I forced the image away. The car, the noise, the adrenaline of seeing Vanessa behind me with a knife. Everything except the license plate. VP. It was something. A clue to who was helping her; who she’d gone with. I had been fearing Luna for so long, had been waiting for her to find me and attack me, that it never even occurred to me that I could find her.

I. Could find. Her.

No. I had to find her. If I was ever going to get my life back—if I was ever going to be rid of Luna and Hollis Hell, I had to find her.

I had been waiting, fearing, cowering, for too long.

It was time to be done waiting, fearing, cowering. It was time to go on the offensive. Find Luna Fairchild and put an end to this once and for all.

But how, without Martinez? Having an unfinished police academy application did not make me a cop, by any stretch. And if Chris didn’t even remember what had gone down that night, how could he help me?

I raced up to my room and grabbed my cell phone.

It rang five times before he answered. I had started to worry that he wouldn’t answer at all. He was out of breath.

“Hello?”

“Hey,” I said. “It’s Nikki. Miss Kill. Whatever. Nikki.”

A couple of breaths. “You calling for career counseling? Because I don’t really think I’m qualified.”

A joke. I smiled. Maybe the old Chris was in there somewhere, after all. Beneath the anger and frustration and blank space. “Very funny. When does your comedy show go on tour?”

A couple more breaths.

“What are you doing, exactly?” I asked. “You’re all out of breath.”

“I’m at the gym, if you must know,” he said.

“Didn’t you just leave physical therapy? Aren’t there, like, limits to what you should be doing right now? Like maybe you should be working on your daytime TV and potato chip consumption. Or maybe learning to knit.”

“What do you want, Nikki?” And just like that, humor over. It wasn’t terribly unlike him to get tired of my shit and shut me down, but these days it just seemed to happen . . . faster.

“Are you back at work yet?”

“No. Why?”

“I just . . . need some help finding something.”

His voice got echoey, and I could hear water turn on in the background. “Finding what?”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Luna Fairchild.”

There was a pause. I heard the water turn off, and the sound of a paper towel being ripped. Finally, softly, “Why?”

“I know you don’t remember,” I said. “But you trusted me. Like, really trusted me. I need you to just trust me now.”

A longer pause. “The last thing I remember about Luna Fairchild is that she was in juvenile detention. Now she’s not?”

“No, she’s definitely not.”