Kiss Kill Vanish (33 page)

I run. Barefoot, I run over cold shards and hot blood, from the room and down the hall. I hear him cursing and stumbling behind me, but I don't turn to see how close he is or how badly he's hurt.

By the time I reach the front door I can't hear him chasing me anymore, but I don't stop. Not for shoes or pants or phone or breath. I glance over my shoulder, but I don't stop even when I hear him scream, “
Valentina!
” from the hallway where he's collapsed. It sounds like the scream of a tortured, desperate, lovesick animal. But he never loved me.

I fling the door open and run.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

H
ibiscus. Jasmine. Magnolia.

My body is numb. I feel nothing but the pounding in my chest as I tear down the steps and across the courtyard, but somehow I can smell the heady stench of floral rot. The air is sticky sweet and pulsing with it. Too much.

I don't stop to think which way to go once I reach the curb. My legs propel me in one direction and I fly, feeling nothing. Birds squawk and shriek in the low-hanging branches over my head, which means it's nearly morning, but it's still dark. They scream loudest right before the sun rises. That's when paradise sounds like hell.

Slap, slap, slap, slap.
I can't feel my feet, but I hear them smack against the pavement. The sidewalk carves a tunnel through the foliage, shadowed from moonlight and street light and the beginnings of a sunrise. I can barely see, but that's safer. The dark can hide me. I know vaguely where I'm heading—away from Brickell and downtown—but destination is irrelevant as long as Emilio's not behind me. I check over my shoulder without slowing my pace and see nothing. Still, he could be driving around looking for me, or maybe he's called someone else to come get me. The FBI. The police. I don't know.

Once my adrenaline starts to wane, the obvious becomes painfully clear. I'm shoeless, pantless, and phoneless. I need help, and though practically everyone I've ever known lives in this city, there's nobody I can trust. Not now. Not ever again.

I pause at an intersection, and in the distance, I catch sight of a figure on the street. Running. Toward me. A surge of panic hits me and I nearly stumble backward, but then I see it's a runner. A woman. When she gets close enough I wave my arms, praying she doesn't look at me and run in the other direction.

“Excuse me,” I call.

She slows to a walk, eyes wide as she fiddles with something in the side of her hydration belt. Mace. She holds up her clenched fist to show me the canister.

“Do you have a phone?” I ask shakily, taking a step toward her so she can see me better, both hands held out.

She swears.

“I just need to make one call.”

“Are you okay?” She puts the Mace back in her belt and pulls out a cell phone. “Do you want me to call the police?”

“No. I just need to call my friend to come get me. Please.”

She's staring at my feet, no, behind my feet. I follow her gaze and see the trail of dark splotches. Blood. My feet are suddenly throbbing. There isn't just one point of pain, but dozens, like the soles are on fire, and the flames are climbing up my calves.

Speechless, she hands me her phone, her eyes never leaving the trail behind me. I close my eyes, concentrating. His number. A jumble of digits appear in my mind, but are they in the right order? I need them to float magically into place. I've seen them enough times now, since I could never bring myself to program his name into my phone. All the times he called when I hoped it was Emilio. A fresh rush of anger pushes the numbers into place, and I've got it. I hope. I dial. He won't be awake, and if he is, he's probably in no condition to drive.

Marcel picks up, and I choke out his name.

“Valentina.” His voice is groggy but clear.

I let out a sob. The relief is so strong I can't think what to say.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” I manage. “Can you come get me?”

It takes Marcel only ten minutes to find me. Jogger girl waits for the first few, but I eventually convince her that I'm fine, that I locked myself out and stepped on a broken beer bottle, that she should go. She can't possibly believe any of it, but she trots off anyway.

Once she's gone, I wish she wasn't. The sky has lightened to cobalt, and I'm more visible every second. I lean into the trunk of a palm tree and watch the corner where I told Marcel to come. More runners pass. Homeless people. Early commuters. Feral cats.

Finally the black Range Rover glides up onto the curb, and I begin limping toward him before he even stops, pain shooting up my legs with every step. His face is hard with rage, but I don't let myself think about it. Not yet. I look down. Almost there. I reach the door, pull it open, place my foot inside, and try to climb in, but lightning shoots up my calf when I put my entire body weight on the ball of my foot. I start to fall back, but Marcel grips my upper arms and hoists me up onto the seat.

“Thank you,” I mumble, righting myself, tugging the T-shirt down.

He leans across me, closes my door, and pulls back onto the street. “What the hell did he do to you?”

“Nothing. Just drive.”

He drives, anger rolling off him like smoke, his knuckles white from choking the steering wheel. I should have already thought through what I'm going to tell him, but my feet hurt, and the shock is wearing off, and I want to cry, so I say nothing. He says nothing. We make it through downtown, to the MacArthur Causeway, and halfway over the bridge to South Beach before either of us speaks.

“Okay, let's hear it,” he says.

“I don't know where to start.”

“Start with your feet.”

“My feet?” I look down at them. Easy enough to explain. “I broke a lamp on his head, then I ran over it.” From the top they look fine, except for the rust-colored stain between my toes where the blood has worked its way up and dried. But when I lift my right foot and see the sole for the first time, I almost gag. It looks like hamburger where the flesh has torn and ripped away. Only three jagged chunks of the porcelain lamp are visible—one in the heel, two in the ball—but there could be a dozen more that I can't see in that pulpy mess.

I don't check my left foot, but it feels about the same.

“You need to go to the ER,” he says.

“
No
. Just take me to . . .” I almost say
wherever you're staying
, but I don't even know who he's staying with, or where we're going right now.

“I'll take you to my hotel,” he says.

“I thought you were staying with friends.”

“Well, I'm not.”

I lean my head back and close my eyes, picturing Emilio staggering down the hall behind me, blood trickling down his forehead onto his perfectly pressed shirt. Except he's not Emilio.

“You cold?” Marcel asks.

“What?”

“You're shivering.”

“Oh.” But I'm not just shivering, I'm convulsing. My teeth are chattering, and I feel like my whole body is tightening around an earthquake.

He turns on the heat. “The blanket is still back there. You want me to pull over and get it for you?”

“I'm not cold.”

I stare out my window. Palm trees fly by, too fast to count, skinny bars against the background of cruise liners and ocean. I thought I missed this view—the pristine white ships rising out of sapphire waves—but I don't feel nostalgia. I feel throbbing in my feet and my chest and my eyes.

We drive through the trickle of Miami Beach's earth lovers—dog walkers and joggers and Whole Foods patrons with their cloth bags and organic greens. It's all familiar, but I'm separate. Just a spectator. The luxury condos and hotels flip by like a movie.

Marcel pulls into the valet lane of the Setai. “Wait,” he says to me, and hands the valet a bill from his wallet. He comes around the front of the car, opens my door, and slides an arm under my knees and behind my neck.

“I can walk,” I say.

“Don't be an idiot.” He lifts me out of the car.

The lobby is glossy and dimly lit, but not so dark that I shouldn't be embarrassed. The T-shirt may or may not be covering my butt, but I'm too spent for humiliation. I could insist on walking and I might look like I'm on my way to the pool, but I'm not convinced I wouldn't pass out if I put an ounce of weight on either foot, so I lay my head against Marcel's shoulder and give up.

Once we're in his room, Marcel takes me to the round marble tub and sits me on the ledge. He turns on the water. “Is this okay?”

“It's a lot nicer than the Holiday Inn.”

“I mean, is the water too hot?”

My feet are still up on the ledge, but I take my right and dip a toe in. “No, it's good.”

But when I try to put my whole foot in, the pain makes me gasp.

“Here. Put it under the running water.” He reaches for my foot. I shake my head, but he takes it anyway and holds it under the faucet.

I grit my teeth until the burning recedes into numbness and I can't feel anything. Ribbons of blood twist from my foot, curl around the drain, and disappear. All that pain. Gone. Emilio. Gone.

Good.

Marcel takes my left foot and does the same. It hurts just as much, but this time the pain is the start of something new and constructive. Like anger. This is the last of Emilio hurting me. I'm finished being lied to by him and my father. And I'm finished being taken by surprise. Valentina the victim is gone, swirling-down-the-tub-drain gone.

Marcel lifts both feet out of the tub and wraps them in a towel, then leaves me in the bathroom. I hear him pick up the phone. “Can I get a first aid kit brought to the room, please? . . . . Tweezers and bandages . . . Yeah. . . . Oh, and Neosporin too. Thanks.”

The phone clicks, and Marcel comes back to the bathroom. He sits across from me on the other side of the tub, and I take a good look at him for the first time. He looks tired, his hair all mussed and his eyes puffy.

“I woke you up,” I say.

He raises an eyebrow. I don't know what that means.

“I'm sorry,” I say.

“When do I get to go kill him?”

“You don't.” I pull my right foot out of the towel and hold it up for him to see. “How bad is it?”

“Pretty bad. Now tell me what happened.”

“Can you get me some pants first?”

“Deal.” He goes off to find me something to wear, and I reposition my feet in the bloodstained towel. Not telling Marcel is the smartest thing. It's the safest thing, too. Smart and safe, though—it seems like I've abandoned both already.

“Shorts?” he asks from the doorway, holding up a pair of khaki cargos.

“Sure.”

“Do you need help?”

I shake my head. He hands them to me. There's a knock at the door, and he goes off to answer it while I carefully ease them over my feet, then wiggle into them without actually standing up.

I have no reason to trust anyone ever again. But if I had to trust someone, it'd be Marcel. That seems so obvious now.

“I have tools,” he says, holding up a first aid kit. “Where do you want to do this?”

“The bed?”

He carries me to the four-poster king-size. He sits at the foot of the bed, puts a pillow in his lap, and places my towel-wrapped feet on top of that. “So there's some rubbing alcohol in this first aid kit.”

“Go ahead.”

“It's going to hurt.”

“I know.”

“A lot.”

“Just do it.”

The pain is searing and white hot. Even with clenched teeth, I can't stop myself from gasping.

“Sorry,” he says, then runs a swab over the other foot. Just as bad. I'm shivering with the pain, but then it fades and is over just as quickly.

Comparatively, what follows—the tweezers digging around in my raw, hanging flesh—barely hurts. Marcel holds each piece of porcelain up for me to see.

“Nice one,” I say in response to the third sliver he pulls out of my right foot.

“Thanks.”

“You should consider a career as a surgeon.”

“Two problems with that,” he says, and holds up another chunk of porcelain. “It might make my dad happy, and it'd require me to go back and finish high school. You said you'd tell me what happened if I got you something to wear.”

“Did I?”

He rolls his eyes.

“First tell me about the blonde in your room,” I say.

“What? Nobody's been in my room but you.”

“Not this one,” I say. “The Holiday Inn.”

“How'd you know she was blond?”

I don't answer.

He keeps his eyes on my foot. “Does that bother you?”

“No.”

“Yes, it does.”

“No, it doesn't.”

“Yes, it does. That's why I did it.”

“You slept with some girl you didn't even know just to make me mad?”

“I didn't sleep with her. But yeah, I had her in my room just to make you mad.”

“And I'm supposed to believe that?”

He pulls another sliver out, a tiny one, and holds it up before putting it beside the others on the spare towel. “I don't care if you believe me. It clearly did make you mad, though, which means I accomplished my goal.”

“You jerk.”

“You had it coming.”

I wince.

“Sorry. I think this is the last one in this foot.”

I lie back into the pillows and stare at the crown molding.

“Your turn,” he says.

I tell him. I start at when he pulled away from Emilio's apartment, and after that the words tumble out on their own. Emilio lied to me. Used me. Never loved me. Saying it scrapes at the humiliation a little, but I feel better after hearing it aloud. I omit the part about Lucien, of course, but I'm used to this deception and the guilt that comes with it. “So you were right,” I end with.