Deaths Excellent Vacation

blinked at the crowd.
    Nora lurched toward her, clutched her arm. “You said . . . you said Jason was here.”
    Annie blinked again. “Oh. Yes. I did. I went outside to see after I called you, but there was no one there. Someone was playing a trick on me.”
    A long, low moan from Hope Kirk.
    “You didn’t speak with Ms. Dare?” Peert said.
    “Well, she kept insisting the man must be Jason Kirk, and I got tired of hearing her say that and I hung up.” Annie’s voice was dreamy- raw, as though she’d just woken from sleep.
    “Oh my God, this is insane!” Nora said. “In-freaking-sane. I had an entire conversation with her. She said he came to the door, she was afraid of him, she could see him at the door, she said hello to him . . .”
    Annie shook her head.
    Nora grabbed her, shook her. Annie seemed limp, like a cast- aside rag doll. Peert pulled Nora’s hands from Annie’s throat.

    FOUR in the morning. Nora lay dozing. The echoes of the past hours: the real fear in Annie’s voice, the blame in the Kirks’ accusations, the staring disbelief of that traitor Molly, the dazed surprise of Annie in real life. There were talks of charges to be brought, of a lawsuit by the Kirks. The network brass fumed; Nora knew, in her lawyer’s readiness, that she was going to be burned by this, very badly.
    And all she’d tried to do was to bring a boy home, safe and sound.
    A breeze poured in from the open balcony window. She was on the top floor of the Hotel Sint Pieter, where she belonged, and having drunk half the minibar when she got back to her room, her body felt feverish from the alcohol. She got up; the cooling ocean breeze was a relief. She was groping toward the bathroom when Jason Kirk said, behind her, “You made it very hard for me.”
    She froze. She shook her head, as if to settle her imagination back into its distant corner of her brain. Then he said the words again, and she spun in stark terror.
    Jason Kirk stood on the balcony, kissed by moonlight. The wind ruffled his light hair slightly.
    She tried to scream and she couldn’t. Oddest thing. She sank to her knees.
    He said, in a voice barely louder than the ocean wind, “You keep telling people you will never forget, you will never stop looking. Safe and sound, right?” He shook his head. “I needed you to stop looking. Do you know how hard it’s been?”
    Nora’s mouth worked. How had he gotten here? It wasn’t possible. Not possible.
    He looked better than his photos and his videos. Handsome face, high cheekbones. Even in the broken moonlight he had dark eyes, pools of black that could let you fall into their depths.
    “May we talk?”
    Nora nodded, and he stepped into the room.
    “You’re alive,” she said. “Oh my God. Jason, the story this will be.”
    “There is no story. You would let it go on forever, or as long as you could use me. There is no story. I need for there to be no story.”
    She hardly heard him, her mind spinning with possibilities and ramifications. “Listen, you have to come with me. Now. Let your parents see you . . .”
    “You don’t see how cruel that would be? I have to be . . . dead to my mom and dad. I have to stay that way.”
    “I don’t understand.” She groped for the lamp, clicked it on. “Were you at Annie’s house tonight?”
    “The tasty little maid? Yes. She only remembers what I want her to. I won’t bother her again.” He took a step toward her. He wore old jeans, a worn soccer jersey, and a long low cap favored by Sint Pieter toughs. Like clothes she’d seen on the neighbor’s clothesline at Annie’s house. “She played her part.”
    “I don’t understand . . .”
    “I wanted to draw you here, bait you with what you couldn’t resist. Me, on the verge of safe and sound. To bring you to me. Because you put my face everywhere, I couldn’t come to you to stop you. I couldn’t get near a boat or a plane or anything else. I needed you to come to me so we could have our chat.” He crossed his arms. “I need you to shut up about me, Nora.”
    “I can . . . now that you’re found.” She nearly felt giddy. That little bitch Molly would be gone. The Kirks would see that she’d only meant the best. And having broken this case open, having personally brought their son home, she would be the undisputed queen of cable news.
    “I’m not found. It’s time for the world to forget about me. Move on to the next tragedy.”
    “But I don’t understand.”
    Jason smiled; there was