“Who is this?” I demand, heart pounding against my ribs. “Who are you?”
The call clicks off.
The cab door opens and Luka gets back in. “They’re gone,” he says grimly. “No one’s seen them.” And then he notices the phone tremoring in my hand. “Did you reach him?”
“Someone else answered,” I say.
The driver has finally managed to get us pointed across the road and is about to pull forward into the other lane when a light shines through the back window, right in my face. I shield my eyes. The light disappears. Someone pounds on the window.
Luka lunges across me to lock the door, tells the driver to go.
“Wait!” I say, unlocking the door. Hands from the outside pull it open.
“What are you doing?” Luka shouts, and I practically feel him prepare to launch through the door at the figure outside. At the sight of Claudia, he pulls up short.
“Hurry!” she says, grabbing my arm.
“What are you doing here?”
The driver shouts; Claudia snaps back and then launches into a diatribe that culminates with her throwing several kuna at him. A moment later he seems to apologize. Too profusely. And I sense she’s worked her Progeny ways on him, though I have no idea what she’s just said.
“He cheated your meter,” she says as we move away. A lie—for Luka’s sake, I assume.
We trek up the hill after Claudia as one car after another pulls from the line below us.
“Have you heard from Ivan?” I say.
“I did.” Her eyes dart to Luka.
“Where is he? Is he okay?”
“Come,” she says, and though her tone is brisk, her face is pale.
She leads us farther up the hill to a car idling on the side of the road. Piotrek’s behind the wheel. We get in, and Claudia turns around in the front seat. She looks younger in the dark without her black sunglasses, and far more human.
“So this is the friend,” she says, as Piotrek pulls ahead of the traffic.
“Luka,” I say.
“Well, Luka, I’m sorry to say you have come at a very bad time.” She slides a meaningful look to me.
“Any idea what happened?” Luka asks tightly, well aware, I know, that he isn’t supposed to know anything about this.
“I am afraid for the worst. Ivan has a history of bad company. It appears the past may have caught up to him tonight.”
“You mean like the mafia?”
“Well, he was from Serbia.”
“How did you know to come for us?” I ask.
“We were headed to Karlovac when Ivan called to say he thought he was being followed and to get you away. We came as quickly as we could.” She glances at Luka. “Ivan’s old associates have a habit of going after their victims’ friends.” She turns forward, and I can hear her exhale an unsteady breath.
“I tried his phone,” I say. “Someone else answered.”
Luka says, “If someone killed him on the ferry, they did it on the way over. They’d still be on the island.”
“You know your way around,” Piotrek says, silent until now. “But your accent is Slovakian.”
“I studied in Croatia—it’s where we met.” He takes my hand. “Before the mess of Audra’s ex showing up, of course, and everything since.”
For a moment there’s nothing but the sound of the car whizzing down the road. And then I realize we are headed not back toward Opatija but east.
“Where are we going?” I say.
“We go to Karlovac and then Zagreb,” Piotrek says, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.
“No. We can’t! Ivan had something to give me. Something from my mother, maybe. I need it.”
“It isn’t safe,” Claudia says.
“You don’t understand—”
“No, you don’t understand. Ivan lived in Lubenice. There are only two old ladies and hardly any tourists this time of year. You will stand out. And we cannot stay in Rijeka.”
“Actually, I would think they’d expect us to be running as far from Rijeka as possible,” Luka says slowly. And I suppose he should know, being a hunter himself.
“Whoever answered Ivan’s phone knew it was me,” I say. “They said my name.” I don’t need to tell her that Ivan’s killer by now knows everything Ivan himself did—including the fact that we had planned to meet him in Cres tonight. The thought makes my skin prickle, because it means they now know everything he did about me.
Piotrek exchanges a glance with Claudia. He says something in another language, which I expect Claudia to snap at. But she murmurs instead and covers her mouth. And I realize that, for as steely as she appeared earlier, she, too, has been badly shaken by tonight.
A minute later she makes a call. After a few brief exchanges I can’t make out, she nods to Piotrek. The car slows and pulls off onto a side street. Moments later, we’re headed back to Rijeka and Claudia has pulled the chip from her phone.
In the darkness, Luka has not let go of my hand. And I realize that whoever killed Ivan now knows that I’m traveling with someone, even if they don’t know his name. And I’m not certain if that is a good or a bad thing.
“I didn’t tell you that I met Claudia and Piotrek earlier,” I say to Luka. “They came with Ivan.”
“Yes,” Claudia says. “I promised our friends in Zagreb that I would confirm that she is alive before they go to the trouble of planning a celebration.”
“Ivan could have told you that,” I say. “I think you wanted to see me yourself . . . because you know me.”
Her head turns, her perfect profile illuminated by the headlights of passing cars. “So clever, always,” she murmurs. “Even with no memory you are hard to fool. Welcome back, Audra.”