“Someone else just got back,” I say.
We lie, limbs twined, after the final burn of the night. It’s nearly dawn. I felt the first couple return hours ago. I can hear them, talking in the front room.
Luka smells like sweat and skin. I know this scent, though I don’t remember it. I love it—and him. I know that, too, though it’s only been days. But experience is not love.
And I am done with logic.
We talk in the darkness of the purple lamp, and I tell him everything. He’s quiet the entire time.
“I haven’t been afraid since the day you walked into the Food Mart,” he says at last. “Not really. Not until now.”
Claudia’s words ring through my mind:
I want to live.
I straighten against Luka’s chest, lift my head to look at him.
“Then we’ll go until we aren’t afraid,” I say. I roll toward the package on the bed stand, tangled in my obi.
Luka’s fingers light on my spine.
“Audra . . .” he says strangely.
I peer inside the package and then curse. It’s full of cash, no passports.
“What’s this, on your back?”
I crane around, not knowing what he means.
A scream erupts from down the hall. At first I think it’s an obscene laugh, or a screech from the kitchen, maybe the coffeemaker. Until it comes again, horribly human and hysterical.
I shove my arms into Luka’s damp dress shirt and run into the front room after Luka, who is still buttoning his jeans.
Ana is swaying on her feet; Piotrek grabs her by the waist. Claudia, pale and frozen, holds her phone in a shaking hand.
“What’s going on?” Luka says.
Claudia turns the phone toward me.
I cup my hand around hers to steady it. A picture on the screen—a video. A human form, bound and badly beaten. I take in the angle of the shoulders, stymied by the blackened eyes and swelling cheek. But I recognize the aubergine jacket, which I last saw riding away on a Vespa.
Nino.
I turn away. But I can’t unsee it, or stop staring even after it’s gone from sight. A groan from the video. He’s alive, if not conscious. And somehow the sound makes it worse.
“Nino never showed up,” Claudia says faintly, holding the phone out for someone to take it. Luka does and, mouth grim, turns away to replay the video.
“Why? Why? Nino!” Ana cries, splintering my heart.
And I know, without being told, that this is because of me.
I convinced Nikola I needed Luka. Thought as soon as we left we’d all be safe. But the Prince of Budapest never meant to let me go without collateral.
How long have they been watching me? How easy was it for him to see my soft spot for Ana, for whom the moon rises and sets on Nino?
“Which of them did this?” Piotrek demands.
“Nikola,” I say, hoarse.
“Where would they take him? He can’t be that far.”
“Listen.” Luka turns up the volume. Drone of an engine.
I move toward him, force myself to watch the full twenty-two seconds from the beginning, to take in the dark interior, the jostle of the phone recording the video, the metal floor beneath him. “He’s in a semi trailer. He could be anywhere.”
I press my fingers against my eyes. One toss of my mask. A grand-bow exit. Claudia’s wrong—I didn’t give the finger to everyone, just to Nikola.
This is my fault.
I take it all back—the bravado, the insinuation. The accusations, the snark.
I have to find Nikola. To say I’ll do it. I’ll find it and give it to him, say I’m sorry—whatever he wants to hear.
Claudia’s phone rings in Luka’s hand. She stares across the room at it, face stricken.
“Answer it,” I say. She takes it from him as one in a trance. Answers, and then holds it toward me.
“It’s for you,” she whispers.
I snatch it to my ear. “Who is this?”
“Audra.” Tibor.
I move out of earshot of Ana. “Where’s Nino?” I hiss.
“Is it true what you said?”
“Yes,” I say, not knowing what he’s even referring to, trying to replay the conversation now jumbled in my head. “Isn’t it obvious that he’s playing you? We just got a video of Nino beaten half to death in a truck! If you think for a minute that I’m going to do anything to help you—”
“I didn’t know about your mother. What Nikola said about murdering her . . . Progeny don’t turn on their own.”
“Nikola’s a killer, Tibor. Criminally insane. Where’s Nino?” I demand.
“I don’t know! I just heard that he was taken near the edge of the city.”
“Then tell me where to find Nikola.”
“You don’t just find Nikola! He finds you! Forget Nino. He’s as good as dead.”
I spin away, out of earshot of Ana. “Don’t say that!”
“I’m sending you Jester. It’s the best I can do.”
“I don’t want Jest—”
The call clicks off. I stare at the phone and then throw it across the room.
When I turn, even Piotrek’s face is white.
“We have to go,” I say.
We leave ten minutes later, Luka practically carrying a catatonic Ana to the car.
“Where?” Piotrek says as we leave the old upper city.
Behind darkened glasses, I mentally search the map I saw in the back of the in-flight magazine. The Budapest court, once our next destination, is now last on the list somewhere below Afghanistan. Which leaves Bosnia to the south, Slovenia to the north, and Italy to the far west, given our lack of passports.
“Go north,” Luka says.
No one speaks. Ana sags against the corner of the backseat beside me, doped up on something Claudia gave her. Whatever it is, I wish I had some, too. I can’t stop shifting, my legs too restless, my skull pounding so hard I think I may be sick.
Luka lays his arm around me, but it doesn’t help. I am replaying my conversation with Nikola last night, my unfortunate exit from court. Wishing I could redo it, sneak out the back, that we had all left within the hour. I cannot erase the image of Nino beaten nearly beyond recognition. Between him and Ivan, I wonder if I will ever be free of guilt.
Hell must be like this.
So this is what it has come to, the search that first brought me here: all of us in a crowded Skoda on the run to nowhere.
This time there is no mention of the mafia, no talking around what we are in front of Luka, and Ana is too doped to notice.
“Audra,” Luka murmurs near my ear sometime later. Claudia and Ana are dozing, Piotrek fixed on the road, his gaze miles away. I lift my head, realize belatedly that I must have dozed, too.
“I think I know what goes with your key.”