“Hey, Grace,” someone says an hour later. I jump, startled. Did she just appear out of thin air? Or was I so hungry and tired and focused on my target that she has been following me for thirty minutes and I didn’t even notice?
In any case, I try to sound as calm as possible when I say, “Hi, Rosie.”
The tiny girl eases closer. “Whatcha doing?”
“Sorry, Rosie, but I’m a little busy at the moment.”
I start to ease around the corner, needing to be ready if and when Noah tells me it’s my turn. But mostly I just need Rosie to get away from me. It’s bad enough I’ve already corrupted Noah; I can’t stand the thought of putting Rosie in danger, too.
But Rosie is holding back a laugh. “Oh, I can tell.”
I’m just about to ask what she thinks is so funny when Noah’s voice comes ringing out of the walkie-talkie I’m holding behind my back. “Grace, we have movement on the south side of the building. I repeat, we have movement, and it’s coming your way.”
I look at Rosie. Rosie looks at me.
“Grace,” Noah says after a moment. “Grace, do you read —”
“Go ahead,” Rosie tells me. “Answer him.”
Slowly, I hold up my walkie-talkie. “I read you.” I can’t take my eyes off of the small girl with the very self-satisfied smile.
“You’re doing it wrong,” Rosie says.
“Sorry, Rosie. I wish I could stay, but I —”
“But you’re trying to follow one of the most security-conscious, not to mention paranoid, men in Adria,” Rosie tells me. “And you’re doing it wrong.”
For a moment I just stare at her. I don’t have a clue what to say. All I know is that I will not tell her that she’s crazy — that she’s making it all up. I will never use that as a weapon against another human being as long as I live.
Rosie looks at my slack jaw, my dazed expression. “I’ve spent my whole life tailing after people who think they’re more interesting than me, Grace.”
“But —”
“I’m not an idiot! I’m just twelve. I’m a twelve-year-old girl and neither of those facts are my fault.”
I was thirteen when I saw my mother die, when I told my story. When I started “having a hard time,” as my grandfather likes to say. Would they have locked me up if I’d been thirty? If I’d been a boy? It’s a question I do not dare to ask.
“Grace?” Noah’s scratchy voice cuts through the air. “Grace, are you there?”
Before I can stop her, Rosie pulls the walkie-talkie from my limp hand.
“Noah,” she says into it. “This is Rosie. Hang back twenty meters and do not cross the street. We’re going to get ahead of him.”
She hands the walkie-talkie back to me. “This is how you do it.”
I am a natural tree climber, swimmer, and window-crawler-outer. Turns out, what Rosie does best is disappear.
She’s small enough that she weaves, totally unseen, through the crowded market. She blends in easily among the tourists that gather outside the palace. And when the man with the scar stops cold and turns, he walks right past her — and Rosie lets him — as if both of them are exactly where they are supposed to be.
For the most part, Noah and I do as we’re told. When she says to get on a streetcar, we get on. When she tells us to split up and wait on opposite corners outside the national cathedral, we do that, too. We are students of a twelve-year-old ninja. And we have a lot to learn.
When the Scarred Man comes out of the church and turns onto a street I’ve never really seen before, I am the one who is closest, so it’s my job to follow.
The Romans built this part of town and I’m walking on cobblestones a thousand years older than my home nation. The world has changed. Wars raged and governments rose and fell, but the streets of Valancia have stayed exactly the same. Curving, twisting, climbing.
As I follow the man who killed my mother up the winding street, there is a moment when I realize that I am not afraid. I’m actually happy that there is something real that I can do. If I can see him I can follow him. And if I can follow him I can find proof of what happened three years ago. And then I can do what they’ve been telling me to do ever since that fateful night: Move on.
There’s laughter on the street behind me. A little girl holds tightly to her brother’s hand.
“Jamie, come on!”
“There’s nothing down there, Gracie.”
“But I saw Momma come this way.”
“No. See, Grace, Mom isn’t here.”
“Grace?” Noah says. “Grace, are you there?”
We’ve ditched the walkie-talkies and are on a three-way cell phone call. There’s a micro-receiver in my ear. I feel like James Bond. That is, if James Bond ever went into the field with twelve-year-old former gymnasts.
“Do you have eyes on him?” Rosie asks.
“Not yet,” I say as the street curves slightly. I ease silently around, waiting for a clean line of sight. “I” — I stagger to a stop and no longer try to muffle my voice — “lost him. I lost him.”
“What?” Noah snaps.
“It’s a dead end,” I say. “The road curves and then it just … stops. It stops right here.”
“He must have doubled back,” Rosie tells me. “You must have missed him.”
“Did you look away for a while?” Noah asks. “Were you distracted by something?”
For a second I can’t answer. I think about the memory.
“No … I mean, I didn’t miss him,” I say, looking around at the empty street that had been growing gradually more and more narrow. Where I stand it’s not much more than an alley, and I am alone. There is no way I missed a car or a pedestrian. It would have been obvious.
The Scarred Man didn’t double back. The Scarred Man disappeared.
I stand there for a long time, looking at the empty alley, and thinking about that little girl who was certain she had seen her mother come this way. Not for the first time I have to wonder where my mother went and why I couldn’t follow.