“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—”