Dare You by Jennifer Brown
“Then why? Why did you take them? Why not leave them with Brandi?”
She looked at me like I was a complete idiot. “Because they were Hollises. And Hollises don’t live trash lives.”
“I disagree,” I said. “Just very rich trash lives.”
She gave me a condescending smile—one that I’d seen on the lips of so many kids in my school. “But at least we still have our lives. Unlike you and that cop.”
“And your husband,” I said coldly, getting the slightest satisfaction out of the look of shock that passed over her face.
“Bullshit.”
“Listen. No more shooting,” I said. Indeed, all we could hear was the continued warbling cry of the frizzy-haired woman.
“All that means is he shot your new little bed buddy. I have to admit, Nikki. Banging a cop is a pretty brilliant move. You can pretty much do whatever you want now, can’t you?”
“What I want is to be left alone,” I said. “But your family makes that impossible.”
She started toward me in a slow, easy step. “Well, we can solve that whole problem right now, can’t we?” She held up the knife. “We’ll just put you and your boyfriend out of your misery. And Rigo too. Why not? He was a danger anyway, letting that spineless, pampered brat, Dru, get the better of him.” She took another step. “You’re not going to fight your way out of this one, Nikki Kill. Unlike Luna, I won’t leave you alive. I can promise you that.”
Out of habit, I began to assess what tools I had in my immediate area. How could I disarm her? How could I take her down? There was nothing. All I had was an overturned cabinet, a bunch of wood polish, and a trash can.
And then I realized . . . there was cold metal still pressing against the skin under my shirt.
I hated guns.
But I hated Vanessa Hollis more.
“What makes you think I’m going to fight you?” I asked, pulling the gun out and pointing it at her.
She stopped and laughed. “Really? You think I’m scared of you with a gun?” Her face went serious. “You had more than enough chance to shoot my daughter in the backyard, Nikki. You would have saved Dru if you’d done it. But you didn’t. You’re scared of guns.” She laughed again, straightening the knife and absently touching her bloody earlobe. My hands shook around the gun handle. Was she right? Was it that I was actually scared of guns?
Or was I scared of death? Of killing? Of being the person who did to Vanessa what someone had done to my mom?
She started toward me again, this time walking faster, a crease drawing between her eyebrows. “You’re wasting both of our time, Nikki,” she said. “We both know you aren’t going to shoot me, so you might as well pu—”
She dropped before I even registered that I’d pulled the trigger.
Blood puddled under her at an alarmingly fast rate. She didn’t move, not even when it formed a little lake under her cheek. She still clutched the knife, but in a slack hand.
My hands spread open and the gun fell out, landing in her blood.
I started to back away, toward the back door, when I felt someone’s arms around me from behind. I shrieked and started to fight, but the arms loosened, and when I turned, my face was buried in Detective Martinez’s chest.
“You had to do it,” he said. “You had to do it.”
40
WE STAGGERED ONTO the sidewalk, the frizzy-haired woman sobbing as she walked behind us. Our shoes left bloody prints on the pavement. Vanessa’s blood. Bill’s blood. Jones’s. So much blood.
“You okay?” Detective Martinez asked, pressing his palm against the side of my face. My cheek felt sticky, and I imagined a red streak staining it like war paint. There was a dark stain on his shirtsleeve. It looked extraordinarily wet.
I nodded, still breathing hard, still shaking, still trying to push away the colors. “Yeah. I’m fine. Did you get hit?” I reached for the sleeve, but he ducked away.
“I’m fine. It’s done. I’ve got some first aid in my car.”
“But Luna . . .”
“I’ve called it in,” he said. “We’ll find her.” Indeed, I could hear police sirens—lots of them—in the distance.
Detective Martinez started toward his car, but got only about four steps before an old-fashioned but glossy black car with red racing stripes squealed around the corner. The words Monte Carlo blinked out at me—darting silver.
I’d seen this car before. It had been parked on a street that we’d passed in Detective Martinez’s old neighborhood.
My gut went orange, a blast so bold I reeled.
“Chris!” I yelled. “Watch—”
He turned toward the sound of the squealing tires and began to duck back to where the woman and I stood, but he didn’t even get a full step in before the car sped up and veered right toward him. He only had time to brace himself as it hit him full-on.
Instinctively, I covered my head and crouched, pushing myself back against the building. I opened my eyes only in time to see Detective Martinez’s body flip through the air and then hit the sidewalk, every part of him looking broken.
The car roared away, the tires shrieking as they took another corner.
“Chris!” I screamed. “Chris!” I raced to his side. His eyes were open, but staring at the sky blankly. I pressed my hands against his chest, his arms, his face, looking for wounds, and yelled to the frizzy-haired woman, the tears in my eyes making it almost impossible to see.
“Call 9-1-1! Call an ambulance!”
41
THEY WOULDN’T LET me follow him into surgery. Of course they wouldn’t. But I fought them. I screamed and kicked and grabbed for his gurney and raised hell in the ER hallway until security came and ushered me outside, where I finally collapsed into a pool of crimson tears.
How many people would die trying to protect me?
How could I allow another one?
42
THEY LET ME into his room, even though he was still in critical condition. The cop securing it said he knew how Chris felt about me. I wondered what that meant, maroon building inside of me. Maroon that, for some reason, I wasn’t quite able to push away. “He’d kill me if I didn’t let you in,” he said.
I’d come to hate that term kill me. It was easily done. So quickly and carelessly.
He hadn’t woken up yet, giving me a hell of a déjà vu feeling when I walked in. Tubes and machines and wires everywhere, wrapping him up just like Peyton had been. Crimson, crimson, crimson tugging at me from every direction. It was what I’d been reeling from when I met him for the first time. I’d have never guessed we would, only seven months later, end up here.
I set down the flowers I’d brought. Why would I bring flowers, anyway? He would have laughed at me for that. I’d never have taken you for a flower girl, I could hear him saying. Going soft on me, Kill?
“Yeah,” I said, reaching down and tracing his eyebrow, down his temple and cheek with my finger. “I think I am. Damn you.”
I pulled a chair next to his bed, just as Dru had done, day after day, with Peyton. And now I understood why. The guilt he must have felt, knowing that he could have stopped her death and didn’t. Knowing that he’d watched her suffer and then watched Rigo beat her until she seemed all but dead. Until she truly was all but dead.
“So, good news,” I said. “Rigo talked. They got him on Highway 15, all the way down in San Diego. But they brought him back and he confessed everything. I think that means Blake offered him a plea deal, but I guess that’s better than getting nothing out of him, right? I gave her the photos I took of the safe, and the address of Dom Distribution. Has she been here yet?” I smoothed a crease out of his sheet. “Probably, huh? She’s the kind of girl who would come see you even though you broke her heart, you playah.” I nudged his shoulder very lightly and tried to laugh, but it came out flat.
His eyelids were so purple. Why were they so purple? I wanted to find his sunglasses and put them on him.
“Oh, hey. I almost forgot.” I pul
I picked at his blanket for a minute, remembering him griping at me to put my cigarette out and taking his beer away from me. I hated the way the memory made me feel—peach and magenta all at once, like an open flower with a dazzling center.
“I’m not saying I’m going to apply, so don’t start hassling me about it all the time. But I’m not saying I won’t apply, either. My dad is going to be so happy about that. Not.” I chuckled. “He is going to hate the idea. But I think you’re right and it might be the path for me. Oh my God, I can’t believe I just told you you’re right. Don’t get a big head about it, Martinez. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, as my dad says.” I watched the monitors for some sort of hint that he’d heard me. Nothing. I swallowed. “You know those hunches you keep pestering me about? It’s this thing called synesthesia. I see colors with letters and numbers and words. And emotions. Not, like, with my eyes. It’s in my mind. You, by the way, are yellow as hell. And that’s a good thing. Anyway, Peyton had it, too, and that’s how we’ve been sort of talking. She left me clues that would stand out only to me. It’s not magic. But I’ll admit, it was kind of fun letting you think it was. So there you go. I guess today was the day. Hopefully now you’ll tell me the rest of your story. It’s only fair, right? So you have to wake up to hold up your end of the deal.” I felt much better having finally told him the truth about me, even if he might not have heard it. I didn’t want him to die not knowing. I didn’t want him to die, period. But if he was going to, I wanted him to be the one person who knew the true me. “I think I might make an okay cop. I think I’d like to try, anyway. But I need you to help keep me out of trouble. Because trouble has a way of finding me. As if you didn’t know.” I thought about that black hole in my memory. The mystery of Mom. I knew so much more about her now, but I still didn’t know who killed her. I still didn’t know what my dad was hiding from me, or what was in that box under his desk. “And maybe you can help me study a little bit. When I catch up with Luna again—and I will—I want it to be by the book, as they say. Do they say that? Or is that just on TV?”
He didn’t answer, of course. Just showered me with his crimson, his face pale and slack. I felt a tear slip down my cheek as I wrapped both of my hands around his one. It was warm. When I held it, the crimson faded just the tiniest bit.
“You have to beat this, Chris. You’re stronger than this. I should know—you’ve kicked my ass more times than I can count. I will never admit that to you when you’re awake, by the way, so hopefully you’re listening now, because it’s the only time you’ll hear it. You snooze, you lose.” I stared at his face, willed it to twitch or move or do . . . something.
“Who were those guys, Chris? Who hit you? Do they have something to do with those bullet holes? Do they have something to do with that guy you were searching for online? Heriberto Abana?” I leaned in close. Even here, I thought I could catch a faint whiff of cologne. It was just him, just the way he smelled. “I’m going to find him, Chris. I’m going to find whoever wants you dead. And I’m going to find my mother’s murderer too. Because it’s time to finish this. But I need your help.” I rested my forehead against his. “I need you.”
I unwound my hands from his and got up. I ran my finger down the side of his face again. “Come back to me, okay?”
I leaned down and kissed him softly.
And maybe I was crazy, but a tiny bit of the crimson parted.
A crack of maroon peeked through.
And a sunburst of yellow.
But was the yellow his . . . or was it mine?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always, I want to thank my agent, Cori Deyoe, for illuminating my path, for holding my hand, and for pointing out my timeline flaws.
Thank you to Melissa Miller for leading me through the twists and turns of Nikki’s life, and for always being there to answer questions when I get stuck. Thank you also to Katherine Tegen, Claudia Gabel, Kelsey Horton, Valerie Shea, and Kathryn Silsand for believing in Nikki Kill and for working hard to find her a place on bookshelves.
Thank you to Joel Tippie for the beautiful cover design.
Thank you to Scott Brown for once again choreographing some pretty badass fight scenes.
And thank you to my friends and family—especially Scott, Paige, Weston, and Rand, for angsting when I angst and cheering when I celebrate. You are the pot of gold at the end of my rainbow, and I love you all.
And, finally, thank you, Readers, for following Nikki Kill into some pretty dark places, and rooting for her to fight her way out. You mean the world to me.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Lacey Crough
JENNIFER BROWN is the author of Shade Me as well as the young adult novels Bitter End, Perfect Escape, Thousand Words, and Torn Away. Her debut young adult novel, Hate List, was chosen as an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, a VOYA Perfect Ten, and a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year. She lives in the Kansas City, Missouri, area with her husband and children. You can visit Jennifer online at www.jenniferbrownauthor.com.
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BOOKS BY JENNIFER BROWN
Shade Me
Dare You
Break Us
CREDITS
Cover photography © 2017 by Michael Frost
Cover art and design by Joel Tippie
COPYRIGHT
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
DARE YOU. Copyright © 2017 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016949688
ISBN 978-0-06-232446-7
EPub Edition © January 2017 ISBN 9780062324481
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FIRST EDITION
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Jennifer Brown, Dare You