I drove to Chris’s at record speed, only remotely worrying that I might get pulled over. A part of me would welcome the trouble. I would welcome the chance to have a normal person’s problems for even just five minutes.
I parked at the curb in front of his apartment building and was surprised to see him sitting on the stairs. He was bare chested, wearing only a pair of basketball shorts and sneakers. I gritted my teeth together to distract myself from noticing. If there were ever a pointless thing for me to notice, Chris Martinez’s bare chest would be it.
He saw me coming and opened the door, pushing with the same half scrunch to one side, as if it still hurt. It probably did. That was the side that had met the impact of the Monte Carlo dead on. It had been pretty demolished. He would likely feel phantom pains there for a long time, if not forever.
“Where’s the fire?” he asked, and at first I stopped short, thinking he was trying—and failing horribly—to be funny. But the look on his face reminded me that he hadn’t seen the letters. He knew nothing about what had happened over the past two hours of my life.
“I found letters,” I said. “Bad letters.” I shocked myself at how easily and quickly the truth came out of me.
“Let’s go for a walk,” he said. “I’m kind of stiff from all that time in the car. I need some exercise.” Indeed, a trace of his limp had come back.
I had to force myself not to churn up the sidewalk, to slow down and wait for him. I was angry, not in a race.
“So you found letters,” he said. He stopped, stooped to pick up a fallen twig, and kept walking, rolling it between his fingers. “I have no idea what that means. What kind of letters?”
“They were letters to my mom from Brandi Carter. And a letter to my dad from Bill Hollis. My dad started the fire that burned down the set at Angry Elephant, Chris. And he refused to pay.”
His eyes widened slightly, but he still kept them firmly planted on the twig as we walked. We rounded a corner, headed toward a church.
“Okay?” he said. “And?”
I planted myself in the center of the sidewalk. He nearly plowed into me. “And? Are you serious? My mother is dead, Chris. What is it you don’t understand about that? She is dead. She’s never coming back. Nobody cares about it but me. Nobody ever has.”
“I care.”
“You do not.” I started walking again. He was a few steps behind me.
“I do care, Nikki. But I have other things to think about, too. Your mom is dead, yes. But someone tried to kill me a few months ago. Today’s bad guy takes precedence over the bad guy from ten years ago.”
I whirled around and started to walk backward. “Oh, well, because an old rival gang member was trying to kill you for taking the drugs away from his dealers, that should totally take precedence over the fact that I think I’m currently living with a potential killer. Nice.”
He laughed incredulously. “Okay, well, because you think your dad might have had something to do with your mom’s death—which you have absolutely no proof of, by the way—and despite the fact that he’s never so much as raised his voice to you, that should totally take precedence over the very real car that hit me. Nice.” He matched my glare.
I growled and turned back. Now I was churning up the sidewalk, and not caring if he was able to keep up with me.
“You know, life isn’t always about you all the time, Nikki. We were partners once.”
I raised my eyebrows, surprised. He nodded.
“Yeah, I remember. We were partners when it was all about looking for your bad guy. But when it comes to mine, we’re not partners. It’s still all about you. It’s always all about you.”
“Oh, really?” I said. “So when I was sitting at the community center all damn day looking for Heriberto, that was about me? Or when I was getting plate numbers and Googling Heriberto and busting my brain to try to remember anything that might help you, that was about me?”
“You help me when it’s convenient for you. But you don’t even consider what might be convenient for me. Maybe I don’t have time to deal with your drama.”
“Drama?” I said, noticing my voice ratcheting up several notches. “So almost being killed repeatedly is drama now?”
“You’re not the only one defending your life,” he spat.
We’d turned another corner and found ourselves skirting the church’s playground. I tromped through the pea gravel and sat on a swing. It made a rusty creaking noise. Chris stood on the perimeter. I threw up my arms. “So what do you want me to do? Help you find the drugs you stashed? Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know, maybe because it would help solve my case?”
“And what about mine?”
He pointed at me. “See, there you go again. Your case. My case. Yours. Mine. Not ours. So what are we doing here if we’re not helping each other out?”
I had no answer for that. Irritation pulsed through me. I’d been hoping to get some support here, not accusations that I was somehow responsible for ruining our so-called partnership that he, up until this point, couldn’t even remember existed.
“I don’t know,” I said softly. There was a long pause between us, during which the swing I was sitting on continued to screech.
“I know why I was stashing the drugs,” he said. “I was trying to flush Heriberto out. He doesn’t like when someone messes with his power. Or his money. He has to be the big dog. And someone was buying up all his inventory—a bigger dog. I guess I flushed him out.”
“Yeah, I guess you did.”
There was more silence between us. I began to swing a little harder so that my feet went to tiptoes every time the swing went back. Chris never left his station at the edge of the playground, though he did move so he was leaning against a scratched bench with a balled-up dirty diaper and a Styrofoam fast-food cup beneath it.
Every time I let my mind wander, it went back to Bill Hollis’s letter to my dad. He’d been so cocky, so sure of himself. I do not lose. I will get my money. Jobs she performed for me long before you came along. It was all so very Hollis. They had nothing if they didn’t have the upper hand on somebody. Even on each other. Luna, pretending to be Peyton. Dru, trying to buy off Rigo. Bill, spouting off taunts until his very last breath. It was like nothing in the world was more important to a Hollis than power. Power over Peyton. Power over me. Power over Jones. Power over my mom. And as soon as they began to lose that power, they made people disappear. I dug my toes into the gravel to stop myself.
“Wait. What did you say?” I asked.
“What?”
“What did you say? About Heriberto.” I pulled myself off the swing and began pacing.
He shrugged. “I don’t know, I was just talking. . . .”
“You said he doesn’t like it when someone messes with his power or his money. And that he has to be the top dog, always. Right?”
“Yeah, I guess. And?”
“Oh my God,” I said. I kicked at the pebbles, hard, sending a spray of them into the air. They clicked as they rolled down the plastic slide. I pushed my hands up through my hair and held on to it at the temples. “Oh my God.”
“What?” He had come onto the gravel now, which made him walk even more off-kilter. “Nikki. What?” He reached up and pulled on my wrists to get my attention.
Silver confetti. My whole brain was silver confetti. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before.
“It wasn’t him,” I said.
“Maybe not Heriberto directly, but like I said—”
I shook my head and pulled my wrists free. “No. Not that. My dad. It wasn’t my dad.” Nobody liked power and money more than a Hollis. My mom was a threat to both. She was also a great way to punish my dad for torching their dream movie. So they took care of Mom the best way they knew how. The same way they made their little Peyton problem go away. The same way they wanted to deal with me. They got rid of the threat by killing her.
He shook his head disbelievingly. “Of course. We’re talking about you. I’m going back.” He started to walk away, but I grabbed his elbow.
“Don’t leave. I need your help.”
“You always need my help. This is nothing new.”