. It was just . . . of all women, why her?

  “I’m not going to dignify that,” he said, and then, “Actually, you know what? I am going to dignify it. I’m with her because she’s beautiful and smart and funny, and to be honest, she’s erotic as hell. Killer body, and she knows how to use it. Feel better?”

  No. I actually felt like I might be sick after all. “So much better,” I said bitterly.

  “Good. So let’s move on then. I’m going to come by. I have something to show you in those bank records we took from the Hollis evidence.”

  “What? No. You can’t come here.” I thought about Dad, probably by now dozing in his recliner downstairs. Maybe on the phone trying to get someone out to do an emergency fix on the window. I imagined Detective Martinez showing up at our doorstep—a cop. Dad’s least favorite kind of person. He would definitely want to know why I was hanging out with him. And there would be no good answer. No reason that would seem good enough to him. “I’ll come there.”

  “I thought you were sick.”

  “Do you want me to come or not?”

  “I’m at the station.”

  “Okay, give me fifteen minutes.”

  “Bring a barf bag,” he said.

  “Jackass,” I muttered as I ended the call.

  Dad was already asleep, an old Nikon box duct-taped over the broken window. Cardboard and tape wouldn’t keep bad guys out, but it was better than nothing, I supposed.

  I scribbled a note on a napkin and left it on the table next to Dad’s recliner, where he would see it when he woke up, and snuck out.

  I DIDN’T THINK I would ever be comfortable walking into the police station. Maybe even less so now that I knew beautiful, funny, smart, erotic Blake with the killer body was gunning for me extra fast. Like I would walk in a free woman, and end up not being let out forever. It was irrational, but it was what it was.