“Shit,” I breathed, sinking down against the side of the truck. Did I shut the door and risk the noise attracting their attention, or did I leave it open and hope they didn’t notice? In the end, I decided on a combination of both. I let the door gently swing closed and then pushed it slowly until it engaged the lock with a soft click. I pressed my lips together, perking my ears for any sense that the men had heard it. More laughter. Apparently they hadn’t.
I shuffled forward a few feet and rose up again, peeking over the hood. They were still there, still talking, only now they were moving toward me, one twirling an overstuffed key ring around one finger. If I stayed where I was, in two minutes they would be on top of me.
There was no way I was going to stay there.
I pushed away from the truck and, staying low, scurried across the aisle. I plunged in between a BMW and a Buick and crouched low again, pressing my back against the Buick and trying not to breathe. Didn’t help.
“You hear something?” I heard one of the guys say.
“No.”
“Sounded like footsteps right over there,” the first one said. I chanced a glance over the trunk of the BMW, only to see them making a beeline for the silver truck I’d just been inside. I had to go, and go now.
I leaned against the door for a second longer, bracing myself, and then sprang into action. I popped up, turned toward the back fence, and started running with everything I had.
“Hey!” I heard one of them shout, and then, “Did you see that?”
I didn’t wait around for an answer; just kicked up dirt and gravel behind me as I sprinted, then scrambled over a gutted SUV, which put me almost at the top of the fence. I hoisted myself up and over in three pulls.
The voices were too far away to be anywhere near me—almost as if they’d given up halfway through the lot—but I still let go almost from the top of the fence, hitting the grass and tumbling backward onto my butt, my arms flailing out to catch my fall. My elbow lit up in pain, but I ignored it, turning to get myself back up on my feet and plowing through the tall grass and weeds until I came out at the back of the Laundromat.
My shoes slapped the asphalt hard as I raced to Chris’s car, which was running, with him behind the wheel, waiting for me.
“Go,” I said, breathless, as I dove in and shut the door.
He slammed the car into gear and backed out, his tires screeching. Typical Chris, driving without asking a single question.
Once we were on the highway and I’d caught my breath, he slowed down.
“Well?”
“Cleaned,” I said, still trying to catch my breath.
He nodded. “Not surprising. I tried to get them to at least release the property to me, but they said there wasn’t any. Wouldn’t have even if there was. Just like I told you.”
“Dude, I never doubted you. I just needed you to distract them while I went in. But I know you well enough to know that you would never agree to that, even if you knew I was going to bring back something.”
“I thought you said there was nothing.”
“I said it was clean. But there was this.” I pulled what I’d found beneath the seat out of my waistband and held it up.
He eyed it skeptically. “An empty notepad.”
“Correct.”
“Is there something on the other pages?” he asked.
“Nope. Just this one.”
He looked at the notepad harder, glancing back and forth between the road and the pad. “There’s nothing there.”
“Wrong,” I said. I tipped it so the light could catch it just right. “There are indentations.”
He pulled to the side of the highway, hit his hazard lights, and took the notepad from me. He studied it, turning it this way and that. He shook his head and handed it back to me.
“It’s nonsense. So many pages going through that it looks like a jumble. This isn’t a clue to anything, Nikki.”
“You’ve said that to me before,” I said. “And you were wrong before.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“You have any other choice?”
He gave an eye roll and turned off his hazards, then pulled onto the highway. “Whatever you say. It’s your wheels that you’re spinning. Not mine.” He drove for a moment, and then said, “It was a painting, wasn’t it? The clue that you found before?”
I paused in surprise. “Among other things. And I bought it. At an auction. You were with me. We almost got run over.”
“I think I remember that,” he said softly.
The air between us grew thick, and he seemed to be a million miles away as he navigated us along the highway. I tried to ignore my heartbeat, which sped up as I willed him to remember more. Remember everything. Remember how it felt to be there together, how it felt to be tangled on the ground, watching the van speed away. Not just recall the events that happened, but the way we felt when they were happening.
I clutched the notepad in my lap, wondering if maybe this time he was right. Maybe this time it really wasn’t a clue.
But, then again, he didn’t see the notepad the same way I saw the notepad. Pages upon pages of writing bled through in indentations, yes. But where he saw jumbled indentations, I saw each letter and number scratching itself out faintly in the correct hue, creating a blur of mixed colors. Orange As and purple threes and the lunch-meat pink and lemon chiffon of Es and Hs and the oxford blue of the word Friday. The mottled yellow-green word Pear and the velvety burgundy word Magic. Nothing that came together in anything that made sense.
Except two words—one midnight with star pops of light, the other sunshine yellow.
Celestial. Day.
But as I looked closer, I realized it was not Celestial; it was something shorter. Celeste.
Celeste Day.
I didn’t know what Celeste Day was, or what it had to do with Jones, or Luna, or the white-blond-haired man driving the truck.
But I sure as hell intended to find out.
5
AFTER CHRIS AND I parted ways at the police station, I drove straight home, turning the two words over in my head as I went. Celeste Day. Celeste Day. It rang no bells. Was it a fair? A celebration of the moon and stars? One of those unofficial “holidays” that nobody but the person who created it celebrates, like National Hot Dog Day? Not one I’d ever heard of. Was it a person?
I was going to have to figure out who or what Celeste Day was.
Dad was downstairs in the basement when I got home. I could hear the metal clink of free weights hitting each other. He hardly ever worked out. Only when he was completely stressed or had something weighing on his mind.
Like guilt, maybe, Dad?
Like, maybe, the feeling that your daughter is figuring out that you had some sort of link to the family who has been trying to kill her? That maybe you suspect she might be this close to finding out you were somehow involved in your own wife’s death?
The thought turned me icy.
I sat in the kitchen, turning up the TV to drown out Dad’s grunts, and ate a sandwich, Hue sitting patiently at my feet waiting for me to drop something. I was staring at whatever dumb show was on, but my mind was everywhere else. Dad, Luna, Chris’s memory loss, Celeste Day.
I was rinsing my plate when Dad appeared at the top of the basement stairs. He had a towel draped over his neck, and his hair was wet with sweat. He was cleaning his glasses with the bottom of his shirt.
“You’re home.”
“Yep. Going upstairs, though. Got some work to do.”
He scrunched up his face. “What kind of work?”
“Research,” I said. “Job research.”
His eyebrows went up, and his lips curved into the meekest smile, wavering at the edges, as if he was afraid to let it completely loose, for fear of scaring me off. “Any particular job?”
I shook my head. “I’m still trying to figure that out.”
He closed the basement door behind him and put the glasses on, then pulled the towel off his neck and used it to wipe his forehead. “Have you thought about photography?” he said into the towel. He was acting nonchalant, but I knew the question was incredibly loaded. He would love nothing more than for me to follow in his—and in some ways, Mom’s—footsteps.