Seven thousand dollars and change.
Chatham Claiborne dropped seven grand in a backpack at my feet at the beach when she didn’t even know my name.
Since she arrived here, she’s been carrying it around with her . . . at school, at work . . . because she says she doesn’t have anything else to do with it, nowhere safe to keep it.
It’s not only an issue of the cash . . . it’s also that the stone in the brooch is red and heart-shaped—just like the charm on Rachel’s necklace—and the fact that some guy keeps showing up wherever Chatham is heading. If there’s a chance that the stone in that pin belongs to Rachel, it’s evidence.
I called the Rachel Bachton hotline, just in case, and told them about the pin. I suppose we’ll know if it’s a piece of the puzzle if someone calls me to follow up on it.
And now, the backpack is stashed under the backseat of my SUV as we head toward Northgate. On the way, I plan to swing past the house on Sheridan before searching for the mysterious brick building with the beer sign painted on it.
“Maybe you could keep it at your house?” Chatham’s brainstorming things to do with the cash.
“No good. If Damien gets a hold of it . . . hell, if Rosie gets a hold of it . . .” I shake my head. “Maybe get a safe deposit box.”
“Here.” Chatham hands me her phone at a red light, and I flip through the pictures on her sister’s Instagram account, which hasn’t been updated since Chatham last saw her. These pictures, in particular, focus on Savannah’s tattoo. They’re old images; she must have posted them shortly after she got the tattoo.
I make a mental note of the username on the page: Farmgirl1004.
“I don’t know.” I only got a glimpse of the ink, and Chatham knows this. And I’ve seen a few pictures of Savannah’s face, but I don’t remember much about the girl who answered the door beyond her cloud of blonde hair and the fact that she wasn’t wearing much clothing. “But it could be.”
We drive past the green-and-purple Victorian, in case the girl in that house hasn’t yet left for the rave—how the hell do I know what time those things start?—but the place is dark and still, so we assume she’s out.
I’ve been driving up and down Foster for at least twenty minutes now, but it’s dark, and we haven’t been able to locate a brick building with a beer sign painted on it. Rosie’s texted me about a thousand times, begging me to come home, and I’m getting tired. I’ve been awake for almost seventeen hours, and I have to be on the weight deck at six in the morning. But this trek could answer Chatham’s questions, so there’s no way that I’m backing out now.
“There.” Chatham points to an alleyway.
I turn into the alley and look up at the shadowed buildings lining the narrow lane. “Where?” The tires crunch over the gravel, and the car dips into well-worn potholes.
“It’s too dark to see if there’s a beer sign,” she says, “but it’s all brick, and there’s a stairwell back there with a few people in line.”
“So you want to walk down an alley, go into a stairwell, and—”
“I don’t think we have a choice.”
“No.” I’m at the end of the alley now. “I guess we don’t.” This might not be the smartest idea I’ve ever had, but she’s right. We don’t have a choice. I kill the engine, step out of the car, and meet her on the sidewalk.
She’s tight to me as we walk around the building to the alley. If I’ve ever had a tighter grip on someone’s hand, I don’t remember when. I can handle myself. I’m not worried about me. But if anything happens to Chatham tonight, I’ll never forgive myself.
We edge closer to the stairwell, where five people are lined up against the railing, smoking cigarettes. They pay no attention to us, and we don’t acknowledge them because it’s at this moment Chatham whispers, “Kiss me.”
Her chin is tilted up toward me, and her lips are in perfect position. So I kiss her.
While my lips are still on hers, she skirts around the smokers, leading the way, and begins the descent down the rickety stairs.
There’s a bulk of muscle standing at the door, and for a second, I think this guy’s about to ask us for IDs and the password. But instead, he says, “Arms up,” and pats me down, then Chatham.
“Twenty-five,” he says. “Fifteen for you, ten for your lady.”
I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding, and reach for my wallet.
But Chatham’s already pulling cash out of the pocket of her jean shorts; she pays our cover, and we enter into the entrails of the brick building that must have a beer sign painted somewhere on it. A few seconds after we set foot on the concrete slab, someone gives us clear plastic cups, despite my attempts to refuse them.
I’m not going to drink anything in this place—because who knows what mysterious ingredients you might be drinking in even water here—and I drop the cups in the closest garbage can.
I feel the music in my bones, in my chest, and even though I’m stone sober now, I can’t help feeling light-headed among the colored lights and their strobe effect.
The room isn’t all that large, maybe twenty-by-forty, but it has really high ceilings, and it’s packed with people.
Chatham hooks her arm through mine.
“Stay close,” I scream.
She shakes her head. She can’t hear me.
There’s a platform that runs the perimeter of the place, barred off with thick, metal railings, and there’s an iron gate—something you might see in an institutional building to block access to certain hallways—in the far left of the room.
We walk further into the sea of sweaty bodies, all bumping into one another. It’s like an orgy on the dance floor—and the whole place is a dance floor, a beehive of slaves to the bass that comes up through the soles of your shoes and consumes you.
I feel her moving next to me. And we’re not here to dance, but it’s almost an involuntary side effect of being in this place.
After two passes through the place, I’m ready to leave. The trip’s a bust; the girl with the tattoo isn’t here. But when I try to tell her, Chatham starts pulling my arm toward the rear of the room. As we get closer to the back wall, farthest from the door through which we came, I see the girl she’s heading for.
The blonde hair. White blonde. Platinum. Too blonde to be the same girl I saw earlier, I think. She’s dancing on a platform, wearing a scrap of something that looks like aluminum foil. Really, it’s a strapless silver dress that barely covers her ass and her boobs. She’s wearing purple vinyl boots with straps that criss-cross over her calves and go all the way up to her knees, so we can’t see if she has a tattoo on her ankle.
Chatham’s talking to me, but I can’t hear what she’s saying.
It’s okay. She can tell me later.
We move toward the platform.
Out of nowhere, I feel a tug on the back of my sweatshirt, and next I know, I’m separated from Chatham and find myself in the center of a ring of dancers, torso-to-torso with a girl with long, ink-blue hair. Her lips are red and puckered, like she tied them into a bow, and her lashes are so thick and so black and rimmed with silver glitter, that I can barely see her eyes beneath them.
I try to extricate myself from the circle. I have to get back to Chatham, but there are so many people, and everyone’s moving, and I’m turned around and . . .
Chatham?
I don’t know where she is! I lost her!
This girl’s hand is in my back pocket, and her body is pressed tight up against mine, and . . .
“Chatham!”
I know she can’t hear me.
I have to find her.
This girl’s lips are at my ear. “I loved that book!” Her scream at close range practically deafens me.
I lean back and look at the girl whose body is rubbing against mine. It’s her, the girl from the purple-and-green house. Isn’t it? She’s wearing a wig—obviously, no one’s hair is really that color—and I can’t see her ankles, but . . .
I grab her by the wrist, and look for the girl in the purple boots to orient myself. If I find her, I’ll find Chatham.
It takes a minute, but . . .
There.
Chatham’s between two guys who don’t seem to care that she isn’t dancing, don’t seem to notice she’s not interested in being the peanut butter to their bread. Her eyes are wide, and she’s sort of scanning the crowd with a deer-in-headlights glance.
Thug number one has his hands on her body. She shakes her head, but then thug number two, behind her, is at the nape of her neck with his mouth, and . . .
“Chatham!” I inch my way closer, shoving a path through a crowd and yanking tattoo girl behind me, and finally I reach her.
Number one gives me a push with his shoulder, disguised as the normal bumping on the dance floor, but I have her hand in mine now, and I give her a pull toward me; she slams into me. She’s shaking her head, and pointing toward the girl in foil and purple boots. I watch her lips when she speaks: it’s not her.
It’s then she sees I’ve got a grip on someone else.
The two girls stand there, each holding one of my hands, and stare at each other.
I glance down at the stranger’s feet.
She’s wearing high-heeled strappy sandals—red patent leather—but I see it now. The tattoo.
Tattoo girl raises a brow at Chatham.
Chatham gives it right back.
Do they know each other?
Next I know, tattoo girl has Chatham in her arms, and her lips on Chatham’s lips.