The Liberation of Alice Love (19 page)

“It was lovely to meet you all,” she agreed, leaning over to exchange more kisses with the women. Then Rafael ran his hand down her bare back in a secret caress and Alice forgot niceties; she let him usher her out of the bar and into the dark street, barely steps from the heavy glass doors before he pulled her against him.

The kiss was hard and hot, and Alice tripped against him, dizzy as he held her upright. “My apartment is near,” he murmured, hands tight against her waist. Alice nodded, afraid her voice would belie her truth. She didn’t do this, it wasn’t her, but, “
Oh
…”—she let out an involuntary moan as his lips closed on her neck. As her head fell back, she caught sight of people down the street, eyes flicking curiously toward them while Rafael’s hands dipped lower, brazen.

Alice didn’t care.

The rest was a blur of kisses and roaming hands, Alice pressed almost horizontal in the backseat of a taxi as she lost herself to the pressure of his touch until they jerked to a sudden stop. Rafael dragged her from the car. They must have passed a lobby, and the stairs, but clutching Rafael’s jacket—his hands burning against her skin as they slipped beneath the draped back of her dress—Alice barely noticed. The only surroundings she registered were the hasty rattle of keys and a distant church bell and then the polished floor was hard against her, cold as he dragged her down. She gasped. Pinning her arms above her head with one hand, Rafael paused to watch her, his eyes dark with lust. Alice’s blood was surging. She wanted more, before she lost her nerve and this all faded away. Pushing up, she tried to reach his lips, but he ducked back just an inch, teasing her. Alice tugged at her wrists, but his weight was too heavy, pressing them into the floor, so she made a noise of frustration, and arched up again, this time reaching far enough to capture his mouth in a ragged kiss. She bit down on his bottom lip and then he broke, releasing her arms and kissing her hungrily again, his hands tangling in her hair, her dress, her thighs. Alice was mindless. Her usual detachment was gone, and instead, the world had shrunk to nothing but the heavy press of his body on hers and the heat of their mouths and the gorgeous pressure—“
Oh
,
God. There
”
—
as he pushed up her dress and drew his hand firm against her.

It wasn’t enough.

Pulling herself from his embrace, Alice rose to her feet. Her heart was racing, and her breath was coming fast, but still, she found herself steady as she turned away from him and took a few steps toward the open bedroom door, slow and provocative. She paused for a moment, the shock of reality suddenly threatening to strip her of her bold abandon—
was she really doing this?—
but then Rafael groaned “Angelique,” and cloaked in her foreign name, Alice felt a rush of power. This wasn’t real; it didn’t count.

She unhooked the slim straps of her dress, letting it fall to the floor in a flutter of red silk before continuing into the bedroom.

Chapter Nineteen

It was still dark when Alice climbed out of her taxi and skipped up the hotel steps. She felt almost drunk from the events of that night—dizzy, and faintly disbelieving. Vivid flashes kept flooding her mind, and without the murmur of somebody else’s name to give her distance from her own actions, Alice’s cheeks flushed hot with the memories.

She’d been shameless.

“
Signora
Love?”

A determined-looking woman moved across the lobby toward her. She was dressed in a red suit with crisp shirt, but despite the name tag that gleamed on her lapel, it took Alice a moment to realize this must be the elusive Carina.

“Yes?” Alice wavered by the elevator, still half existing back in Rafael’s tangled sheets. “Is the computer back up? Because I’d rather go through check-in tomorrow. It’s late,” she apologized, patting down her disheveled hair. “So I’d really—’”

Carina turned her back on Alice and snapped her fingers. Two uniformed men appeared from beside the reception desk: young, and dark haired, with neat blue shirts and navy shorts. Police uniforms, Alice registered. She looked at them blankly.

“Is something wrong? Did something happen, back at home?”

They didn’t reply. Instead, the men studied her curiously while Carina began to speak in rapid Italian, gesturing emphatically with every other sentence. Alice waited, confused, until she caught sight of Pascal in the background.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, taking a step toward him. Immediately, one of the policemen moved to block her path. For the first time, Alice felt a tremor of fear. “What’s happening?” she demanded, louder this time. “What is this?”

Carina finally broke off her tirade. She glared at Alice. “You are foolish, yes, to come back? To make fun and scorn me?”

Alice shook her head, still trying to follow. It was too far from the gloss and glitter of her evening to this cold reception. “No, there’s some mistake. I’ve never been here before.”

“Ha!” Carina gave a disdainful snort. “Not three months ago you come, and stay with us, and then leave without payment.” Turning to the police, she continued, “The cards she give us are finished. She vanishes, like,
poof
!”

The men looked at Alice again, this time with clear disapproval. “This be true?” one of them asked, his accent thick.

“I didn’t!” she protested, and then suddenly understood the fuss. Ella must have absconded without paying the bill. Or rather, Alice Love had.

Her first instinct was relief. Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, Alice began her well-practiced explanation: “I’m sorry for the confusion, but this is all a mistake,” she told them, giving what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “The woman who was here, before, she stole my passport. She’s been using my identity.”

Her apology was ignored. “You think I do not know you?” Carina’s voice rang out in the lobby. She stabbed one red polished fingertip in Alice’s direction. “I remember everything: the same dress, the same hair. It is you!”

Alice took a step back. “It isn’t. I promise. She just used my name, and looks like me, and…” She trailed off. Her defense sounded flimsy even to her own ears. And the dress! Of course, she would have to be wearing the same outfit as Ella this time. Carina struck her as a woman who would not forget an ensemble.

This was serious.

“I need to call someone at the embassy,” she announced, trying not to panic. Once she had someone speaking fluent English, who would understand about ongoing investigations and fraud, then all this confusion would all be settled.

“
Sì, ambasciata, domani
—tomorrow. For now, you come.” One of the men, stern faced, reached for Alice’s arm. She jerked back.

“No, not tomorrow. I want to talk to them now!” Alice thought with horror of the stories she read in the newspaper—of tourists trapped abroad, facing unlikely charges from local police; of confused late-night confessions and no access to lawyers. She swallowed again, the gravity of her circumstances making its full weight felt.

Carina glared, again complaining in Italian. The men nodded and began to move toward Alice.

Alice looked around wildly. “Pascal,” she called across. “The embassy—how do I contact them?”

He looked uneasy. “Is too late. In morning, perhaps…”

“But I’ve got to!” Fear rose, sharp in Alice’s chest as she took in the handcuffs dangling from the police belt loops. “I have to call someone. This is all a mistake!”

Pascal shook his head. The policeman once again reached for her, but Alice folded her arms and—mustering as much icy defiance as possible while wearing a slip of red silk at three a.m. in foreign surroundings—declared loudly, “I’m not moving until I speak to someone at the British embassy.” And so they arrested her.

***

Alice’s panic, which she’d fought so desperately to control during the brief drive in the back of the police car, flared to life again as she was led through the busy station, metal cold against her wrists. She was surrounded by incomprehensible chatter as the men talked around her but could only imagine what they were saying. Her whole life, she had never so much as received a parking ticket. Her record—until Ella—had been unblemished. And now? There was dark ink staining her fingertips and disdainful, accusing looks all around. She shivered, chilled in her wisp of a dress. They hadn’t let her go back to her room for a change of clothes, or even a cardigan, and now, under the harsh fluorescent lights and accusing stares, Alice feared her beautiful outfit looked provocative and cheap.

After an age spent wilting under the disdainful gazes of passing officers she was taken to a small, cold room and her questioning began in earnest. Hours passed as she trembled on a hard, metal chair; a rotating parade of officers attempted to exhort a confession from her. She had defrauded the hotel of almost a thousand euros, they told her, left a canceled credit card as security, and fled to the Amalfi Coast. She was a thief, and a liar, or perhaps just mistaken, no? The fragments Alice could decipher were as contradictory as they were confusing, and soon, even their faces blurred from her tiredness and fear. But one thing was made very clear: the sooner she admitted her crimes, the sooner they could release her. Papers printed with dense Italian were thrust across the table to her, a pen placed in her hand.

Alice shook her head again, exhausted. “I can’t help you,” she explained. “I need to see a lawyer.”

The officer scowled and pushed the pages at her again.

“No,” she fumbled, wishing there had been a section in her phrasebook for emergencies like this. “
L’ambasciata
.
No signa
…
signa
…” She trailed off, useless. The door opened, and another man entered the room.

“Is nothing,” an older officer told her in broken English. He loomed over her with dark hair and a thick moustache. “Just an explanation. What you say has happened.”

Alice quivered. “I’m sorry.” She swallowed, feeling utterly powerless. “I don’t understand it. I can’t.”

“But you must.” The man looked down at her, softening. “Is no importance, is just official.”

“No, please…” Alice felt the sharp sting of tears prick her eyes. The fact she’d been celebrating only hours before haunted her now. Nobody knew where she was. “I really…I just need to speak to…” Her voice wavered, but the man didn’t wait for her to finish. He scribbled his own name on the form and pushed it again toward her.

“See? Is not so hard. You sign, and we go call the embassy for you. All straight in a minute.” He smiled, encouraging. Alice felt a wave of tiredness pull on her bones. She just wanted to be back at the hotel, warm in the soft folds of that bed. She blinked again at the dense print, her head clouded. Why would he lie? For all she knew, it was nothing more than official procedure.

Her hand reached for the pen.

“
Sì
, good girl.” The man nodded approvingly.

But Alice paused, the pen inches from the paper. If there was one thing she’d learned from her years as a lawyer, it was that she never signed anything she didn’t understand. Never.

“No, thank you.” Her voice emerged calm, as if from someone else. And perhaps it did. Alice may be panicked and weepy, but she felt the memory of Angelique still lurking at the back of her consciousness, full of poise. Grasping at that new, unexpected reserve of strength, Alice gave the officer a polite smile. Angelique would not be bowed. “I’ll wait until my lawyer gets here, thanks all the same. And now, I’d like to make my phone calls.”

The man’s face darkened.

“My phone calls,” Alice repeated, her confidence returning. The panic that had fluttered in her chest since the sight of those first policemen seemed to melt away. She was innocent, and that was enough. She could handle this. Straightening her posture, she stared at him evenly. “International law is not so different, I think? I won’t sign anything.”

Although she had been making that same protest for what felt like hours, there was clearly something new in her tone that made the officer incline his head slightly and retreat. Moments later, she was led to another small room, identical to the last except for one precious fact: the table held an old plastic telephone.

Alice rushed over, not even waiting to sit down before she stumbled through the international prefixes: dialing the number she always called first, the one she knew by heart.

“Julian? It’s me. I need—”

“…Not around right now, but if you leave a message…”

Alice made a noise of frustration. Of course, it was the middle of the night. She waited impatiently for his amiable message to finish, and then gripped the phone tighter. “Jules,” she started finally. “It’s me, Alice. I’ve, umm, run into some trouble. I’ve been arrested. In Rome. Italy,” she added, in case that wasn’t clear. “I need you to call the embassy here, and find me a lawyer, and…I don’t know. Something.” She sighed, already realizing how futile it was. By the time he woke, she would have been languishing here for hours; and then the time it would take to rouse the embassy, and muster the appropriate personnel…

“Just, try something, will you? I really need your help.” She hung up and just as quickly dialed again, repeating her message to Stefan’s voice mail this time.

Then she stopped. Alice thought hard, but her list of emergency contacts was shockingly low. She couldn’t call her stepsister, of course—Flora could barely navigate across London, let alone coordinate an international rescue effort—and besides Julian and Stefan, Alice was at a loss for who else to try. She knew a dozen or so people who would list her at the top of their call sheet, but when the task fell to her? Alice was sorely lacking.

“You come with me.” Her mustachioed policeman was back, this time beckoning her from her seat. Alice reluctantly pulled on her shoes and followed him down a bleak, gray corridor, until the chatter from the lobby could no longer be heard, and there were several thick doors between her and daylight.

“What will happen to me now?” she asked, looking around. They were passing holding cells: narrow spaces with cinderblock walls and tall metal grates sliding across every compartment. People were sleeping on narrow benches, or slumped in the corner, gazing balefully at her as they passed.

The man directed her into an empty cell at the end of the row, and Alice had no choice but to follow his command. He unlocked her handcuffs, and then, in a swift, surprising gesture, shrugged off his navy jacket and slung it around her shoulders, warm from his stocky body. He looked at her, with what could almost be sympathy. “Now, you wait.”

The bars screeched as he pulled the grate closed.

Hours passed. Alice soon gave up attempts to sleep on the narrow bench; instead, she lay, staring at the stained gray ceiling and wondering why it was she felt so calm. The specter of more paperwork and threatening policemen still loomed, and she wasn’t even sure if help was on the way—Alice knew she should be huddled there in a panic, but ever since her alter ego, Angelique, had infected her system with strength and an imperious tone, she hadn’t felt any of her early cold fear. She had spent her life saving everybody else from their tangled messes, hadn’t she? So why wouldn’t she be capable of handling this one, too?

Yes, Alice decided, stretching into a new, position. If there was one thing this trip to Rome had taught her, it was that she could deal with whatever events came her way—be they irate hoteliers, impatient police officers, or even seductive young men…

The more she thought about it, the more Alice realized that there might be another lesson too. Don’t get caught.

***

By morning, she had settled into a vaguely comfortable position hanging backward off the bench, with her bare legs stretched at a right angle up the wall in front of her. The mustachioed policeman was replaced by a baby-faced trainee, who added a scratchy blanket to her haul and provided a tray of coffee, yogurt, and a halfhearted fruit cup.

Alice nibbled on them without complaint as she contemplated her next move—once she was released, of course. From what she could glean of her interview, Ella had taken recommendations for hotels around Amalfi before fleeing: “Positano,” the policeman had repeated several times. Perhaps that was a town Ella planned to go, or a derogatory term for British criminals, but either way, following Ella’s route south seemed to make the most sense now that—