“But it did. It happened, just like Luna happened. And Hollywood Dreams happened. God, have you even thought about the affairs? Have you ever wondered how many there were? Have you wondered if we have siblings, Dru? Someone out there who shares our DNA? We already know we don’t have the same mother. How many other mommies are out there? How many babies? Have you ever thought about any of this? Because you should. I mean, what if my real mother had another baby with another man? That’s a half sibling I could have out there, Dru. Jesus. It’s all so . . . sick.”
She was hinting. She already knew about me at that point, and she was trying to tell Dru. Trying to get him to divulge what he knew. She trusted him. Even though she’d seen what she’d seen between him and Vanessa, she still trusted him. It was a relief to know that I wasn’t the only one.
“And even if that—”
But Dru interrupted her. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”
Peyton laughed, long and loud, resentment ringing through the recorder. “It’s nothing? He stole us, Dru. He stole us. Vanessa isn’t our mother—clearly you believe that, or you wouldn’t have had your tongue shoved halfway down her throat. Where are they? Where are our mothers? What did he do to them?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, but his voice was very low.
“Luna and I were supposed to be actresses, not escorts. Luna knew Vanessa’s plans and I didn’t. I thought we were going to be stars, and the whole time we were being groomed to take over Vanessa’s disgusting business. I spent my whole life believing in this lie. I thought I would be on the big screen someday. Not on my back.” She said this last with such venom, I actually eased away from the recorder just slightly.
“It’s not too late,” he said. “You can still—”
Peyton interrupted him. “That, my friend, is where you’re wrong.” Her voice had turned cold, clinical. “You used to be with me. You hated Daddy Dearest just as much as I hated Vanessa. When I told you what I’d found out about the affairs, you said you were going to take him down. But now that it’s all getting real, big brother, you just can’t force yourself to make the break, can you? You’re just not strong enough. I thought you would have my back, but I guess I was wrong. It is definitely too late for me and this family. I am done.”
Dru’s voice came back, half mocking, half uncertain. “What do you think you’re going to do?”
“Bug out.”
“You already have.”
I could hear a long swallow through the microphone, followed by the tinkle of ice on glass again. “Not good enough,” Peyton said, her voice wet. “I don’t just want out of that house. I want out out.”
A slight pause. “What does that mean?”
“It means money, big brother. I want money, or I will sink every last one of you. Bill Hollis, the perfect, impeccable filmmaker, will lose his career in a flurry of whores and affairs, not to mention abuse. Vanessa will find out all about Luna’s extracurricular activities with drugs and johns. They will both look fabulous in orange, don’t you think? And, by the way, I will tell Dad about your little affair with his wife. Just see how much of his precious inheritance you receive after that. Not to mention, no job in the industry for you, which you’ll need when he cuts you off. You’ll be just another uneducated pretty face waiting tables in a chain restaurant. Pity.”
“You can’t do that,” Dru growled. I had never heard anger in his voice before, not even when Detective Martinez was hauling him out in handcuffs. It was an unsettling sound. Reminded me of just how much about him I didn’t know.
“Oh, but I can,” Peyton said, her voice calm and steady. And equally unsettling. In a way, I was overhearing the most awful conversation of my life. I was overhearing hatred. “And don’t doubt me. You had your chance, and you were too cowardly to follow through. I, on the other hand, have already left home. I literally have nothing to lose.”
Not true, I thought. You had Dru. There was affection there, I could hear it behind the shock and the anger and the doubt.
You had me.
Although I supposed she wouldn’t be worried about losing something she’d never actually known she had until now.
“How much?” Dru said tightly.
“Five million,” Peyton answered without hesitation. I heard the ice on glass again. “Enough, for now, to get me away.”
Dru made a balking noise.
“Laugh all you want. Daddy has it. He can shit out five million without breaking a sweat. If I keep thinking about how easy it will be for him, I might have to ask for more.”
“He’ll never go for it.”
“Make sure he does, Dru. There will still be a few million left for you, then.”
Another pause. The sound of footsteps moving away. “When do you want it?”
I sensed movement from Peyton as well—a shuffling of clothing just like before. “Here, I wrote it down for you on this.” A brief pause, and then an evil giggle. “What? You don’t like the flyer I chose? It’s just an advertisement for the family business, Dru. You and Vanessa are so close, I would think you’d be in support of it.”
No answer.
Peyton spoke again, the merriment gone from her tone. “You are the only one I want there, understood? If I see anyone else, I’m out of there and we renegotiate a much higher amount.”
“Why me?”
“Because, believe it or not, big brother, I actually trust you. I think that down deep you’re still on my side. Here, take the flyer.”
“I’ve already read it. I know where to go. You keep it.”
“Suit yourself,” she said. There was the sound of a door shutting again—no, slamming—and then the recording shut off.
For a long while, I held the recorder in my lap, wondering if I should play it again, or if I should listen longer just in case there was more, or if I should simply put it back in the bushes and pretend I’d never seen or heard a thing.
I understood now what had happened. Peyton was blackmailing her family. But someone had gotten one up on her. She had thought it might go down that way and had enlisted me to be her witness.
She had intended for me to see this through to the end.
So I would.
I tossed the recorder into the passenger seat.
I straightened one leg, leaning over to one side, and dug my phone out of my pocket.
I pulled up Dru’s text and answered it.
Meet me at the mansion instead. Pool house. 30.
I tossed my phone in the seat right next to the recorder and put the car into gear, pointing it toward Hollis Mansion.
27
THE MANSION WAS dark, the only lights the landscaping lanterns shooting up the white stucco in ominous beams, the windows a line of black holes punched in the walls. No sign of life within. A little disconcerting. Where were all the Hollises? More accurately, where was Luna? Vanessa didn’t impress me as the kind who liked to get her hands dirty, and to hear Peyton talk on the recorder about Bill’s reputation, there was no way he was going to risk bad press on little old me. He had people for that.
And from what I’d witnessed last time I was here, Luna was his people.
I looped around the block and parked the next street over, figuring my best asset would be the element of surprise. If Luna didn’t see me coming, she couldn’t be waiting for me. Gunner would have been proud of my planning.
I sat for a few minutes in my car, listening to the tick of the engine cooling and thinking it wasn’t too late to just turn around and go. . . .
Go where, exactly? Back home? Luna knew I was there. She most likely knew I was alone at home, too. To Detective Chris Martinez? He would probably arrest me for aiding and abetting Dru. To my doting parent who would forever and always keep me safe? Yeah, as if. I ached for my mom. If what Peyton had hinted at in the recording was true, Mom was her real mother, too, and if she were here, she would be able to clear things up. Maybe she could even have protected Peyton. Maybe she c
ould have protected me. Putrid yellowish brown, the color of vomit and rotting garbage, began to overwhelm me. It was a color I knew well but hadn’t seen for years—the color of bitterness over Mom leaving me. I had to get moving before I got sick.
Besides, I needed to talk to Dru. I needed to tell him what I knew, to ask him for clarification. To confront him about the kiss. Why was his bloodied, broken bracelet in Peyton’s car? If he was so up to his eyeballs in this mess, why did he keep sleeping with me? Why did he act so clueless when I was around? What was he afraid of?
I waited for a car to pass by and disappear down a long circle drive at the other end of the street, and then I got out of my car and headed toward the mansion. In order to get there, I had to go through two yards, which meant scaling a fence, where I was greeted by a white puffball of a dog who barked at first, but then came running to me excitedly, the bells tied into the ribbons on his ears jingling in the night.
I scratched him behind the ears, whispering softly to keep him quiet and ducking behind a massive hot tub until I was certain his owners weren’t going to come out to investigate. When they never came, I raced across the yard and climbed the fence again, this time emptying myself out into the beam of a motion-detector floodlight. Another dog—much bigger, two yards over—began barking then, and I moved as fast as I could out of the floodlight’s reach, my path lit by gold-and-slate fireworks, which had appeared with my nerves and adrenaline.
The next yard, fortunately, didn’t have a fence, a dog, or any illumination, but I found myself almost walking right up on top of a couple making out in front of a dying fire pit in the backyard. They were too hot into it to notice me, so I veered over one yard and ran to the front corner, which faced the Hollis mansion.
The fence wouldn’t be nearly as easy to scale—wrought iron, tall—but I found a tree that hung over it on one side. It had low branches, made for climbing. I scurried up the tree, hugged the trunk as I edged around to the other side, then dropped into the yard, imagining the Hollis family safety consultant shaking his head at the overlooked breach.
The house was still dark. It gave off a creepy vibe, for some reason not looking empty, but the opposite of it. As if there were Hollises on the inside, peering out at me, waiting for me to trip so they could pounce.
“Don’t be stupid, Nikki,” I told myself. “She didn’t beat you before, and she’s not going to now.” I tried not to think of all the possibilities of what she could do. Although I’d run through the backyard the day Luna had drugged me, I’d never actually approached the house from this side before. But I was pretty sure I knew where to go, so I stuck to the shadows and made my way around a delicately manicured side garden, several fountains, and an aggressively obnoxious gazebo, the home of a ridiculous armless statue. Jesus, it was like these people had everything, just to prove that they could. I wondered if the neighbors thought all this money was made in the movies, or if they knew that a good portion of it was earned, literally, on the backs of young women. Did they know that the armless statue might have been bought with drug money?
The pool was lit up and shimmering in the breeze, making soft ripples against the steps. In any other world, the sound would be comforting to me. I loved swimming. I preferred the beach, but the scent of chlorine and sound of a gurgling pool pump held a special place of excitement in my heart, too.
Mom had loved swimming. She was practically a mermaid. She despised swimming in public, though, because all the men were constantly ogling her. Some men have no respect, she used to say. Or at least those were things I remembered, sketchy, disjointed, and out of context. It was the worst part about losing my mom at such a young age. I couldn’t trust my memories.
I waited by the gazebo, just watching, searching for something out of place or dangerous-looking. Listening for footsteps or breathing or a voice. But other than the gurgle of the pool pump, the night was still. The pool house was dark, but the door was cracked open. I thought I saw the curtain on the door flutter, but the movement was so slight it might have been a trick of my mind.
I walked around the pool, past the lawn chairs, and approached the pool house door. My heart began pounding with anticipation.
I pushed, and the door popped open with a small squeak. I stepped inside and listened. Nothing. The door swung softly shut behind me. Immediately, I tensed.
“Dru?”
Still nothing.
I took another step inside. I could feel a presence, the faint smell of soap or shampoo or something on skin, the air disturbance of another body. My eyes wouldn’t adjust, though. “I’m here,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”
I heard a noise—a thump—and saw a shadow move, positioning itself in front of me, near the far end of the room. I had a sense of more than just darkness now—the sensation of bumpy gray and black pressed in on me, too. I breathed deep, trying to calm my fear.
“For real, I just need to talk to you about some things, okay? No games this time. Please?”
Something was wrong. I could feel it. I could see it begin to roll in from the corner shadows, like freshly poured asphalt progressing toward me. I rubbed my hands together. Dry, papery. I swallowed, my eyes darting for possible places to take cover. There was a bulky shadow to my right. An easy chair, maybe? I took a step toward it.
“Dru?” I slid my hand into my pocket and wrapped it around my cell phone. If nothing else, I could use it as a weapon. Slowly, I pulled it out of my pocket as I edged another step closer to the chair.
This time the noise I heard was different. Coming from the shadow at the end of the room. Metal clicking on metal. I flicked on my cell phone flashlight.
The room was flooded with light, so bright and unexpected, my free hand flung involuntarily in front of my eyes. I squinted against the ache.
But even in the short amount of time it took me to shield myself from the light, I could see the blond hair, the wafer-thin body, the crocodile eyes.
And a gun, pointed right at me.
“Look at you, Nikki Kill, right on time,” Luna Fairchild said, her hands gripped around the gun, her smile steady and cold. “And my brother is late. Just like always.”
28
RUN, NIKKI.
Run.
Gunner’s voice echoed through my mind, dark bursts of brown. Be safe. Turn around and get the hell out of there.
He would have been right to suggest I run. He also would have been so disappointed, because I didn’t do it. I wasn’t rooted to my spot. I wasn’t paralyzed by fear. I wasn’t taken back to my childhood, frightened that I would meet my mom’s fate, blanked out by crimson at an impossibly young age.
I was just fed up.
I wanted this to be done.
I was pissed. Ragemonster-red pissed.
“You don’t want to kill me,” I said, working to keep my voice steady. I was no longer messing with Luna, but that didn’t mean she didn’t terrify me. I could feel her calculated fury pulsating across the room.
She laughed, tossing her hair back without so much as twitching the gun out of place the tiniest centimeter. “Oh, you’re so wrong about that. Not only do I want to, I actually need to.”
“Why? Because Peyton figured out that I’m her sister?”
Her smile fell the tiniest bit.
I used my momentum to my advantage. “Yeah, I know, Luna. I know all about why Peyton was suddenly acting so strange. She wanted out of this family, she was planning to run with the money she was extorting from you, and she was reaching out to the one blood relative she thought could help her. Me.”
“Lies,” Luna said, the gun as steady as a rock. “She was reaching out to you so she could blackmail you, too. Peyton likes money, and you were just another source. When she was done bleeding us dry, she was going to go after you. Sister.”
“Why would a Hollis come to me for money? And what could she possibly have on me, anyway?”
“Because she could,” Luna said, as if I were the dumbest person she’d ever encou
ntered. “Peyton was a scammer. A user. She always knew what everyone’s weak spot was the instant she met them. She knew all about your sweet little family, that’s what she had on you.” She turned her head to the side, her blond waves cascading beautifully down one shoulder. With the gun in her hand, she truly did look like a movie star, like she was simply playing the part of a psychotic killer. “She knew that somebody did the naughty with someone they shouldn’t have and, oops, out popped a baby. How embarrassed your devoted little daddy would be for the world to find out. Are you sure he’s even your real daddy, Nikki? Or was he the naughty one? How are you so sure your mom was the skank?”
I ground my teeth together, forcing myself not to let her push my buttons. Not to rush her. There was too much distance between us, and I had no idea how good of a shot she might be. As fast as I was, a bullet could close the distance much faster.
Luna’s smile spread wider. “Aw, did I hurt your feelings? So sorry. It must hurt to hear that your new sister was only in it for herself.”
Only in it for herself. I saw a brief flash of Peyton in the hospital, her hair fanned out against the pillow. I saw the way she opened her eyes, tentatively, in response to my voice. I saw the smile she gave me.
It’s not unusual for there to be involuntary muscle action, the nurse had said. But she was wrong. I knew it then and I knew it now. Peyton was responding to me, to my voice. She’d smiled. She’d told me in that instant of “involuntary” movement that she’d meant to be sisters, not that she’d meant to squeeze me for cash. She was trying to protect me.
“You’re wrong,” I said. “You don’t have any idea what Peyton would have done.”
“Honey,” Luna said, removing one hand from the gun to swipe her hair back over her shoulder, “nobody knew Peyton Hollis better than I did. I have been Peyton Hollis, practically more often than she has. My mom always liked Peyton better. She thought Peyton had so much more potential than I did. So I proved her wrong. I was better at being Peyton Hollis than she ever could have been. What Peyton could never accept, I took advantage of. She didn’t want to be an escort? Fine. I’ll be one for her. I like money, and I love fucking over my mother by selling her drugs to her own clients right under her nose. Peyton thought she was the better actress? Please. I never shared her dreams of getting an Oscar, but I think we both know that I could.” Her eyes grew wide and sad, her full bottom lip quivering. “I don’t know, Officer,” she said in a bereft voice. “I don’t know why Nikki Kill would commit suicide in my pool house. She’s been dating my brother. She must have needed attention.”