I was so sick of crimson. Death, death, death. It followed my life like a grim shadow, rolling in and out on tides of deep, burnt red.

Mom, Peyton, Dru.

Vanessa.

And almost Chris.

Almost.

It had been three months since I’d last seen him. Right after he’d woken up and it had been clear that everything between us had changed. How could it stay the same when he didn’t remember anything more than my name? It hurt too much to be forgotten. And it annoyed me too much to be hurt.

Besides, his gaggle of cop buddies hung around, watching me like I was a suspect, like I had done this to him just by virtue of being in his life.

And they might not have been altogether wrong. If I hadn’t been in Chris’s life, he might have never been following Rigo Basile. Peyton’s murder would have remained an unsolved case, but he wouldn’t have had any reason to be at Tesori Antico, trading bullets with Bill Hollis. He wouldn’t have been walking across the street, distracted by the blood seeping through his shirt. He wouldn’t have been there at all when that black Monte Carlo rounded the corner.

But that Monte Carlo had nothing to do with the Hollises. At least not that I could tell. That black Monte Carlo was about something else. Something Chris wouldn’t let me in on. Something that had him driving around with bullet holes in the front panel of his car and had him checking sidewalks and doorways like he expected someone to jump out at him.

He’d been right to expect that, apparently. They’d caught him in that one rare instant that he wasn’t watching for them.

Whoever they were. I had a name—Heriberto. Someone he’d been searching for. But the last name was escaping me because it was associated in my mind with a color I didn’t expect and I usually relied on my synesthesia to help me remember things like words, numbers, and names. Heriberto’s last name wasn’t red, and it wasn’t exactly purple. . . .

Basically, I had nothing for the cops who caught me in the hallways, the waiting rooms, the cafeteria, peppering me with questions. You’re . . . close. What do you know? What did he tell you? Who did this? My answer was always the same: I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. We weren’t that close.

We weren’t that close.

We were that close. But I was the only one who knew it. Even Chris didn’t know it anymore.

So I stayed away. It killed me, but I didn’t belong by his bedside. Not like the others. I paid attention to his progress from afar.