Deceptive Coordinates

Deceptive Coordinates

“I can’t do this,” Lila squeezed her eyes shut and threw the folded paper in Max’s direction. It fluttered to the ground, and he stooped to pick it up before the mud could soil it. Paper wasn’t really the right word to describe it, as it was a thick, cream card with gold accents on the edges. 

Max looked at her sympathetically. “You can’t put it off forever. Come on, you can do this, Lila. Whatever it says, it’ll be okay,” Lila could tell he was trying to sound as optimistic as he could. “You’ll get some answers, and at the very least you’ll find out if Julian’s alive and where he is.” Lila tried to force Max’s words to sink in, but she couldn’t help imagining the worst. Her husband Julian had disappeared over three months ago, leaving only a note pleading with her to not follow him and that he’d contact her soon, providing no other explanation. She had waited patiently the first week, but as time passed her patience had worn thin and given way to a crawling feeling that something had happened to him. The night was when it became inescapable, the too-silent darkness surrounding her and leaving her alone with her fears, which eventually slipped into her nightmares. 

Max carefully placed the card back into her hand and gestured at her house, “Let’s go inside so you can sit down and try to relax if you don’t want to look right now.” She barely noticed as he guided her through her front door and into a kitchen chair, looking up to find him sliding a cup of water in front of her. She smiled, thanking him before draining it in one gulp. They sat for a few minutes in comfortable silence, interrupted when Max’s phone rang. He picked it up and left the room, leaving Lila alone. 

A few days ago, the card had shown up in her mailbox, and Lila could feel right when she laid eyes on it, that it was what she had been waiting for. The first contact from her husband in three months. Before she could stop herself again, in one swift motion, Lila tore the gold ribbon holding the card closed, and opened it. She could feel every muscle tense up in anticipation of something terrible. Inside, the card was plain except for the small, solid black writing written in the very center with a neat hand. Her breath caught, recognizing the handwriting as Julian’s. It was a series of numbers and letters that confused her until she realized they looked to be coordinates, but there was nothing else in the note, no message at all. She couldn’t figure out what he was trying to tell her. 

Max returned just as she was closing the card again, stopping short when he saw her. “You did it!” He grinned, taking it from her and barely glancing at it before identifying the characters as coordinates.

“I figured that much on my own,” she sighed. “Why though? Why can’t he just write the message or write out the location? Now we have even more to do before we can get answers.” As she was speaking, Max had already pulled up a website on his phone to input the coordinates and pinpoint the location. 

He frowned, turning the phone so it faced her. “According to this website, it seems to be a place in the middle of a forest in Spain. Does Julian know anybody there?”

At the mention of Spain, something clicked in Lila’s memory. Before she and Julian had gotten married, he had gone to Madrid a couple of times. He had always told her it was for business, but perhaps there was something he had been keeping from her. She remembered how stressed he’d be prior to each trip, but she had never pried, thinking it was just due to work and travel. 

She relayed this to Max, and learned that he never knew about the trips, which only increased her own wariness. Max and Julian were first cousins, and had grown up as close as brothers. Lila had actually met Julian through Max at a college event that Max had dragged Lila to their freshman year. Now, they were a close trio, and Max was their favorite third wheel. In fact, Lila felt more like a third wheel around the two men than she suspected Max felt with the actual married couple. 

“Are you sure, Max? Could you just be forgetting?” She knew it wasn’t possible, but she asked anyway. 

“I definitely wouldn’t forget him flying off to Spain if I knew about it, Lila. But before your wedding, I was still in residency, so he probably just didn’t tell me about it because I wasn’t even in California. So the question here is why he needed to go there and what he was up to.” Max pondered out loud. His eyes had acquired a curious gleam.

Lila tapped the coordinates, “That’s exactly what I’d like to find out. Guess it’s time to brush up on our Spanish, mi amigo.”

Three days later, Lila landed in Spain alone on a bright Saturday morning. The chirping harmony of the birds and the warm June air made her wish she wasn’t there for such a stressful reason, but finding her husband was what she had come for, and soon it would all be worth it. Max had apologetically declined to come due to work, which had bothered Lila, but dwelling on the things she had no control over would only waste her time and energy. Instead, she had steeled herself for solo travel to a country she had never been to before. 

The next few hours were a blur of buses, taxis, and jumbled pronunciations and translation apps, until she finally found herself standing in front of the forest pinpointed on the coordinates. She opened the coordinate app she had installed prior to arriving, and slowly began moving according to the instructions. Luckily, the location looked to be part of a trail, so she wouldn’t need to go off into the wilderness. The sun was descending over the trees, darkening the sky with a palette of vivid pinks and oranges. Lila’s heart ached. Julian had loved watching sunsets with her. On their first date, he had taken her to a beach for a picnic and had pointed out the array of colors as the sky became dark. “It’s just like the pink lemonade,” he had pointed at their drinks with a grin, toasting his glass with hers. It had become tradition for them to make sure to catch a sunset together once in a while, and they’d seen too many to count in all the years they had been together. Now, she couldn’t help but think she’d never see one with him again.

“What are you trying to make me do out here, Julian? Your little scavenger hunt better be worth it.” She murmured to herself. The breeze picked up, ruffling her hair and swaying the trees. She headed deeper into the forest, following the trail. The location was still over a mile away, and the trees began to loom in front of her. The darkness was descending like a thick blanket overhead, shrouding the forest in shadows. Lila had known it was getting late, and had entered inside anyway, not wanting to put off finding Julian. She had a creeping sense of regret now, but she was in too deep to turn back without answers. She switched on her flashlight and continued on.

A twig snapped, echoing through the air. Lila whirled around, heart in her throat, and came face to face with a squirrel nibbling on a berry. “You’re really losing it now,” she told herself as she turned back around. The rest of the journey was uneventful, with her stopping and ensuring she was going the right way every few minutes. Finally, she came upon a small opening to a cave-like area beyond. She double-checked the map. Julian despised caves, always shuddering and saying they triggered his claustrophobia. She tried Max’s cell to run it by him, but it went straight to voicemail. She sighed, despising his decision to be a doctor and not even getting his Saturdays off.

“Here goes nothing,” she whispered, stepping through the leaves and stooping down into the cave’s opening. Its ceiling became higher after stepping inside, so she stood straight again and began walking. 

Footsteps crunched on the ground behind her. Her heart began racing again, but as she halted, the steps did too. Her own footsteps had scared her. She was about to scoff when she heard shuffling again. She turned around, feeling her heartbeat in her dry mouth. Her flashlight seemed to move on its own, willing its beam to find the source of the noise. 

As her eyes landed on the offender, she was convinced she was now hallucinating. “Max?” She asked, dumbfounded.

“I’m sorry Lila. I don’t have a choice.” He swung something heavy at her head, and the world swam into nothing.

Lila’s head throbbed. She couldn’t tell where she was, and the thought of opening her eyes was unbearable. The left side of her body was brushing something hard and cold, like stone. Slowly, her ears began registering the sound of voices. Two men were heatedly arguing, and she wanted them to shut up so she could sleep in silence. She moaned as another pulse of pain entered her head, and the voices fell quiet.

“Lila?” One of the men said. “Are you awake? Lila? Love, please wake up!” His voice was hoarse, as if he hadn’t used it in days. Julian. Her eyes flew open as the fog cleared, immediately followed by a fresh wave of pain in her eye socket. She could make out a figure hunched over in a chair with his hands tied behind him. There was a small fire burning in the corner, bathing everything in a dim, orange glow.

She whimpered, “Julian is that you? What’s going on? I came here to find you, and Max was behind me, and-”

“I know Lila, you don’t need to explain. He’s the one who caused all of this.” Julian sounded so tired.

A new voice joined the conversation, “I’m sorry, lovebirds. It isn’t personal.” Max. He sounded so smug. Lila turned toward the direction of his voice. He was leaning on a cave wall, smiling at her. She felt the urge to throw something, preferably very heavy, at his head.

“It isn’t personal? You told me you can’t come with me, then ambushed me in a cave, knocked me out, and tied my husband up and did God knows what else to him! What is wrong with you, who are you?” She glared at him. She doubted his name was even Max, and was he actually Julian’s cousin? Suddenly, the sense of fear that had been slowly building up inside her rose to insurmountable panic. These were likely going to be her last moments alive, but she wasn’t going to give up without trying. She shuffled slowly, feeling the pockets on her jacket and pants discreetly. Max had taken away her bag, but had forgotten to empty her pockets, so she still had her phone. She was attempting to punch in the different emergency numbers for Spain when she noticed Julian subtly shaking his head at her. Her hands stilled, and she frowned at him. She may not have been able to talk to him, but their years of marriage allowed her to understand the plea in his eyes. Trust me. She would.

“Oh dear, explaining who I am is a very long story. A story that I’m not even sure your husband would like you to know,” Max was practically gloating. Lila tried to catch Julian’s eye, but he wouldn’t look at her. She felt like screaming. Her Julian didn’t keep secrets, or at least he never had before. It seemed like everything she thought she knew was being thrown out the window. She closed her eyes, wishing it was all just a nightmare, and that when she woke up, she’d be back home on a normal day with Julian. 

“But I have no problem with making Julian uncomfortable.” Max continued, his eyes flashing at him. Lila instinctively wanted to throw herself between this man and her husband. “No, we’re not actually cousins, Lila. But he only found out about that before your wedding during those trips that I pretended to know nothing about. What’s wrong, he never told you?” Max smirked at Lila’s confusion. “Don’t take it personally, darling. His business, as you think the trips were for, is quite shrouded in secrecy. He’s been working to undermine me since he found out who I am, or I suppose who I’m not, but letting his wife in on what he found out could have compromised it. You see me everyday and we all know you’re a terrible liar.”

Lila was stuck on Max’s odd referral to Julian’s business when he began inching toward where she was still curled up on the floor. His steps seemed awkward, and she screamed when she realized why. In his arms, he carried a rifle. 

“I’m sorry it has to happen this way. It was honestly fun to pretend to be friends with you, darling. At times, I wished it was real. You made my college years much more bearable and gave me an excuse to feel like a normal kid. I almost gave up my mission because of you.” As he closed in on her, the cave suddenly flooded with intense light. Almost a dozen men in what looked to be a black military uniform stormed inside. One headed straight to Max, tackling him to the ground, and another snapped a pair of handcuffs on his wrist. Another man gently assisted Lila in standing up, and across from her, Julian was being freed from his ties.

“Yes sir, the threat has been apprehended, and we have his words on record.” One of the men spoke into his comms. The next sentence shattered Lila’s perception of everything she thought she knew into a million pieces. “The prince is safe.”

“Julian. Explain. Now.” Lila blankly stated to her husband a few hours later. They had finally been left alone in peace after government officials had been swarming all around them, taking blood, temperatures, and asking absurd questions. At his continued silence, she gave in to her frustration, her voice rising. “I’m sorry, Prince Julian, is it? Apparently I’ve been with a prince of Spain for seven years but he never had the decency to let me in on the fact of his identity? Tell me what the hell this is all about this second, or else-” Her trembling voice broke off, and she fell into the chair behind her.

Finally, he sighed and met her eyes. “I’m really sorry Lila. It’s not what you think. I swear. I’m not as in the know as you believe. I mean yes, I knew I was a prince since I was little, but they gave us the choice to live normally, and that’s what I chose. I only had to accept my position when I was warned about an assassination plot against my family before we got married. That was also when I found out Max’s family were the perpetrators. They are distantly related to us, but they claimed to be descended from someone they’re not so they could present as closer. I was so worried about the danger to you if you married me, but the officials I worked with told me to go ahead with it.”

“Why?” Lila whispered, already knowing the answer.

“Max would know immediately. He’s always known how much I love you, so if I suddenly called it off, he’d know he was the reason.” Julian confirmed. His eyes became stormy. “All those years before I found out, I really thought he was my cousin, and you thought he was your best friend. I waited until the intelligence told me to, and then disappeared to draw him out. That coordinate card was sent to him, not to you, but he saw through the plan. He must have planted it in your mailbox. If he had come alone, they could have blown up the cave or been more ruthless. He knew if you were there too, he’d have a better chance of getting away and of hurting me.” He sighed, rubbing a hand over his face.

Lila didn’t know what to say or think. “What now? Do we move here, are you taking up the mantle of prince now?” The grief and shock of the past day made her chest ache. 

He was silent for a moment. “I’m not sure, we can figure that out together gradually. But we’re safe now, and that’s what matters.” He tucked her hair behind her ear. His warm gaze moved toward the window, and he lit up with a smile. She followed his gaze to the vibrant sky brightening over the Spanish countryside. The sun was rising. “Look, Lila. It’s just like pink lemonade.”