Chapter 25
twenty-five
RODRIGO
Billie is still (technically) in a relationship.
Billie isn’t ready to rush things. I understand this.
And I know this is better for me, given that I always jump into matters of the heart without really knowing the person.
After our conversation in the dining car, I have spent the last few hours seated next to Billie on the train, telling myself not to touch her, but to be her friend.
It is a difficult assignment.
The way she moves makes it impossible to look away.
I want to know everything about her— what music she is listening to on the headphones that cover her ears.
What she will think of my family home in the country, if we are lucky enough to make it there without being shot by one of the Twin Ledgers goons.
Billie does not understand the effort she is worth. She does not understand that— although I cannot stop thinking about kissing her, about being with her— there is something about her that makes me care more about her happiness than my own. Even if it’s not with me— Billie deserves to be happy.
But then— I simply cannot fathom a man like Tyler could make her happy. Billie deserves a man who would cross oceans for her.
When the train ride ends, it’s nighttime, and we immediately step onto the platform, catching the nearest Uber to a shopping district in the heart of Madrid.
Alana links arms with Billie and pulls her into a store with club-going attire “Rodrigo!” Alana shouts, waving at me. “Don’t you want to pick your clothes?”
“Let Billie choose for me,” I say, waving a hand in the air.
I don’t care what I’m going to wear. I ignore all of it— everything that Alana is doing— because I am focused on scanning the area, looking for a phone or some method to get a message to Melissa safely.
I have to let her know where we are without alerting The Twin Ledger to our location.
While Alana drags Billie into the store, I stay outside— keeping guard— looking across the square for any sign of a payphone. Nothing.
Minutes later, Billie and Alana emerge in new clothes.
Alana is wearing a neon pink bodysuit— because of course she is— with matching glow-in-the-dark bracelets stacked up both arms like armor. There’s glitter on her cheeks. She looks like Barbie at a rave, which I suspect is exactly the aesthetic she was going for.
And then there is Billie.
Billie is wearing a green neon top that’s too big for her— it keeps slipping off one shoulder— and someone, probably Alana, has painted glow-in-the-dark streaks across her cheeks like war paint.
Her brown hair is pulled back, and the UV light catches the gold flecks in her eyes in a way that makes them look like a new color entirely.
She looks like a very small, very serious person who has been asked to attend a costume party she did not agree to.
She is stunning.
She holds out a bag, for me. I open it, exhaling a sigh of relief when I see a simple neon tank top inside. The color is a horrific neon yellow, but other than that— it’s fine.
“I wanted to get you a crop top,” Alana clucks, “but Billie said you’d like this better.”
Thank you, I mouth at Billie as I take off my t-shirt and put on the tank. I swear I see Billie struggling to look away when I remove my shirt, and I can’t help but smile. Good. Maybe there is hope for us beyond friendship, after all.
I grab our bags— we’re down to my duffell, Billie’s small purse, and— after much negotiation— a very large tote bag that belongs to Alana and represents what she refused to part with.
We cross the square together, weaving through alleys and cobblestone, finally arriving at a techno club.
The bass reaches us before the door does.
It comes up through the pavement, through the soles of my boots— and settles somewhere behind my ribs.
The building itself is an old industrial thing, all exposed brick and rusted metal, converted into…
whatever this is. A sign reads PULSE in letters that throb between ultraviolet and hot pink.
There’s a line of people wrapped around the corner, most of them dressed like they fell into a vat of highlighter fluid and decided to just go with it.
We fit right in. That was the idea, apparently.
“Okay,” Billie says, squinting at the entrance. “So this guy you know who makes passports–”
“Tamor,” Alana nods.
“He’s– Tamor is in there?” Billie continues.
Alana is already moving toward the door, bypassing the line entirely with the kind of confidence that only someone who has never once listened told no can summon. “He’s like, around. Somewhere. He’s always around places like this.”
“That’s— that’s your intel?” Billie says. “He’s around?”
“Billie. Babe. Relax.” Alana doesn’t look back. “Tamor owns this place. He’ll come around… at some point. In the meantime…” She shrugs. With that, she simply walks past the bouncer— a man the width of a refrigerator— and smiles at him. He steps aside. We’re in.
The inside of Pulse hits me like a physical thing.
The music is enormous— a deep, rolling techno beat that fills every cubic centimeter of the space.
The ceiling is high, industrial, strung with strips of LED that pulse in time with the bass.
Bodies everywhere. The air smells like sweat and synthetic fog and something vaguely sweet, like someone spilled a cocktail into the smoke machine.
Strobe lights carve the crowd into frozen frames— a raised hand here, a turned head there, everyone moving in beautiful, disconnected fragments.
I’ve worked on construction sites where the jackhammer rattled my teeth. This is louder.
Alana is already gone. I turn to say something to Billie and see her tracking Alana’s neon pink form as it cuts through the crowd, moving toward the bar with the precision of a heat-seeking missile.
Within thirty seconds, Alana has plucked a drink from the hand of some guy who didn’t even see her coming.
She takes a sip, makes a face like it’s not up to her standards, then keeps it anyway.
Then she’s dancing. Just like that. Arms up, hips moving, surrounded by strangers who seem thrilled to have her among them.
“She’s unbelievable,” Billie says, but I can barely hear her over the music. She has to lean close, and her mouth is near my ear. “I thought she had a real contact!”
“What’s our next move?” I shout over the music. “We could try to make it to my family’s home. But it would be safer with new identities. New papers, in case we are stopped?—”
Billie straightens, and I can see her switching into what I’ve started thinking of as her Mission Mode.
Her jaw sets. Her bambi eyes narrow— as much as they can narrow, which isn’t much, because those eyes were engineered by some cosmic artist to be permanently wide and searching. She scans the room.
“I’m going to find Tamor,” she says. “Stay close?”
“Always.”
We head for the bar and I hide our bags in a corner near the bin for dirty glasses, then follow Billie as she pushes through the crowd toward the nearest security guard— a tall man in all black with an earpiece. Billie taps his arm. He looks down at her like she’s a lost child.
“Excuse me,” she shouts over the music. “I’m looking for someone named Tamor? He’s a— a friend? He should be here?”
The guard stares at her. Then he shakes his head. Not a no, exactly. More of an I-can’t-believe-you’re-crazy-eough-to-ask.
Billie nods, undeterred. She thanks him— because she is the kind of person who thanks someone for giving her nothing— and moves on to the next one.
This guard is shorter, stockier, standing near a roped-off VIP section.
Billie repeats her question. He shrugs. Points vaguely at the dance floor, which is like pointing at the ocean and saying the fish is in there.
She tries a third. A woman this time, arms crossed, stationed near the back bar. The woman leans down to hear Billie, then straightens and gives her a look that roughly translates to: you’re either a cop or you’re crazy, and either way, I can’t help you.
I watch all of this from a few steps behind, close enough to step in if needed but far enough to let her work.
And the thing that strikes me— the thing that always strikes me about Billie Harper— is that she doesn’t quit.
She has the kind of persistence that doesn’t announce itself.
It’s quiet. It’s stubborn. It’s the most attractive thing I’ve ever seen.
Her long hair is cascading down her back, and she’s glowing under these lights, and…
Dios mío. I need to focus.
Billie circles back to me, frustration written across her honest face in a way she probably doesn’t realize. She’s terrible at hiding her feelings. Her face is an open book— no, it’s an open diary, the kind with no lock, left on a park bench for the world to read.
“No one knows who Tamor is,” she says. “Or they won’t say. I’ve tried three guards and a bartender and a guy who I think was just a very tall patron.”
“Maybe he goes by another name here.”
“Maybe he doesn’t exist and Alana made him up and we’re going to die in a techno nightclub.”
I almost laugh. “That’s a little dramatic, no?”
“Is it? Is it dramatic, Rodrigo? Because two weeks ago I was writing emails in Chicago, and now I’m in a neon tank top in Madrid trying to find an underground fake ID guy in a techno club. I think I’ve earned dramatic.”
She makes me laugh, because she has a point. She has several points.
We find Alana near the center of the dance floor, sandwiched between two men who look like they were carved from marble and then given very expensive haircuts.
She’s dancing with both of them, her glow bracelets catching the light in arcs and circles.
When she sees us approaching, she doesn’t stop dancing. She just raises her eyebrows.
“No luck,” Billie says, loud enough to cut through the bass. “Nobody knows Tamor.”