Seven Minutes to Noon (36 page)

“No!” Austin protested.

“Please!” Tim begged. “I can’t leave you again.”

Austin yanked his hand out of Tim’s and ran behind Alice, who shielded him as Tim struggled to decide. But for Alice there was no decision; Austin was
her
son now. She would never let him go.

“On y va!”
Analise called to Tim in French. Her tone was hard, free of the sweet, lilting accent she had mastered in Brooklyn.

Over by the van, Mike tried desperately to work his cell phone, but there was no signal this far along the map. Tim turned around and jogged back to the car,
stirring up a cloud of dust. Mike threw aside his phone and chased him. Nearly there, Mike managed to grab the back of Tim’s shirt.

“Stop!” Mike shouted. “Enough!”

Tim twisted himself free and Mike almost caught him again, but didn’t. And so Tim slipped away into the essential inch of difference between capture and escape. He got back into his car, slammed shut the door and revved the motor, but before pulling out he paused to say something to Mike. It was a weird moment: Tim urgently speaking, Mike listening, both men pouring sweat and exhaustion and fear and rage and anguish, the remnants of their old friendship flying off them in broken bits.

It was just before the car began to move that Alice noticed Analise looking at her with cold, vacant eyes. At the snap of Analise’s voice —
“Vite!”
— Ivy woke up in the backseat and turned around just as the old white car peeled onto the road.

Alice memorized her face. She was lovely. Round-cheeked, with Lauren’s sandy brown hair cut in bangs above vivid green eyes.

Tim’s eyes. She would see the world his way.

Mike pulled a scrap of paper and pen out of his pocket and wrote down the license number.

“I’ve got it!” he called to Alice as the car disappeared.

“You know these people?” Miguel asked.

“Very well,” Alice said. “Is there somewhere we can make a call?”

By the time they got the café’s phone plugged in and had established a dial tone, then managed a connection to the local police, who contacted Interpol, the FBI and ultimately Frannie Viola at the Seventy-sixth Precinct in Brooklyn, New York... by the time the local roads, highways and airports at Puerto Vallarta and Mexico City had been sealed... it was too late.

They were gone.

Later that night, lying in bed under a draping white mosquito net, Alice asked Mike, “What did Tim say to you?”

Hands clasped behind his head on the white pillow, Mike smirked. “‘I love her.’” He rolled over to face Alice. “Who do you think he meant? Ivy or Analise?”

“I’m not sure,” Alice said. The cool humidity fast against her skin, she pushed off the white sheet and closed her eyes.