“Grace, I thought we talked about this!” Noah calls after me. “I thought we said that maybe Iran wasn’t the best place for us to … you know … hang out.” He glances nervously around, but this stretch of beach is deserted. There is no one here to see. “Especially those of us who are, you know, half Israeli.”
“And American,” Megan adds. “Americans should really keep out as well.”
“Guys.” I look at them and then do something truly desperate. I say, “Please.”
“Grace, wait,” Megan calls to me, but I’m already through the gate and running across the stretch of sand that lies between the wall and a wooden fence that has been beaten down by more than two decades of salty air and neglect.
“Grace!” Megan’s voice isn’t fading, and I know she’s right behind me, running through the weeds that are so thick and high that when I see him, I have to freeze, slamming to a stop.
I feel Megan collide with me, then Noah. For a second, no one speaks. We just stand quietly, staring at the boy asleep on the ground.
His hands are bound with shoestrings, his feet with his own belt. He lies on his side, lifeless and still.
“Alexei!” Megan rushes to his side and shakes him. Her hands push back his hair, looking for some kind of wound.
But Noah doesn’t panic. He just looks at me.
“He’s okay, Megan,” I say. “He’s just sleeping.”
“In the weeds in the backyard of the Iranian embassy?” Noah sounds like he wants to shout but is afraid to.
“He’s drugged,” I say.
“How did he …” Megan starts, then realizes she already knows the answer. “No. No. No, Grace. Tell me you didn’t drug the son of the Russian ambassador and restrain him on Iranian soil. Please tell me you didn’t do that.”
“I had to!” I tell her.
“Oh, she had to,” Noah says, cutting his eyes at Megan and then at me. “Tell us, Grace, exactly why you had to drug Alexei.”
“He was going to give up his diplomatic immunity. He was going to turn himself in.”
I stand, waiting, watching. And that is when I see the look that passes between Megan and Noah like a secret.
“What?” I ask, but they stay silent. “What is it?”
Noah eases toward me. “Alexei’s dad just finished the press conference. It’s done. They’re expecting Alexei to come in for questioning” — Noah glances down at his watch — “now. Right now, in fact.”
Megan shifts her gaze onto me. “If Alexei doesn’t show up …”
“He can’t show up,” I tell them.
“He has to!” Megan says. “Without diplomatic immunity, not showing up will mean violating all kinds of Adrian laws. He has to turn himself in. It’s too late.”
“No,” I say. I’m not shouting. My voice is even and low. “He didn’t do it, and he is not going to turn himself in. Now come on.” I reach down and grab Alexei’s arm. “Help me get him inside. I would have done it myself, but he’s heavier than he looks.”
I pull and tug, but Alexei barely moves across the overgrown grass. Neither Noah nor Megan moves to help me.
“We have to get him inside,” I say again. “We have to hide him. If we hide him then he’ll be okay. We can —”
Noah’s hand is on my arm. Calm radiates through his skin and into mine. It’s enough to make me want to cry, so I pull harder.
“Grace,” he says.
“Help me get him inside!”
“Grace,” he says again. “What’s wrong?”
But a better question is: What’s right?
My mother is dead and so is Spence. They’re both dead, and it’s too late to save them.
But it’s not too late to save Alexei.
“Alexei is innocent,” I say, my voice so soft it’s almost a whisper.
“So?” Noah prompts, and I look into his big brown eyes that have always felt as comforting as chocolate. I want to make him see. But I don’t want to make him change.
“So sometimes innocent people get hurt.”
Megan and Noah see them then, the ghosts that follow me. They hear the things that I can’t say.
“Grace,” Megan says, easing closer, “Alexei can’t stay here.”
“Of course he can’t. But he’s harder to move than I thought he would be.”
“No.” Noah’s voice is so soft it’s like he’s speaking to a child. “I think what Megan was trying to say is that Alexei has to turn himself in.”
“No. He’s got to go back to Moscow. He’ll be okay there. I think. At least, I hope so. They probably can’t get to him in Moscow.”
Neither Megan nor Noah asks who “they” are. They don’t mention my cracking voice or my shaking hands.
“I know I sound like a crazy person,” I tell them. “I know it. But you have to believe me. If he stays —”
“Gracie.” The voice is too far away. I only realize who is speaking when Megan drops to her knees and helps Alexei sit upright.
“What happened?” he asks.
Noah gives me a skeptical look before telling Alexei, “You took a little nap, my friend.”
While Noah works on the belt that binds Alexei’s feet, Megan pulls a pocketknife from somewhere and cuts through the shoestrings around his wrists.