* * *
It takes no fewer than three transfers to reach his personal secretary, who, of course, does not let me through.
“I’m afraid he cannot be reached. If you care to leave a message . . .”
“Tell him it’s Audra Ellison. Give him this number,” I say.
“Is he expecting your call?”
“Oh, he’ll want to talk to me.”
I hang up and lean against the cracked bathroom wall. Stare up at the ceiling, and then roll my head toward the door and Luka, resting on the other side of it.
The phone buzzes in my hand.
I glance at it. No number I recognize. Same area code I just dialed.
Click on.
“Hello.”
“Audra?” A male voice.
“Speaking.”
“This is Serge Deniel.” His accent is French but far less pronounced than Jester’s. “Our mutual friend said you would contact me. What can I do for you?”
Oh, did he? I imagine Tibor’s smug expression.
“Do you know who I am?”
Muffled sound of traffic, distant horns. He’s in a car, but not distracted enough to be driving. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Then I think the question is what I can do for you.”
“We should meet. Where are you?”
“Ljubljana.”
“And yet the news reports social media sightings of you in Italy.”
I lift my brows. Jester.
“Yeah, well, I get around.”
“I am in Zürich. I can be there in two hours.”
“How will you guarantee my safety?”
“I will phone you when I land. You can name your meeting place then.”
“I want you to know that I have passed sensitive information about your crimes to several of my . . . associates. Damning evidence similar to what’s going public on one of your fraternal brothers tonight. They have explicit instructions to release your information immediately if anything should happen to me.”
“It seems you have my testicles on the chopping block,” he says tightly.
“I’m glad we understand one another. Have a safe flight.”
I click off and open a browser, search for images of Serge Deniel. Forties, dark, short hair. Prominent widow’s peak. Slightly crooked nose. Blue eyes.
I go out to wake Luka. Sit down beside him, shake his good shoulder gently.
He turns his head toward me, reaches up and pulls me toward him.
“Luka . . .”
His eyes don’t open. His head tilts up.
His lips are soft. In all this time, we haven’t kissed. We haven’t made love. Not since . . . I don’t remember what day it was. Not even the day of his rescue. Just pain, worry, and flight, ever since. Because a piece of us is missing. My expression crumples, and his arm folds around my shoulders.
“We’ll find her,” he whispers. And I don’t know if he’s awake or still in his drug-induced sleep. But I kiss him, wanting to make it true.
I miss the way things were before. Before I nearly lost him. Before I knew about Eva. I feel guilty admitting that even to myself. I wrote in my journal I wanted to give myself the chance to fall in love with him twice. And I suppose I did—though I’m pretty sure this isn’t how I imagined it happening. Or Luka, either. I saw the way he looked at me when I woke up on the cruise ship. And again, in the too-short moments we thought everything was all right in Munich. And what did I do? I started an argument.
“I need you to wake up,” I whisper. “Jester called. They haven’t excommunicated us.” I give him a small smile.
“That’s . . . surprising,” he murmurs, voice husky.
“But I need to leave.”
“Where?”
I press my lips together, wonder if I can lie straight to his face.
His eyes open, pupils large in the light falling on the bed from the bathroom. “Stop protecting me.”
“I’m not.”
I am.
He rolls toward his good shoulder with a grimace. “Where are we going?”
“I contacted Serge.”
He’s wide awake in an instant.
“What?”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“I said it was worth considering—not that you should do it!” he says. He turns his head with a soft curse, not looking at me.
“It’s the only option left.”
He sits up slowly on the floral coverlet (why do cheap hotels always have floral bedspreads?) and glances at his shoulder. The bandage is crusted with blood. But at least none of it’s fresh.
“Where are we meeting him?”
I frown. “He’s coming to Ljubljana.”
“What time?”
“Luka . . .”
“I said what time?”
“He’s calling in less than two hours.”
He nods and slides his feet to the floor, glances at me.
“Thank you. For not slipping out and leaving me a note or something.”
“ ’Course.”
But I thought about it.
My phone rings at 2:07 P.M. Ten minutes early.
“I’ve just touched down in Ljubljana,” Serge says.
“The corner of Slovenska and Rimska in thirty minutes,” I say. “A car will pick you up—and only you.”
He hesitates. I can practically hear the pull of his sleeve as he checks his watch. “Done.” He hangs up.
We gather our few things—phones, car keys, a couple jackets brought by housekeeping from the lost and found, which is also where I managed to snag a clean top and hat—and leave the room.
The minute we step outside, I know we have made a horrendous mistake.
Across the parking lot, right where we left it, is the beaten-up Lotus.
In the horror and aftermath of losing Brother Daniel, we never changed cars.
Luka spins away with a curse.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, mouth dry, panic rising in my chest. Luka grabs me by the arm, pulls me back under the eaves.
There’s a beer garden in front of the inn’s hokey little restaurant, sectioned off by a wooden fence. We hurry down the side of the building, through the entrance, and under the canopy of green outdoor umbrellas, past tables of cigarette smokers sitting around their afternoon drinks. I lower my head, will us to pass unseen until we emerge through the restaurant and out the back door.
The inn butts up against several buildings just off a highway, and we skirt between them toward the road.
A minute later a car pulls up just long enough for me to persuade the driver to take a long walk.
“What were we thinking?” Luka explodes behind the wheel.
But in our shock and grief, we weren’t. Luka squints at the rearview mirror. I glance behind us and then crane my neck to peer at the sky. Crack the window, even, to listen to the traffic around us. But it’s clear. Not a siren, not a blue light. Is it possible fate actually dealt us a break? God knows we’re due.
“Call him,” Luka says. “We can’t meet him here.”
Something like desperation rises up from my panic. “We’ve been ditching cars for days,” I say. “They wouldn’t expect us to have it. For all they know, someone else drove the Lotus here. Besides, according to social media sightings, we’re in Italy.”
“Yeah? And how long ago was that?”
“It was . . .” I glance at the clock.
Hours ago.
“We’ll meet him. Just not here. Tell him to get to Karlovac.”
I expel a slow breath and pull out my phone. It rings in my hand.
Serge.
“Audra, we have a problem. My source tells me they are looking for you inside the city.”
“Are you sure?” I glance around us again, holding the phone away from my ear so that Luka can hear.
“Quite. Where are you?”
I don’t respond.
“The airport is twenty-six kilometers north. Can you get there? The plane wil
l be ready.”
I glance at Luka.
“We’re coming.”
“You have someone with you.” It’s not really a question and he doesn’t seem surprised. “I would normally recommend you stay off the highway, but . . .”
“I know.” Get out of the city fast. Story of my life.
“What are you driving?” he says.
I hesitate. Glance around us again.
“Audra, I know you don’t trust me. But I didn’t come here just to lose you to the Historian. I can help you. Let me.”
“See you at the airport.” I end the call.
We speed west, weave into the passing lane as the traffic around us veers right.
We enter the exchange, and cars scatter from us like oil separating from water. I grab the wad of cheap tissue I shoved in my pocket back at the inn, hold it beneath my nose as my head begins to pound.
We enter the expressway. Traffic is thicker here than I would have guessed for a city the size of Ljubljana. I send four and then five cars—I can’t tell how many because right now I’m seeing two of each of them—out the next exit.
As vehicles enter the on-ramp to our right, it takes more effort to keep the left lane clear. I gasp out loud at the sharp shard of pain behind my eye. For a moment, the cars crowd closer.
“There’s a construction zone slowing traffic just before the bridge,” Luka says.
“I see it.”
“You have to clear it.”
“I said I got it.”
Luka’s mouth tightens as he speeds up. The bridge is a hundred yards ahead, the construction zone camped just ten before it.
My hands go to my head, which feels like it might explode at any minute as my vision flutters like a monitor on the fritz. I squeeze my eyes shut and reopen them, force them to focus, but I’m losing it: In the side-view mirror a truck and several vehicles break away from the right lane in our wake and speed forward.
Thirty yards ahead of us, a truck abruptly pulls from the construction zone and lumbers onto the bridge. And I can’t tell if that’s just me, losing my grip, or—
“It’s a trap!” Luka says as the truck pulls to a stop at an angle across both lanes.
Traffic closes behind us. There’s nowhere to go. Four men have exited the truck in black tactical gear, armed.
Luka points ahead of us, to a smaller SUV. “I need that, right now.”
For a hellacious instant, it doesn’t move.
“AUDRA!”
Eva.
The SUV swerves from line. Accelerates onto the bridge.
Luka floors the gas.
“What are you doing—” The last word flies from my mouth with my breath as Luka closes the distance in seconds and then pulls into the right lane, even with the SUV’s back tire.
At the last instant he turns directly into the SUV. I scream, the sound cut short by the impact. The SUV swings around, goes rolling into the air.
I watch it careen for an eternity as we slide forward after it, each split second like a thousand frozen images captured in the flash of a strobe.
The SUV smashes into the truck and those standing before it with a deafening crash.
We skid to a halt short yards away, panting and breathless.
Luka glances at me. “Are you all right?”
I nod, ears still ringing.
He shifts the car into reverse, hits the gas, and glances in the rearview mirror. His eyes widen. A horn blares just before a truck rams us into the wreckage, sends us spinning, bouncing into the guardrail. I scream, grab for the dash, the door, trying to brace myself.
The world upends, sickeningly weightless. Glimpse of wreckage, glimpse of sky. Green trees . . . the river below.
There is nothing soft about water. The impact crushes, and I am dazed. Vaguely aware of us traveling, carried away. Hearing everything—nothing—at once as the world is a roar, more muffled by the instant. Except for Luka, shouting my name.
It’s cold. Shocking my limbs to reflexive life. Rushing around my legs to my waist, seizing up my lungs. I need to close the window, or open it the rest of the way—I’m not sure which. But I can’t move. Am vaguely aware of Luka struggling, saying something. Grappling over me. Working desperately at the window, the cold rising to my neck.
At some point, he cradles my chin and lifts it above the water. No longer shouting. His words soft and shuddering. He kisses me, his lips wet but warm around his whispers until the river swallows them whole.
I need to tell him something. To live. That I love him. And something else—to not let them take my memory. To take it for himself. Because I know now what this is stealing my voice, making it bubble up before my eyes with my breath. But no air comes back. Sends me jerking against the door, bashing my head against the window when I try.
I always knew that the fight of my life might cost me my life. That’s why they call it that, isn’t it? Because even if it isn’t a lifetime long, it has consumed just that, in full.
Weightless. All is quiet. Except for Luka, still struggling over me as the sound fades from my ears.
For the first time I can remember, I am not afraid.
20
* * *
I can’t spot the little midge floating on the water. An arm stretches out past my shoulder.
“Look right there, in front of that rock.”
I squint and follow the line of that finger toward a tiny white thing like the tuft of a dandelion, riding its way downstream.
“I see it!”
A quick snatch and it disappears. The figure behind me straightens and sets the hook with a whoop. Begins to reel him in.
“Got him, Audra!”
“We got him!” I shout and clap my hands, glance up at him with a grin. The sun is behind his head, and his eyes crinkle at me. He bends down and sets the rod in my hands, his larger ones over mine as we tug and reel.
It is the first fish I’ve ever caught myself. I’m five, and that night when we get back to our summer cabin, my mom takes a picture of me proudly holding it next to my father. His name is Jesse and hers is Amy. She has laugh lines and freckles from too many days in the sun and long, curly hair that is nothing like mine.
My best friends Hannah, Bryn, Blake, and I lounge across the bed of my parents’ RV in shorts damp from our swimsuit bottoms, watching the eleventh Doctor defeat Prisoner Zero and then escape the Weeping Angels.
We’ve spent the entire day slathering sunscreen on ourselves and floating in a giant inner tube on Lake Okoboji, and the evening eating burgers and s’mores until mosquitoes drove us inside. Never mind that I’ve been forced into hours of strategic planning about how Blake’s going to get Josh Hoffman to ask her to Homecoming this year. At least it keeps them from asking about whether I’ve talked to Aiden, whether I want to, or have thought about it (the answer is no). Bad enough I have to see him at swim practice.
Meanwhile, Hannah’s bemoaning the fact that she’s the only one close to flunking chemistry ever since the day I managed to memorize the periodic table during a single study hall.
“How’d you do that, anyway?” she says.
I say something about my mom being on a ginkgo biloba kick, not wanting to talk about my new meds.
We make plans about Iowa State, where we’re all going to room together. Figure out how much money it’d take to backpack across Europe after freshman year.
It is the best sweet sixteen ever.
Two days later, my parents tell me I’m adopted.
Josh just asked me to Homecoming. I don’t even hang out with him or his friends! I said no, but I should never have confided in Hannah. Now Blake’s refusing to talk to me.
My parents finally agree to let me transfer schools a week after I quit the swim team. Now that we’ve gone a third humiliating round with the principal and Bryn’s and Blake’s parents over the fake account that showed up online—complete with a series of slutty confessions and pictures of me changing into my swimsuit—they’re finally letting me d
isappear from Sioux City High forever.
The night they tell me, I cry. They think it’s relief, and it is. But I’m angry. Angry they waited so long. At my former friends for what they did. At everyone who looked at the page and even shared it. And at myself, for feeling so ashamed.
Emily is squeezing my hand so hard it hurts. Her eyes shine when she gets excited like that—like a weird cross between a girl and a puppy. When they call my name instead of hers, I brace for the worst—which turns out not to be a good thing because she literally screams and grabs me and jumps up and down so that I have to hold on to the side of my dress before I have a major malfunction.
Going up for that tiara is the most mortifying moment of my life.
“Congratulations!” Emily squeals at me when the whole thing is over and the royal couple has been announced, before snapping a series of selfies that I mostly endure. But I am grateful—so grateful because of the kind of friend she is. Because I know she wanted this and I know I did not. Had to be convinced even to come tonight with a group of our friends in a dress my mom picked up on sale just yesterday from the mall and a pair of Emily’s shoes.
The whole year’s been weird that way, from three guys asking me to prom to girls like Emily wanting to be my friend—a bizarre turn halfway through my new school’s first semester that actually made me wonder if I was being set up.
She laughs and teases me about being the first chess team prom princess in the history of high school as I wonder how long I have to keep this thing on my head.
“We’re celebrating with giant burgers at Harlow’s!” she says to the others.
I say I need to check in at home, tell the group of friends I came with to go on without me, I’ll get a ride and meet them. It’s a lie. The truth is, I’m having a case of postsocial anxiety, weird energy jittering in my veins, pulse pounding in my head. As soon as I leave the gym, I take off Emily’s shoes and jog barefoot down the street. It makes me feel better. At home I change into jeans and sneakers, tell my parents my friends are waiting outside . . . and then run the two miles to Harlow’s.
But Emily never makes it. She dies in a car accident with her boyfriend on the way to the restaurant.