Dare You

  38

  TESORI ANTICO WAS closed, the front lights extinguished and the interior lights dimmed. The door, however, was left unlocked, and we walked inside. The same frizzy-haired woman I’d talked to before was sitting at the glass case again. She looked up when we came in. There was no sign of Detective Martinez anywhere. God, had Rigo killed him back at the warehouse?

  The woman immediately disappeared through the beaded door, leaving Jones and me alone among the antiques. He shoved my shoulders from behind, inching me along toward the back of the store. I resisted, planting my feet, trying to buy as much time as possible. Trying to think of a plan.

  I swept my hand over my pockets. My phone was missing. If Detective Martinez was out there, I was cut off from him. I sent him mental notes, even though that had never worked before. I’m still here. Come and help me.

  But I couldn’t guarantee he would. I couldn’t even guarantee that he was still alive. I was in this on my own. I had to think fast. I had to take my chance.

  “Hello?” Jones called. The woman didn’t come back. “We’re here,” he said. “Luna?” He raised up onto his tiptoes and craned to see where the woman had gone.

  It was my one chance. I lifted my foot and stomped as hard as I could backward. I’d hoped to feel the crunch of Jones’s arch giving way, but doing it blind, I was off center. I managed to catch the side. It was enough, though. I turned and barreled into him like a linebacker and just kept going. Silently, I raced down the aisle and rounded the corner, sliding on my knees under a crowded shelf and disappearing under the antiques. An angel with a missing nose stared me in the face. I gulped in air as quietly as I could, my heart hammering away.

  “Hey! Damn it!” I heard Jones say, but he didn’t exactly yell it.

  I pulled my knees close to my chest and waited for his footsteps to go by, trying not to look at the bloody depiction of World War II on the canvas to my left. Crimson. Even on the paintings, crimson.

  “Nikki! Where are you?”

  I held my breath. Tucked in tight. I could hear his footsteps getting closer. Please don’t find me, please don’t find me.

  “Damn it, Nikki, don’t do this,” he said. There was a clang as something nearby got knocked over. A bang as he lifted and dropped something else.

  I made sure I wasn’t touching anything, pulling myself into a tight ball. Behind me was a cinder-block wall. If Jones peeked down, there would be nowhere for me to go. I swore my heart was beating so hard, you could hear it outside my chest.

  Finally, I could see his shoes. Scuffed white boat shoes. Sand caught in the creases. My stomach soured at the memory of our night on the beach. That entire night had been a setup.

  I pressed myself harder against the wall. The shoes stopped. A pillow dropped right in front of the shelf, enclosing me in total darkness. Shit. Now I couldn’t see anything. I turned my head. The empty-eyed angel stared back at me. I could still see that. I wished I couldn’t.

  Finally, I heard his shoes move, his footsteps begin to echo away. I waited until I couldn’t hear them anymore, then leaned forward and moved the pillow just half an inch or so. He wasn’t in the aisle anymore but was close.

  I would have to be fast.

  I could be fast.

  Trying to make as little noise as humanly possible, I bolted, scrambling up onto my knees and then onto my feet, running one way, and then, when met with a dead end, running another. The aisles seemed to fuse together in my panic. Everywhere I looked, there seemed to be the same trinkets and statues and chairs. I felt like I was running in circles, my path obscured by the gray and black that closed in on me, the starbursts of metal that blinded me. The snarling face of a tiger statue, the pursed mouth of a chipped doll face. A mannequin, torso only, draped in a black lace shawl. An unsettling painting of a nude woman wearing a wedding veil and wrapped around the hips of a skeleton. A jack-in-the-box. Finally, I made myself pause and take two breaths, squeezing my eyes shut. I could hear Jones coming toward me, but I refused to bolt again without knowing where I was going first.

  A peacock feather. I’d seen it coming in. It was poking out of a vase with a monogram painted on it in gold. Letters that meant nothing to me. But letters that would stand out in color when I saw them again. I knew if I passed the vase and turned left at the end of this aisle, I would be able to make a break for the front door.

  Tensing every muscle in my body, I bounded toward the feather, my legs pumping, my hands outstretched to punch the door open.

  But I never got the chance. The door flung outward when I was still three feet away from it, and in raced a dark blur. It was too late for me to slow down. I ran chest-first into it and skidded back on my butt into a giant plastic clown head.

  39

  IMMEDIATELY, I SPRANG to my feet. The person I’d run into was coming toward me. I threw a front snap to keep him back. He paused to dodge it, then advanced on me anyway. I started to throw another kick, but then it came into focus who it was.

  “It’s me,” he breathed. “You’re okay.”

  Detective Martinez wrapped me up in his arms, and I clung to him just to prove to myself that he was real. Just as quickly, we both pulled away. He grabbed my hand.

  “Come on, let’s get you out of here.”

  “Rigo?”

  He shook his head. “I had to follow you.”

  “He got away?”

  “How cozy,” I heard. A familiar, and chilling, voice that made both of us stop and turn. “The cop and the snitch together.”

  I saw Jones first, as he inched around the corner, through the stack and jumble of art, his hands up surrender-style, the shadow of a figure that I knew well pressed up behind him. The shadow held a gun to Jones’s head. It was only then that I realized whose voice it was that had sounded so familiar.

  “Bill Hollis,” I breathed, the air sucked out of me as if I’d been punched in the gut.

  “And delivered to me with Nikki Kill,” he said jovially. “Is it my birthday? Jones, you shouldn’t have.”

  Next to me, Detective Martinez had taken out his gun and was pointing it forward.

  “I hate it when I have to mix business with pleasure. But I guess I’m going to have to, because we have unfinished business, don’t we, Nikki Kill?”

  Gold fireworks burst in my vision, refusing to let the asphalt black niggle its way in fully.

  I had been warned. I had been told. I understood that Bill Hollis was no longer in Dubai. But seeing him somehow made it more real, more dangerous. But something had changed. Shifted inside of me. The terror that once gripped me from hearing his voice in the dark of Hollis Mansion was still there . . . but it was underneath. Muted. Buried by the certainty that I just needed this to be over. I didn’t want to face him again. I’d been avoiding even thinking about it.

  But I would face him.

  I would.

  It was time to be done being afraid. If this was where it all had to end, then so be it.

  “I let you get away once,” I said. “I won’t do it again.” My voice sounded much more cold and confident than I felt on the inside.

  “That’s tough talk for someone who’s completely outnumbered.”

  I felt rather than heard the door open behind us, the air sucking wisps of my hair backward. I didn’t need to turn around to have a pretty good idea of who was standing there.

  “Go ahead and drop your weapon, Detective.”

  I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and flicked a glance backward. Sure enough, Vanessa Hollis stood just inside the doorway.

  Behind her, bloody and unsteady, but smiling smugly, stood Luna Fairchild. “Boo,” she said, and then lunged at me and wrapped me in a choke hold from behind.

  “I would be more than happy to let Luna strangle her,” Vanessa said, leaning close to Detective Martinez’s ear. “Is that what you want? I wouldn’t blame you. She is a bit of a deadweight. Put the gun down.” She licked his earlobe.

  “I’m not the only one,”
I gasped, my back groaning as I strained to keep my footing. Luna was shorter than me by a lot, and her grip was wicked. “I’m not the only one who can tell.”

  “Empty threat,” Luna said, and her arm tightened around my neck. “And nobody asked you to talk.” Gray spots danced in front of my eyes, only this time it wasn’t my synesthesia doing the choreography; it was lack of oxygen.

  “Oh, you mean the trailer whore,” Bill Hollis called. “Or should I say the dead trailer whore. Things would have worked out for her a lot differently if you hadn’t gone down there. I warned her not to talk. She didn’t listen. You just can’t teach some people.”

  “Although it does make sense. She was dumb trailer trash if I ever saw it,” Vanessa added. “Luna, honey, you’re letting up.” The grip around my neck, which had loosened enough for me to get my hands between her arm and my throat, tightened again.

  “In case you haven’t had the chance to watch the news lately,” Bill continued, “and you have been pretty busy, it seems the trailer of a certain ex-whore has burned down. And she must have been in a drugged stupor—you know how hookers and drugs go together—because she never even attempted to get out of bed. Weird, huh? Your only witness. Poof! Up in smoke.”

  My mind reeled. Brandi was gone? We had just talked to her. Just gotten to know her. She had told us that talking to her put her in danger. And the Hollises had burned her up. And it had been my fault. If I’d let her stay hidden . . .

  “Well, not the only one,” Vanessa added. “We also got rid of those two apartment rats. They were a money pit anyway. What’s two more dead nobodies, though?”

  “We’re about to find out,” Luna said, her breath tickling my ear.

  Oh God, Ruby and Blue. Tears filled my eyes, and I wasn’t sure if they were from my inability to breathe or from something else. I began to well up with putrid brown ink, the color of raw sewage. I couldn’t. I couldn’t succumb to my colors now. I closed my eyes and breathed, pushing them away.

  “This is getting boring, Mother,” Luna said. I could tell by her voice that she was talking through gritted teeth. I could also tell that she was getting tired. Her grip had loosened. I could hear Gunner in my head. Wait for your chance, Nikki. You can get out of this. She’s hurt, remember?

  “Yes, let’s get a move on this, Bill,” Vanessa said. “We have a flight to catch.”

  “Last chance, Martinez. Drop it now,” Bill Hollis called.

  “You won’t shoot anyone,” Detective Martinez called back.

  “Oh, really?”

  Bill shoved Jones, who stumbled three steps forward, bumping up against a floor vase, which tipped, spilling a clutch of walking sticks onto the ground. They clattered and rolled. I could see the old Jones in his face. The Jones who got in too deep and regretted it. The Jones who didn’t mean to hurt anyone. The Jones who just wanted to go off to college and start a life free of the Nikki Kill drama.

  “Go, Jones!” I cried, but then, just as Jones tensed as if to run, Bill Hollis fired two shots into his back.

  Crimson bang. Jones’s face morphed into Dru’s and back into his own as he gasped out his last breaths. Bumpy gray and black pulsed over me, crimson splashes. Mom, Peyton, Dru, Jones, Mom, Peyton, Dru, Jo . . .

  The frizzy-haired woman, who was standing in the beaded doorway, screamed and pressed her hands over her ears. Her eyes were huge as she watched Jones fall to the floor. She began shouting gibberish, distracting Bill Hollis. Luna had jumped at the report of the gun.

  I twisted to my right, wrenching my head out of Luna’s grasp. Detective Martinez dove in the other direction, behind a table, grabbing my wrist and pulling me with him as he went, before I could get ahold of Luna again. He shot three times, each report pounding colors into my head. I wrapped myself up into a ball, covering my head and wincing with every bang.

  Luna scrambled away, while Vanessa calmly walked toward the frizzy-haired woman, who now had her face buried in the hem of her sweater.

  Luna’s movement broke me free. I lunged out from behind the table, ramming into Vanessa’s side with my shoulder. She let loose a gawp, and we landed in a tumble on the floor, skidding into a cabinet full of carnival glass. Several cups tipped over the edges of the shelves and crashed around us.

  Neither of us said a word. There were more shots and the sound of things breaking. The frizzy-haired woman screamed repeatedly. Vanessa and I furiously untangled our bodies from each other. She reached out and clawed at me, her fingers raking painfully down my ear and neck. I grabbed her arm and twisted, and then axe-kicked her shin once, twice, three times. She cried out each time, even though my leverage was shit and I was still trying to catch my breath and I was exhausted from fighting with Luna earlier. Vanessa was pampered, and used to Rigo doing her dirty work for her. She wasn’t good at fighting. But she wasn’t afraid to get nasty, either.

  She flipped over so she was straddling me and started pummeling me in a flurry of untargeted blows. I covered, but she didn’t stop.

  I had no choice. I was going to have to get street about it.

  Blindly, I reached up and grabbed a fistful of hair, yanking until I felt the individual strands tear, ripping a scream out of Vanessa. My hand came loose, still holding an alarming amount of hair, and I grabbed for it again, pulling with everything I had, until she stopped hitting me. The third time I went for it, I got an earring instead, something I didn’t realize until I held it, and a bloody chunk of ear with it, in my palm. Vanessa’s shrieks intermingled with the sound of gunfire and the cries of the frizzy-haired woman. Finally, Vanessa managed to yank herself loose and crawl away. I grabbed for her leg, but she was too fast. She got to her feet and raced across the store toward Bill.

  Oh, hell no.

  I got up and followed her, staggering and holding on to my side. Everything hurt. There was blood everywhere, including on me. Was it mine or someone else’s? Was it Detective Martinez’s? Was he even alive?

  “Nikki!” he shouted, as if he could hear my thoughts. “Watch ou—”

  I had been so busy racing after Vanessa, I’d forgotten all about Bill. Which seemed impossible, given that he was firing a gun over and over again. At some point, he had moved, disorienting me. I tripped over something and fell hard on my knees, my palms slapping into something wet on the floor. I only realized when I raised them to my face that the wetness was blood. The something I’d tripped over was Jones.

  Nikki . . . go . . . Mom’s wristwatch flashing crimson, crimson, crimson, as the life beat out of her. My shoes slipping in the blood.

  “Oh God,” I whimpered, hurrying to right myself, staring at my hands, feeling an old, familiar panic well up inside of me.

  “Nikki!” Detective Martinez shouted again, but his voice sounded distant, faint. As if he were yelling at me from far away. I couldn’t respond. I could only stare at the blood. The crimson. It was on me.

  The Tootsie Rolls weren’t the only thing that had fallen into my mom’s blood that day. So had I. Dropped to the floor, pulled at her clothes, pounded on her arms, her chest, screamed at her, Don’t die, Mom. Just don’t die. I had forgotten. I had forgotten the blood soaking my jeans and the tops of my shoes, smearing my forearms, coating my hands. And everything after that moment was a blank. Everything between me frantically shaking her and my dad taking me to my grandparents’ house while he sorted things out, gone.

  There was more shouting, pulling at me, prying my attention away from the blood on my hands. I looked up, feeling like I was coming out of a fog.

  And that was when I finally saw Bill Hollis. He’d been crouched behind the cash register, but now he was standing upright and coming at me, the barrel of his gun large and smoking and aimed right at my face.

  I pulled myself up and sprinted with everything I had, ignoring Jones’s blood and my ringing ears and the smell of burnt things on the air. I raced toward Hollis, not knowing what I would do when I got to him; only knowing that I had to do something. I had to stop him.

>   Just as I broke into the open space in front of the register, a bang ripped through the air. I felt a bullet whiz past me and glanced back just in time to see Detective Martinez come around the corner, raise his gun, and fire. Bill’s eyes opened, wide and surprised, as a hole appeared in the center of his forehead, and then he dropped.

  I didn’t wait to see what happened next. I flew through the beaded curtain and toward a back service door that had been flung open. I saw a blur of blond in the doorway, running away. Luna.

  Everything on me hurt, and my lungs felt like they were going to burst. I could taste gunpowder in the air. I thought I could even smell blood, though it might have been my imagination.

  But I couldn’t let Luna Fairchild get away. Not again. She wouldn’t be satisfied until I was the one in the ground. This had to be over.

  I gave it everything I had and reached the door just in time to see her dive into the passenger seat of a silver truck, the license plate candy cane and mustard—VP—followed by a repeated number. The truck turned in a U, a very tan, white-haired man behind the wheel. They screeched out of the parking lot.

  Luna was gone again.

  “Damn it!” I raged, pounding the door frame with my fist. “Son of a bitch!” I kicked a short metal shelf filled with cleaners and wood restorers. It overturned, sending cans flying everywhere. I didn’t care. “Shit!” I was breathing hard and rough, pacing in that tight space.

  “Such filthy words for such a squeaky-clean girl,” I heard.

  I whipped around.

  Vanessa stood between me and the beaded curtain, a butcher knife in her hand.

  “Where did you get that?” I asked, backing away.

  “I brought it just for you. Since you’re so fond of knives,” she said. “Or have you forgotten what happened last time? Looks like Luna got away. Guess we’ll all get away and you will be dead. Just like my weak, lovesick stepson and his pathetic sister.”

  “Those were your children.”

  “Correction. Those were my husband’s children. Children that he didn’t want in the first place. They were nothing to him. And less than nothing to me.”