Kiss Kill Vanish (25 page)

The hope trickles out of me penny by penny. Eighteen dollars. A plane ticket to Miami will cost at least five hundred. That's . . . The math hurts. That's too much. I'm not going home. At that rate, I'm not making enough for food.

I lie down, empty. The hope and caffeine have been used up. I've still got butter on my lips, but the rest of the croissant seems to have settled into a ball of grease and gluten right below my ribs. I could wait for Emilio. Or I could steal from Nanette, or maybe even from Jacques, and then send them the money once I got back to Miami. Or I could call my father. I can't decide which option makes me want to throw up the most.

I pull my phone out of my bag before I can think too hard about what I'm doing and dial.

“Jane.” It's just a syllable, but I can tell Marcel is smiling. “Or am I supposed to call you Valentina?”

“You'd better stick with Jane.”

“Why Jane, by the way?”

“You don't like it?”

“I didn't say that. I'm just curious.”

“Because it's nondescript,” I say.

“As in plain Jane.”

“I didn't want to be noticed.”

“And how'd that work for you?”

“Not so well.”

He laughs. “Should I come get you?”

“What?”

“To swim. That's why you're calling, right?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

The pool is cleansing. I feel strong, carving a path through the water with my hands, propelling my body forward with each kick. Marcel beats me by a larger margin than last time, but it doesn't matter. Or it matters less. I spend the entire swim going through what to say, how to ask so it doesn't sound like begging. By the end, though, I'm too tired and too ready to have it over with to say any of the things I planned.

I pull myself up out of the water, panting. Marcel is sitting with his legs dangling in the pool, no longer breathing heavy at all. If he ever was.

“You okay?” he asks.

I nod and blurt out, “Can I borrow some money?”

“Of course.”

I'm not sure what I expected. A smirk at the very least.

“I need kind of a lot, though.”

He shrugs.

“No,” I say, “like six hundred dollars.”

“Okay.”

“Seriously? That's all?”

He hands me a towel, and I realize I'm shivering. “Did you think I'd say no?”

“Um, no? I don't know. I thought you'd want to know why.” I don't add that I thought he might make me beg.

“Do you want to tell me why?”

I shouldn't. I thought I'd have to, but if he's willing to give me the money no questions asked, there's no reason to. Unless he's my friend. Unless I care that he might miss me when I disappear. “A plane ticket to Miami.”

“I thought you were waiting for Emilio.”

“I was. But something is wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know, but I need to go back.”

“Oh. So why don't you call your father?”

“I don't want him to know. I'm not going
home
home.”

Marcel snorts. “Sorry. It's just . . . seriously?”

“What's so funny?”

“Your father is Victor Cruz. He'll definitely know if you're in Miami.”

“How?” I ask. I wring the water from my braids, watching the water trickle over my thighs. “Lucien isn't reporting back anymore.”

“I wouldn't be surprised if he had someone else watching you. And he probably has someone at customs on his payroll. I'm guessing the minute your passport gets scanned, he gets a phone call.”

“Oh.” Of course. That must be how he found me here.

“And once you get to Miami, don't you think people will recognize you? Where are you going to stay?”

My teeth are chattering now. The towel is drenched. “I hadn't thought about it.”

He doesn't need to say anything else. I realize now how naive the plan was, if I can even call it a plan. It was a fantasy: fly to Miami, break into my house, take enough untraceable jewelry for Emilio and me to live off, and convince Emilio to come with me. I might as well have had us riding off on a unicorn at the end.

“Never mind,” I say. My throat thickens, and tears blur my vision. Marcel's staring at me. I need to go change before I lose control completely.

I start to stand, but he puts his hand on my leg. “Wait.”

I sit back down, blink the tears away, and try not to look at his hand or feel anything at all. He's staring through the water into the artificial blue of the pool floor, his mind elsewhere. He could be gripping a sandwich for all he knows.

“The Burlington crossing can be a pain,” he mutters. “Alburgh is pretty quiet, though. At night, especially. I've only had my car searched once.”

“What are you talking about? Why did you have your car searched?”

“Everybody has their car searched at some point. It's a statistical probability when you're crossing the border regularly.”

“Oh.” I can't ignore it any longer. I look down at his hand.

He pulls it away. “You wouldn't be any harder to hide than a suitcase full of guns.”

“You've smuggled guns across the border?”

“Of course not. But people do, and they get away with it.”

“What are you suggesting?” I ask.

“I'm suggesting we road trip.”

We draw up plans in Marcel's room.

It's the first time I've been into the main house, but Marcel doesn't give me a tour. He barely turns on enough lights for us to make it through the first floor and up the two flights of stairs. I don't need it illuminated to get the drift, though. It's cavernous and immaculate, with anemic watercolor landscapes covering the walls. It's my home in Miami drained of blood. No wonder Lucien was so desperate to escape. No wonder Marcel is still trying.

“Is this really going to work?” I ask, staring at the bookshelves that line two walls of his room. Not what I was expecting of a high school dropout. Aside from the books, there isn't much personality in the room, but I get the sense that any gratuitous personality is wiped clean by the daily maid.

“Maybe.” He's hunched over his laptop, pulling up maps of the various routes from Montreal to Miami. “Maybe not. You still want to try?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

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S
ix minutes.

I'm leaving. It's hard to believe, but if that clock is still actually functioning, Marcel should be here soon.

Parting with my junk hurt. Surprisingly, it was more painful than pawning my tennis bracelet and earrings to get here, which doesn't make any sense. At least a dozen times over the past couple of months I've pictured myself gleefully chucking the synthetic blanket into the Dumpster out back, hurling the scuffed shoes and threadbare sweaters into the icy Saint Lawrence River, but I couldn't do it today. I thought I hated them, but at least they were mine.

Instead, after Marcel dropped me off, I gathered the few items I'm taking with me—two changes of clothes, a few pairs of underwear, basic toiletries—and put them into a grocery bag. The rest I reluctantly lugged to the Salvation Army donation box.

I realized too late that I should've kept the blanket, that I was still hours from midnight and Marcel's warm car. I've spent the entire evening freezing on the cot without it. It's been bearable only because it's the last time. By this time tomorrow I'll be somewhere warmer—not Miami yet, but somewhere warmer.

Five minutes.

My grocery bag of clothes, the mandolin, and me. That's all that's left. I'm huddled on the cot, staring at the clock on the floor because I used the crate to lug everything else to the Salvation Army.

I'm lucky Nanette isn't home. She's the only one who occasionally pokes her head in here, and if she did today, my leaving would be obvious. Marcel and I both agreed not to tell anyone. He insisted nobody would miss him, or at least not for a week, which seems both unbelievable and totally possible. Almost as unbelievable and totally possible: he's driving me to Miami. 1,639 miles. Twenty-nine hours. That's not a reasonable favor to do for someone, not even a friend, but I couldn't make myself try to talk him out of it. He said that he needed a break from winter anyway, and that he's always loved South Beach. He said he had friends there to stay with. So I guess I'm letting him.

Four minutes.

But Nanette. I owe her something. I owe her lots of little things, actually—detergent, peanut butter, ChapStick, crackers, not to mention wear and tear on her bathing suit, and heels that I've bled into. A thank-you. I owe her a thank-you. When this is all over, I'll send her something, anonymously if I have to.

Of course, Emilio's going to be pissed off at first. I can fantasize all I want about how happy he'll be to find me on his doorstep, but I can't forget what he said.
Don't come back. Promise me you won't come back.
And the way he said it—those words sank like stones.

He was scared when he said that, though. Terse out of fear. After the shock wears off, after he understands that I'm not in danger because nobody knows I'm in Miami, he'll come around. I'll make him. I'll show up at his apartment in Brickell, and he'll be mad, but he'll let me in, and he'll have missed me. We'll walk down through Bayside Marketplace to the docks, dip our toes in warm water, and be in this together. I'll melt his anger. I'll make him forget.

Three minutes.

If I can.

Marcel said midnight is the best time to leave because it puts us at the border by two, and by that time border patrol agents don't care about anything except going back to sleep.

Guilt creeps up my spine, one notch at a time. I'm using Marcel. But if he knows it—and he does—is it really so bad? He wants to take me to Miami. He was the one who suggested it, so it's not like I put the idea in his head.

I still don't want Marcel to see this apartment. Not the lobby, not the busted elevator, definitely not the musty common room or this fetid closet. How is it possible I'm still so vain? I don't know, but it's bad enough that he's seen the outside of this derelict embarrassment. I'll wait outside.

I pick up the plastic grocery bag and the mandolin case and give the closet one final glance. The water stain on the ceiling looks like it's grown again, the edges pushing outward, getting ready to swallow everything. The room is empty, except for the cot and the clock.

I unplug the clock, but I don't take it with me. It's not mine. And besides, I'm done waiting.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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M
arcel is late.

Icy fog wraps around me, and I shiver. The grocery bag and mandolin weight me to the sidewalk like anchors while I take turns entertaining the best- and worst-case scenarios. The best: he's just late. The worst: he's changed his mind. In a moment of typical old-Marcel flakiness, he offered to do this, then realized that a few days of ogling uninhibited South Beachers isn't worth the risk of getting arrested for human trafficking.

No. That's not the worst-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is he's lying to me and has been for as long as we've been friends, which I guess is what we are now. He's working for my father, or for one of my father's enemies.

I'm crazy. Paranoid. Since that night in Emilio's closet, there's an endless thread of doubt winding its way through my thoughts, and it's tangled in everything now, twisting every interaction. Anybody could be a liar, a murderer, an enforcer, an informant.

I pull out my phone to check the time. It's 12:33. No wonder I'm so cold—I've been out here for a half hour. I watch my frozen thumbs press the buttons to dial Marcel's number, but before I can finish, Lucien's Range Rover careens around the corner. Even though I can see Marcel's distinctly squarer jaw, a fleeting panic washes over me at the thought of Lucien behind that wheel, followed by an irrational tide of betrayal. I shouldn't be mad at a dead man, even if he did lie to me. As quickly as the anger surged, it ebbs, and I'm left with cold, cold guilt.

Marcel stops in front of me, leans over, and pushes the door open without getting out of the car. “You getting in?” he asks.

Did I hesitate? I must have. I pick up my things, throw the bag and then the mandolin over the seat, and climb into the familiar leather chair. Thankfully, the smell of coffee covers any lingering scent of Lucien's cologne. “You're late. I thought you'd changed your mind.”

“I never change my mind,” he says, and holds out a coffee for me. “It'd mean I was wrong in the first place.”

I roll my eyes and take the cup. “And you're never wrong in the first place?”

“No. I just never admit it.”

Marcel peels away from the building and I don't look back, but I feel a distinct pull as it recedes, as if I'm still connected to it by a string. The sadness surprises me. It's complicated, leaving a prison and a haven.

I sip slowly, drinking in my final views of Montreal. I'll never come back. It's beautiful tonight, dark and glittering like a giant, deadly snake, but once I'm gone the memories will be enough to keep me away. Forever, I think.

“Why are you driving Lucien's car?” I ask.

“Mine's more likely to get searched.”

I nod. That makes sense. The Range Rover is luxurious in a less-likely-to-be-breaking-the-law way than Marcel's European sports car. This'll draw less attention. “So where am I going to hide?”