Exiled (A Madame X Novel)

by Jasinda Wilder

  I’ll make do.

  I clutch the foam cup full of coffee and glide away into the snow and shadows. Reach the intersection, stop, stare up at the black sky, at the fat white flakes drifting lazily to the earth.

  “I know it’s you, Indigo.” Logan.

  I sip my coffee. Say nothing. Turn, standing straight now, pretense abandoned.

  “Knew you weren’t dead. That felt a little too neat.”

  “Let her continue to believe it.” My voice is hoarse from disuse; I have little to say, lately.

  “No shit.” He has his own coffee, but his is in a mug. He’s in the bitter cold in only his tuxedo jacket, seemingly oblivious. “She’s come too far, Caleb. Don’t fuck it up for her now.”

  “Caleb is dead.” I swallow the last of the coffee, burning my tongue and throat. “He died in a car bomb.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Nothing.” I turn, look into Logan’s one scorching blue eye. “There is nothing I want.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Call it . . . a final farewell.” I feel the truth of the statement even as I say it.

  Logan stares me down, searches me. I let him.

  There is a trash can nearby. I toss the cup in, shove my fists into my coat pocket—under the stink and the filth I smeared on it, the coat I’m wearing is a five-hundred-dollar mountain climber’s insulated shell, with a thick wool sweater beneath it; I’m plenty warm.

  I turn away from Logan. “Promise me one thing, Ryder. Make sure Jakob is . . . a better man than me.”

  He only nods, a single jerk of his head.

  I walk away, then. I feel Logan’s gaze on me until I turn the corner.

  Thomas is waiting in a red Bentley Bentayga, three blocks north of the shelter. He pops the trunk when he sees me approaching. There are two bags waiting, one full, one empty. I quickly shuck the filthy disguise and re-dress in new, clean clothing—jeans, a sweater, boots. No more suits and ties for me. The disguise goes into the empty bag, zipped up against the stink. I keep it, though. It may come in handy again, someday. Thomas hands me a bottle of water and a towel. I rinse the stink out of my beard as best I can, pat it dry, finger-comb it straight. Slide a Rangers ball cap onto my head.

  “I’ll drive, Thomas.” I stand beside the driver’s door.

  He looks confused; I never drive. “Sir?”

  “I said I’ll drive.”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  I take the driver’s seat, adjust the steering wheel, the mirrors, turn on the seat warmer. Tune the radio to something hard and heavy as Thomas slides into the front seat beside me. He seems ill at ease, tapping the dashboard with a long finger, tracing the stitching on his seat, fiddling with the lumbar settings.

  I input a destination into the navi: Miami, Florida; nineteen hours and twenty-one minutes, it tells me.

  Thomas is alert as we leave Manhattan.

  He’s alert as we hit New Jersey.

  He’s alert, and confused now as we pass the hotel that marks the farthest I ever made it from you.

  “Sir?”

  “Yes, Thomas?”

  “Where are we going, sir?”

  I tap the navi screen. “Miami. White sand beaches and bitches in bikinis.”

  “And what about Miss Isab—”

  “If you ever utter that name again, I will put a bullet between your eyes,” I hiss.

  Thomas is unperturbed by my threat. Merely eyes me curiously. “You are done, then?” He waves a hand behind us. “With . . . all of that?”

  I drive a long, long time in silence, considering his question. Am I?

  I have to be.

  I must be.

  I do not know how to be done, but I must be.

  I do not know how to start over, yet again, but I must.

  Finally, after thirty miles, I answer. “Yes, Thomas. It is done.”

  Thomas nods, tilts his seat back, crosses his massive arms over his broad chest, tugs his chauffeur cap down over his eyes. “Good. It is good.” Lower, more to himself, he murmurs something else: “Took a very long time. Too long, I think.”

  “Fifteen years. That’s how long it took.”

  But I don’t think Thomas heard me; he’s snoring already.

  I put an entire tank of gas between us, three-hundred-some miles. Thomas sleeps while I refuel.

  I put another tankful of gas between us.

  Seven hundred miles.

  You are seven hundred miles away, Isabel.

  I stop somewhere in South Carolina. Pull off the road around dawn, nine hours after leaving Manhattan. I stand on the side of the road, heat on my back, joints stiff, eyes burning with exhaustion. I yawn, stretch.

  Face north.

  As if I could see you, even from here.

  I can feel you, I think.

  I can believe it is real now.

  You are gone.

  No, I am gone.

  “Good-bye, Isabel.”

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