ASHES OF THE PAST

THE RED CIRCLE

Chapter 4

Kylie’s POV

I hated that necklace.

Not because it was ugly. It was a small silver pendant resting against Star Brown’s collarbone like it belonged there. I hated what it meant.

I’d seen it before, years ago, on a day I went looking for a stapler in my father’s office and found a folder I wasn’t supposed to open. Photographs. Dates. A woman in a white dress with that exact pendant at her throat, and one name circled in red ink.

Michael Brown.

Beneath it, a line for a daughter.

Estrella.

I’d heard my father’s footsteps in the hall and shoved everything back, and I’d never forgotten that name. For years I told myself a necklace was just a necklace.

Then a girl walked into my lecture with S. BROWN scrawled across her notebook.

“You’ve been quiet.”

Desmon fell into step beside me on the quad, arms folded, studying my face the way he did when he thought I was about to do something stupid.

“Thinking.”

“That’s usually when you cause a problem.”

I kept walking. Two weeks ago my father had started taking calls behind a closed door, in Spanish, with a city name I’d caught through the wall. Guadalajara. He hadn’t said it to me. He hadn’t said anything to me in three years.

“Find out about her family,” I said. “Where she’s from. Who her father is.”

Desmon stopped. “You met her yesterday, and you already know her name and what she wears around her neck.”

“Just do it.”

“Is this about your dad?”

“Don’t.”

He lifted both hands. “Fine.” The teasing was gone from his face, which was worse.

I found her that afternoon on the bench outside the library, her class notebook open on her lap and the page still blank.

“Writer’s block?”

“You again.” The corner of her mouth twitched, and she shut the notebook before I could see.

I sat without waiting for an invitation. She didn’t look as if she’d slept. There was a shadow under each eye, and her hand kept drifting to her collar, checking.

“Somebody followed me home last night,” she said.

My spine went rigid. “Who?”

“A black sedan. Same one that was parked here this morning. It sat behind me for six blocks with its lights off.” She kept her eyes on the quad. “When I got to my building, the back door opened. Nobody got out. It just sat there, open, until I was inside.”

She finally looked at me. “It wasn’t trying to grab me. It wanted me to see it. That’s the part I can’t stop thinking about.”

I’d noticed that car twice this week.

“Did you see a plate? A face?”

“Just a phone, pointed at me.” Now she did look at me. “Do you know anything about that car?”

“No.”

“You recognized my necklace yesterday.”

I stood, and the bench creaked. “I have to go.”

“Do you know something about my mother?”

I made my face go blank. “I don’t know anything about your mother.”

Which was almost true. I knew a name, a photograph, and a secret my father kept locked in a drawer**, a drawer I’d learned to open with a bent paperclip when I was eleven, because in my house you learned early how to get into places you weren’t invited**. I didn’t know what any of it meant.

She held my gaze, like she was giving me one last chance.

I said nothing.

She picked up her notebook and walked into the library without looking back.

I should have told her to stay away from me. Instead I’d let her walk into a building where I had no idea who might be waiting.

My phone buzzed. Dad. I declined it. It rang again. I declined it again.

A message lit the screen: Answer your phone, Kylie.

Then a text from a number I didn’t know.

They’ve found her.

I read it twice.

“Kylie?” Desmon had caught up. I turned the screen toward him, and I watched his face change.

“Who sent that?”

“No idea.”

Another buzz. Library. Now.

Then: They want what she’s wearing.

Whoever had sent this wasn’t guessing. They knew where she was, and what she wore. I should have asked why they were telling me. I didn’t. I was already running.

The reading room was nearly empty. The librarian’s desk stood unmanned, a mug still steaming beside the keyboard.

Star’s table sat in the corner. Her notebook lay open, her bag hooked on the chair, the chair shoved back as if she’d stood in a hurry.

“Star?”

Only the hum of the lights.

The first aisle was empty. In the second, a pen lay on the carpet, uncapped, its ink still wet. Hers. The plastic was warm in my fingers.

From deep in the stacks came a dull thud, something heavy hitting wood, then a gasp cut off short.

I moved.

At the very back, a man in a gray jacket had Star pinned against the shelves, one hand clamped over her mouth, a blade against her ribs. Her chain was wrapped around his fist.

“Quiet, Estrella,” he murmured. “Give it to me and this ends.”

Estrella.

The name from the folder.

It wasn’t a coincidence. It had never been.

“Let her go.”

He turned his head. He didn’t look scared. He looked bored. “Walk away, kid. This isn’t yours.”

“I said let her go.”

His grip tightened, and Star flinched as the blade pressed closer.

I don’t remember deciding to move. I remember my shoulder hitting his ribs, the shelves shuddering, books raining down on us both. Star dropped to the floor. His elbow caught my jaw and the world flashed white. I swung into his stomach and he doubled over, swearing in Spanish.

Something cold dragged across my forearm. Blood, hot and fast, soaking my sleeve.

I looked down for half a second. He raised the blade again.

“Down!”

Desmon’s voice. I dropped. Desmon hit him from the side and drove him back, and the man twisted away, one hand digging into his jacket. His phone. He glanced at the screen, and something in his face went flat and cold, like he’d been given an order.

He slammed his elbow into the alarm panel beside the emergency door and was gone.

The fire alarm began to scream.

“Go!” I shouted, and Desmon went after him.

I turned.

Star hadn’t moved from the floor. Her hands were clamped over her ears and her eyes were fixed on the ceiling, as if it were about to come down. She wasn’t looking at me. She wasn’t looking at anything in this room.

“Star.”

Nothing. Her lips were moving.

“Star. Look at me.”

Her eyes slid to mine. It took a second for her to find me.

“It’s not a fire,” I said. “It’s just the alarm. It’s only the alarm.”

She nodded, jerkily. A red line burned across her throat where the chain had bitten in. The pendant still hung there, intact.

I dropped to one knee in front of her. “Are you hurt?”

She looked at my bleeding arm, then back at my face.

“He called me Estrella.” Her voice shook. “Nobody calls me that. Nobody except my mother.”

I could tell her about the folder. I could tell her I’d seen that name beside her mother’s photograph years before I met her.

But I couldn’t tell her why my father had hidden it. And I couldn’t tell her what he might do if he knew I’d found her.

“Who is he, Kylie?”

I looked away.

“Kylie.”

I dragged my gaze back. For the first time since I’d met her I had no joke and no smile, nothing but the truth, and I couldn’t give it to her.

My phone buzzed against my leg. I pulled it out with a bloody hand.

Fast, Kylie. Next time you won’t be.

Through the glass wall of the reading room, across the quad, a figure stood motionless among the running students. Even from that distance I could tell the person was watching. The figure raised a phone, waved it once, and lowered it.