Kiss Kill Vanish (30 page)

HarperCollins Publishers

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I
have no plan. It's hard to believe that now, standing on Emilio's doorstep, knuckles still sore from knocking for the second time, waiting for him to answer. But what was there to plan? He'll see me, I'll tell him I had to come, that we can do this better together, and he'll understand.

I look again to the windowpane. Blinds block my view of inside, but a yellow sliver of light spills onto the cement beside me. And is that sound his TV or his neighbor's? I rub my knuckles and lift my hand to knock again, but before I can, the door flies open. A wild-eyed Emilio stands in front of me. Suit pants, undershirt, wet hair, the smell of aftershave. I take in the details but no air. My mouth is dry. I force my lips open before I even decide what I'm about to say. “I had to come—”

His grip on my arm stops me, the force of his yank shocking me out of my fairy tale. I stumble forward, or he pulls me in, his fingers still squeezing my arm even after I'm inside and the door is closed.

“How long were you out there?” he demands.

I let out a whimper. “You're hurting me.”

Instead of relaxing his grip, he pulls me closer. I'm inches from his face, breathing in his aftershave. “Did anyone see you?”

“I—I don't know. I was only out there for a few seconds. Maybe a minute at the most.” I gulp for breath, for control, for understanding of this too-raw hostility. “Emilio. You're hurting me.”

He loosens his grip and turns away from me to lock the door. “How did you get here?”

“Marcel.”

He spins back around. “Are you trying to get me killed? You realize this means your father knows, right?”

“Marcel doesn't work for my father!”

“You don't know anything.”

“He snuck me across the border in the back of his car and drove me all the way here.”

He shakes his head, incredulous. “And you think he did that out of the goodness of his heart? Why would you trust Marcel?”

The answer. I can't find the words for it, and maybe the sight of Emilio half-dressed and the smell of his wet hair are twirling my thoughts around and rendering me senseless, or maybe there isn't a single, logical reason for me to give. I don't know why I trust Marcel, but I do. Or I did. “I thought you'd be happy to see me.”

“Happy to see you?” He runs a hand through his wet hair and closes his eyes like he's in pain. “Valentina . . .” He doesn't finish. He turns away from me and walks into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

The room glows like a stage, the lights a little too bright, the shadows nonexistent. I take a few shaky steps forward. I'm not going to cry. I drop my bag and the mandolin beside the glass coffee table and slide onto the corner of his couch. My fingers curl into my palms. If I could, I'd curl my whole body up and disappear. Instead I slump back into the soft leather and look around me.

The apartment is small but clean—cleaner than I'd remembered. It feels impersonal, the sharp angles and black leather and glass tables, and not just in a bachelor pad way. It feels like an office, but even offices have cheap prints on the walls. I glance around. A clock. A mirror. A TV.

No art.

Why hadn't I noticed that the last time I was here? I know the answer—because
he
was with me. When Emilio is in the room, any room, there are things that I don't notice. Sometimes they're important.

I can hear him banging around in there, but I'm too tired and hungry to do anything but sit. All that time I spent waiting for him, freezing to death, living off Jacques's chocolate and Nanette's charity, all the nights I spent convincing myself he would be with me if he could, and now that I'm here he's too angry to be in the same room with me, to even talk to me. It doesn't seem like this could be happening.

When Emilio's door opens behind me, I fight the urge to jump up and turn to him. The sounds tell me what he's doing—picking things up, putting things down, opening a cupboard, pouring a drink. Finally he comes around to the chair across from me. He leans forward and puts a drink on the table for me, taking a sip from the one in his hand.

“I don't know what to say,” he starts. He's not looking at me. And aside from dragging me in by my arm, he hasn't even touched me. The light-blue dress shirt he's put on makes his tan skin glow, and he's gelled back his hair. I don't like it when his curls are hidden.

“You're going out,” I say.

“I have to meet some people for drinks. Business, of course. Then I'm going to your father's.”

“What people?”

He clinks the ice cubes in his glass. “You shouldn't have come.”

I stare at my own drink on the table—Coke, from the looks of it. I'm thirsty, but I don't pick it up. I could cry. I feel the tears waiting to pool and spill, but I don't let them get close enough to need to blink. Stupidly, I say it again. “I thought you'd be happy to see me.”

“I'm sorry. I am, but it's just not safe for you to be here and now—”

“But nobody knows I'm here,” I interrupt.

“You don't know that.” He stares over my shoulder to the window. The blinds block everything, but his mind is out in the courtyard shadows. “Why couldn't you just wait for me like we talked about? You have no idea what you're getting in the middle of.”

“Then tell me!”

His face doesn't change, and I understand that he's never going to tell me. I might as well be talking to myself. He takes one more sip and glances at his watch. It's titanium, smooth, exquisite, expensive. I've never seen it before.

“You have to trust me,” he says. “We can talk when I get back, but promise me you won't go anywhere.”

I can't stop staring at his watch. “I have no car,” I mutter. It's not as gaudy as the ones my father usually wears, but I can tell it's a ten-thousand-dollar piece. At least.

“And don't call anyone—not your sisters, not Marcel, not your father, not anybody.”

“You think you have to tell me that?” I ask, breaking away from the polished glare on his wrist. He's looking at me. Finally, he's looking at me, and for a second I see it in his eyes—the fear that explains his anger—and I want to forgive him. “I'm here for you,” I say. “I can help you get the money so we can get away from him forever. Or is that not still the plan?”

He stands, leaving his drink on the table. “I can't talk about this now.”

I stand too. I don't know why. I feel too dejected to walk him to his own door, but my feet move me along behind him anyway. If it's not still the plan, what am I doing here?

He takes his suit jacket from the back of a chair and slides his arms into the sleeves. Without thinking I step toward him to help him, easing the jacket over his shoulders, pulling the lapels forward, adjusting his shirt collar. I let my fingers rest on the warm skin at his neck.

He doesn't respond, and I realize it was a mistake. Touching him. Coming back. Believing the things he told me in Montreal. All of it. There are so many mistakes, I can't see where they started, where I need to go back to.

I take my hand away, but he catches my wrist and brings it back to his neck, pulling me in with his other hand, and his lips find mine before I realize what's happening.

One hungry kiss. One million stars. We're back on the yacht, stealing time, and everything else is inconsequential. I'm spinning, or he's turning me around, pushing me against the door, but I'm still lucid enough to know that the pressure of his mouth and the pain of his words can't both be true. So I choose this. His hands in my hair, his lips whispering my name between kisses—this is the Emilio I believe. I had fears, I think. It's not that they weren't legitimate, but I just can't quite remember them when his mouth finds my neck and his hands drop to my hips.

But then he pulls away without warning. “I'm sorry,” he says into my hair.

I can't think to speak. He's sorry. For kissing me? Or for everything else?

“After tomorrow, we'll be able to leave. And when this is all over and we're far away from here, promise me you'll still love me.”

I nod, numbly.

“Say it.”

“I'll always love you.”

“I have to go. Wait up for me?”

I nod again.

He pulls me away from the door, and leaves without another word.

My daze doesn't lift. I drift from room to room, and eventually the walls stop spinning, my heart slows, and the tiny apartment becomes artless and impersonal again. He's gone. But he's coming back.

I wander through the bedroom, the office, the kitchen, then find my way back to his bedroom. It smells like him. His sheets probably feel like him. I peel off my cold-weather layers—boots, sweater, leggings—pounds lighter as I drop each on the floor. They're so ugly and worn and full of lonely memories. I'm never wearing them again.

I find a soft brushed-cotton T-shirt in Emilio's dresser, slip it on, and fall into his bed. He said to wait up, but he'll be gone for hours, and I've been up for so long I can't remember when this day began. Or can I? That laugh. The hotel. Marcel. I close my eyes and hear the wail of a siren, wiping away the memory. I'm never going to think about that again.

When I open my eyes, I'm lost. If I dreamed, I don't remember it, and the blissful haze of before is gone. My skin is prickled with a chill. Except it's warm. I fell asleep with the lights on, but it still takes a few moments to place that sleek, curving lamp, the clock with all the numbers 12:53 lit up properly, the faintest smell of hibiscus. All that before I remember.

I sit up. “Emilio?”

No answer. I swing my legs out of bed. Maybe the gnawing dread is just hunger. I make my way to the kitchen, but Emilio has the disappointing fridge of a man who eats out. A lot. A block of cheddar and a stale bagel seem like my best bet, so I take both, along with a knife from one of the drawers, and head for the living room couch. I don't turn on the TV. I sit slicing rectangles of crumbling cheese, listening to the muted chirp of a million tropical insects.

It's all wrong. No more hoping and ignoring—I have to think everything through and force the strangest of these details to make sense. For starters, Emilio is not trying to get the money together to rescue his family. I was willing to believe that lie for as long as he told it, but he didn't even say it tonight. I said it. He said I had to trust him.

So he's changed his mind? So he loves me, but not enough to put everyone else he loves in danger? But then why not just tell me? And why would he kiss me like that, beg me to trust him, act like we're still going to escape together? If he's come up with another way, why wouldn't he tell me?

The answer collides like a fist in my gut. Something clatters. It's my knife hitting the floor, but I've already forgotten the sound because my heart is louder than a blade bouncing on tile, and I'm standing, running toward the door, stopping, turning around, grabbing my bag of clothes and shaking it out onto the couch. My phone. I pick it up, but my hands are shaking, and it takes me several tries to dial Emilio's number. It rings. It rings nine times, but I keep waiting, shaking, squeezing it to my ear, knowing he won't pick up. He probably doesn't even have that phone on him. It's probably somewhere in this apartment, turned off. Useless.

Like me.

Emilio is going to kill Papi.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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T
he phone becomes heavier and heavier in my hand. I stare at the buttons. Too many choices. I could call my sisters, but that wouldn't do any good. They don't know anything. They don't even know who Papi really is, and even if I could explain it all to them and actually make them understand, what could they do about it? Obviously I can't call the police. And I know a thousand people in this city, but I can't trust a single one of them.

I have to call Papi.

I watch my thumb key in the number, but it hovers over the call button. I can't do it. I squeeze my eyes shut and see Emilio's face, and feel his hands, and hear his laugh. If I call Papi, Papi will kill Emilio.

I clear the number and put the phone down. There has to be another way. If I knew where Emilio went, I could go find him and convince him not to do it, but he could be anywhere. Or he could already be at my house.
My house.
Should I go home? I have to go home. But I have no car and no cash.

I replay the moment of him leaving, his lips in my hair, whispering, pleading with me to love him after tomorrow.
After
tomorrow. Does that mean I have time to figure out how to stop this, or is he going back to my house tonight to do it?

Is he there right now?

The panic surges again, and I'm all unfocused energy. It feels like I'm watching someone else, but I'm not. It's me rummaging wildly through Emilio's things, emptying out his desk drawer, scattering the contents of the bedside table across the bed. He must have cash somewhere. I don't need much—cab fare to the south end of Key Biscayne won't be more than twenty-five dollars—but all I can find is loose change. Two quarters in the couch. A handful of nickels and pennies under receipts by the phone. Another quarter in his desk.

The drawer in the kitchen yields nothing but typical junk drawer odds and ends, and I'm about to move on when I see the key ring. It's small and plain, just a thin metal hoop with a single key, stuck to the inside of a roll of packing tape. I only stop because it looks familiar. But whatever memory it's attached to doesn't surface as I peel off the layer of tape holding it against the cardboard. I only know I've seen it before. It's the right size for a bike lock or maybe a drawer.