Vivian Divine Is Dead (9 page)

I see your soul
, I want to say, but I bite my tongue, and hope he sees mine.

My own scream wakes me. I sit straight up, my skin itching with fear.

“What’s wrong?” Nick asks, sitting up beside me.

It’s another nightmare. I’m in the black box again, something pressing into me from all sides, but I don’t feel guilty this time, I just feel scared.

“Are you okay?” Nick searches my face for an answer, but I can’t bring myself to speak. I shake my head, and as if the tears were lodged in there, they shake out and pour down my cheeks.

Nick strokes the tears off my face, and I’m embarrassed, but I can’t stop crying.

I never cry in front of anyone!
Even at Mom’s funeral I didn’t shed a single tear for the cameras. But this time, it’s like the floodgates opened, and my fear and sadness and shame are pouring out all over him.

But Nick doesn’t seem to mind. He takes me in his arms and rocks me, back and forth, more gently than I ever thought possible. I don’t want to speak, to ruin the moment. And then I think:
This is the most intimate moment I’ve ever had
. So I let him hold me and rock me and rub my back. Neither of us says a word. Then the impossible happens: I drift back off to sleep, somehow comforted in Nick’s arms.

Chapter Eleven

I
WAKE THE NEXT MORNING
still wrapped in Nick’s arms. The world is unbearably bright, and it smells like pine needles and damp soil. I bury my head in his chest, wanting to stay there forever. But nature has other ideas. I wait until pain fills my bladder, wanting every last moment with Nick, then I stand up and hobble deeper into the woods to find a place to pee.

The woods aren’t so scary this morning. They’re dressed in the orange-and-black wings of monarchs. There’s a flowering meadow to my left, and when I glance to my right, I’m surprised to see that we are less than fifty feet from the windy dirt road.
We were supposed to stay off the road, but we must have crossed it last night in the dark.

After I find a place to pee, I stand up and head back toward Nick, amazed at how the ground is a fluttering orange carpet, its smooth surface broken only by a small mound at the end of the clearing.
A bundle of firewood?
I imagine the pride lighting up Nick’s face when I return, cradling an armful of wood for our morning fire.

As I walk, butterflies lift into the air and swirl around my legs, their wings tickling my skin. I feel something growing inside of me, a small flame of happiness that I haven’t felt since Mom died. I want to cup my hands around it, to protect this tiny feeling of joy flickering inside of me, warming the ice that’s frozen across my heart. I think of Nick’s arms, his smile, his strong chest pressed against my back . . .

When I reach the mound at the end of the clearing, it’s layered with butterflies. There’s a sweet smell that I can’t place. I reach down to grab the wood, and the butterflies spring off it, leaving something exposed in the sunshine: a body.

My scream echoes through the forest, bouncing off trees and scaring the whole forest to life. Orange wings rain down on me, beating against me like a heavy snow. Birds call in shrieking high voices. I hear Nick yell “Ines!” and his footsteps charging toward me. All this is happening in slow motion, as if from very far away, because I can’t do anything but look at him: the dark suit, pale skin, and two giant orange butterflies resting on his eyelids.

A physical pain surges in my chest, rolling up my throat, into the back of my mouth . . . I vomit in the bushes. I crouch over and try to hide myself behind a tree. The bitter taste of vomit coats the back of my tongue.

Nick skids to a stop when he reaches me, the branches breaking under his weight like snapping bones. “That’s him!” he exclaims. “The man at my cousin’s house!”

The world speeds up to its normal pace, and I realize I’m trembling from head to toe. “Are you sure?” My voice is frantic, and I have to work to keep it steady.

Nick nods. “Are you okay?”

Do I look okay? Is anything about this situation okay?
I wipe off my mouth and crawl out from behind the tree, embarrassment pushing heat into my cheeks. “What should we do?” I ask, turning my head away in case my breath smells rotten.

“Let’s get out of here. Somebody didn’t want him found, and if they know we found him . . .” Nick says. “I don’t know what will happen. But it has nothing to do with us.”

It has nothing to do with you
.
And everything to do with me.
I suck on my front teeth, trying to swallow back the taste of vomit in my mouth.
And it’s not just you that I’m putting in danger. What if Dad’s dead in the middle of nowhere, thanks to me? What if they tortured him to find out where I am, and when he wouldn’t give me up, they killed him?

I push back the thought and force myself to look at the dead man: the tailored pants, the crisp suit jacket, the perfectly knotted tie . . . I stop just below the face. I can’t look at it, not with those orange butterflies resting over his dead eyes.

“We’ve gotta get out of here now,” Nick says.

“Shouldn’t we do something to—”

“Did you hear that?” Nick interrupts me, his voice a thick whisper.

“I didn’t hear anything,” I say, looking at the dead man’s lips. I’m waiting for them to move, to form the words
help me
. I remember Dad on the day Mom was killed: how he cried out to her when I kneeled beside him, and how behind him, the TV alternated between images of Mom’s knifed back and that horrible building in an endless loop. I turned off the TV and swore I’d never see those images again.
But I did—when it was my turn to die.

“That,” Nick says again, and I hear it this time: a car engine rattling up the road. “I’ll find out who it is.” He pulls his gun from his pocket and drops two bullets in the chamber. “Stay here. If I’m not back in two minutes, run.”

“You’re gonna leave me here?”
Definitely a bad idea.
The last time I was alone, my bag was stolen and I would have died on the roadside if it weren’t for Nick. I grab his hand and squeeze as hard as I can. “Please don’t go.”

“I’ll be right back. You can see me from here.” Nick points to the dusty mountain road not far from the clearing, a short enough distance to run to if I need him. He strokes the back of his hand softly across my cheek. “He can’t hurt you. He’s dead.”

Nick’s wrong about that. The dead can hurt you. Much worse than the living.

“I’ll be right back, okay?” Nick gives me a reassuring smile and walks through the trees, looking back every few steps to make sure I’m okay.

“Okay,” I whisper. But I’m not okay. If I were okay, I wouldn’t be sitting by a dead body in the middle of the woods in Mexico, waiting for someone to find me and kill me. But at least the body hasn’t come back to life and dragged me into his grave—yet.

I inch a little closer, wondering who he is, what he’s doing out here, and most importantly, if he was looking for me.

A morbid fascination creeps over me. Despite the thin red line across his throat where somebody sliced the life out of him, he looks like he could be sleeping. I lean a little closer to the man, my heart pounding. Beneath me, a stick snaps, loud as a gunshot.

I jump, and the butterflies scatter off the man’s face. His eyes are open in terror, but it’s not the look that scares me. It’s the colors.

One brown eye. One blue.

It’s the FBI agent Mary hit with the limo.

I bite down on my bottom lip so I don’t scream aloud, and sink backward, vomit rising in my throat again. I picture him flipping over the roof, the way his mouth opened and closed silently behind the thick glass.
He was following me this whole time.

It feels like a hundred years ago that I was huddled in my limo, frozen under his gun’s black eye.
Who killed him?
A wave of shock ripples through me, paralyzing me with fear.
Are they going to kill me, too?

The roar of an engine startles me out of my thoughts. I hear Nick shouting something in Spanish and brakes squealing to a stop. I glance through the trees to the road, where Nick’s standing with his back to me.
I have to know why he was following me. If I don’t find out now, I’ll never know.

Hoping Nick doesn’t turn around, I push my fingers into the FBI agent’s shirt pockets
. Empty
.
There’s got to be something here. A business card, a cell phone, anything to tell me why he was following me.
I rifle through his pants pockets, and then turn to his suit jacket.
I can’t believe I’m doing this. Is stealing from the FBI a federal crime?

From the inside left pocket of his suit jacket, I pull out his FBI badge.
Agent Patterson. Temporary replacement ID.

I shove his badge back into his jacket, and then dig into his other inside pocket. My fingers catch on a small white envelope.
Bingo.
I open the envelope and shake out the contents. A ragged napkin falls onto his dead chest, and a folded piece of paper lands in the grass by my feet. I pick the napkin up with my fingertips and inspect it quickly. On the back is a hastily scribbled set of numbers:

12.03.60.6.

Are these lotto numbers? Why would he be playing lotto at a time like this?
Slowly the numbers fall into place:
They’re my bus numbers from L.A. and Tijuana.
I picture Mary’s note, the one she told me to destroy:
Buy a cash ticket for the 1203 bus to Tijuana, then transfer to the 606 bus to Rosales.
I would have walked right into his hands if the bus hadn’t broken down.
He knew everything. What would he have done to me if he’d caught me?

On the road, the car engine shuts off, and silence crawls over the forest.

Focus
. I force my hand to pick up the paper off the ground and unfold it. It’s a picture of me. I’m standing with Mary, looking straight into the camera. The edges are torn and wrinkled, as if it’s been passed through many hands.
How many people want me dead? And why?

As I quickly stuff the envelope back into the agent’s jacket pocket, I hear footsteps inches behind me. My body relaxes.
Nick’s back. He’ll know what to do.

“Nick, I was just looking for—”

“¿Quién?”

That isn’t Nick’s voice
. That voice reminds me of urine and churches and looming black shadows. My mouth goes dry, and my tongue scrapes against my chapped lips. And when I turn around, it isn’t Nick.

It isn’t Nick at all.

Chapter Twelve

T
HE MAN STANDING IN FRONT
of me hardly looks human. He’s huge, as big as a tree. A line of rough stitches curves from his forehead to his chin, like someone carved him up and sewed him back together. Gray snakes are tattooed on his face, slithering down his neck, onto his gigantic biceps and gnarly hands.

My whole body cramps with terror, and a lump the size of a fist lodges in my throat. I glance behind me, wondering if I can make it farther into the forest before he reaches me. But before I can move an inch, the man grabs my chin with his bony fingers, his knuckles grinding into my cheekbones as he forces me to look at him.

“Vivian,” he growls.

I back away slowly, snapping twigs beneath my feet, until his arm is completely stretched out, his bony hand still wrapped around my chin. “Where’s Nick?” I whimper.

He grabs my wrist with his other hand and clenches down on my arm until it feels like my bones will break. I’m so focused on the searing pain in my arm that I hardly notice that he’s pulling me through the forest like a piece of dead firewood, my feet barely touching the ground.

“Nick!” I scream. “Help!”

But when we break through the trees, there’s nobody on the road.

“What did you do to Nick?”

The man slides his fingertip across his burly neck.
Please tell me he didn’t cut Nick’s throat.

“NICK!” I scream at the top of my lungs.

The man flings open the passenger door and shoves me in. Under my thick layer of fear, I feel anger rush through the cracks.
What if Nick needs me?

Imagining Nick’s bloody body, a fire sparks in the base of my stomach.
He could be lying half-dead in the bushes, bleeding to death!
Anger explodes inside me and I throw myself against the door, but it’s locked from the outside.
Try the window.
I grab the handle, and I’ve rolled the window down an inch when the driver’s door is wrenched open and the man is sitting beside me, his horrible face only inches from mine.

We fly up the mountain road, dust coating the car in a thick skin. Biting my lip to keep from crying, I watch the ground fly by, gauging if it would kill me to jump.

I’ve done it before. I jumped out of a moving car for a stunt in
Zombie Killer.
Dad taught me to push my chin into my chest and curl my body into a ball when I jumped.
Make it authentic
, Dad said, and it worked. When I hit the padded floor, it didn’t hurt at all. Of course, the car was going only five miles per hour through a fully padded studio. I glance back at the road.
But even if I could get the window down in time to jump out, hitting pure gravel at sixty miles per hour? Not good odds.

I reach up and put on my seat belt.
At least I won’t go through the windshield—if he doesn’t kill me first.
“Who sent you?” I ask, my voice quivering so much I can barely make out the words. The man obviously can’t work on his own. He wouldn’t have made it out of the circus without someone unlocking the cage.

He grunts, then pulls a plastic-wrapped cigar out of his front pocket, rips the plastic off with his teeth, and gnaws off the end. Pieces of brown paper stick to his teeth and lips.

“Please tell me,” I whisper, dropping my voice to the most soothing tone I know.
Maybe I can talk him into letting me go. If I just give him the right incentive . . .

Snatching a lighter off the dashboard, he lights his cigar and sucks it until the tip glows like the end of a sparkler.

“Just tell me what you did to Nick,” I beg. His mouth tightens into a sharp line and he grips the steering wheel tighter with his huge, tattooed hands.
He’s listening. Keep talking.
I take a deep breath, getting ready for my big speech.
This is where the heroine talks the villain out of killing her.
I’ll explain how he can have a better life than this, that he’ll find somebody to love him, that he can get an honest job (maybe in the circus), how with that face, he’d be a great character actor.

“You don’t have to do this,” I say quietly. “I can help you. I’ll take you back to Hollywood with me. My agent can get you a role in a movie. We could even get you plastic surgery—”

A voice erupts right above my head, and I jump so high I hit the ceiling, almost smacking my temple on the CB radio poking out of the rearview mirror.
“Scars!”
the voice orders over the CB.
“Atención!”

“Scars?” I repeat, and the tattooed man glares at me in response.
So his name is Scars? You’ve got to be kidding me.
Are we in the movie
The Godfather
or something?

“
Silencio
,” Scars says to me as he takes the CB radio out of the front visor. He pushes a red button and lowers his lips to it, one side of his snake-infested face twitching with nerves.
Who on earth could make this man nervous?
“
¿Sí, señor?
” he asks.

“
Tráigala a la casa
,” the voice orders.
“¿Comprende, Scars?”

“
Comprendo
,” Scars repeats. He flies around a switchback on the mountain road, and a mix of motion sickness and stark terror makes me focus on the floor. By my feet, there’s a folded suit, faded green like a soldier’s uniform.

“Are you in the military?” I ask.

“¿En los militares?”
Scars inhales sharply on his cigar, and his cheeks puff out with smoke. Then coughing erupts from his lips, and smoke billows out in every direction. The cigar shoots out of his mouth and hits the floor. I stare at the lit cigar for a second, burning into the carpet by his foot.
This is my chance.

In one movement, I grab the burning cigar and shove it into his leg. He howls, wrenching the wheel to the side. We skid off the road, and there’s this moment that stretches on and on, where all is silent, and we’re slowly careening toward the earth, before the car flips. Then glass shatters around me, and I can’t hear my screams over the screech of steel crushing; the ground and sky are switching places, the world breaking into pieces. We flip again. And again.

When it stops, I’m folded into the ceiling. Every muscle in my body hurts. I hear Scars groaning beside me. He’s trapped behind the steering wheel, bleeding from the forehead. There’s a nasty hole in his leg, the skin already bubbling up around it. He pounds the steering wheel with his fist, and the smell of his burned skin mixes with thick smoke.
The cigar must still be burning
.

I pop off my seat belt, drop to the floor, and kick the door open. Coughing tears from my throat as I breathe in the smoke pouring from the engine.
It’s not the cigar: the engine’s on fire.

“Vivian!” Scars screeches, letting out a horrible, wounded animal sound. He grabs my hair, and I whip around and bite his hand as hard as I can. He screams, letting go of my hair. I climb out of the car and scramble up the rocky hillside.

Without the shade of the forest, sun pounds down on the rocks, heating them like the inside of a dry sauna. My fingers burn from grabbing them, and my knees feel like they’re bleeding from scrambling over their searing edges. Behind me, Scars’s angry voice races up the rocks, grabbing at my heels as I sprint up the mountain.

The
boom
of the explosion stops me in my tracks. The vile stench of gasoline fills the air and smoke climbs up the sky with its grasping paws. The burst of heat rolling over me singes my skin.

Nobody could live through an explosion like that.
Even so, for a long time after his voice dies and the smoke settles, I keep running. Scrambling. Crawling. I don’t stop running until my side pulses with pain, until rocks have ripped through my jeans and torn most of the skin from my knees.