14

IT WAS ALREADY dark outside by the time I reached the address. It was no elementary school. I pulled into a severely neglected parking lot, my headlights sweeping over what looked like an abandoned supermarket. Damn it, I had gotten the address wrong.

I turned on the dome light and inspected what Peyton had written again, which was difficult with the bumpy gray and black undulating under my fingers. Golden. Golden. Golden. My heart beat in time with the word, getting stronger and faster with every propulsion of blood through my veins. Golden. Golden. Fear. Fear.

I looked at the building again, and the screen on my GPS, which showed that I was at the end point. This was definitely the address she had written down.

Peyton had met someone here? At eleven o’clock? Morning or night, that was the question. In the morning, it would be sketchy enough, but at night, it would have been downright terrifying. I had assumed I was coming to the place where she’d met her attacker, but if she’d been attacked at an elementary school, then this wasn’t it. She’d had an appointment here for something else.

Golden. Golden. Golden.

Slowly, I pulled around to the back of the building. My headlights revealed drifts of detritus shifting around an old loading dock—trash and old clothing, broken bottles, the kind of stuff the derelicts sometimes dropped behind the dojang on summer nights. I pulled up to the dock and let the lights shine on it, trying to take in every detail, trying to imagine Peyton Hollis standing ankle-deep in the muck in the middle of a fall night, frantically pushing buttons to call me.

I couldn’t get there in my head.

I turned off the car and got out.

It was impossibly dark behind the building now, adding to the ominousness, and immediately goose bumps popped up on my arms. I was in full alert mode. I heard fast-food wrappers rustle in the wind, or possibly shifted by a rat, I smelled the exhaust from my own car, I saw the letters on a Dumpster pulsate with a dull glow. Slowly, as I settled down, my eyes adjusted and I was able to make out the parking lot better. A cloud drifted away from the moon, and I could see individual pebbles on the ground.

And, at the foot of the steps leading up to the loading dock, a pool of dark pebbles. I switched my phone to flashlight mode and shone it down onto them.

Blood. A lot of it.

I shone the light in a circle around them.

The darkened stones trailed off toward the middle of the lot, and I followed them until they abruptly ended near a set of tire tracks.

My hand shook.

Jesus. She had been here. This was where it had gone down, whatever “it” was. Peyton hadn’t been attacked in an elementary school parking lot. She’d been attacked here and moved to an elementary school parking lot. But why? And by whom? Did the police not know this? Or had they been withholding it, hoping someone would slip? Either way, it was probably something they should know. Something I should call Detective Martinez about as soon as I got back to my car.

Shaken, I held up the light and stood up straight, trying to take in everything I could see, wishing the light would penetrate farther across the parking lot so I could stay near the safety of my car. But my phone could only light up so far, and I found myself crunching through the gravel toward the Dumpsters and the tree line behind them. I felt a familiar lump try to edge its way into my throat. A panicky constriction settled in there. My eyes kept trying to pull back to that pool of blood. Kept trying to see it, to feel it under my shoes, slipping, slipping, Tootsie Rolls soaking up the red, the numbers of a watch pulsing slower, slower, slower. Cool it, Nikki, I told myself. It’s not your mother’s blood.

I caught a flicker of something through the leaves, far back in the trees. I swept the light back and forth a few times, trying to catch it again. Nothing but foliage, rustling in the night breeze. I had almost convinced myself that it had just been my imagination, when suddenly the light caught it again. A flash. Or more like . . . a reflection?

I walked all the way across the lot, until I’d finally hit grass. Holding the phone out in front of me, my entire body on high alert, I slowly arced the light across the woods.

There it was. Again.

Red. It was definitely a red reflection.

“A taillight,” I whispered to myself. “There’s a car in there.”

For a moment, my body was seized with fear. Was there someone back there, watching me? Maybe the same person who had attacked Peyton, just waiting for me to get close enough? I took a deep breath. Clenched and unclenched my fists. Closed my eyes and tried to imagine Kyo Sah Nim Gunner standing by my side. He would be calm, ready to defend.

I wanted to run. To turn around, get into my car, and drive straight to the police station, find Detective Martinez, and tell him what I’d found. Admit to myself that I was in over my head and this was best handled by the police now. But I couldn’t not go into those trees. Bill Hollis had been yelling about having lost Peyton’s car. The reflected taillight was hers. I just knew it down deep in my bones. I had to go in. I could find the answers I was searching for. The answers I would probably never get if I turned this over to the police.

Deciding that I might need my hands, just in case my theory about the car being Peyton’s was wrong and someone was waiting for me inside, I pocketed my phone and plunged into the tree line, feeling somewhat protected by the same dark that had frightened me. The brambles wrapped around the toes of my shoes and tried to keep me back, but I kept to the flattened and broken areas where the car tires had gone through.

Although it seemed like I was completely cut off from the rest of the world back here in the woods, it was no time before I was on top of a cherry-red Mustang convertible with vanity plates reading FNFAIR—the car that everyone who was anyone knew was Peyton Hollis’s car.

“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.