Chapter 24
twenty-four
BILLIE
I shouldn’t have let him kiss me. The memory of his lips on mine lingers as I push my way through Barcelona Sants train station.
The sound of people running late echoes through the tiled emporium— shoes clacking, suitcases rolling— but all I can think about, all I’ve been thinking about for hours— is the way it felt to be close to Rodrigo.
The moment has stayed with me, an electric jolt of hope underneath a more reasonable, lingering finish of what-the-hell-am-I-doing.
I’m standing near a departure board in the blazer I didn’t pay for. Well, technically I did pay for it, since it’s on my credit card, which Alana stole. I’m trying to look like I belong in a European train station at nine in the morning with an international arms dealer.
I should be worried about the criminal history I’m rapidly building and what it will mean for my future, but instead— The kiss.
I keep coming back to the kiss. I can’t stop thinking about it, which is a problem, because I technically have a boyfriend.
Had a boyfriend. Have a boyfriend? The tense is unclear because Alana broke up with Tyler on my behalf via text message, which is not how I would have handled it, but which I also haven’t tried to correct or even worried about, which says something about me that I’m not ready to examine.
Technically, you’re single, Billie, I think to myself.
But the squirming feeling in my stomach confirms what I already know: I feel guilty.
I feel like I cheated on Tyler, because I didn’t do the breaking up with him myself.
This is what I get, for postponing the inevitable.
I let one year turn into another and now— I’d like to be free of Tyler, but I’m not. Not really.
Also: Rodrigo was Alana’s boyfriend. Recently. As in, days ago. Am I a bad friend?
I shake myself out of my musings. Alana kidnapped me and dragged me across an international border.
Why do I care if I’m stealing the love of her life?
And Tyler’s a bad boyfriend who ignores me, lets me do his laundry, and plays video games all day.
I shouldn’t feel guilty for betraying either one of them.
But somehow, I do. Maybe that’s the difference between me and Alana.
“You are thinking too much,” Rodrigo says, looking over at me with a smile that makes me melt. He’s been standing next to me this entire time, letting me think, not saying a word.
“It’s the first time since we left the hotel room that I’ve had a chance to think without Alana yapping in my ear,” I say, giggling a little. Something about being around Rodrigo makes me do that. The giggling.
Rodrigo nods somberly, leaning in. “Yes, Billie, I must tell you while Alana isn’t here—” he moves closer to me and I can smell his cologne again. Something like the beach and a spice I can’t name. “Melissa is here, in Barcelona?—”
“No!” I almost shout, covering my mouth. “She’s so pregnant!”
“Yes,” Rodrigo agrees. “But she came anyway. To find you. She is with Interpol. I sent her to meet my contact there. They are tracking my phone?—”
My heart pounds in my chest. “If Alana finds out, we’re dead.”
“She won’t,” Rodrigo says gently. “As long as I have my phone they will be able to track us. Melissa is on her way to Interpol right now?—”
“Three tickets to Madrid,” Alana announces, appearing beside us.
We both go quiet immediately. She fans the tickets in front of my face.
She’s holding my credit card in her other hand, and she slides it back into her own wallet— my card, her wallet.
She does it with a seamless ease that says what’s mine is actually hers.
“My card,” I say.
“Our card,” she corrects warmly. “Friendship is about sharing, Billie.”
If she’s so big on sharing, maybe I should do whatever I want with Rodrigo, I think wryly to myself.
We start walking. Rodrigo is a few steps ahead of us, scanning the station with careful attention. His face— as he scans the station for threats— exists in a way that is geometrically unfair. I look away.
“The train leaves in twelve minutes,” Alana says, motioning toward the platform and skipping ahead of Rodrigo. “Platform seven. Keep up, you two.”
I keep up. Rodrigo falls into step beside me, and his arm brushes mine as we walk, and the contact is so brief and so ordinary and so completely devastating that I have to remind myself to breathe.
“You alright?” he asks, low, just for me.
“Fine,” I say. “Just processing. A lot of things to process.”
He nods. He doesn’t push. This is one of the things I’ve noticed about Rodrigo— he doesn’t fill silence with noise.
He lets things sit. Tyler would have already changed the subject to something about himself.
I think this, and then I feel guilty for thinking it, and then I feel guilty for feeling guilty, and the whole thing becomes a nesting doll of guilt.
On the platform, while we wait for the doors to open, Rodrigo pauses momentarily to tie his shoe. Alana leans over to me with a conspiratorial posture.
“Can I tell you something?” she says.
“Can I stop you?” I ask.
“No.” She grins. “I’m actually glad Rodrigo broke up with me.”
I look at her. I look at her for a long moment, trying to determine if this is a trap.
“You are?” I say carefully.
“Totally.” She flips her hair— a gesture that says she has moved on.
“Because here's the thing. Marco has one ring. Mateo had the other. And now that Mateo is— well, no longer with us—” she makes a vague gesture toward the ceiling— “that second ring is somewhere. And if I find it, I don’t need to work for the Twin Ledger… or any man. I don’t need Marco.
I have access to the vault myself. Billions, Billie.
Billions in gold and weapons and paintings and God knows what else. ”
She says this like she’s found a really good deal on flights.
“And if Rodrigo and I were still together,” she continues, “he’d expect me me to, like, not use it. Or to use it ethically. Or donate to charity or whatever. He's very morally rigid. Very ‘let’s do the right thing.’ Very exhausting. I don’t know how some people live like that.”
We suffer greatly, I think, considering the moral quandary I’ve been contemplating for the past few hours.
I glance at Rodrigo, who is standing ten feet away and cannot hear this conversation, and who I know has a good heart. Morally rigid. Sure. If that’s what we're calling it. He pushed me behind a table to save me from stray bullets. I’d go with “hero,” but to each her own.
“The point is,” Alana says, squeezing my arm, “being a little selfish is good. It’s healthy. You should try it sometime.” She looks at me with real warmth. “You spend your whole life making other people happy. Who’s making you happy?”
My heart races. Does Alana know about the kiss? Could she possibly be telling me to be happy?
Then, she adds: “You’re lucky I dumped Tyler for you. Now you can go find a cute alpaca-farmer somewhere and start a family together.”
She pats my arm. Nope. She doesn’t know about the kiss.
The doors open. We board.
The train is sleek and modern. Alana leads us to our seats— three in a row, because of course she’s orchestrated the seating— and I end up by the window with Rodrigo beside me and Alana on the aisle, already pulling comfort items from her bag like she’s getting ready for a spa appointment.
“Three hours to Madrid,” Alana says, popping a mint into her mouth.
I recognize it as one left on the pillows at our last hotel.
“Trains are safer. The Ledger monitors flights and rental cars like crazy, but trains?” She shakes her head.
“They think trains are beneath them. Very elitist organization. Works in our favor.”
The train begins to move. Barcelona slides past the window— the city pulling away from us like a tide going out. I watch it go and feel relieved.
Rodrigo’s knee is close to mine. Not touching. Just— there. The space between us is three inches and contains, I’m sure of it, the entire emotional content of my life. I try to keep my breathing even, as if I sit next to a man this handsome every day.
“Okay,” Alana says, once we’ve cleared the station and the train has found its rhythm. She holds out her hand. “Phones.”
“What?” I say.
“Phones. All of them. Now.”
Rodrigo looks at her. His expression communicates that he knows where this is going and does not approve.
“The Ledger can track us through our devices,” Alana says, with the patience of a kindergarten teacher explaining a concept for the third time. “Cell towers, GPS, all of it. If we keep our phones, they’ll know exactly where we are within the hour. Hand them over.”
“But you scrubbed mine!” I argue.
“Give it,” Alana says.
Rodrigo’s jaw tightens. He’s holding his phone in his hand like it’s the last thread connecting him to the outside world, which, as I just found out— it is.
He looks at me. Something passes between us— an understanding that he’s giving up our connection to Melissa.
To Interpol. His eyes say he’s asking me for permission.
I give him the slightest nod. We don’t have a choice but to play this Alana’s way.
Then, he hands his phone over, and pile mine on top of it.
Alana holds both devices up alongside her own.
“For the record,” she says, “I think it’s really brave of you guys to go off the grid like this. Very bold. Love the energy. Oprah would approve.”
She reaches across Rodrigo, pushes the window glass open against the rushing wind, and throws the phones out into the Spanish countryside.
I watch them arc and disappear— small rectangles tumbling against a blur of green and gold— and with them goes my connection to Melissa, to Rodrigo’s Interpol contact, to the entire infrastructure of people who might be looking for us.