We were to arrive back in the states the next day, much to my displeasure.
"El is most likely not even in this part of the world anymore," Audi told me, trying his hardest to console me. It was a good attempt, but it ultimately failed.
"Where do you think she is, then?" I asked him after he told me we were getting on the plane to head back right after we gathered our things from the hotel.
"Could be a number of places," he answered.
"I told him we have it narrowed down," Burk said behind us as we walked into the hotel.
"And we do," Audi agreed.
We each broke off to gather our own things, which left me to gather El's things as well. Audi asked if I needed help, but I declined. I wanted to be the one to get her belongings. He nodded his head reluctantly, told me I had thirty minutes to get our bags packed and meet everyone else in the lobby.
I had a small meltdown when I closed the door to our room behind me, sliding down the wall, nearly choking to death because I couldn't seem to get oxygen past my tonsils. My chest tightened, but I soon regained control.
We declined room service, including maids, so the room was just as we left it. The bed was unmade, a few of her clothes were on the floor by her suitcase.
I sat cross legged on the floor by her things, gingerly picking up the pair of jeans and a couple of shirts that lay around to fold them and put them back in her suitcase.
After I took care of her, I gathered my own things, which wasn't a task. When I got something out, I made sure that something else went back in my own bag so that I didn't create a mess. My mother taught me to do that, and it was one of the only things that she taught me that really stuck with me. I always seemed to find a way to create a messy jumble, she had said.
I finished the chores in ten minutes, then decided to lay down for the rest of the time I was allotted.
I thought about going onto the balcony to sit, take in the view for the last time. I couldn't, though, so I just fell back onto the bed, grabbed her pillow and buried my face in it.
I ended up stuffing her pillow into her bag before I walked out the door.
I knew that, as soon as I got back to my own home in the compound, I'd place it neatly on her bed. The bed I'd been sleeping in before she'd even returned.
I began having nightmares again after being away from her for so long. One night, I dreamed that I'd stabbed a woman to death. She was trying to kill me, so I had to take her out first. After waking up and refusing to let myself call her cell phone, I went to her room. Her scent still lingered, making me lightheaded and calm and happy. I hadn't had a nightmare since.
I wasn't looking forward to the bad dreams to come.
**********************
"Tibet. China. Italy. Greece. The United States."
I sighed. "I thought you said you narrowed it down?"
Audi looked at me, upset. "Do you know how many countries are in the world?"
He waited for an honest answer. I rubbed my hand over my mouth, trying to keep myself from murdering him. "No, Audi. I do not."
"One hundred and ninety six! That's a lot of damn countries! And you think I didn't narrow it down?" He threw his hands up, truly dumbfounded.
The only reason I didn't jump over the table we sat at was that, for one, I knew Audi got harder to deal with whenever he was really stressed. Which was most of the time. But there was a slight shift in his gusto when he got really, really upset. The second reason I didn't jump over the table was that I was ready to get home. I didn't want the pilots to have to land our plane to get back up to help pull me off of him. We needed to get home, sort this mess out, and find her.
"I'm sorry. Okay? Do you have specific locations?"
"Some countries, yes. China. The United States..."
"The United States," I mumbled. "How about that."
"Right under our noses," he commented. I agreed. "Locations in the US ping back to New York and Los Angeles."
"Of course," I said, unimpressed. Two of the largest cities in one of the largest countries that Audi has narrowed it down to.
"Let me ask you something. Do you expect them to be on some small island, cooped up in a little farm house that sticks out on a satellite image like a sore thumb?"
"That'd be nice," I told him honestly.
He sighed. "In China, we have Shanghai and Nanjing. In Tibet, we have Zhangmu Town. Italy is up in the air. Greece is Xanthi, which we're sure is the smallest city out of all of them. One might even call it a town."
"What makes it so special?"
"Same as the others. Pings that we intercepted on the day I first talked to Nico on the phone were extremely similar to the ones that we traced to these locations. Xanthi is just so oddly small of a place that it caught our attention."
"What about Italy?"
"It's just... confusing. Several pings trace to several Italian cities. Rome. Milan. Florence. Pisa. A few others. We're working around the clock to narrow those specific cities down."
"How do you know if they're the right traces? The right signals?"
He sighed. He wasn't a genius when it came to technology. Maybe because he was older. "That weird little tech guy says that the IP addresses are each individualized... something with numbers matching up and all that crap."
I nodded. I wasn't a computer genius, either, but I knew a little more than Audi did. Or thought he did. I knew what the weird little tech guy was talking about.
"Look, boy," he sighed as he got up from the chair. "We'll find her. It's only a matter of time before those pricks screw up and make a wrong move. They'll turn their backs for one fraction of a millisecond, and you know what she'll do? She'll give them hell. You and I, we both know that they can't contain her. We couldn't contain her."
I rubbed my chin with the back of my hand and stared at the table in front of me. "But they know what they're dealing with. They're her. She's them. They know how she works. You guys were just getting started with us."
"Ha. Sure, we were just getting started with you. But they're just getting started with her, whether they think they really know her or not."
*************************
Audi retreated to his own room to get some sleep. We had a long flight back and were only an hour into it.
Five hours passed. I tried watching television. I tried doing research on the computer on the cities Audi listed. I paced up and down the small aisle, into the kitchen, into my bedroom, then back down the aisle. I stared out the window, finding clouds that made particular shapes. When I found a cloud in the shape of a dolphin, I closed the blinds.
Then I laughed. I couldn't believe El had dragged me into that dolphinarium, forced me to put on that horrendous wet suit and have the best time I'd ever had with anyone.
Life drained out of me when I realized that that was a week ago. She'd been with Nico's people for a full seven days. I had been unconscious for nearly that whole time.
Not knowing what I missed hurt me. Not knowing what she was going through killed me.
At the beginning of the seventh hour on the plane, I gave up.
I'd tried to stay awake, tried to think of anything that might help her situation and make mine a little more bearable. We were completely cut off, however. There wasn't a thing in the world I could do.
I went to my room, shut the blinds, and pulled her pillow out of her suitcase.
Since it had been immersed in her bag, surrounded by her clothes, the pillow smelled more strongly of her. She had a distinct smell, a faint mix of coconut and peppermint. I didn't know how she smelled like that all the time, but I liked it. It soothed me. It took me out of the present and shoved me into a less intense reality, a reality that only she and I existed in.
I zipped her bag back up tight, not wanting the unappealing scents of the outside world find their way in and kick her out.
I stripped off my shirt and threw on a pair of sweatpants, then slowly crawled under the blankets that she'd also been under only a week ago. Then I laid my head on her pillow, drifting off an hour later.
**********************
I chased her.
I saw her dark, red hair whip behind her as she got farther and farther away from me, farther into the cool, crisp night.
We were in a city that was full of lights. A huge, bright blue lit Ferris wheel stood tall in the distance.
I first spotted her when she was walking alongside a river that cut through the city, under a few trees. I kept my distance, the moonlight shining on the water beside us as we went along. She didn't look like she had anywhere to be, so I didn't know why the hell she was out by herself at night in such a big place.
So I called out to her. And she ran.
I followed her along the river until she ran across the street and into a tunnel that was carved into the buildings.
The tall, tan, royal looking buildings rose up around us again as I reached the end of the small tunnel, still behind her.
No other people were out this late at night which left us to our game of chase, her leading me to the center of the square the buildings made. Apparently the only way in and out was through the tunnel we'd came through.
At the center of the square were fountains and large glass pyramids, illuminated so brightly that I wondered why I hadn't noticed them earlier. I noticed them, however, when she stopped in front of them and allowed me to catch up. She still faced the pyramids, her back to me. I slowly approached her.
"El," I said in the calmest tone I could. I wanted to charge her and tackle her, wanted to wrap my arms and legs around her so that she couldn't leave me again.
She continued to stare up at the pyramids, her long, curly hair blowing slightly in the cold breeze behind her.
"El. Sweetheart, please."
"I like when you call me that," she mused, still turned away from me.
"Please turn around. Come back to me."
"I can't."
"No," I begged, my voice going up an octave. Was I about to cry? "No, please, El. You can come back. Come back to me. Just turn around." I eased up behind her as I talked, bringing my voice to a whisper. I knew she could hear me. "Please..."
When she turned, I took a step back. Though it was dark, I saw her just as I would have if it were noon on a sunny day.
Her skin was pale, paper white. Her lips were white, unlike their usual light pink. Her irises were white, the grey limbus barely visible.
She looked dead.
She took a step in my direction, closing the small gap between us quickly. I couldn't move. I didn't want to move.
She smiled at me.
Her freezing hands shot up to my face, caressing my cheeks. I felt my heart rate go up, felt my breathing increase, felt the muscles in every part of my body get ready to take flight as her pale hands embraced me.
This wasn't El. This couldn't be El.
"Call me sweetheart again," she cooed.
I swallowed nervously, and she breathlessly laughed.
She brought one of her hands down and slipped it inside the pocket of the black fleece jacket she wore. When her hand reappeared and I saw what was in it, my body begged to take flight again. I couldn't make myself move.
With her left hand, she touched my face. With her right hand, she twirled a vicious looking knife. The moonlight glinted off the rigid blades as she looked at the blade and then back at me, admiring us both.
"Sweetheart," I pleaded. "El..." Please return to your normal self and please don't kill me.
She smiled again, then jabbed the knife into my gut.
*************************
Audi came into my room and woke me up. We had arrived back in the states.
"Rise and shine, sweetheart!" Audi yelled as he barged into my room. I groaned, remembering the insane dream. Audi never had the right words to say, but the empowering, strong way he said his next words was the reason I found it in me to get myself up.
Audi smiled big at me in the annoying way he smiled at everyone. "Are you ready to get to work?"