BURY

THE RED DRESS

The safe was open.

Not broken. Open. Code entered. 0-0-0-0, the factory code Damon said he never changed because no one but him knew the office existed behind the glass box.

Inside: nothing. A dark square where the black notebook should have been. Maya's notebook. The one with every offshore transfer marked in red pen, every fake invoice, every name.

Gone.

"Agatha didn't take it," Damon said, already on his phone, texting his security. "She doesn't have the code."

"Who does?"

"Me. Maya. And -"

"Marco."

He didn't answer. He didn't need to.

We ran. Up the white stairs, two at a time, my black coat flying. My bedroom door - the one across from his - was closed. I had left it open. I always leave it open so I can hear.

Now it was closed.

Damon pushed me behind him, pulled a black Glock from the back of his pants - when did he even grab that? - and kicked the door open.

It was empty. At first.

Bed made. Pillow flat. Gun under it - still there, I could see the outline. Closet open, red dress hanging where I left it.

Then I smelled it. Men's cologne. Cheap, sweet. Not Damon's leather and smoke.

Red tie cologne.

"Marco's been here," I whispered.

Damon walked to the closet. The red dress. He touched it. It was warm.

"Not been. Is."

The bathroom door creaked.

Marco Valentino stepped out of MY bathroom.

Wearing my red dress.

The red dress Damon gave me. The one I hung up like evidence. Zipped up the back, too tight on his shoulders, seams stretching, lipstick - my lipstick? No, his own, smeared pink - on his mouth. My gun in his hand. My father's pistol.

He smiled with pink teeth.

"Do you like it?" he asked, twirling. The dress ripped slightly at the shoulder. "I always wanted to try it. Maya said I looked pretty in red. Before she - what was it? Overdosed?"

Damon raised his gun. Steady. No shake.

"Take it off."

Marco laughed. He put my gun to his own head, still smiling in the red dress.

"Or what, cousin? You'll shoot me in your little pet's bedroom? While she's watching? Oh, Lena - you left your gun under your pillow. That's so predictable. Foster kids always hide things under pillows."

I couldn't move. The image was so wrong, so obscene, I couldn't make sense of it. Marco - 6'2, broad, in my red dress, holding my father's gun that my father used to kill himself.

"Where's the notebook?" Damon's voice was ice.

"What notebook?" Marco batted his eyelashes, pink lipstick cracked. "Oh, you mean Maya's little diary? 'Marco stole, Marco killed, Marco is a bad boy?' That notebook?"

He tossed my gun onto the bed. It bounced.

"I burned it. In your garden, Damon. With the dead tree. While you were downstairs kissing Uncle Vincent's ass and letting him kiss your assistant's hand."

My legs went weak.

"You burned it."

"Well - most of it. I kept one page. The page with my father's accounts. Because if you're going to audit, Lena, you should audit correctly. You missed a name."

He reached into the red dress - into the bra area of MY dress - and pulled out a single folded black page, burnt at the edges.

He threw it at me. It landed at my feet.

I picked it up. Maya's handwriting, red pen, shaking:

_OFFSHORE - V. VALENTINO - $47M - LENA'S NAME AS SIGNATURE - FORGED - THEY WILL USE HER TOO_

My name. Forged. As signature on a $47 million theft.

They weren't just going to kill me. They were going to frame me first.

"See?" Marco said, adjusting the red dress straps. "Uncle Vincent doesn't just kill girls who count. He frames the next girl so no one looks for the first. You were supposed to sign those papers at the funeral, Lena. That's why we sent you the invitation with the gold seal. But you opened the casket instead. You ruined it."

Damon's finger tightened on the trigger.

"Marco. Last warning. Take off the dress. Get out."

Marco looked at Damon, then at me, then back at Damon.

"You won't shoot me, Damon. Because if you shoot me, my father will come back with ten men and kill your little Lena while she sleeps. And you like watching her sleep, don't you? I saw the camera in her room. The one behind the mirror."

What camera?

I looked at Damon. His jaw locked. He didn't deny it.

"There's no camera," he said, but it was a second too slow.

Marco giggled in my red dress.

"Oh, she didn't know. Poor Lena. He watches you shower too? Or just sleep? God, Damon, you're so predictable. You put a blade on her throat and a camera in her mirror and call it protection."

I stepped forward and picked up my father's gun from the bed. Heavy. Cold.

"Take off my dress."

Marco raised his eyebrows, amused.

"Or what? You'll shoot me? In that dress? You'd look so hot covered in my blood."

"No," I said, and pointed the gun not at his head, but at the seam of the red dress, at his chest where his heart was. "I'll shoot the dress. It's mine. And you're stretching it."

For a second, no one moved.

Then Marco - in one fast move - lunged at me, grabbed my wrist, twisted the gun away. He was stronger. Dress ripping.

Damon fired.

Not at Marco. At the wall, inches from Marco's head. The sound exploded in the small bedroom.

Plaster rained.

Marco froze, my wrist in his hand.

Damon walked forward, grabbed Marco by the back of the red dress and ripped it. Clean down the back. Seams screaming. He threw Marco - 180 pounds of man in torn red fabric - to the floor.

"Get out," Damon whispered, gun to Marco's temple now, kneeling over him. "Get out of her room. Get out of my house. Tell your father if he forges her name on one more paper, I will put his silver ring down his throat."

Marco, on the floor, red dress torn open at the back, pink lipstick smeared, looked up and smiled, bleeding from where plaster cut his cheek.

"You can't keep her alive for ninety days, Damon. You know that. The contract you wrote? 'Day 90, I deliver the killer alive.' You will have to deliver ME alive. And you can't kill me. So you will have to give her to me."

He looked at me, on the floor, gun in my hand again.

"See you tomorrow, Lena. Wear black. Red doesn't suit you when you're scared."

Security dragged him out, still in the torn red dress, laughing.

Silence.

My bedroom smelled like gunpowder and cheap cologne and ripped fabric.

The red dress was on the floor, destroyed. The single page from Maya's notebook was still in my hand, shaking.

_THEY WILL USE HER TOO - LENA'S NAME AS SIGNATURE - FORGED_

Damon stood, gun still in hand, breathing hard, looking at the dress.

"Lena -"

"Is there a camera behind my mirror?"

He closed his eyes.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because Marco tried to get into your room on Night 1. Before you even got here. I put it there so Agatha could watch when I wasn't -"

"Don't lie."

He opened his eyes. Black, honest for once.

"Because I wanted to make sure you were breathing. After Maya. After I found her. I check. Every hour."

I held the torn red dress. The dagger necklace was still cold on my throat.

My father's gun was warm in my other hand.

The page said they forged my signature on $47 million.

Someone had burned the only proof that could clear me.

And Marco was still going to be at breakfast tomorrow.

Damon knelt and picked up the red dress, folded it like it mattered.

"I'll buy you another one," he said quietly.

"I don't want another red dress," I said, voice cracking for the first time since the funeral. "I want the notebook."

He looked at the burnt page in my hand. At the gun. At the torn dress.

"The page says your name was forged. That means there's a copy of your signature somewhere in Vincent's office. In the city. Original papers."

"You mean -"

"We have to go get it. Tonight. Before they file it. If they file it, you become the thief. Not the witness."

He checked his watch. 9:47 PM.

"Vincent leaves his downtown office at 10 PM every night to pray. For twenty minutes, it's empty. We have twenty minutes to break in and find a file with your forged signature on it."

Break into Vincent Valentino's office. The man with the silver ring who killed my sister.

With a torn red dress on the floor and a camera behind my mirror and a gun that still had one bullet.

Damon held out his hand.

"Do you trust me?"

The note said DON'T TRUST HIM EITHER.

Maya wrote that.

But Maya also left me this necklace. This blade.

I put my hand in his.

"For twenty minutes," I said.