“I saw a cool-looking café a few blocks away,” Noel said. “Want to go there?”
“Uh . . .” Aria touched the blond strands of her wig. She couldn’t imagine going somewhere so public. But maybe the café was dark inside. Maybe they could be escorted to a private room. Maybe no one in the place would have seen the APB with her face on it. Act normal, she told herself.
She started down the street, her hand tightly gripping Noel’s. Halfway down the block, she noticed a black sedan parked across the street. Its windows were tinted, but she could just make out that someone was inside. As they turned left, the sedan’s lights flipped on, and the car began to slowly creep after them.
She dug her nails into Noel’s arm. “I think that car is following us.”
“What?” Noel swiveled around.
Aria dug her nails harder. “Don’t look.”
Noel sighed loudly. “No one’s after us.”
“I can just tell.” She walked fast but not too fast, pretending to be just another pedestrian out for dinner. “Why aren’t they driving faster?”
Noel twisted his mouth. “Because this is, like, a fifteen-mile-per-hour zone?”
But Aria had a horrible sense, one much more pressing than the one she’d felt even in the newsagent’s in Amsterdam. This was the end of the road. Someone had recognized her—maybe it had been that man on the train. He’d tipped off the authorities, they’d put out an alert, and someone at the hotel had made the call. Aria and Noel had basically just delivered themselves straight to the waiting Feds. She might as well knock on the window and offer up her wrists for handcuffs.
“What do you want to do?” Noel asked.
“I don’t know,” Aria said through her teeth, wishing there was an alley to duck into. The car slunk behind them, though it was quite far away, as if the driver was trying to figure out if it was really them. Or maybe he was calling for backup. “We can’t go back to the hotel. They’ll follow us.”
“Aria, they’re not following us,” Noel said. “We should keep walking.”
Aria stared at Noel fearfully as they clomped past a bakery. “We shouldn’t have left the room. I shouldn’t have given in to you.”
He set his jaw. “So now it’s all my fault?”
Aria said nothing.
“What were we supposed to do, hide forever?” Noel asked.
“Yes!” Aria shrieked, slapping her arms to her sides. “We were supposed to hide however long it took!”
Noel let out a strange laugh. Aria turned and looked at him. “What?”
He flinched. “Because this isn’t you, Aria. And honestly, I thought this was sort of going to be . . . fun. Not like . . . this.”
Aria set her jaw. “Well, I’m sorry this isn’t more of a vacation for you. But I didn’t ask you to come, Noel. I would have been fine on my own.”
Noel squinted at her. “You didn’t seem very fine when I found you. You were a total mess.”
“I’m sorry I’ve caused you so much stress,” Aria said bitterly, ignoring his comment. Then she looked up. “You know, if it were someone else here, someone else you were protecting, I bet you wouldn’t complain about this not being fun.”
Noel looked at her sharply. “Someone else meaning who?”
The words had come out of Aria’s mouth so quickly she hadn’t exactly had time to process them. “Forget it,” she said. “I’m just upset.”
Noel put his hands on his hips, stopping next to a dry-cleaner’s. “You’re talking about Ali, aren’t you?”
Aria turned away. She hated how well Noel knew her. “Maybe,” she said, feeling something inside her break. “You would have done anything for her, Noel.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” Noel’s nostrils flared. “The only person I’ll do anything for is you.” He glared. “Why can’t you believe that?”
Aria stared at a shimmering puddle of oil on the street. Would she ever forgive Noel for Ali? Ali clouded everything in Aria’s mind. Two nights ago, when he’d given her that bracelet, she’d had a fleeting thought: Had he thought about giving this to Ali once, too? Even the blond wig: It looked, she realized now, like Ali’s hair.
“It’s still so hard,” she said in a raspy voice. “And I can’t help but think that if you hadn’t trusted her so much, maybe we wouldn’t be here at all.”
Noel recoiled. “Meaning?”
“Meaning . . .” Aria gulped. Meaning you could have warned someone. Meaning you could have stopped her. Meaning Ali wouldn’t have been let out of the hospital, and she wouldn’t have killed all those people, and she wouldn’t have come after us and I wouldn’t be in this situation.
But that felt too much to say aloud. It was too much blame to put on him. And she knew it wasn’t right—it was as wrong, in fact, as Hanna blaming Spencer for Emily’s death simply for suggesting they stay at the beach overnight. There were a lot of factors at play. Noel didn’t pull all the strings. No one did.
Noel was staring at her now like he understood exactly what was happening in her brain. He took one big step back, his mouth opened wide. “My God, Aria,” he whispered. “Your perception is so, so warped.”
She held up her hand. “I don’t—”
“Deep down, you still blame me. You still hate me. I risk my life to come to Europe for you, and even that isn’t enough.”