by Tosca Lee
“Yes, thank you. But I, ah—I felt like my taxi driver was asking me a lot of questions about this place, what people kept here.”
Take me out the back way you go to your car.
“Yes. Come with me,” she says, as though this is not an unusual request. “I will escort you another way.”
I follow her at a brisk clip. I need to leave this place—and Vienna, and Europe, for that matter. We all do.
But almost overpowering my urgency to leave is a desire to get back to Luka. To see and touch him. To say that I know now and believe him and I’m sorry. To ask him for the story of us and the things we said to one another . . .
To tell him that the woman I was before sends her love.
He has kept his promise. He has been relentless in his love. I glance down at my hand, realizing I never took off the ring. Moreover, I don’t want to. Even after knowing him only a few short weeks—at least as far as my memory is concerned—I can actually picture him picking it out.
The woman leads me down a back hallway, which she accesses with her key card.
With her back to me, I pull the phone from my pocket, unlock it. Texts spill onto the screen:
From Luka’s number: Are you in?
Ten minutes later: Accident on corner—access blocked out front. Do not come down Lerchenfelder Strasse.
From Claudia’s number: Luka’s freaking out.
And, most recently, from Luka: I’m coming in if I don’t hear from you in the next 10 min. That was seven minutes ago.
I send a quick note that I’m on my way as the woman unlocks a back door.
“Here, to the path,” she says, opening the door and gesturing me toward a green common area filled with trees and the occasional bench in the middle of the block.
I glance out. “Thank you,” I say.
“Miss Ellison?” she says as I step past her.
I start to answer and then halt.
She should not know my name.
My head swivels just as she reaches inside her jacket.
Adrenaline fires my veins—but instead of the gun I imagined, she produces only an envelope. “What’s this?” I say, taking it with unsteady fingers.
“In case I miss.”
The pistol lifts in her other hand. I leap to the side with a scream. The shot fires, and I throw my entire weight against the metal door, slamming her back.
I sprint for the trees, ears ringing, phone clutched in one hand, envelope in the other.
The entire interior of the block is enclosed by the buildings that line it. To my distant right, a skywalk leads to the parking garage across the street. Bad choice. I sprint across the grass, connect with one of the narrower paths toward the northwest corner, where I saw a hotel on Jester’s map.
Open the door. Open the back door. Come out for a smoke, a walk—just open the door!
I’m running full force, throwing every persuasion I can think of ahead of me, not knowing who might even be in the building, let alone on the ground floor. Just before I reach the back entrance, a woman in a maid’s uniform steps outside. I barrel past her, into the hotel, through a laundry into a small kitchen. Emerge into a red and purple bar area, veer into the lobby.
I look back and find a balding hotel clerk staring at me in astonishment.
“Guten Tag,” I pant and shove out the front door to bolt across the street, blood pounding in my temples.
My phone rings in my pocket.
“They know,” I say, breathing hard against the phone. “They were waiting for me to get it—”
“Where are you?” Luka demands. Sirens sound somewhere in the distance, and for a disoriented moment I can’t tell if I’m hearing them from the street or through the phone.
“Lange Gasse,” I say, veering right. “Headed north.”
“They’ve got us blocked—” I hear a car door opening. “I’m coming.”
I tear down the sidewalk looking for a back street, an alley between buildings—anything to stay out of sight.
“Keep going north. Don’t stop. Are you being followed?” I can hear his steps pounding the pavement, words jarred with every stride.
I glance back, but I’m running so fast I can hardly see. “I don’t think so.”
“There’s a hotel a few blocks up, on your left.”
I can’t get the image of the woman with the gun out of my mind. The angle of it was, for a split second, the perfect kill shot. I start to hyperventilate, vision spotting.
“Audra? Audra! Find a place to get your bearings. You’re going to be okay,” he says, and I nod, though I know he can’t see it. I duck into the doorway of a café, just enough to get out of sight, to calm my burning lungs.
“You’re okay. I’m almost there.”
My next breath is a ragged sob.
“One more block. You’re going to make it.” And it sounds like he’s slowed as well.
I look down and actually see the envelope clutched in my hand for the first time. I tear it open.
The note is brief.
Do you think you can escape Vienna without being followed? Bring the contents of the box and the Scions will let Luka live. The offer expires at midnight. He will be dead by morning.
N.
An address in Budapest is printed at the bottom.
Like that, the breath I just caught is knocked from my lungs.
Don’t trust Nikola. He’s in league with them.
“Audra? Are you there?”
I squeeze my eyes shut, nod. “Yeah.”
“Keep going.”
I shove the note in my pocket, push out of the doorway with a glance behind me, and jog to the end of the block, wiping my cheek on my sleeve.
“I see you. You’re almost there.”
“I see it,” I say, nearing the Art Nouveau building, an ornate crest over the front entrance. A hotel car is waiting outside.
I need that car! A few seconds later, a doorman comes down the steps, waves the car forward.
“Get the doorman to hail you a cab,” Luka says.
“I did. It’s pulling up now—I see it.”
A pause, and then he says, “I’m almost there.”
The doorman steps up to get the door, and I slide in without a beat, and then across to the other side. I feel as though my nose is dripping. My hand comes away red. I search around, wondering if I’m injured, but no. I’ve run so hard my nose is bleeding. The driver hands me a tissue, and ten seconds later, Luka slides in after me.
Go. Go. Quickly.
And then we’re pulling away down the street and I don’t even know what direction we’re headed because I’ve thrown myself into Luka’s arms.
34
* * *
“I’m never leaving you alone again,” Luka murmurs against my hair. We’ve called the others, who ended up abandoning the car in the traffic jam, which Jester’s convinced was orchestrated, and told them to meet us in Zurich in two days.
“The good news is that the cameras at the vault don’t record video, in order to keep it anonymous,” Jester said.
Not that it matters now.
And then we directed the driver the other way. East, toward Bratislava. It’s too close to Budapest for my comfort, but it’s the largest nearby city with an airport. From there, I don’t care where we go.
“I think Claudia knows we’re not meeting them in Zurich,” I say.
Luka strokes the hair that isn’t really mine and murmurs, “Then she knows you want to keep her alive. It was coming to that, anyway.”
Yes. I want to keep her alive. And with the others headed to Switzerland, I can at least concentrate on the life I’m concerned about right now: Luka’s.
The driver glances at me in the rearview mirror—has done so twice in the last minute.
I’m not her. Maybe I resemble her, but now that you look . . . no.
“How did you do that?” Luka says.
“Do what?”
“Get the doorman to hail your cab before you even
got there.”
“I don’t know. The same way I got the maid to let me in the back door of a hotel, I guess.”
“So you . . . called it in?” he says strangely.
“I guess. I must be getting better.”
“I’ve never heard of that. I don’t think that’s normal.”
But nothing about this is normal.
I realize then that he’s staring at something, and follow the line of his gaze to my hand.
He’s very still, and for a moment I just listen to the hard beat of his heart through his chest. It’s strong and steady as the arm wrapped around me, if a little faster than before.
I lift my fingers, the diamond ring throwing fire from the sunset behind us.
“So, um . . . guess what I found.”
“Yeah,” he says and rakes his hair back. “About that.”
His tone catches me off guard, and it occurs to me that maybe I shouldn’t have made assumptions. For all I know, we—or even he—called it off. Can I blame him? Four weeks ago I didn’t even know who he was.
“I told you a few months ago—”
“It’s okay,” I say, twisting it off.
“No.” He catches at my hand. “Wear it. If you want to. I never got you the diamond I said I was going to. I never got the chance.”
“Oh. Well, I still want that,” I say.
He takes the ring from me, slides it slowly back onto my finger, and then studies it so long I don’t know if he’s looking at the ring or the finger it’s on.
“When I gave you this, I said it looked like a princess ring,” he whispers. “Perfect for you.”
I think of what I said to myself, about Luka being good. Proof of God, even, in this godless mess.
He pulls me closer in the backseat, wraps both arms around me. The edge of the envelope digs into my side.
“So how big of a diamond are we talking about?” he says.
I lean back against him. “Oh, big.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything,” he murmurs.
“I did leave myself a note to ask you about something when this is all over.”
He shakes his head. “Figures.”
We’ve had so little levity—the truest laugh I ever heard from him was back in Maine, when he thought we were free and I knew no better. I close my eyes, envision the wine aisle of the Food Mart, the Mad Moose on the south side of the lake, the feral ducks gobbling up fries. I pretend, for just this moment, that the note in my pocket does not exist. That I am not plastered on television screens, wanted for murder.
That Nikola has not threatened to kill him by morning.
I catch myself admiring the ring on my finger, and I can’t help but think of Ana. I instantly feel guilty. What right do I have to be happy when the one thing she wanted—a life with Nino—has just been taken from her? When I don’t even know if she’s still alive?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I say.
He exhales a long sigh. “How do you spring that on someone who doesn’t even know your name? Who doesn’t know if they even trust you?”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. He pulls me tighter against him in response.
“It’s not your fault, you know.”
“I found a lot of crazy stuff,” I say quietly. “Do you know what it is?”
“No,” he says. “Not all of it. And I know this is hard to understand, but I didn’t want to. You were so preoccupied trying to find a way out that even when you were with me, you weren’t with me. I felt like I’d lost you way before you went to that Center.” He lays his cheek against the top of my head.
“In the end it didn’t matter, because you did find a way. And if all went as planned, we would never need to talk about it again. But the other reason I didn’t ask for details is because I knew you had things of your mother’s. And . . . given what I came from, and how she died—or how we thought she died—you deserved to have whatever piece of her you could. Pure. Untainted by my past.”
I was right, in my letters to myself. He is gentle. And I don’t need a diamond to believe it.
Protect him.
“You’re stronger than you know,” he murmurs against my hair.
“I don’t feel strong.”
“You are. You’re the strongest person I know. Not to mention scary smart.”
I lift my head to look at him. God, he’s beautiful. I can’t imagine what this has been like for him. Were the situation reversed, it would shred my heart to see no recognition in his eyes for me.
“I left you alone,” I say. “I did it for us, I know, but I left you. And I took your friend and your lover with me. I am so sorry, Luka.”
He reaches up and covers his eyes, his expression twisting beneath his fingers.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper and clasp his face between my hands, kissing the tears that roll down his cheeks. “And I love you.”
He pulls me against him with a sob, arms locked tight around me, and buries his face against my neck.
“You’re the strong one,” I say softly. And I mean it. Because of the two of us, he is the only one who could weather what he did and survive. Even after falling in love with him again after so short a time—perhaps the greatest gift I have ever given myself—I don’t think I could go through losing him and come out alive.
And I get why he was willing to take those three years. And why I fought for more, unwilling to just survive.
Now we’ll be lucky to have even that.
35
* * *
It’s early evening by the time we arrive at Letisko Airport in Bratislava.
“This won’t work,” Luka murmurs.
“It has to,” I say, combing the bangs of my wig down toward my eyes.
“Audra.” He catches me by the arm. “We can still turn around and leave.”
But that’s the thing. We can’t.
I persuade the ticket agent to bump two other passengers from the last flight to Liverpool, which is as far as we can get on anything tonight. Which is to say, not far enough. I suggest, too, that I actually resemble the photo in my new German passport, which looks nothing like me.
Past the ticket counter, I pause to assess security. The agents who can be persuaded. The cameras that can’t. They’re not my only problem; an entire terminal full of passengers waits beyond the checkpoint.
“This is crazy,” Luka whispers. “There’s too many. You can’t do this alone.”
It is crazy. Jester, Claudia, and Piotrek together wouldn’t take this on. But I don’t have a choice.
I present my ticket and passport to the agent at the front of the line. Ignore Luka as he does the same behind me. Take the envelope out from beneath my sweater. Lay it, along with my shoes, jacket, and phone, on the conveyor belt. That is the hardest part: watching it pass from my possession. So simple and old-fashioned on that moving belt. So much trouble over a stack of papers. So many lives lost, families ruined. So much blood spilled.
Too much.
By the time we get through security, my nose is bleeding again. I retrieve the envelope, hurry to the bathroom, where I tuck it back beneath my sweater once I’ve gotten the bleeding to stop. I also take the opportunity to flush the note from Nikola down the toilet.
I stay there as long as I dare, head tilted back against the stall, eyes turned toward the ceiling. But I know Luka is waiting and I don’t dare let him out of my sight for long.
We move quickly through the terminal, sequester ourselves near a window at our gate. No one in a twenty-foot radius is looking, far too preoccupied with phones, children, conversations. Anything. Anything but me.
I don’t have to try to keep my knee from bouncing; there’s no spare energy for the jitters. I turn my face against Luka’s shoulder, a wad of toilet paper held to my nose.
“How are you doing this?” he murmurs, holding me tightly against him.
I don’t answer. My head has begun to pound.
“Audra, you’re going to give yourself an aneury
sm,” he says tightly.
I actually wonder if he’s right.
“It’s worse if you talk about it,” I say.
He pulls me tighter against his chest, holds my head in his arms.
“I was thinking,” he says, “maybe we go from Liverpool to Dubai.”
“Dubai?”
“We’ll get you a burka, make this whole anonymity thing a lot easier.”
I exhale a soft, pained laugh. But it’s not my anonymity I’m worried about.
“Whose idea was Maine?” I murmur.
“Yours,” he says, and I can’t help a small smile.
When they call boarding at last, he has to help me up.
By the time we get in line I’m swaying on my feet. His arm tightens around me. A woman behind us offers him a bottle of water. She thinks I’m sick. And I am.
Waiting in our seats on the plane is the worst. He lays his head atop mine, which is resting on his shoulder. I close my eyes and hold his hand.
I want to hold it forever.
I wait for the remaining passengers to straggle on and fumble for overhead space, for the tone to indicate that the door is about to close.
At the last possible second I unbuckle my seat belt and push up unsteadily.
He clutches me. “Where are you going?”
I cup my hand to my face, say I’m going to be sick. It’s not the first time I’ve told that lie.
He reaches for the airsick bag.
“No,” I say urgently. “Not here.”
I hurry past the flight attendants to the galley, grab a stack of napkins. Glance back at Luka’s stricken face.
Throw a last, massive persuasion behind me.
Don’t let that man off the plane.
The next second I’m out the door and sprinting up the jet bridge as fast as I can. Crying.
I’m almost to ground transportation when my phone starts ringing. I ignore it, hail a cab. The phone is relentless.
Finally, I shut it down.
36
* * *
I close my eyes in the back of the cab, a tissue shoved up my nose. Head pounding, face swollen—from tears, persuasion. From life.
