Vivian Divine Is Dead (20 page)

I close my eyes, trying to remember Dad’s instructions.
First, take off the plastic cover.
I steady the bobby pin in my free hand, poking the plastic end between my thumb and forefinger. Then I clamp my teeth around the plastic and slowly draw it off the bobby pin.
First step. Check. But what makes me think I can do it this time when Dad had to do it for me last time?

I make sure that I have the pin securely between my fingers, and then I insert the bobby pin in the lock, push my handcuffed hand toward the bed, and pull up on the bobby pin. The metal is hard against my wrist bone, reminding me that I’m basing my whole escape plan on a movie scene that wasn’t real in the first place. But I feel the bobby pin bending, slowly, beneath my fingers.
Don’t crack. Please don’t crack.

I wiggle out the now L-shaped pin, insert it the other way in the lock, and try to bend the metal as slowly as humanly possible. I have to bend it into a U shape without it breaking.
That’s the only way it works—in the movies, anyway.

After five excruciating minutes and the blood nearly completely drained out of my arm, I feel two right angles.
A perfect U.

Please work. Please work. Please work.

I mumble these words under my breath, until I can’t hear them anymore, and then I turn the pin.

SNAP!
The bobby pin breaks in the lock, taking with it my last chance of escape—and Mom’s last chance at life.

The broken end of the bobby pin falls out of the lock and bounces against the bed frame with a
plink
. It’s the loudest sound I’ve ever heard—louder than gunshots and steel crushing, than shattering glass and crowds chanting my name.
It’s all over. Marcos will take us somewhere where no one will ever find us.

“Let us out!” I yell, banging my handcuffed hand against the bed. “We want out!” Tears roll down my face, gathering in the corners of my lips and dripping from my chin. I pound on the handcuff with my other fist until pain pulses across my knuckles, and then I start to scream: soul-wrenching, heart-ripping screams.

When my voice is hoarse and my throat feels raw from screaming, I hear footsteps outside the room.
Marcos is coming.
I pull against my handcuffs, the metal shredding my skin.
There has to be a way out.
As the footsteps get closer, I bang my wrist against the metal as hard as I can, hoping to break the cuff.
No luck.

Find a weapon.
I scan the bed for something to protect myself with, something within arm’s reach. On the end of each bedpost is an antique brass ornament, shaped like a blunt letter opener with curlicues on each side.
Better than nothing.
With one hand cuffed to the headboard, I twist the nearest brass ornament until it comes off. It slips out of my grip and bounces under the bed.
Damnit!
I stretch my leg out and try to kick it toward me, but my foot just misses.

The footsteps stop just outside the room. Someone pokes his face in, just long enough for me to look him in the eyes, with no Don Juan mask to cover his cruel face:

Nick.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I
N THE DIMLY LIT BEDROOM
, Nick’s red jersey shines like a fat drop of blood.
If it isn’t the last person in the world I want to see.

“What are you doing here?” I growl, yanking repeatedly on the handcuff until the skin around my wrist feels rubbed raw.

“I can explain,” Nick says, edging into the room. “But we’ve got to hurry. We don’t have long until—”

“Until you kill me?”

“Until Marcos notices these are missing.” Nick takes a key ring out of his pocket, and the keys jingle together, frighteningly loud in the pressed silence of the bedroom. I remember the cart of ceramic skeletons in the plaza, the way their bones tinkled together in air thick with kerosene. “I’m not trying to scare you—”

“You don’t scare me, you son of a bitch!” I lunge at him, but my wrist bone slams against the inside of the handcuff, shooting pain up and down my arm. “Everything you said about being glad I was there, accidentally meeting me on the bus, helping me get to Rosales—that was a big cover-up, wasn’t it? For your godfather?”

Nick steps farther into the room, staying carefully out of arm’s reach. “Yes, but I didn’t know he was going to hurt you, I swear to God. Marcos just asked me to follow an American girl to make sure she got safely to Rosales.”

“Don’t bother lying to me. You knew exactly who I was the whole time!” I prod around with my foot until I feel the brass ornament stab the sole of my shoe. “And all those hours we talked about my life, all those things I shared with you . . .” My voice cracks. “You were probably laughing inside.”

“I wasn’t. I swear I wasn’t. I’ll prove it to you. But right now—we’ve gotta get you out of here.” He grabs my handcuffed wrist and tries to force the key into the lock. “Hold still!” he says. I’m pressed against the bed frame, adrenaline shooting through my body, and I’m confused about whether I want to kiss him or kill him.

“Get your hands off me!” I lean down, the movement tweaking my handcuffed wrist so it pulses with pain. Ignoring my throbbing wrist, I grab the brass ornament with my free hand and swing it at him. He jumps back, a brass curlicue narrowly missing his pretty face. “Why should I believe anything you say?”

“Because Marcos will be here in less than an hour, and we have to be gone by then.” He shakes the keys in front of me. “And I have the keys to your handcuffs. If you’ll let me unlock you, we can get to the boat before Marcos gets here.”

“Whose boat?” I ask, shifting the weapon to my handcuffed hand so I can rub the searing pain out of my wrist.

“My cousin Antonio’s meeting us in the cove in an hour. He’ll take us to the American consulate in Rosales, but he can only wait for ten minutes, and then he’ll leave without us.”

“Why a measly boat?” I say sarcastically. “If you’re making it up, why not go big? How about a private jet, or a rescue helicopter?”

“What can I do to make you believe me?” Nick asks. “I’m trying to save your life! And I can get you out of here, if you’ll just let me unlock you—”

“You really think I’d let you anywhere near me?”

“Here, unlock your own handcuffs.” He tosses the keys to me and I catch them with my free hand, making sure to hold on to my makeshift weapon in my other hand.
What do I have to lose? I can either wait here for Marcos, or try to trust Nick a little. If the key doesn’t work, then he’s betrayed me again. But what if he’s really trying to help me?
I insert the small key into the lock.
But why would Nick help me now?
I turn the key and the cuffs unlock with a quiet click.

“Is this a trick?” I ask.
Otherwise, why is he helping me? Won’t Marcos kill Nick for betraying him?

“No trick,” Nick says. “I didn’t know what Marcos wanted. He used me to get to you, but I’m not going to let him hurt you.” He lifts Mom up in his arms, her neck bent backward so her mouth’s hanging open. “Follow me.”

Gripping my weapon, I follow Nick as he moves swiftly across the room, toward the table under the window, where Marcos kept his mother’s bones.
My grandmother
. My stomach wrenches
.

“Do you believe me yet?” Nick asks, stopping beside the dressing table.

“Maybe,” I admit, loosening my grip a little on my makeshift weapon.
Why else would he unlock my handcuffs? Doesn’t he have everything to lose too?
“But I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t lost my bag on that bus. Or was that your fault, too?”

“I had nothing to do with the bus breaking down,” Nick says. “But I kind of—had something to do with your missing bag. I didn’t want to do it, but Marcos made me promise to dispose of it. I didn’t have a choice. It would have been too easy for you to slip away if you had money and a passport,” he explains. “Besides, I knew I’d be there to protect you.”

Nick stole my bag? He took the only things I owned, and lied about it to my face?
I’m so angry now hot tears are filling my eyes. I tighten my grip on the brass ornament again, still small and sharp in my hands. “Protect me from who?” I ask. “You? You’re just like the rest of them. You’re no better than Scars.”

Nick flinches like I just smacked him across the face. “But I can be, Vivian.” He presses his knee against the side of the altar, and it moves a few feet to the left. Beneath it is an opening in the floor, with stairs disappearing into the darkness.

“Just give me a chance,” Nick says, stepping onto the top stair. “Stay close,” he whispers. He climbs quietly down two flights of stairs, and I follow him closely, not wanting to be more than a foot away from Mom. “Marcos had a tunnel dug to transport his goods,” Nick says, stepping off the last stair into the dank, smelly basement. He crosses the basement quickly and stops in front of a dark, gaping hole in the wall. “It runs from here to the lake, so it’s really steep and floods when it rains, but I can get you out this way.”

I peek around Nick into the narrow, concrete tunnel.
But how do I know he’s not still working for Marcos? Getting rid of the evidence?
I test both edges of the brass ornament, turning it over so the sharpest side is facing Nick. “Give me one reason I should believe you.”

“Because I’m going to get you out of here,” Nick says.

He did unlock my handcuffs and show me the way to the tunnel. Maybe Nick isn’t lying—maybe he’s going to help us.

“There’s a rowboat at the end of the tunnel,” Nick continues. “All we have to do is follow the shoreline left until we see Antonio’s boat. It has a Santa Muerte flag on it. Remember Santa Muerte?”

I nod, remembering the creepy skeleton in the wedding dress tattooed onto Nick’s back, and the way he trembled when I traced my fingers across his skin.

“We’ll follow the tunnel all the way down to the lake,” Nick adds, ducking into the narrow opening. “If anything happens to me, keep going. Don’t look back.”

If Nick were still working for Marcos, would he think something could “happen” to him?
I let my hand relax around the ornament
. If he’s warning me about it, couldn’t that mean he’s running for his life too?

From above us, there’s the tapping of two feet, and then four, as they walk across the funeral parlor.
They’re coming
. Hoping I’m making the right choice, I quickly follow Nick into the tunnel.

The tunnel’s a tube of concrete, just tall enough for me to stand up in. Water seeps through the cracks in the concrete above my head, flooding the tunnel with cold, murky water up to my ankles. Bare lightbulbs hang from the ceiling, flickering a sickly yellow hue, so it’s not dark exactly, but that kind of eerie twilight where ghosts should materialize out of thin air.

Water sloshes against the concrete as I follow Nick down the tunnel, the brass ornament tucked uncertainly in my hand. “Why are you helping us?” I ask.

Nick readjusts Mom in his arms so her blond hair doesn’t drag in the water. “Remember that boy we met? The one that followed you in the forest and drew my gun in the dirt?”

I nod, watching how our shadows launch themselves at the concrete walls.

“That boy didn’t call you the White Devil. He called me a criminal, and he was right,” Nick says. “And that’s all I thought I was until I met you. Then I thought . . . maybe if I was with you, I could be something different.”

“Different?”

“Better,” Nick says.

“You can be.”

“If you were really Ines, an ordinary girl, maybe. But you’re the most famous girl in the world, and the only thing my godfather wants.”

In the rising water of the tunnel, my feet slide out from under me, and I press my palms against both walls to keep standing. The sharp end of the brass ornament stabs my right hand, and I realize I’ve forgotten about my makeshift weapon.
Maybe because I believe Nick’s trying to help us. Or maybe because I care about him, and I think he cares about me too.
“But you’re not ordinary either,” I say, carefully holding myself up in the frigid water. “You can act, and make fires, and kiss like a genius.”

Nick smiles, briefly lighting up the dingy tunnel, and I could kiss the dimples in his tan cheeks. “I have to get you out of here,” he says, his smile fading. “I’ve lost everyone else I loved. I won’t lose you.”

He loves me!
The brass ornament slips out of my hand and splashes as it lands in the water.
Nick loves me!
“I love—”

“I know,” Nick says.

A boom echoes through the tunnel, and voices race toward us, garbled and incomprehensible. Every sound rattles through my brain: the roar of their voices, water sloshing against the walls, the pounding of their feet.

“Vivian!” Marcos yells. His voice echoes around me, chasing me down the concrete tube. I try to run, but I’m almost up to my knees in water, so I trudge ahead as fast as I can, my feet sliding across the slippery concrete.

“Hurry!” I wedge my hands against the walls and focus on placing each foot carefully on the concrete, one after the other.
Just don’t fall.

The ceiling of the tunnel gets abruptly lower, and we have to crouch to keep forging ahead. “We’re almost there,” Nick says. “Hear that?”

I hear the sound of waves echoing down the tunnel.
The lake.

We’re here.

Outside the tunnel, rain is streaking across the small circle of sky. Slices of razor-sharp rain bounce off the water, each drop a wrinkle in the lake’s dark flesh. The roar of rain on the top of the concrete tunnel pounds in my ears.

“Vivian!” Marcos’s voice rolls down the tunnel, the pressure of it pushing me forward. “Come back here!”

The cold concrete bites my fingers as I wrap my hand around the lip of the tunnel and scoot out of the narrow opening onto the moonlit beach, my feet immediately sinking into the sand. My legs burn from crouching in the entrance, and the rain is pounding wet needles into my skinned kneecaps. Nick is standing in the sand beside me, Mom cradled tightly in his arms.

We’re on a tiny beach, a dark, twenty-foot crescent of pebbles and sand. To my right is an old rickety dock, and tied to it is the small wooden boat Nick picked me up in.

Nick carries Mom across the tiny beach to the boat. “Get in,” he says. He lays her down gently on the wet floor, and I swing my leg over the side, instantly feeling the sting of the freezing rain pelt my thighs. The boat rocks under my weight, and water slaps against the side, showering Mom and me with icy water.

Coughing racks Mom’s brittle body, and a groan sputters out of her mouth. The muscles twitch below her eyelids, and then she wrenches her eyes open, her pupils huge black circles, the whites of her eyes shot up with red veins. They roll upward as she tries to focus on me. She blinks rapidly in the rain, her breath tearing out of her chest.

“Mom?”
She’s awake. Thank God.
I curve my hands around her cheeks and try to hold her face steady. “Mom, it’s me.”

Mom’s head rocks back and forth, each gaunt cheek deathly white against the dark wood floor. She opens her trembling mouth, and her lips form a word that never comes.

“It’s me, Vivian,” I repeat.

Mom groans, and somewhere in there I hear the vowels of my name: “Viiiiiviiiiiaaaaann?”

“I’m here.” Her skin is thin as paper in my cupped hands. “We’re leaving.” I glance over at Nick, who’s untying the boat from the rickety dock. His fingers are shaking in the pelting rain, and the rope keeps falling out of his hands.

Mom’s fingers desperately grasp the air, and I place my hand over hers. “Get . . . out . . .” she moans.

“We’re already out,” I whisper, and her eyes drop closed, rapidly twitching under the lids.

Nick drops the end of the rope into the boat and hands me the oars. “Hold on to these,” he says, wading out into the ankle-deep water. “The lake’s pretty shallow here, so I’ll push us out,” he says. As Nick pushes us across the shallow lake, the bottom of the boat scraping the sandy floor, I glance across the dark, stormy water, toward Rosales.
We’re going to make it to safety. Nick will come back to L.A. with me, and we’ll start over, Mom and Dad, me, and the boy I love.