She finds the envelope I’ve stored there. She pulls out the fake Canadian passport and opens it.
“Angela LeBlanc?”
“Yup. Twenty-eight years old, born in Montreal.”
“Born in Montreal? But I don’t speak a word of French,” she frets as we pull closer.
“I do,” I say. “Just leave the talking to me.”
Chapter 6
Aurora
Curse keeps his impeccable, empty-eyed cool when speaking to the border agent. Meanwhile, even beneath the luxurious warmth of the down-filled parka and the with seat heater on, I’m trembling. I manage to hand over my fake passport when asked without dropping it, at least, and give a sickly smile when the border agent’s eyes go to my face. His attention seems to linger a little too long, and my smile falters, nausea rising. But then Curse says something about us coming back from a wedding, and I realize the agent is probably noticing what’s got to be some very badly messed up makeup ringing my eyes and streaked down my cheeks. I wipe at my face, even though I know it likely won’t do any good.
After another gut-twisting moment of waiting, we’re cleared to go. Curse takes our documents, and hands the passport back to me. I have no idea how he managed to do it, but the photograph in this fake passport is my real passport photo. Marco told me to renew it not long after Papà died and wedding preparations were in full swing. There were plans, I was fairly sure, to go on some kind of month-long honeymoon and business trip. I never learned where we would be going, though. Marco didn’t bother to inform me or ask for my input.
And obviously he won’t be taking me anywhere now.
I stare at the swirling white of the snow outside, forcing myself to focus on what I see in front of me so I don’t see the images inside my own head. Images of Marco dead on the floor, blood spreading beneath his body like ink.
Images of his uncle, alive, twenty-two years ago.
Their eyes were so close in colour.
Their hands felt just the same.
“We’re stopping here.”
Once again, Curse rescues me, this time from the toxic pull of my thoughts.
“Here?” I ask, squinting. “Where?”
I can’t see much of anything beyond the snow. We’re basically in the middle of a blizzard right now.
“There’s a motel.” As he says it, the building seems to pull itself out of the frothy whiteness, a lone structure backing onto spiky coniferous trees. “I have a place in Montreal,” Curse continues. “But I don’t want to keep driving through this. And I want to ditch the vehicle before we go to a property associated with me.”
“You’re going to get rid of your vehicle? At a motel?”
I wonder if he just plans to abandon it here as he puts it into park.
“I know some people,” he says, sliding a darkly sardonic glance my way. “I can have it in a shipping container at the port of Montreal by midnight tonight. They’ll scrape the VIN right off.”
“Then what? It’ll just stay hidden there in a container?”
“No, it’ll get shipped off to Africa or the Middle East,” he says. “Happens every day. Usually, the vehicles are stolen first. I’ll just be…” He pauses, as if searching for the right words. “I’ll just be making a donation.”
I let that absorb. He seems to have figured everything out. Plans upon plans upon plans. I think again about what he said when I asked him what he was doing in New York, and his flippant response that he was there for a wedding. The fact that he already had a fake passport ready with my photo in it makes it clear that the wedding he was there for was mine. He intended to take me with him before I ever pushed Marco. Before I ever even made that call.
Was he at the ceremony? It’s surreal to think he might have been. That the boy I loved as a child, and the man who’d rejected me so soundly as a teen, could have been silently watching me marry someone else tonight.
Why the hell was he there?
What does he want with me?
Right now, he wants me to put the parka on properly, apparently, because that’s what he tells me to do. I slide my arms into the sleeves and yank on the zipper. I’m just pulling up the hood when he comes around to my side and opens the car door. Wind blasts in, bringing with it a flurry of snowflakes.
“Put these on.” He dangles a pair of winter boots in front of me. I take them, ditching my wedding heels and sliding my feet inside the fluffy warmth. “Anything you don’t want to keep, leave it here.” He eyes my abandoned shoes where they glitter on the floor of his car. I make no move to retrieve them, and at the last second I toss my phone down there, too. Then, I step out of the vehicle. All I’ve got with me now are the clothes Curse provided and the new, fake passport. Angela LeBlanc. What would it be like? To be her for a while?
