Shade Me

by Jennifer Brown

  “Shit,” I whispered as I stared at it. Clearly, whoever had attacked Peyton knew what they were doing when it came to covering tracks. By moving Peyton’s body and hiding her car in the woods behind an abandoned supermarket, they’d just about guaranteed it would never be found. Except . . . why not hide her body in the car? She probably would have died.

  The only reason I could think of was that whoever had moved Peyton’s body did not want her to die. But why? Was this a warning to someone? Was Peyton an example? Was Detective Martinez right? Was Arrigo Basile behind this? And if so, did that mean Dru was, too?

  I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out Peyton’s keys. The car key was easy to find—it was the only one attached to a fob with buttons. I pressed the unlock button and the car sprang to life, the interior light blinking on.

  I gulped, peering through the driver’s-side window. I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Definitely no bad guys crouching on the floorboard. Maybe there was nothing in there at all, but I wouldn’t know unless I opened the door and got in. But if I opened the door and got in, I was reaching the point of no return. My prints would be all over the inside of this car, and if the cops found it, Detective Martinez would really have some questions for me.

  I could still turn back. Give up. Get out of this. Let Peyton’s problem be the Hollises’ to solve. They were back in the country now anyway, and they had some deep, deep problems. That much was clear. My dad was right—there was something particularly repulsive about someone with major issues and an untouchable superiority complex.

  But then something caught my eye on the floorboard of the passenger side. A snippet of a word, swirling with tie-dye. I’d seen it before. Hendrix.

  “Christ. Gibson,” I breathed, making my way to the other side of the car, where I could see more clearly the guitar strap that Gibson Talley had been wearing in one of the Viral Fanfare photos. I recalled the date on the photo. October 15. It had stood out to me, the way all dates did. It wasn’t that long ago. He had been in this car. And recently. “I knew it,” I said. “I fucking knew it.”

  I opened the passenger door and picked up the guitar strap, turned it over. Sure enough, there was blood along the edge. God, was that Peyton’s blood? Had Gibson picked it up after he attacked her? Had he ditched it in her car to hide evidence? I felt sick, like I shouldn’t be touching it. I rolled the strap into a loose wad and stuffed it deep into my pocket. I wasn’t sure what I would do with it, only that it seemed like an important thing to have. I had now removed evidence from the victim’s car. Any chance that I might be able to ask Chris Martinez for help was gone.

  Otherwise, the car seemed exceptionally clean. I slid inside and shut the door. An iPod was plugged in. A few Starbucks Splash Sticks and a tube of lipstick littered the center console. I opened the glove box. Nothing. Car manual and two service receipts.

  The dome light blinked out, and I was once again bathed in eerie darkness. I could see if anyone pulled into the parking lot behind me. I pressed the door lock button, feeling safer after hearing the reassuring click of all the locks finding home.

  I turned onto my knees and peered into the backseat, blinking a few times to help my eyes adjust.

  There was something on the floor.

  I bent to pick it up. It was a point-and-shoot camera. Was this the camera that had taken all the strange photos? Hopefully there were more on it. If the photos were the clues Peyton wanted me to find, the camera was a gold mine.

  I fiddled around with it until I located the memory card slot. I pushed my finger against it. Nothing happened. I pulled out my phone and shone a light on it. There was an empty slot where the memory card should have been.

  Strange. I continued to examine the camera with my flashlight but found nothing on it. The battery was dead, so I couldn’t turn it on, but even if I could, with no memory card in it, there would be nothing to view.

  The light from my phone bounced off something else on the same floorboard. I bent over the seat and grabbed it, held it up.

  A bracelet dangled between my thumb and forefinger. It was gold, Figaro link, the clasp smashed and broken. I dropped the bracelet into my palm and shone the light on it full force. A brown crust looked brushed over it. Blood.

  I dropped the bracelet into my jacket pocket with the guitar strap, my heart beating fast. I needed to go back through Peyton’s photos. If only I could find one of Gib wearing this bracelet, I would have enough to go to the cops with. In the back of my mind, I remembered seeing it in one of the pictures. I just had to find which one.

  I started to get out of the car and then had a thought. I reached over the driver’s seat and found the button for the trunk. My heart sped up as I pressed the button. God knew what I would discover in there, but I had to know.

  I stepped out of the car and shut the door softly, pausing to listen to the night air. I almost thought I could hear a car coming down the road. I squinted, peering through the woods back the way I’d come, but saw no headlights. My mind was playing tricks on me.

  I stood there long enough for the dome light to go out again. Something moved in the weeds to my left, causing me to tense, bend my knees, and get ready to bolt. I stood that way for a long time, just listening. I felt watched.

  But after hearing nothing else, I went around to the open trunk and looked inside. A quilt, soiled with grass stains and some leaves, was wadded up in one corner. A set of jumper cables was coiled neatly on top of it. A flashlight. A bicycle tire pump. A spare tire. Standard trunk stuff.

  In frustration, I picked up the corner of the quilt and let it drop again. I didn’t know what I’d been hoping to find, but it wasn’t in here.

  And then I saw it.

  A manila folder, peeking out from under the corner of the quilt I’d just messed with. A file, filled with papers.

  I slid it out and opened it, holding it low under the trunk light.

  Kill, Nikki A.

  What the hell?

  I scanned down the first page inside the folder, unsure what I was looking at. My name, address, date of birth. My dad’s name, cell phone number. I turned the page—my vaccination records, going all the way back to kindergarten. After that, my last report card.

  It was my school record. The original, typed on official letterhead. Somehow Peyton had gotten hold of it.

  I flipped through everything, my gut dropping as I read about myself, and then I got to the last page. It was the school counselor’s report, from the one time I’d talked to him, earlier this year.

  I scanned his stupid report:

  Student reports seeing colors associated with letters and numbers. Each letter and number has what she considers a “correct” color, and certain words have specific colors as well, which may or may not be related to the colors of the letters contained in the words. She reports being unable to control this phenomenon. Student excels at memory tasks and is ambidextrous, but has a hard time concentrating on math and reading. I recommend a full eval to treat possible ADHD and also suggest therapy for attention-seeking behaviors. Student used foul language during our session and ended it abruptly. I recommend continuing with academic probation, possibly offering help from the tutoring lab or behavioral education services.

  “Asshole,” I muttered, ragemonster red and black swirling a little dance across the page, but as I started to flip the file closed, I realized for the first time that several words of the report had been highlighted. In the margin, in very curvy script, someone had written the word synesthesia.

  I stared at the writing, everything becoming completely clear.

  Peyton had somehow gotten her hands on my school file and had read the report. I was right—she knew I had synesthesia.

  She knew because she had it, too.

  The clues I’d found were clues she’d been deliberately leaving.

  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.

  15

  SILENTLY, 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.

  16

  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.