Killing Sarai (15 page)

Victor

I stand with my hands pressed against the counter, a towel wrapped around my lower body after having just showered. I peer into the mirror over the sink, tilting my chin to one side and then the other, feeling like I should probably shave but decide against it. Samantha sits down on the closed toilet seat with a suture needle and thread in one hand, ready to stitch me up.

“Are you going to drop the towel?” she asks. “I can’t very well do this with it in the way. And it’s not like I haven’t seen it before.”

I start to remove the towel just as she says that, but then I notice a sound so faint, like the sound of a sharp breath, that I’m surprised I heard it at all. I glance into the mirror and look behind me at the door seeing nothing but knowing that Sarai is on the other side of it.

“Victor?” Samantha urges me, getting irritated with my slow response.

“No,” I finally answer, turning around so that the side where the wound is, is facing her. I reach down and strategically adjust the towel over the back of my hip so that she can access it, afterwards tying it firmly together on the other side to hold it in place.

“If you insist,” Samantha says and goes right to work.

I feel the needle slide in once and I grit my teeth for a moment until the pain fades.

“You never did tell me why you stopped coming here,” Samantha says.

“It was for the best.”

“Bullshit. It was something I did, or said, or maybe it was something I
didn’t
do. I just want to know. No hard feelings. No awkwardness. Just answer the question that’s been bugging the shit out of me for ten years. I deserve that much.”

After the second pass of the needle through my skin, I no longer feel it.

“I respected you,” I say. “It didn’t feel it right to use you anymore.”

“Honey, you know better than that.” She smiles up at me briefly. “I didn’t mind; hell, I enjoyed it.”

“But I
did
mind.”

Samantha pushes the needle through again, always carefully. Then she shakes her head. “I wonder how you manage to pull off this job with that conscience of yours. I think you’re the only one with a conscience who can.”

“Well, it was nothing you did or didn’t do,” I say, skipping over her comment entirely. “So, I hope I’ve answered the question enough to satisfy you.”

“Stop being so technical with me, Victor. You know I hate it.”

She stands up from the toilet seat and reaches for the iodine, spilling a small amount onto a wash cloth. She dabs it all over and around the stitched bullet wound.

“I hear you started staying at Safe House Nine over in Dallas when you came through these parts,” she goes on and I can predict where she’s going with the rest of it. “Is it because that one was younger than me? I mean, it’s perfectly fine. I
am
getting up in the years, I admit.”

It is exactly what I predicted she’d say.

I sigh and lean against the counter, crossing my arms. She pulls a large square of gauze from a packet to prepare it next.

I look right at her, hoping I can say what I’m about to say without turning her against me. I won’t leave Sarai alone with her if she thinks I chose Safe House Nine over her because of something as absurd as her age. Samantha is a killer. And a woman who feels scorned who is also a killer is a fatal combination.

“I chose Nine because she was a whore and proud of it,” I say, laying the truth out the way it needs to be, to make her understand. “I couldn’t use you like she let me use her. Because you were and still are my friend. I hope you understand.”

She laughs lightly. “You don’t have any friends, Victor.”

Her gaze skirts me as she places the gauze over the wound and presses two strips of dressing tape along its edges. Then she raises up the rest of the way and looks at me with thoughtful green eyes. I feel the same thing in her eyes that I always felt when I came here, when I slept with her. She might have been someone who could fall in love with me, if I had let it go that far. She started getting too close and I couldn’t let that happen. She had always been kind to me. She was different from the others who were more like myself and are only interested in sex. Because anything more is not only reckless and dangerous and foolish, but is completely unacceptable.

“Who do you think you’re fooling, Victor?” she asks with a playful, yet inoffensive smile.

I pull the towel the rest of the way back over my hips, tucking it in on itself at the waist.

“What do you mean?” I ask, looking upon her curiously.

Samantha starts clearing the countertop of the bandage leftovers and rinsing the blood and iodine down the sink with a burst of water.

“That girl down the hall,” she says. “Izabel. Of course we both know that’s not her real name, but regardless, what the hell are you doing with her?” She drops a handful of bloody tissues into the wastebasket beside the toilet.

“I told you,” I say. “I’m just using her until I eliminate my target. After that, she’s on her own.”

I never could completely fool Samantha, but what strikes me the most about right now is that she appears to know more about what’s going on with me than even I do. And I’m not fond of that idea.

I glance toward the bathroom door several feet away, wondering if Sarai is still hiding there, listening to everything between us. I know she is. I can feel it. But Samantha needs to stop. Right now. Because I can’t have her filling Sarai’s head with things that might cause her confusion. The girl is confused enough as it is.

“I need to get dressed,” I say, hoping to deter her from the topic. I reach for my clean boxer-briefs hanging nearby, but Samantha steps around in front of me.

She crosses her arms and the smile she wore before has been replaced by determination.

“You can’t do this. You know that.”

I reach around her and grab my boxers anyway, letting the towel drop to the floor and stepping into them.

“Victor,” she persists, “you can’t be the hero. Not for her or for anyone else. You
know
this. What you’re doing, what you’re
feeling
is only going to get you killed.”

I pull my thumbs from the elastic, letting it snap against my hips and shut Samantha up with the hard look in my eyes.

“You’re way off the mark, Sam,” I say, glaring at her. “You think you see something in me for her because it’s what you’re used to believing you saw in me for
you
.” Instantly, I regret my words.

Samantha glares at me coldly, her fingers pressing aggressively into her biceps. “What are you saying? That it’s what you think
I—.” She can’t look at me anymore and her eyes stray toward the shower. Because she knows I’m right. I shouldn’t have said it, but she can’t deny the truth.

Finally she looks at me again, hurt and admission on her features. “You’re right,” she says. “I have always thought of you in that way. I read into things between us wrong and saw things that weren’t there.”

I keep silent to let her finish, but it seems that she has.

“I truly am sorry for anything I have done to you,” I say and mean it with everything in me.

She shakes her graying blonde head. “No, Victor, you did everything right. You saw that I was developing feelings for you before I knew it myself and you did the right thing.”

I cup my hands underneath her elbows and she relaxes a little.

“I hope that—.”

Uncrossing her arms, my hands fall away.

“Victor,” she says, putting up both of her hands between us, “please don’t apologize for not having the same feelings for me that I was having for you. That’s not something you can control, I know. And I hope that you’ll believe me when I say that you can
always
trust me. You’re the one person in the Order that I trust and can truly call…my friend.”

“I thought you said I didn’t have any friends?” I smile faintly.

Relaxing one arm back against her chest, she pats my shoulder with the other.

“OK, maybe you just have me,” she says, smiling back at me. But then she becomes serious again. “And because I’m your only friend, you have to trust me,
listen
to me when I tell you that what you’re doing with this girl is going to get you exiled, or killed, or both.”

I start buttoning my shirt.

I had hoped she would drop it altogether, especially if Sarai is still listening in from the other room, though I get the strangest feeling that she’s not and that relaxes my mind somewhat.

“I’m not doing anything with her other than keeping her safe until this is all over,” I insist. “She deserves a shot a normal life after what she’s been through and I decided at some point to try and give that to her.”

I slip into my black slacks, tucking in my shirt. Samantha pulls my tie from the hanger on the wall and drapes it around the back of my neck.

She sighs. “OK,” she says, surrendering. “But tell me, and be honest with
yourself
before you answer…,” she hesitates, her fingers paused around the tie. I nod. “Since she’s been with you, can you tell yourself that she’s going to be any different than you were years after you were taken by the Order?”

Her question quietly shocks me. I had not expected it at all.

“Even I see it, Victor, and I’ve only spent an afternoon with her so I know you see it, too.”

I know now what she’s referring to, but I’m still too taken aback by the revelation to comment. Samantha detects this, my need to hear more of what I already know to be true from someone else’s lips rather than just my own. Subconsciously needing the validation.

“I know you can’t tell me anything about where she came from, who she’s running from or how long she was with those she’s running from, but judging by what I see in her now I can tell two things.” She straightens my finished tie and lets one hand drop to her side, the other briefly holds up two fingers. “One,” she drops one finger, “she’s already so anesthetized to what is normal that she might never live a normal life. She knew I was testing her food for her because you were making sure it wasn’t
poisoned
, but it didn’t faze her. She sat at that table with us, scarfing down that lunch like we were a simple family of three sharing an afternoon meal in the suburbs.”

She leans against the counter, crossing her arms over her chest.

“And two,” she goes on, “for her to be that way I know she had to have been a prisoner, sex slave or no-telling-what for several years, no less than five. And at her young age—what is she twenty-three, twenty-four? (She gestures her hands around in front of her briefly)—that means she had to have been fairly young when she was taken.
Like you
. And we both know that the younger one is, the easier it is to mold them into whoever or whatever you want them to be. Also like you.”

Every word that Samantha spoke is true and I know it. I know it better than anyone.

I slip my suit vest on over my shirt and tie and button all four buttons.

“She’s in the fifty-fifty zone,” I say. “She can go either way with an equal shot at both. And she’s strong enough. And intelligent.” Lastly, I put on my suit jacket. “I’m just giving her
her one and only shot. Which direction she chooses to take it will be
her
decision. And I won’t be there to see it. She’ll be on her own then.”

Samantha cocks her head to one side. She probably doesn’t fully believe me, but she has finally exhausted her warnings.

She comes up to me, the same sweetly seductive smile she always wore minutes before I’d have my way with her in the past. She stops directly in front of me and her fingers dance upward along the fabric of my jacket. She rests her hands on both sides of my neck, brushing lightly against my skin.

“One last kiss,” she says looking into my eyes, “for old time’s sake. I just want to feel young again, like I always felt when you’d visit me.”

I bring my hands up and cradle her face within them, kissing her forehead slowly first. “It was never about you being older than me, Sam. You’re still as sexy today as you were to me ten years ago.” And then I touch my lips to hers, dragging the tip of my tongue softly across her bottom lip and into her mouth.

Sarai

They’ve been in the bathroom for a really long time. But it’s none of my business what they do. I left the room right before Samantha started stitching Victor up, resolved to come to my senses and let it go. I feel like I should’ve stayed to hear the things they talked about at least, since I’m pretty sure some of it was about me and I have a right to know, but it was too intrusive. And I admit, I didn’t want to see them together.

Despite feeling some jealousy for Victor, which I realize is only natural given the extraordinary situation I’ve been thrust into with him, I know that he could never be interested in someone like me, or in anyone at all, really.

Except Samantha and others like her, I suppose.

Regardless of their age difference, I know they’ve been intimate before. I heard her say it right before I left the room and I like to think I’m smart enough to put together the rest of the picture on my own, knowing what little I do know. Whatever their past relationship I feel like even though she’s attractive and obviously a kind and smart woman, those probably weren’t the things that brought him here. And it wasn’t just the sex, either. It was that Samantha knew all along that sex was all it would ever be.

I’m no expert, but it’s just what I believe in my heart. Samantha is
like
him, maybe not exactly in what roles they play in their secretive world of crime and danger and death, but she knows he’s too disciplined and unemotional to become involved.

Victor could probably never trust himself with anyone on the ‘outside’. And when it comes to comparing me with them, I am the epitome of the outside.

I stare off toward the curtain-covered window in the spare room where Victor left me earlier. It’s pitch black outside even though it’s not even nine o’clock yet. I lay on my side on the bed, one arm bent beneath my head underneath my pillow. My feet are cold, but I don’t care to get up and break apart a pair of socks from the package Victor bought me, so I press my feet together at the ankles and slide them underneath the blanket.

Victor walks into the room. He leaves the door open to let the light from the hallway filter inside instead of flipping on the switch. I get the feeling he thought at first I might’ve been asleep.

He’s dressed from head to toe in refined sophistication, more-so than I’ve ever seen him and I can’t help but stare across the room at his dangerous beauty. His tall form moves through the path of light at the door and then is bathed in shadow when he approaches the bed where I lay.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he says and sits down beside me, his back straight, his hands resting along the tops of his legs.

“Are you going to come back?”

It takes him a moment to answer. He keeps his eyes trained on the window out ahead.

“It will probably be best that I didn’t,” he says.

My heart lurches. I swallow.

“When Javier is dead, either Samantha will take you where you need to go, or I’ll send Niklas for you.”

The back of my throat is beginning to burn, the top of my nose, just between my eyes is starting to itch.

I force the tears back.

I don’t want him to go at all, much less never come back. I want to stay with him, though I don’t know why.

“But what if others know?” I remind him, hoping to change his mind without him knowing the real reason why. “What about John
Lansen? What about all of the other men I saw? Victor, they might know and maybe Javier won’t be the last to come looking for me.” I really don’t care if they do. That’s not what I’m afraid of. I’m afraid of Victor walking out that door and never seeing him again.

Finally, I manage to sit up, anger twisting my features at first, until I notice it and let them soften.

I cross my legs Indian-style on the bed and reach out to take his wrist, tugging on the sleeve of his jacket. I halfway expected him to retract it from me, but he doesn’t. He rests his hand upon the tops of my crossed ankles and just that simple touch, that single gesture, causes my throat to close up with emotion. I look down at his hand, my fingers shaking nervously against the cuff of his dress shirt.

He
didn’t move his hand away…,
I keep thinking to myself.

Tears brim my eyelids, but I breathe them back quickly.

“I am sorry, Sarai,” he says looking me in the eyes as his churn with conflict and indecision.

I get the feeling that he doesn’t want to leave me here. I
feel
it…I
know
it….

Slowly he stands up from the bed. I sit here, frozen in a chasm of self-defeat and anger and fear.
Fear
! How can he accuse me of fearing nothing?! I want to shout at him, tell him how wrong he is as he shoulders his bags and takes up the gun suitcase in one hand.

Instead, I wipe the few tears that did manage to fall from my eyes and I say across the room to him softly:

“Victor, you were wrong.”

He turns only his head to look back at me.

“You were wrong when you said I fear nothing. You were
so
wrong….”

He holds his gaze on me for only a second and then turns and walks away, closing the door and letting the darkness of the room consume me again.

~~~

Samantha left me alone for the next hour and a half. I guess she wanted to give me time to myself because when she did finally come into the room with me minutes ago, I could tell that she felt something for me as I lay curled up on the bed, staring at that window. It makes me wonder what they talked about in her bathroom earlier, makes me regret not staying longer to have found out.

I would hate her for knowing more than me, if she was an easy person to hate.

But I realize I like her too much for that.

“You know, Victor does this stuff all the time, Izabel.” She pats me on the hip with the palm of her hand. She’s sitting in the same spot next to me where Victor last sat.

“He’ll be fine.” She smiles. “And I’m sure he knows you’re grateful to him for helping you.”

“What can you tell me about him?” I ask.

She inhales a deep, concentrated breath and her eyebrows rise with that loaded-question sort of look.

“Well, I’m guessing you know what he does for a living already, so you can probably imagine that I’m sworn to a certain amount of secrecy that if I break could get me in a lot of trouble.”

True, but she’s smiling and really seems kind of itching to talk to me, regardless. It may not turn out to be much, but something is better than nothing, I suppose.

I sit upright, dropping my legs over the side of the bed to sit like her. I rest my hands within my lap.

She smiles over at me in a short glance and reaches out her hand. “Let’s talk about it over a cup of coffee.”

She stands up and I put my hand in hers and accept.

“I swear it’s perfectly poison-free,” she jokes as I follow her out the door and into the hall.

“I believe you.”

I believe her mostly because if Victor trusted her enough to leave me alone with her then that’s enough for me.

I sit down at the kitchen table while she gets the coffee ready at the counter where the coffee pot sits next to an old giant microwave.

“I suppose it’s OK to tell you that he’s been the way he is pretty much all his life.” She scoops a few tablespoons of coffee into the filter and shuts the top of the coffee maker. “But I really only know the things he’s told me. Nothing more than that.”

“What kinds of things?”

She pours the water in the back of the coffee maker while allowing the different conversations she’s had with Victor to materialize.

“Well, I know he loves his coffee black.” She smiles. “He loves Thai food and he won’t touch tuna fish with someone else’s tongue. He prefers a good beer over a fine wine, but only the best beer, preferably German.” She sits down at the table with me and props the side of her face in one hand, looking thoughtful. “To tell you the truth, Victor would rather go all the way to Germany for a beer than to drink the beer here.” She waves her hand at me once, removing it from her cheek. “He’s a very particular man.”

“But what about his family?” I ask. “He told me he had a sister and that he killed his father and something about his mother being in…
Budapest
, I think?”

Samantha shakes her head, smiling and maybe even finding what I told her a little amusing. But she’s not gloating about it.

“No, doll,” she says. “If that’s what he told you, it was probably just to get you to stop talking. (Well, she’s right about that much, I know.) He would never tell anyone else anything too personal about his life, especially his family. Not even me. I don’t even know if he
has
a family.”

I stay as far away from the topic of the two of them as I can.

“You need to know, Izabel,” she looks at me intently so that I’ll meet her gaze, “that Victor is risking a lot…no, he’s risking
everything
by helping you. And even though he left tonight and doesn’t intend to come back for you, what he’s already done where you’re concerned, though I have no idea what that might be, it could have already sealed his fate.”

My stomach tightens and I get this horrid feeling in the center of my throat.

Her gaze shifts softly and I feel as if she’s mourning me, or my feelings in some private way.

She leans her back against the chair. The coffee gurgles and drips into the pot behind her.

“But how do you know that’s what he’s doing?” I ask. “How do you know he’s helping me and that I’m not just part of his mission?”

“Because he would never have brought you here,” she says almost sympathetically. “And he wouldn’t have asked me not to tell anyone, our employer,
no one
, that he did it.”

I raise my gaze from the table to look at her, surprised by the information she just gave.

She nods at me as if to confirm my thoughts even though I never spoke them aloud. “Yes,” she says. “Other than Niklas, I am the only one he trusts. Maybe not completely because Victor is incapable of that, but he trusts me. And by hiding you out here and asking me to risk my life by keeping you a secret,
that’s
how I know.”

She’s telling the truth. I can’t bring myself to believe otherwise no matter how hard I try. And I
do
try. I think I’m subconsciously attempting to find some reason not to like her or to be suspicious of her because of my jealousy from before.

But I find nothing.

And I can’t help but wonder if she holds that against me, if there is any lingering bitterness towards me because Victor asked her to risk her life for me. But I sense that there isn’t. It makes me feel ashamed in a way.

She gets up from the table and heads back toward the coffee pot.

But then she stops mid-stride and freezes at the end of the counter as if she came within an inch of walking into a glass wall. Her right hand touches the edge of the counter, her fingers curling into a fist as her head snaps back around to me. Her eyes are wide and alert and the sight of her like that makes me jump in my own skin.

And then I hear something, too, and my heart starts to bang violently against my ribs, reverberating through my bones and into my ears. Shadows move across the kitchen window and at that moment, Samantha drops low toward the floor, though still on her feet, and rushes toward me, pulling me completely from the chair. It happens so fast that I don’t get to drop as gracefully as she had. I nearly fall on my butt, but my right foot keeps me grounded where I spin around precariously on it until I catch my balance and then follow her through to the hallway.

“Who is it?” I whisper.

She grabs my arm and pulls me around in front of her. Her dog, Pepper, runs to the back door, barking furiously.

“Stay low and get back to your room!” she hisses. “
Hurry
!”

Crouched as low to the floor as I can possibly be without actually sitting on it, I feel like I’m scuttling across the carpet toward the opened bedroom door. Once I’m inside, Samantha comes in right behind me and dropping the rest of the way to her knees, she thrusts out both arms and presses her hands against the large wooden chest sitting at the foot of the bed. As she’s moving the chest, more shadows move across the window and I hear voices whispering outside.

And they’re speaking Spanish.

I whirl around to Samantha, tearing my eyes away from the window just in time to see her lifting a small metal door in the floor that had been hidden underneath the chest.

“Get inside! Hurry! Now!”

In that last second, which I don’t even think I really have the time to spare, I reach underneath the mattress and grab the gun that Victor left there, shoving it into the back of my pants. Samantha waves her hand at me to hurry and when I’m close enough she grabs my arm and helps me the rest of the way by practically shoving me down into the hole beneath the floor.