[English] Killing Sarai

Killing Sarai
Killing Sarai Page 10



“You don’t want to see what’s on that computer,” I say.

“You admit it, then,” she says nervously. “Something happened. You found out while I was in the shower.”

I’m standing up now. She still hasn’t shot me. She’s not going to unless I try to go after her. Though I’m not so impressed anymore. If I was her, I would have put a bullet in my skull by now.

I nod my answer. I’m only mildly surprised that she figured that much out. I should never have asked about her mother. She’s a smart girl, this one, though still far too sympathetic and human to get out of this by herself alive.

Leaving the gun in her right hand and keeping her eyes on me, she takes three and a half steps backward and reaches for the iPad, glancing between it and me, one second each, long enough to type in the password. After one full minute of frustration, unable to find anything, the girl points the gun at the iPad and steps away from the table closer to the wall.

“You pull it up,” she demands. “Whatever it is.”

Her hands, both gripping the gun handle now, are shaking.

“I will tell you one last time, you don’t want to see it.”

“Just show me!”

She’s crying now. Tears roll down her cheeks. I notice her lip quiver on the right side. She’s probably sick to her stomach, her nerves frayed to nothing. I glimpse the ropes I tied her up with lying on the floor. They haven’t been cut. She has small hands, small wrists. Quite the escape artist to have worked herself free from those knots. I glimpse the clock between the beds. But it took her far too long to pull it off, I see.

“Hurry!”

Her eyes are red and glistening with moisture.

I turn the iPad around on the table to face me. Using my finger, I open my private email account and then the folder where I filed away the attachment message I received last night from my liaison:

“What have you done?” Fleischer inquired the night before through the live video feed. “The girl was not part of the deal.” His German accent always bleeding heavily through his English.

“Guzmán’s daughter was there,” I said. “I saw her on the compound before I entered the house.” I looked once toward the restroom where the girl was still showering after fifteen minutes. “Javier Ruiz has an impressive operation.”

“Are you certain you saw the same girl?”

I was offended by Fleischer’s lack of confidence in me, that after years of working together and never being wrong in my assessments that he would still second-guess my findings.

“It was the same girl,” I confirmed evenly. “I took half of the money Javier agreed to and left, as I was ordered to do.”

“And then how did you end up with the other girl?”

“She escaped the compound and hid in my car.”

“And you did not know she was there?” He appeared surprised.

“Yes, I knew,” I confirmed.

“Then explain why—”

“Remember, Fleischer, that you are not my employer. It would be wise not to speak to me as if you were.”

Fleischer swallowed his pride and raised his chin to appear more confident in his moment beneath me.

“What did Javier offer to have Guzmán killed?”

“Not a fraction of what Guzmán offered to kill Javier and Izel and for the safe return of his daughter.”

I added, “I could have fulfilled the contract while I was there.”

“Yes,” Fleischer said. “But that was not part of the plan, the same as keeping the runaway with you.”

“The girl will be useful.”

“So far, she has proven anything but,” Fleischer said, regaining the confidence I stripped from him before. “Everything has changed. The plan. The contract. Your orders.”

“What are my new orders?” I asked.

“Vonnegut has given no new orders yet,” he said. “He awaits my contact. Your new orders will depend on the information I get from you now.”

Fleischer and I locked eyes in this moment, both of us sharing the same thoughts: You are my brother and I will do nothing to betray you, no matter our profession or the orders that either of us are ever given.

No one but the two of us know that we share the same father. But over the years since our recruit by the Order when we were young boys, we have grown apart. It is often easy to forget that we share the same blood, especially by Fleischer, first name Niklas, who has lived in my shadow in the Order for so many years.

I simply nodded, knowing that Niklas would relay to our employer, Vonnegut, whatever I needed him to.

To retain the relationship between my brother and me, I offered him information he never asked for:

“The girl will be useful, Niklas,” I repeated, calling him by his first name to offer a truce. “It seems that she is more to Javier than Javier would like us to know.”

Niklas nodded in response, understanding my intent.

“You mean to use the girl to trade for Guzmán’s daughter,” he stated.

“If it comes down to that, yes,” I said. “Tell Vonnegut that I have it under control, but that I will await whatever orders he chooses.”

“I will tell him,” Niklas agreed.

I clicked on the ‘play’ button then to watch the video Javier sent to Vonnegut, in which Fleischer, as my liaison, was then ordered to pass along to me.

It’s just as I thought: Javier has the girl’s friend, Lydia, in a compromising position. He wants the girl to see it, to know that if she doesn’t give herself up or convince me to take her back to him, Lydia will die. I knew then as I watched the scene unfold on the video before me that this Mexican drug lord was far more brutal than the Order knew.

I heard the shower shut off and I ran my finger over the screen to turn off the video, shutting the iPad down afterwards.

The girl will be devastated. If she finds out about this, it will make her unstable.

But I can use this also to my advantage.

With the recorded video now playing on the screen, I twist the iPad around on the table to face the girl’s direction. She glances down at it for only seconds, the gun shaking in her grasp, and then back at me again, fearful that I might make a move. But when she sees her friend, Lydia, she turns her attention solely on the video, abandoning her upper-hand. I don’t take advantage of it. I slide my hands into my pants pockets and stand here watching the girl’s eyes widen with trepidation as the video plays.

Javier circles Lydia who sits bound to a chair, a red bandanna is stuffed in her mouth. Tears and sweat soak her face. Her left eye is swollen and bruised. A trickle of blood beads from one nostril.

“For you, Sarai,” Javier says into the camera as Izel stands next to Lydia, her hair wrenched in Izel’s fist. “I want you back here in thirty-six hours.” The girl clasps her free hand over her trembling lips; the gun hasn’t been pointed directly at me for the past several long seconds. “Or she’ll die and it’ll be your fault.”

Izel pulls back her fist and buries it in Lydia’s already bruised and beaten face. Lydia’s bound body lurches backward and more tears spring from her eyes. Blood erupts from her bottom lip.

The girl drops the gun on the floor and reaches for the iPad, shoving it clean off the table and then she falls to the floor onto her knees, sobbing into her hands.

I sit down on the end of the bed, leaving the gun on the floor and the girl alone in her moment of despair.

CHAPTER NINE

Sarai

I can’t see straight. Through the burning tears, through the blur in front of my eyes, through the anger and hatred and hurt shorting out my nervous system. My body has somehow found its way onto the floor. I lay with my face pressed against the carpet.

Not Lydia…anyone but her. She’s innocent and frail. She’ll never be able to endure it. Not like me….

It takes me far too long to come to the realization that I’m no longer the one holding the gun, that I’m no longer the one in control. One moment of weakness, traumatized by the suffering of my friend, has stripped that privilege from me. And I deserve it. I deserve whatever punishment fate deems fit to serve because I got away and Lydia didn’t. I should have used the phone not five feet from me on the nightstand between the beds, to call the police. I should have called them before I forced him awake, but I was too insistent on knowing what information Victor knew that I didn’t. I had still hoped that maybe he would help me, at least by telling me the location of the compound so I’d have something to tell the authorities.

I should have shot him when I had the chance.

From the corner of my eye, I see Victor’s black dress socks planted unmoving on the floor. Tilting my head back just a little, my eyes trail from the bottom of his pants up to his waist. His forearms are resting along the length of the tops of his legs, the palms of his hands gently cupping his knees. He sits with his back fairly straight, his gaze fixated out ahead.

Finally, his head moves as he averts his eyes to me.

“I am sorry,” he says with absolutely no emotion in his words, yet somehow I detect the faintest hint...

Killing Sarai
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I blink back the stun of his words. “What? No…,” I shake my head in protest. “No, you have to take me back! You saw the video! They will kill her!”

He stands from the chair and straightens the sleeves of his white dress shirt now tucked neatly into his pants and buttoned back around his strong wrists.

“The plan has changed,” he says calmly.

I practically throw myself toward him, stopping just inches from his body, my eyes wide and feral and unbelieving. “No, Victor!” He flinches. “I have to go back! Don’t you understand?! We—I have to help her! I want Izel dead! I want Javier dead for what he’s done!”

“He will be,” Victor says.

He turns to the side and zips the duffle bag closed.

I push myself the last few inches through the space between us and then shove him with both hands. “I’m going back with or without you!” He catches me by the wrists, securing them firmly within his grasp. “Please….” The word comes out with every ounce of desperation in me.

He scans my face, so close I can feel the warm breath emitting from his nostrils. “Just be patient,” he says, stunning me into stillness.

He lets go of my wrists when he senses me beginning to step backward and away from him.

“Patient?” I can’t believe what he’s saying to me. “There’s no time to be patient! How can you say that?”

He bends over and fixes his hands underneath the mattress of the bed nearest the window and lifts it onto its side revealing a hollow space underneath surrounded by the wood frame that holds the bed up. He grabs the duffle bags, hiding them inside and then the suitcase, setting the mattress back down afterwards.

“I’m awaiting word,” he says.

“Word from who?”

He sighs, annoyed with my questions. “From Javier.”

“Why?”

I don’t know what to say, or what to believe, all I do know is that my mind is spinning with everything going on and I can’t keep up.

Victor walks to the door and looks back at me.

“Come on,” he says, nodding with the backward tilt of his head for me to follow.

“What, you’re not going to tie my hands together, or drag me down the hallway by my wrist? What if I run away?”

“You won’t.”

“You don’t think so?” I counter.

He shakes his head once. “No, you won’t because I’m the only one of us who knows the way back to Javier.”

I just stand here.

Victor places his hand on the silver lever and opens the door. “Are you coming, or are you staying here?”

I stare across the room at him blankly.

Maybe he’s going to help me after all. Maybe after seeing what Izel and Javier are doing to Lydia, Victor has remembered how it feels to be remorseful, if he’s ever known what that feels like at all.

“Where are we going?” I ask, knowing that it can’t be far if he’s leaving his bags here.

“To breakfast.”

CHAPTER TEN

Victor

More than two hours have passed and there has been no word. Nothing from Niklas or Vonnegut. Nothing from Javier or Guzmán. The girl is beyond the point of restless. I bought her breakfast in the hotel, but she hardly ate a bite, just picked at her omelet with her fork. It may be a result of her concern for her friend, but I find her sudden inability to ask continuous questions or try to converse with me, refreshing.

I do wonder why she has yet to try contacting family members. I find it difficult to believe that, despite the grave situation with her dear friend, she would not also show interest in calling a sister, grandmother or an aunt. That she did not use the one opportunity she had last night while I was sleeping.

This leaves me with two theories: she cares more about the life of her friend, or she has no family left. Perhaps it’s both. I’m fairly certain that it is.

I feel my cell phone vibrating against my leg and I stand up from the table in the lobby and reach inside to retrieve it.

The girl is instantly attentive to me.

My brother’s code name reads on the screen.

“Who is it?” the girl asks, standing up with me.

I run my finger over the answer bar, but hold the phone, face-down against my chest. Gesturing for the girl to sit back down, I say, “I want you to stay here. I’m going right outside to take this call. I trust that you’ll be here when I get back.” I know she’s not going anywhere.

Clearly wanting nothing more than to follow me out and hang on my every word, she takes a deep, heavy breath, crosses her arms and takes her seat again.

“OK.” She grits her teeth behind her softly pressed lips.

I walk out the front doors and put the phone to my ear.

“I am going to put Javier on this call,” Niklas says. “Are you prepared?”

“Yes,” I answer and wait while Niklas makes the transfer.

Javier’s voice seethes with barely controlled anger when he is patched through:

“You’ll die for what you’ve done,” he says in English. “Sarai should’ve been brought back to me the second you found her!”

“What’s done is done,” I say. “Get to the reason for your contact.”

I hear him breathe heavily on the three-way call. Niklas sits listening quietly.

Finally, Javier contains himself.

“I still want the hit on Guzmán carried out for the price we agreed on, but I will give you another one million American to also kill Sarai.”

Kill her? I did not expect my communication with Javier would cause me surprise. This is very interesting, indeed.

“Why would you want her dead?” I ask.

“That doesn’t matter,” he says. “The reasons never matter in this business. You should know that.”

I do know that, and this is the first time I’ve ever asked why a client wanted a mark killed.

“I have a better offer for you,” I announce. “You bring the girl’s friend, Lydia and one other girl at your compound—a photo will be sent to you immediately following this call—to Green Valley, Arizona in twenty-four hours. I trade you this girl for those two and then afterwards I will kill Guzmán and then give you the girls back once I have been paid in full.”

I don’t have to hear Niklas comment to know that he is in complete disagreement with this, but he remains quiet.

“You mean Guzmán’s daughter,” Javier probes, knowing. “Am I right?”

“Yes,” I say. “If it isn’t already obvious, Guzmán paid to have her returned to him.”

Javier laughs. “And all this time I thought he was trying to have me killed!” He pulls himself from his humorous revelation. “You are good,” he says. “I give you that. Knock out two contracts at once. Show Guzmán his daughter, take the money for bringing her to him then turn around and kill him and take the money I paid to have him killed.” He laughs again.

I remain calm and unemotional.

“Is it a deal, or not?”

“So then you’re passing on the contract to kill Sarai?” he asks.

“Right now,” I begin, “she is my only leverage. Once I do what you paid me to do and I give her back to you, do what you want with her. It is not of my concern.”

Niklas ends the call after we have come to another agreement. He calls me back once he knows that Javier’s line has been disconnected.

“Victor, you cannot do this,” Niklas argues. “You are making deals without—”

“What are Vonnegut’s new orders?” I ask.

I glance through the window to see the girl still sitting anxiously in the hotel lobby.

“He has not given them yet,” Niklas says. “You are not permitted to agree *****ch deals, only to enforce them.”

“Then tell Vonnegut I was only attempting to maintain the upper-hand,” I explain. “The moment that Javier realizes that I have no authority to offer and agree *****ch terms is the moment he believes he can get away with demanding more. I mean no disrespect, but Vonnegut must trust me on this. He has always trusted my decisions before. He has been given no reason to stop now.”

Niklas remains quiet. I believe he holds this fact against me, that the Order trusts me, yet they have never given him the same luxury.

“Very well,” Niklas agrees. “I will tell Vonnegut. But Victor, you’re becoming ungoverned.” He pauses as if to decide whether or not he should go on. “Since the mission in Budapest last year. I have noticed the difference in you. The Order I believe has not, but it is only a matter of time.”

“Niklas,” I say to him carefully as my brother and not my liaison, “I thank you for your discretion. Now, will you do something for me?”

“When have I ever refused?”

I leave Niklas, tucking the phone back in my pocket and I head inside to find the girl.

She had been pacing the floor and when she notices me, she stops and her arms come uncrossed and fall to her sides, a look of question heavy on her face.

“Come with me,” I say, taking her by the elbow.

“Where...

Killing Sarai
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“I need you to tell me everything,” Victor says with gentle intent. “Tell me about your relationship with Javier. You said he believes he is in love with you.”

I nod in a slow, rapid motion. “Yes. He told me once that he was in love with me, but I know better. He’s crazy. Possessive. But he protected me from the things the other girls had to go through.”

I don’t like to think about these things, much less talk openly about them. I am ashamed and I hate myself for what they endured.

“He protected you?” Victor asks, needing more information.

“Yes. I was off-limits to Javier’s men. And Izel, well, Javier nearly killed her when she hit me in the face once. After that, she wasn’t allowed to touch me. And I was allowed luxuries the other girls weren’t, too. Hot showers and good food and I got to see places outside of the compound. I even flew on a small plane with him several times. Javier would rarely let me out of his sight. Izel hated me for it, accused Javier of ‘going soft’, falling for a ‘stupid American girl’.”

A spark of intrigue passes over Victor’s features.

“What kind of places were you taken?”

I shrug softly and let my hands fall in-between my thighs, my fingers curling nervously around one another.

“Sometimes,” I begin, “he’d take me with him to other rich men’s houses, with sparkling blue pools shaped like horseshoes and other strange things. Javier said it was just to mingle but I knew we were there for drug deals. And girls. Sometimes we came back with a new one. He would dress up in a nice suit and shiny black shoes just like yours.” I glance down at Victor’s shoes briefly. “He didn’t look like the scumbag you saw the other day, living in filth. He is rich, despite what you saw.”

“I gathered that much.”

I go on:

“And of course he’d make me dress up, too.”

I lower my eyes shamefully, mostly because sometimes I enjoyed it, dressing up and being treated like a princess. That was how I always thought of it: a princess, as disturbing as the circumstances were.

“I felt like an arm trophy.”

“That is exactly what you were,” he says and I look back up at him again, quietly stung by his words. “Do you remember anything about the men whose homes you were taken to?”

“Yes,” I say with a nod. “But I think they were vacation homes, or something.”

“Why?”

“Because they mentioned things about how they were only in Mexico for a few weeks, or how they were heading back to California, or Nevada or Florida, places like that.”

“They were Americans?”

“Some of them were, I’m pretty sure they were,” I say. “They didn’t have accents, foreign anyway. They definitely weren’t Mexican, that’s for sure.”

They may have been American, but I knew they wouldn’t help me like I hoped Victor would. They were just as evil as Javier. Two of them even tried to buy me from him. No, none of them would ever have helped me escape so this is why I consider Victor the first American I’ve seen in nine years. Those men lost that privilege by association.

“Do you remember any of their names?”

Victor looks more eager now than I have ever seen him, yet he still manages to maintain an almost flawless unemotional façade.

I think back, trying to recall and coming up short.

“No,” I say, frustrated with myself, “not right now, but I did hear their names on occasion when one would introduce one to another.” I pause and say with more emotion, “Victor, what is it?”

His dangerous bluish eyes lock on mine.

“At the compound, or anywhere Javier could keep tabs on you and control you, you weren’t a threat to him. But now that you’ve escaped, you’re a bigger threat than anyone because you know too much. It is apparent Izel was right to think him foolish with his feelings for you; he probably never anticipated you leaving. You being alive and free is a threat to his entire operation and anyone involved in it.”

I think on it a moment, letting the obvious truth of Victor’s words sink into my mind. I may not have ever known where I was kept in Mexico and even right now I wouldn’t be able to tell American authorities where Lydia and the other girls are being held against their will, but I do know names, still hidden in the back of my memory, but they’re there nonetheless. And I remember faces and conversations, although casual they still held many small bits of information that, I suppose, given to the right people could expose them as drug and *** traffickers.

“Larsaw, or maybe Larsen,” I say suddenly as the name appears on the tip of my tongue. “Gerald Larsen. I remember he was the first American I was ‘shown off’ to when Javier took me to my first house. He had white hair. He was chubby. But I was never directly introduced to anyone. I wasn’t allowed to speak. I learned their names by listening to their conversations.”

Victor looks deeply in thought and shakes his head suddenly.

“John Gerald Lansen is the CEO of Balfour Enterprises and founder of the most reputable charity for ending violence against women in the United States.” He looks right at me. “The information you hold, no matter how insignificant you think it all is, could bring down a lot of high profile people. I imagine if word gets out that you have escaped and the right person—a vengeful sister, perhaps,” he says, I know referring to Izel, “who decides to tell the right people, more than Guzmán will pay to have Javier killed and Javier knows this.”

It hits me like a shock of electricity and I jump from the bed and try to make a run for the door. Victor catches me mid-stride, grabbing me around the waist. I whirl around at him, punching at him blindly. I manage to hit him, but I’m not sure where as my fists move clumsily and in such a chaotic motion that my eyes can’t keep up within the scuffle.

My back hits the floor and I look up, my auburn hair whipped savagely around my face, to see Victor pinning me, straddling my waist.

“Let me go! Let me go, godammit!” I thrash around under his weight, unable to do much with my legs, my hands pinned against the floor above my head, trapped by his own.

“He’s going to kill me! Someone help!”

He manages to bind both of my wrists with one hand, the other he presses over my mouth to muffle my screams. Tears shoot from my eyes. I beg him over and over again, my voice almost completely shut out by the weight of his hand.

“I’m not going to kill you,” he says calmly. “If it was my intention, you’d be dead already.”

He waits for my tense body to ease some before I feel his hand loosen ever so slightly.

“Are you going to be quiet?”

I nod because I still can’t speak with his hand over my mouth.

Finally, after a long moment, Victor moves his hand away slowly.

“Why wouldn’t you kill me?” I ask, my voice still trembling and choked by tears. “Still using me as leverage?”

“In a way, yes,” he answers.

I want to scream again while I have a chance, but his words keep me from it:

“And I don’t kill innocent people.”

Silence fills the small space between us.

“No one is innocent,” I snap, surprising myself. “Least of all me. For years I let that disgusting murderer violate me and I never said no. I sat back and watched in silence as he and his men and that bitch sister of his beat and raped and sold the girls I became close to. I did nothing. I never screamed or fought back or stood up for any of them. Not a single one.” I hear my voice beginning to rise with anger, but I don’t care. I clench my fists together on my chest, looking up into his eyes as he remains seated on top of me. “I pretended like nothing bothered me, that Carmen’s hands being smashed to bits by that hammer didn’t faze me! I didn’t flinch when Marisol was forced to have an abortion by a butcher doctor who left her to bleed to death on the table! I didn’t shed a single tear when the girl with the red hair and freckles was killed right in front of me because the man who came to purchase her didn’t like what he saw!” I bring up my fists and go to slam them down on the tops of his legs out of anger, but he catches my wrists and holds them solidly. “I am not innocent!” I roar.

I feel his hands wrench my wrists, but my head is too clouded by emotion to care.

The things I’ve admitted are things that have haunted me for the longest time. They’ve been buried in my soul, burning through to the very core of me, rendering me emotionless and turning me into someone entirely different than I was supposed to be.

I let my head fall to the side, feeling the pang of defeat. I can’t look at him anymore. Not out of anger or hatred or revenge, but out of shame. I can’t look a murder in the eye because not only am I no better than he is, it’s possible that I’m worse.

“You are very strong,” he says and raises his body from mine. “With a strong survival instinct. It is the only thing that separates you from those other girls. Like them, you were still held...

Killing Sarai
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We pull into a parking lot at the end of a road lined by resort homes. I’ve been here before, once with my best friend when her older sister picked us up from school in her new car. We had gotten lost and she used this place to turn around. It was weeks before my mom forced me to Mexico with her and Javier. This familiar place reminds me that I’m very close to home. I’m so close that I could walk there. It would take several hours, but I could do it.

But where would I go?

Victor shuts the truck’s engine off. I look out through the windshield to see a section of trees and brush separating the parking lot from the interstate. A car flies by every few seconds. But the parking lot is empty save one lone car in the distance parked by a dumpster. On the other side of the lot though, over a low concrete wall there are many cars parked outside a shopping center.

I wonder why he chose a public place, although currently quiet and abandoned, to do whatever it is that we came here to do. Because Javier doesn’t care about the public or risking an innocent bystander getting caught in his crossfire.

“Stay in the truck,” Victor says just before shutting the heavy metal door.

He walks around to the back as a sleek black SUV enters the parking lot from behind the homes. My heart immediately starts pounding. I slink down in the seat, but move around to his side so that I can get a better glimpse out the window. I want to see but I don’t want to be seen.

Victor meets the SUV halfway, about fifty feet from where I am and it stops in the center of the road. I see a man. A white man it looks like and I’m confused by this. Victor nods and then I see his lips moving. I reach over and roll the window down by the old-fashioned crank. It sticks at first, but then the window breaks apart and I manage to open it several inches. But they’re too far away for me to hear anything they’re saying.

Victor starts walking back toward the truck and the SUV follows. I swallow hard and find myself practically all the way in the floorboard now, the top of my head pressing against the hard steering wheel. The driver’s side door opens, exposing me in my awkward position. That other man is standing next to Victor, both of them looking in at me.

The strange man, who I notice looks somewhat like Victor with his tall stature, brown hair, blue eyes and sculpted cheekbones, nods at me as if it’s his way of saying hello. Needless to say, I’m too afraid and unsure of him to give him the same courtesy.

The man, though still looking at me as though I’m a peculiar specimen of sorts that deserves study, says something to Victor in another language. It’s not Spanish. Victor replies to him in that same language, which I’m starting to think is likely German. The man finally looks at Victor.

“This is Niklas,” Victor says to me. “You’re going to ride with him and follow me to another location close by.”

Instantly, I feel my head shaking back and forth in refusal.

Victor reaches out his hand to me, but I reject it. Instead, I start to climb my way out of the floorboard and go toward the other side of the truck. I feel Victor’s hand wrap around part of my thigh.

“He will not harm you,” Victor says. “This truck is not safe for you if Javier or his men open fire on us.”

I glance through the back window at the SUV, assuming it has some kind of bulletproof windows, maybe. I don’t care to ask; I simply don’t want to be left alone with this man, safer vehicle or not.

“This one is not very cooperative,” the man named Niklas says in English. He definitely has an accent, unlike Victor who seems to speak fluently in whatever language he knows.

“Sarai,” Victor says my name and it stuns me immobile; he’s never called me by my name before. “I am asking you to cooperate.”

I look up into Victor’s harsh eyes and hold my gaze for a moment, letting my mind clear out the unexpected reaction that he saying my name has put there. My body relaxes and then soon after Victor’s fingers slide away from my thigh. I look back and forth between the two of them slowly, still unsure, but now more willing.

“Will you tell me what’s going to happen?” I ask, looking at both of them, but Victor knows the question was meant for him.

Niklas keeps his cold blue eyes fixed on me, but it seems more from an observant nature than a possessive one.

“We will meet Javier not far from here in a more secluded area. There, your friend will be handed over to us.”

A dark feeling of uncertainty suddenly grows within the pit of my stomach.

I narrow my gaze on Victor.

“Just like that?” I ask skeptically. “No, Javier won’t just give her over. He’ll…” I back away again against the passenger’s side door, my hand already on the handle in case I need to make a run for it. “…there’s no way he’d do that. You’re trading her for me, aren’t you?” My voice rises. “Aren’t you!”

“Yes,” Victor says.

Niklas remains quiet and calm and ever so observant. It’s starting to unnerve me.

But then I come to my senses and look away from both of them. I stare out the windshield at the landscape and the cars on the other side of the concrete wall, but I really don’t see any of it. All I see is Lydia’s face in my mind, the way I saw it last on that video: bruised and bloodied and tear-streaked and frightened. I know this is what needs to be done. A trade: me for Lydia. That is something I know Javier would agree to, now more than ever.

But he wants me dead….

My hands clench the tattered leather seat beneath me, my fingers digging into the exposed cushion insulation. My entire body trembles with dread. But then I stubbornly force that fear into the back of my mind. Maybe he won’t kill me once he has me back. I could go on pretending like being with him is where I want to be. I could even pretend that Victor kidnapped me. I know I can fool Javier. I know I can! I did it for years! I made him trust me, so much so that he believed he loved me. I can do it again.

Long enough until I get my first chance to kill him.

Yes, that’s exactly what I’ll do. Because I only care about two things anymore: Lydia’s safety and killing Javier. I know that once I do it, I’ll sign my own death warrant. Izel or one of Javier’s men will hunt me down before I can get a mile from the compound and they’ll shoot me dead, just like Victor did that store owner back in Mexico.

But at least Javier will be dead.

And I don’t fear death.

I open the truck door to find Niklas standing at it waiting on me. I was so lost in my thoughts that I never even saw him leave and walk around to my side of the truck.

I shut the door and look over the hood of the truck at Victor on the other side. I’ve never really been able to read his face because his emotions, if he has any, seem impenetrable, but right now I do detect the faintest hint of something unnatural in his eyes. Could it be regret? No, maybe it’s indecision or…no, that can’t be it.

“I’ll do it,” I announce, never taking my eyes from Victor’s. “If you can get Lydia away safely, I’ll do it.”

Victor nods. Then he goes to open the truck door and I stop him.

“But Victor, please take her home. I’m begging you. Just take her home. She lives in El Paso, Texas. With her grandparents. Please.”

Victor doesn’t nod or answer verbally this time, but I know, just by that look in his eyes that he will do it. I’m not sure why I believe that, but I do.

After transferring his bags from the truck to the SUV, he gets inside the truck and the rumble of the engine turning on follows seconds later.

“Come,” Niklas says, taking me by the arm, his fingers wrapped a little more harshly around my bicep than Victor ever did it.

He guides me around to the backseat, opening the door and standing directly behind me as if he’s making sure I get in and don’t try to run away. Once I’m inside, the smell of new leather and car freshener fills my senses. A metal cage barrier separates the backseat from the front, just like a police officer might have in his patrol car. Already I feel trapped. I hear a clicking sound as Niklas locks all of the doors after he’s inside. I glance to my left and right to see that there are no inside lock switches on either of the backseat doors. I am truly trapped in here.

We end up on Interstate 19, following close behind Victor in the old beat-up truck.

“You have become quite a wrench in the gears,” Niklas says from the driver’s seat.

I glance up to meet his eyes in the rearview mirror.

I don’t like him much. Not that I should like him at all considering the situation, but at least with Victor, despite being a killer, I felt a sense of safety. Even back at the compound as I watched him through the crack in the door with Lydia, I got the feeling I could trust him, that he would help me. My hunches were completely off, I admit, but he never hurt me. Regardless of what he is or what he’s done and what complications I’ve caused him, he never treated me badly.

Niklas, on the other hand, I get the sense is a little more intolerant.

I try to keep my eyes on the road out ahead, but it’s hard not to meet his gaze...

Killing Sarai
Killing Sarai Page 14



CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Eight men stand outside the trucks, shouldering rifles, all of them Javier’s men. I grip the leather seat beneath me, finding it harder to penetrate with my fingertips than the worn-out seats in the old truck. We come to a stop about one hundred feet away.

But I don’t see Javier. Or Izel.

I begin to panic when at first I don’t see Lydia, either, but then I spot her inside the cream-colored Ford. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s Lydia. I press my face against the metal cage as closely as I can, trying to see better, but it doesn’t help much.

Niklas turns his head to look at me.

“Sit back and stay out of sight,” he demands.

I do what he says, not because he ordered it but because it’s probably best.

The truck door slams shut. Victor walks out ahead of it towards them. One by one I look at each of the men, wondering which one was sent here to speak for Javier since he’s not here himself, but then I see Izel’s black hair sliding past the window of the green truck as she gets out.

“This makes twice Javier’s been too much of a coward to come himself,” I say out loud, not necessarily to Niklas.

“He knows by now that Victor can kill him with little effort,” Niklas says, watching out the window. “I’d say it’s a smart move on Javier’s part.”

Izel tries to approach Victor with her usual sultry walk, but she’s clearly in pain from the wounds he left on her legs and she stumbles just as she passes the rusted hood. One of the men step over quickly to help her, but she smacks him hard across the face and shouts curses at him, telling him to back off. She hates pity. I think she hates everything, including herself.

Words are exchanged between Izel and Victor. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but by the body language, I can tell it’s the usual: Izel trying to scare him with threats about Javier and how he’s made a very dangerous enemy—same opening conversation as they had back at the motel that day. And just like before, Victor is unfazed by her and it only adds fuel to the fire in her expression.

I try to hear what they’re saying even though I know I can’t, but mostly, I try to see Lydia.

Against Niklas’ demand, I push up closer to the cage again, trying to glimpse her through the window. I’m positive that’s her sitting on the passenger’s side. But I think there’s someone sitting next to her.

Izel raises her hand to the men by the truck behind her and one of them runs around to open the door. He reaches inside and grabs the one I think is Lydia and drags her out.

“It’s her!” I say excitedly, relieved.

Niklas snaps his head around.

“I said sit back,” he growls through bared teeth. “Don’t f**k this up any more than you already have.”

I freeze hearing this and I fall backward against the seat again, though only enough that it satisfies him and he turns away.

Lydia looks like hell, but at least she’s able to walk. At least she’s alive. She’s dressed in the same dirty clothes she was wearing when I saw her on that video. The bloodstains left from her mouth and nose are evident on the front of her thin white t-shirt, even from here at a distance. Her hands are bound at the wrists down in front of her. Her light red hair is disheveled and filthy and matted. She’s crying, gazing hopelessly toward us in the SUV and I can only imagine she’s wondering whether or not I’m in here. I want to run out of here and toward her, to let her know that I’m OK and that she’s finally going home, but wishing I could do that I know is all that I can do.

The man who pulled her out of the truck jerks on her elbow, pulling her harshly out of the way and over to the side.

Victor says something to Izel and she smiles cunningly. Then she looks back over her bare shoulder and indicates with the wave of two fingers for the other man whom she’d just slapped, to do something. He responds quickly by going around to the open truck door where Lydia was removed and he reaches inside for the other figure I saw had been sitting next to her.

“Oh my God,” I say also more to myself. “That’s Cordelia. Why did they bring her?” I look to Niklas for the answer, but he doesn’t offer one.

Cordelia and Lydia are standing side by side now, both trembling with tear-streaked faces, both of them unable to stop looking toward the SUV.

Victor waves two fingers toward us.

Niklas turns around. “Are you ready?”

I swallow hard. “Yes.”

Niklas opens his door and as he gets out the hidden locks on the SUV click again. He pops the back door open and reaches out his hand to me. Reluctantly I take it.

“Sarai!” I hear Lydia’s voice on the air once I step out of the SUV.

I look up as I move around the opened door to see the man holding her by the elbow push her onto the dirt-covered ground and onto her knees. The other man does the same to Cordelia just because he can.

I begin to walk slowly the short distance toward Victor, my legs shaking more with each step. I feel Izel’s eyes on me, so cold and predatory, but I won’t look at her. I refuse to give her the satisfaction. Instead, I look only at Victor and although he’s staring right into my eyes, I know that not an ounce of his vigilant attention has been taken from those around him.

Then he looks away, putting his hand up to me and instinctively I stop.

“Have one of your men bring them,” Victor instructs Izel.

Izel sneers, her nostrils flaring, making her look all the more hateful. Then with the backward tilt of her head, she orders the man standing over Lydia to do just that. He swings his rifle hanging from the shoulder-strap around toward his back and then reaches out with both hands, grabbing Lydia and Cordelia each in one, lifting them to their feet.

Victor looks at me again. He reaches out his hand and as I walk toward him I feel his seemingly emotionless gaze penetrate my own. There’s something in his eyes, something quiet and mysterious and I feel like he’s trying to speak to me through them. I place my hand into his and his fingers collapse around it, at first carefully.

Something doesn’t feel right, in a way like that furtive look I saw in his eyes seconds ago.

As the man approaches, Victor’s hand tightens around mine. I only see Lydia’s eyes now, full of fear and hope and relief as she moves closer. And then when they are within Victor’s reach, in a quick, unseen motion, I’m shoved onto the ground and I see Victor reach out so fast, grabbing the man by his head and snapping his neck. Lydia and Cordelia fall to their knees and the next thing I know, Victor has the man’s semi-automatic rifle and is spraying bullets toward Izel and the others.

Lydia and Cordelia try to cling to me as the sound of bullets move vociferously through the air in all directions, but I shove them both onto their stomachs and push theirs faces against the dirt with my hands.

“Stay down!” I scream, dust whipping up into my mouth. “Follow me! Come on!” And I drag my body as fast as I can across the dirt toward the SUV like a soldier crawling through enemy fire.

More shots ring out, two or three hit the sand near us, one pinging off the side of the SUV’s open door. And even though the SUV is within fifteen feet, I feel like it’s too far away and that we’ll never make it. One bullet hits the ground two feet in front of my face, causing me to freeze up and come to a dead stop. I’ve already lost sight of Victor, but I see Niklas running away from the SUV with a gun gripped in both hands as he fires off several shots in rapid succession.

“Hurry!” I shout over the chaos, twisting my head around so that I can see if Lydia and Cordelia are still following, my arms pressed even harder into the dirt.

Lydia is screaming and I glimpse blood on the sand near her foot. Cordelia, terrified, moves quickly past me, forcing her body through the sand even with her wrists bound. But Lydia is stagnant and I turn back to help her. If I have to drag her across the ground alone and through a hailstorm of bullets, that’s what I’ll do.

“My foot!” Lydia cries out to me.

“Don’t stop, Lydia! Push through it! You have to keep moving!”

I finally make it back to her and I cover her head with both of my arms when another bullet zooms past, narrowly missing us. She buries her face in the crook of my arm now. Sobs rock her body.

The bullets stop, but the eerie silence is almost as frightening as the noise. For what feels like forever, I’m afraid to lift my head and as the dust begins to settle, I only see two upright bodies among the dead.

Viktor and Niklas.

Sobs of utter relief shudder through me, causing my chest to constrict over and over again until I feel like throwing up. I don’t even realize that I’ve managed to sit upright with my bare heels digging into the sand. At some point I lost my flip-flops. Lydia throws herself on me and I wrap my arms around her so tight I feel my fingers digging into her back. She would do the same if her hands weren’t restricted by that rope.

“Sarai! Sarai!” Lydia cries into my shoulder. My name is all that she can get out.

“I know, Lydia! I’m so sorry that I left without you. I’m so sorry!”...

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Killing Sarai Page 15



I cry into her hair until I feel her body being pried away from me.

“No!” I scream out at whoever it is. “Get away from me! Leave her alone!” My voice cracks and strains under the weight of emotion, which I never knew I possessed.

“We must go,” Victor’s voice says from somewhere above me. “We cannot stay here any longer.”

“No!” I lash out, reaching up with one hand and trying to shove him away.

“Now, Victor,” Niklas says from behind. “There is no time for this.”

Victor grabs me from around the waist and scoops me up with ease and tosses me, belly-down, over his shoulder. I kick and scream and beat him on the back with my fists as he carries me toward the SUV and away from Lydia’s body.

“We can’t just leave her here!”

“We have to.”

He sets me in the backseat with Cordelia.

“Victor! You can’t! Please don’t leave her here like this!”

There is remorse in his eyes. I see it although hidden behind the ever-present mystery in his face, I see it there as plain as I see anything.

He shuts the door and the locks click in place again. I ride in absolute silence to wherever it is they’re taking us.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Victor

Niklas has never known when to remain silent. He lacks discipline and because of this our Order has always been fonder of me.

We were together when we were recruited at the ages of seven and nine, but so were two other neighborhood boys who had been good friends of ours. We had been playing ball in the field behind the schoolyard, like we did every Saturday afternoon, when the men came. Niklas and I did not know we were brothers at the time. But we were the best of friends. Inseparable like brothers should be. So perhaps deep down a part of us knew all along.

It wasn’t until four years later, after my mother was killed while on a mission that we found out the truth. Niklas’ mother told us in secret.

It has been kept a secret ever since.

“What have you done, Victor? What were you thinking? Where is your head?”

Niklas white-knuckles the steering wheel. He turns to look at me every few moments, waiting for me to give him an answer that I cannot give.

Quietly, I bite back the pain searing through my hip.

I look over at Niklas.

“You must tell Vonnegut that they shot first,” I say and I see the argument cloud his features instantly. “Tell him that I had no choice.”

“Victor.” He shakes his head and then hits the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “What has happened to you?” He grits his teeth, holding back the kind of words he wants to say but knows would be better left unsaid.

He hits the steering wheel again.

“I have always done everything you have ever asked me to do. Not once have I refused you. Rarely do I question you. But I don’t because I trust you as I should.” He inhales a sharp breath and I notice his eyes stray toward the rearview mirror. And then he looks back at me. “But this is different. You’re risking everything: your place in the Order, your relationship with Vonnegut, your life, my life.” He slashes the air between us with his hand. “All for that girl.”

“I am doing nothing of the sort.”

“Then what would you call it?” he snaps. “If not for her, then for what? Make me understand, Victor!”

He swerves into the opposite lane of the highway to make it around a slow-moving car.

“And why have you told her your name? You’ve become unstable. They eliminate the unstable ones, Victor, you know this.”

He forces his eyes back on the road having hit his own nerve. His mother was one of the ‘unstable ones’.

“I will not let anything happen to you because of me,” I say. “If you feel you must tell Vonnegut the truth, I will understand. I will not hold that against you.”

He shakes his head dejectedly. “No. As I have always done, I will tell him whatever you need me to tell him.”

He pauses and grips the steering wheel with both hands, moving the palm of one hand over the ridges of the leather as if to keep his hand from hitting something else.

“I hope that one day you will tell me the truth,” he adds, not looking at me. “About what’s happening to you. About what really happened in Budapest. And if that has anything to do with what you’re doing now.”

“There is nothing to tell,” I say.

“Dammit! I am not Vonnegut!”

“No, you are Niklas, the only person in this world whom I trust.” I point out ahead. “Drop us off there. I’ll need to get a new car.”

Despite wanting nothing more than to shout at me all day until I tell him something satisfying, Niklas drops it altogether. Discipline. Something he will never have.

We pull through the front gate of a car dealership.

“Around to the side,” I say. “Wait for me there.”

Without objection, Niklas does as I say and parks on the side of the building next to another customer vehicle.

Before I get out, I glance back once at the girl, Sarai. She’s motionless and lost. Her eyes are open, but whatever it is that she’s staring at somehow I know she doesn’t really see. I want her to look upon me, just for a moment. But she never does and I walk away.

Sarai

I feel like I should be like Cordelia, sitting next to me wide awake yet unaware of it herself. I know it will take her months of therapy to overcome what she’s gone through. I know because I went through the same thing after I watched my mother die.

The only way I’m anything like poor Cordelia is that I can’t find the will to speak. I just sit here, letting the time pass and being completely incoherent to it, numb to its efforts to cause me discomfort. Fifteen minutes could be two hours and I truly wouldn’t know the difference.

Unlike Cordelia, I’m aware of everything around me. I just don’t care.

Sometime later, Victor emerges from the building and opens my door on the SUV. He just looks at me for a moment as if waiting for something, I guess for me to get out.

I look over at him, letting my head fall sideways against the seat. “You didn’t have to leave her there.”

“Yes I did,” he says and takes my hand. “She’ll be found soon, if she hasn’t already. You have my word.”

I take Victor’s hand, but glance over at Cordelia before I get out.

“What about her?”

Victor turns his gaze on Niklas in the driver’s seat.

“No long stops in-between,” he instructs. “Meet Guzmán at the waypoint we discussed. The money for his daughter. Inform him of the turn of events and that we could not control Javier’s absence, but the job will be done.”

“Whatever you say, Victor,” Niklas agrees flatly, his words tinged with bitterness and disappointment.

Victor tugs on my hand and I get out of the SUV.

As we are walking away, Niklas stops us:

“Where will you go?” he asks, hanging partially out the window with his arm resting on the door.

“For now,” Victor says, “Tucson. Await my contact for the rest.”

Niklas drives away.

As Victor walks alongside me toward a shiny new dark gray car, I fall back behind him for a moment.

“Why are we going to Tucson?”

He stops mid-stride and turns around to face me.

“I’m taking you home.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

When I see ‘home’ on the horizon many minutes later, it doesn’t affect me the way that I always dreamed it would. I don’t even lift my head from the passenger’s side window to look at it as we roll by. Because I know there’s nothing for me here.

Instead of gazing out at the city, I watch the black asphalt move rapidly as we coast over it.

“Where do you live?” Victor asks.

Finally, I lift my head and turn to face him.

“Why are you doing this?”

Victor sighs and puts his eyes back on the road.

“Because I think you’ve seen enough.”

He pulls the car into a roadside convenience store parking lot and puts it into Park. It’s starting to get dark outside.

“You need to tell me where to take you,” he says and I detect the faintest hint of discomfort in his face.

“Your father?” he urges when I don’t answer.

Absently, I shake my head. “My father could be one of a hundred men in Tucson. I never knew him.”

“A grandmother? An aunt? A distant cousin? Where would you like to go?”

I quite literally have no family. Since I don’t know my father, I don’t know any of my family on his side. I never had any siblings; my mother got her tubes tied after she had me. My grandparents both died when I was a teenager. My aunt, Jill, lives somewhere in France because she could afford to move there and she disowned my mom when I was thirteen-years-old. And in-turn, she disowned me, accused me of being just like my mom even though I was as different from her as night is from day.

Not wanting to give Victor any reason to believe that he owes me anything else, I say the only person that comes to mind so that he can drop me off and leave me to whatever kind...

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“Are you going to kill him?” I ask, but then add, “I mean not for me, of course, but for that other man?” I want him to say that, yes, it’s for me, but I know that’s not the reason.

“You will be safe to live your life now,” he says simply.

We share a quiet moment and I get out of the car, shutting the door softly behind me. And then I watch Victor drive away, his brake lights penetrating the partial darkness at the very end of the road. And then he’s gone. Just like that.

What just happened?

I doubt I’ll ever be able to wrap my mind around the past nine years of my life and even more-so, the past couple of days. As I stand here at the end of a driveway of a place familiar yet so foreign to me, I realize that I can’t feel myself. At least the person I used to be, or the person I was supposed to be but the opportunity was taken from me by Javier. By my mother.

I have lived a life of seclusion and bondage, a prisoner of a Mexican drug lord who although treated me with a strange sort of kindness, abused me in other ways. I have slept with a man I didn’t love and who I didn’t want to sleep with for most of my young life. And Javier is the only man I’ve ever been with ***ually. I have seen rape and kidnapping and abuse in every form possible. And I have seen death. So much death. My only friend died in my arms just hours ago. I watched the life leave her body as she looked at me.

After all of this, I feel like, as I sift through those memories casually as though scanning a hand of cards, none of it is affecting me the way that it should, the way it would a normal girl. And I know why. I just hate to admit it to myself: over the years I became used to it. It was how my life was. My mind conformed and adapted the best way that it knew how.

But now here I am back at home in Tucson, free to do whatever I want. I could walk a few blocks to the little store I used to go to everyday after school and buy a soda and a bag of Doritos. If I wanted, I could go to my old elementary school down the road and swing on the swings or lay down in the field that surrounds the building and just look up at the stars until I fall asleep. I could steal that bike in the front yard of lot number twelve and ride to my old friend’s house twenty miles away. But the trailer behind me at the end of the cracked concrete driveway is just as good. And it’s right there. It’s taking me longer than I anticipated to walk up to the door and find out if the only person I knew who could help me now still lives there.

I can do whatever I want, yet I find it eternally difficult to choose where to begin. Or if to begin at all.

I guess now I know what it feels like when a person has spent half of his or her life in prison and is released back out into the world. They don’t know what to do with themselves, they don’t know how to fit back into society. They constantly look over their shoulder. They can’t sleep past five a.m. or believe that they can choose what to eat and when to eat it. Violence and darkness and confinement is so much a part of them that half of them never learn any other way.

I don’t want to be like that. But right now, as I stand here staring at the blaring light on the front porch and letting it bring spots in front of my eyes, I feel like it’s how I’ll be forever whether I want it or not.

A shadow moves across the front window.

I shove the stack of money in the back of my shorts, pulling my tank top down over it and then I take a deep breath.

I walk up the wooden steps and knock lightly upon the door.

“Who is it?” a man’s voice asks from the other side.

I’m pretty certain now that she’s long gone from this place.

“It’s…Sarai. I used to live over at lot fifteen.”

The chain on the door shuffles and then the door breaks apart. A short, chubby man peers out at me.

“How can I help you?”

He’s shirtless and his round belly hangs over the elastic of his knee-length gym shorts. The smell of popcorn filters out the door and past me.

“Does Mrs. Gregory live here anymore?” It feels awkward asking because I already know that she doesn’t.

The man shakes his head.

“Sorry, but I’ve lived here for two years now,” he says. “And I never knew of a Mrs. Gregory.”

“OK, thanks.”

I turn my back on him and descend the steps.

“Are you alright?” the man calls out.

I glance up at him momentarily. “Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”

He nods and closes the door as I leave, the sound of the chain lock being slid back into place is brief.

My bare feet move painlessly over the sand and rock-littered road of the trailer park. The street lights mounted high on the light poles begin to thin out and bathe me in darkness as I make it to the end of the road and leave the property. A car drives by and I’m instantly on edge, thinking it might be Javier here to kill me. But it drives on past and leaves me only with an erratic heartbeat and paranoid thoughts. At least I know that Izel is dead. I picture her last moment lying on her stomach in the sand with that gun in her hand. I didn’t flinch or recoil when I saw Victor’s bullet pass through her skull and her upper-body hit the ground face-down like a toddler falling asleep in his birthday cake. No, I felt only the satisfaction of revenge. I was glad to watch her die. Because she had it coming.

I only wish that it had been me who killed her for what she did to Lydia.

Strolling past a line of about a dozen mailboxes, I see the stop sign out ahead where I remember that if I go left it’ll lead me to the elementary school. I decide in this moment that that’s where I’ll go because I have nowhere else to go. And after many long minutes of walking I make it there, glad that nothing about the playground has changed, at least. The same old rusted seesaw I remember sits near the swing set with one seat raised high in the air. Three spring riders: a dolphin, a lion and a walrus, are lined next to each other inside an encased sea of playground pebbles. I make my way through the dry grass and sit down on the same swing I always went straight for during recess. And thankfully it feels the same, too. The way I coil my fingers around the linked chains just above my head, how the conformable plastic seat fits just right against my thighs. But I’m much taller now than I was back then, so my legs are bent awkwardly beneath me. I dig my toes into the cool pebbles and watch a tiny white light from a plane move across the distant sky, making no sound.

And the only face I see in my thoughts is Victor’s. He helped me, after all, even when I had accepted that he never would. I think about the conversation that he had with Niklas in the SUV and it only creates for me more questions about Victor. I wonder why he fired first. I wonder why he didn’t just go along with the original plan to hand me over, trade me for Lydia and apparently, Cordelia, who I had no idea was any part of this at all. Maybe he knew that Izel would’ve killed me anyway and afterwards tried to kill Victor and take Lydia and Cordelia back. It’s very plausible that Javier ordered Izel to go along with it, make the trade and then the second she had the opportunity, start shooting at us. I don’t know; there are many ways that the whole thing could’ve gone. And there are many reasons why Victor might’ve done what he did.

All that I’m sure of is that I’m alive because of Victor. I’m home in Tucson because of Victor. I’m free from a life not of my choosing, because of Victor.

Cold-blooded murderer-for-hire or not, he saved my life.

I reach around and take the money from the back of my shorts. I run my fingers fast over the edges, letting each bill fall rapidly onto the next, expelling a small blast of air on my face. There has to be at least five thousand dollars here. I start to count the ends of each bill, but stop a quarter of the way and just accept that there’s a lot. Enough to rent myself a room for the night so I can get a shower and some rest. I resolve to do just that, relieved that I’ve come up with a solid first part of a very long plan. But then I realize that I don’t even have a driver’s license. I don’t have a single shred of identification to prove that I’m me, or anyone else. I’ll be lucky to find a hotel to rent a room to me without identification, no matter how much money I try to bribe them with. And I need to spend this money wisely, do what I have to do to stretch it out. Because it’s all that I’ve got.

In the back of my mind I know I could simply go to the police and tell them my story and that they would help me. But I feel so overwhelmed by the simplest things that with work, I know, could be remedied that I feel utterly defeated by it all.

I sigh miserably, letting my head fall in-between my slouched shoulders and I press my toes into the pebbles some more, moving them around in a circular pattern.

And then for the first time in what feels like forever, I break down in tears of self-pity. Not of anger or anguish or frustration. I cry for myself. Sobs roll through my body. I let the money fall on the ground next to my bare feet and I grip the chains on either side of me and just let it all out.

When I’m done minutes later, I raise my head and wipe the tears from my face.

A set of headlights turns on the street on the opposite side of the...

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I can’t talk about this anymore. I shake it off and inhale deeply, raising my head from the seat. And then I pass the money over toward him, urging him to take it.

“Keep it,” Victor says, shifting the car into Drive. “You will need it later.”

I push it down between my seat and the console.

“You know, you’re in danger of becoming a trusted member of society,” I jest.

I see his eyes move toward me briefly without moving his head.

“Perhaps,” he says, pulling onto the freeway. “Just let it be known that if that’s the case, I’ll have to tie you up again.” He looks over at me and although his lips aren’t smiling, I see that his eyes are.

I turn toward the window beside me because unlike Victor, I have absolutely no control over the smile on my face and I can’t risk letting him see it.

~~~~

We stop at a hotel just outside of Tucson and instead of running away this time I help him carry his usual bags up to our room on the third floor. Our room. Two words together that days ago I never would’ve imagined using so casually. I had asked about having my own, but he insisted that while with him I stay close. I didn’t have to ask why. Being on the run with someone like him, I imagine it’s better that way, but I do feel that there’s something more to it that he’s not telling me. I’m sidetracked by those thoughts when I see the blood on the tail of Victor’s dress shirt as he pulls the shirt from the top of his slacks.

“Are you bleeding?” I walk over to him, trying to get a better look at that side of his body.

“Yes, but I’ll be fine.”

“But why…were you shot?”

He unbuttons his shirt all the way down, exposing his well-defined chest muscles and abs underneath, but all I notice is more blood.

Now I understand why he was in such a hurry to get into the room, why he seemed uncharacteristically uneasy since before we parted ways with Niklas and Cordelia.

“Go down to the front desk and request a bottle of peroxide, gauze and alcohol. They should have a first-aid kit.”

I keep looking to and from his eyes and the blood, trying to see the actual wound. He takes his shirt off the rest of the way and drops it on the floor.

Finally, I take notice of his physique.

“Sarai?”

I look up at him. “OK, I’ll be right back.”

I hurry out the door, not running but walking briskly so as not to draw too much attention to myself. God, I feel like a fugitive.

It takes several long minutes for the front desk clerk to find everything that I asked for after having to leave the lobby and look in the housekeeping room. Because she only had a tiny first-aid kit with some Band-Aids and antibiotic ointment, close-by behind the desk.

“Sorry, I couldn’t find any peroxide, but here’s a full bottle of alcohol.” The girl hands the bottle and an unopened box of rolled gauze over the counter to me. “What happened? Is everything alright?”

I thank her and take the stuff from the counter.

“Yeah, everything’s fine. My uh, boyfriend, cut his hand open on his pocket knife.” I shake my head and roll my eyes dramatically. “He was trying to open one of those human-proof plastic packages. I told him I’d come down here and ask for some scissors, but he insisted he ‘had it’.” I roll my eyes again for a little added effect.

The girl laughs lightly. “Sounds like my boyfriend.”

I laugh with her, thank her again and head back to the elevator feeling like I can’t get away from her fast enough.

Victor has his slacks pulled down over one side of his hip by the time I get back. He’s standing in front of the mirror, twisting his waist awkwardly so that he can get a better look at the wound, which I see clearly now. There’s a small hole in the thicker flesh just behind the top of his hipbone. It doesn’t appear to be bleeding much anymore, though there’s plenty of blood on this shirt, proof it’s already bled its fair share.

I walk over and set the supplies down on the long TV stand in front of the mirror.

“Is the bullet still in there?” I ask, looking at the wound more intently.

“Yes,” he says reaching for the rubbing alcohol, “but it’s not deep.” Twisting the cap off, he pours some over the wound. He grimaces and shuts his eyes momentarily until the burning pain eases.

“You left it in there all this time?” I ask, finding no potential reason acceptable. “Why didn’t you do this sooner? Or go to a hospital?”

It dawns on me now that he didn’t even tend to that wound after he dropped me off, that he waited until after…

“Victor?” I ask upon realizing.

He walks over to his duffle bag on the table by the window and reaches inside.

“Yes?” He barely looks over at me, more occupied with the knife he just fished from the bag.

In the last second I decide not to speak my assumptions aloud. Because I’m probably far off the mark and I don’t want to look silly believing something so absurd.

“Never mind,” I say. “Do you need help?”

He contemplates the offer. “No, I can do it. I’ve done it before.”

Maybe that lie I told the front desk clerk had some truth to it, after all. I smile faintly thinking about it and then I move across the room toward him with the alcohol and gauze in my hands.

“You can’t even see it fully,” I point out. “I can help. Just tell me what to do. I’m not completely useless.”

Again, his face appears faintly contemplative and then to my surprise, he takes off his slacks and stands in front of me practically nak*d, wearing only a pair of tight black boxer briefs that cling to every masculine curve and indentation from his lower waist to the tops of his thighs. It’s only natural that I check him out a little, especially since he’s so physically fit, but I don’t let that distract me. That bullet deserves all of my attention and I make sure to give it.

He burns the blade of his knife with a lighter for a time and hands it out to me. I’ve never done anything like this before and really feel a bit squeamish just thinking about it, but I try not to let that show on my face. I take the knife by the handle and wait for him to instruct me.

“Like I said, it’s not too deep. Just dig it out with the end of the blade.”

I wince at the picture his words create in my mind. “But what if I cut you?”

“It can’t be worse than what the bullet did. Now hurry,” he says, pulling the elastic around his underwear down farther over his hipbone to give me better access.

Covertly, I glimpse the rigid curve of his upper pelvic bone muscle and then get to work.

Hesitantly, I bring the knife up to his skin and glance up at him, hoping he’ll change his mind and do it himself, after all. Because I really don’t think I can do this.

“Go on,” he urges me. “You’re not going to hurt me anymore than it already does.”

I kneel down so my eyes are level with the wound and I feel my face flush red hot when I notice the outline of his manhood through the tight-fitting boxer briefs. But even still, I don’t let his obvious good genes distract me from the matter at hand.

Carefully, I insert the tip of the blade into the wound, my face tightening and twisting into something horrible. Nervous at first, it takes me way too long to push it in farther and I don’t until he gets tired of waiting.

“It’s like pulling a Band-Aid off a sore, Sarai,” he says irritably. “Just do it and get it over with. The longer you drag it out the worse it feels.”

I bite down on my bottom lip, press the fingers of my free hand around the back of this hard thigh to get a better grip around the area and then I sink the knife in deeper. I feel his muscles constrict beneath my hand, but I’m too nervous to look up and see the pain that I know is on his face.

“Why did you come back for me?” I ask, partly to take my mind off what I’m doing, the rest of me just really wanting to know.

“I never left,” he says and I glance up to see his eyes. He looks away and then adds, “I thought you were being followed. I planned to stay back and wait until Javier or whoever he sent for you, showed up where you were.”

Taken aback by his admission, I pull the knife out of his flesh and c*ck my head backward to glare up at him.

“You were using me as bait?” I don’t know if that pain I suddenly feel is because he risked my life to catch Javier, or if it’s because he doesn’t care about my well-being as much as I had started to believe he might.

Victor sighs faintly, though still irritably, but it seems more-so because of what I said than me taking my time about pulling the damn Band-Aid off.

“No,” he says. “Shortly after I pulled onto the main road, I saw another car drive past. A brand new Cadillac. Black with a nice price tag. I thought it didn’t quite fit with the neighborhood.”

I feel foolish before he even finishes explaining.

“So I turned around and parked on the road and watched it to make sure.”

I remember that car now, the only one that drove past...

Killing Sarai
Killing Sarai Page 18



I plop down on the end of my bed and turn the television on, searching for the local news. When I find it, I can’t do anything but stare at the black-haired woman as she stands outside the area where ‘ten bodies were found shot to death earlier this morning’, and the rest of what she says fades into the back of my mind. It hurts to think about Lydia, the horrible way that she died. It hurts knowing that I couldn’t help her like I promised and that her grandparents will soon know about her death and that they will be heartbroken.

The only good that I get out of this newscast is knowing that Lydia’s body was found, that it wasn’t left out there to decay and turn to dust never to be identified.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Victor

The girl is asleep when I get out of the shower. I turn off the lights in the room and double-check the door before stopping at the side of her bed. She’s curled in the fetal position with one pillow crushed against her chest. She’s filthy and could’ve used a shower herself, but was exhausted by all that has happened.

I study the way her long, auburn hair, although disheveled, outlines the contours of her face. She appears peaceful lying there, innocent. Despite exhaustion, after all that she has been through I find it interesting that she can sleep at all.

I’m going to need to get her some new clothes and shoes soon.

Carefully, I pull the bedspread over her body and leave her to her deep sleep, sitting down at the table on the other side of the room.

I’m breaking my own rules keeping her around like this. I know that I should have left her at the trailer park and waited for Javier to come for her—because surely that is one of the first places he’ll look—make it easier on myself to eliminate him. But I feel like I owe it to her to keep her alive. At least for now. At least until Javier Ruiz is dead. She has seen too much, experienced too much. She shows all the signs of having lost the ability to react to fear and danger appropriately. She is numb to danger and that in itself is a death sentence.

Once this is over with, I will set her out on her own again. Perhaps she will find her way, though her chances are slim. But it is a risk that I must take. She cannot be with me for much longer; the life I lead will only get her killed.

I make contact with Niklas through a live video feed on my iPad, putting only one ear bud in my ear so that I can control the volume of my voice while speaking with him.

“She is still with you?” Niklas asks, incredulous.

I did not expect anything less of him.

“I will get rid of her once I eliminate Javier Ruiz,” I say. “For now, I need her close-by. I cannot chase Javier if he’s moving from place to place chasing her.”

“So you’re using her as bait?” He appears more accepting of the prospect.

I glance over at Sarai to make sure she isn’t awake.

“Yes,” I answer looking back, but instantly feel as though I am deceiving my brother and in-turn, our employer.

Taking matters into my own hands and breaking protocol for the sake of a successful mission, I am known for. Over time my decisions based purely on instinct have been accepted and respected by Vonnegut. Because I have never been wrong. But breaking protocol by outright deceiving the Order is new territory for me.

And I don’t yet fully understand why I’m doing it.

“Good,” Niklas says. “Onto matters. Last known whereabouts of Ruiz was just outside of Nogales. He had trouble crossing the border into Arizona, but was finally granted permission once his insiders planted in border patrol arrived to see him through. We believe he is on his way to Tucson, if he isn’t there already.”

Niklas adds, “What is your next move? Vonnegut has all but passed off the reins of this mission completely onto you. All that he asks for are updates. And as you can understand I’m sure, he believes it is taking far too long to conclude. Javier should have been eliminated yesterday and you should be on a plane to your next mission by now.”

“I am aware,” I point out. “Forty-eight more hours at the most is all that I need.”

Niklas accepts, nodding in answer.

“I will take the girl with me to Houston in the morning,” I go on. “Inform Safe House Twelve of my arrival.”

“Why Twelve?” Niklas looks at me warily. “You always choose Safe House Nine. Twelve is not your…shall I say type?”

“I am not going there for that,” I tell him.

He believes that, but I can sense that he doesn’t particularly agree with it.

Something is different about my brother as my liaison and my brother and I intend to find out what.

“Why go to Houston at all?” he asks, seemingly irritated with my decisions entirely. “You could wait for him to come to you and be done with this. Why, Victor, are you dragging this out?” Anger and frustration rises up in his voice.

“I’m taking the girl there to keep her safe,” I say and there’s more than enough question in his face to show that he is beside himself over my reasoning. So, for the sake of my relationship with my brother, I add, “Niklas, it is only temporary, I assure you. You must trust me.”

“Very well,” Niklas agrees with suppressed suspicion. “I will alert Safe House Twelve of your arrival. She will be waiting for you.”

And then the video feed goes dead.

I run my finger over a series of touch keys, breaking into the system through the backdoor. I choose a long series of commands, wiping the device clean of all evidence of correspondence and then crashing the system afterwards. I walk quietly past Sarai and take the iPad into the bathroom, cleaning my fingerprints from every square inch of it using what’s left of the alcohol from before. And then I drop the device into the back of the toilet.

I crawl into the bed by the window and lay on my back, looking up at the ceiling in the darkness.

“He doesn’t like me much. Does he?”

I’m quietly stunned that she managed to pretend to be sleeping without my knowing.

Was she pretending? Or am I becoming too unfocused because of her?

“No, he does not,” I answer without looking at her.

“But you do?”

The question stumps me.

She gets up from the bed and my head falls to the side to see her as she approaches. Not knowing what to do, unable to read her because I’m confused by her actions, I don’t speak. She lies down beside me. Her knees are drawn up and pressed together, her hands hidden between them, and she looks at me.

“You should get back into your own bed,” I say.

“I just want to sleep here. It’s not what you think. I’m just afraid.”

“You fear nothing,” I say, looking back up at the ceiling.

“You’re wrong,” she counters. “I fear everything. What tomorrow will bring and if I’ll be alive to see the end of it. I’m afraid of Javier or anyone else coming through that door and killing me in my sleep. I’m afraid of never being able to live a normal life. I don’t even know what normal feels like anymore.”

“There is a stark difference between fear and uncertainty, Sarai. You fear nothing but are uncertain of everything.”

“How can you believe that?” She seems truly confounded by my assessment of her.

I look at her and answer, “Because you didn’t go to the police. Because you made no effort to contact anyone else that you knew and you have had dozens of chances to do so. Because you got back in the car. With me. A killer. Because you know that I will kill you without thinking twice about it and I would not be remorseful, yet you’re lying next to me. Here in this bed. Alone and willingly.”

I reach over and pull the gun from the floor beside the bed and before she knows what’s happening, the barrel of it is pressed underneath her chin, forcing her head backward. I push my body against hers, our shoulders touching, the weight of my gun hand held up by her chest. My eyes study hers, the question and surprise within them, although faint. I look at her mouth, her soft and innocent lips pressed together gently.

I lean over and whisper onto the side of her mouth, “Because you’re not shaking, Sarai.” And then slowly, I pull the gun away, never removing my eyes from hers.

“I am not Javier,” I say. “You are mistaken if you believe you can manipulate me as you did him.”

She appears offended, though it’s very faint in her eyes, I see it. It is exactly the reaction that I wanted. That I needed, to know that the accusation is untrue.

Without argument, she looks away from me and rolls over onto her other side. She doesn’t get up and move back to her bed.

And I don’t force her.

“I wasn’t with Javier willingly,” she says with her back to me. “I don’t have any reason to manipulate you.”

A minute of quiet passes; only the shuffling of feet moving down the carpeted hallway outside the door disrupting it.

“I’m glad you came back,” she says softly. “And Victor…I should tell you, I’ve been a liar for the past nine years of my life. Everything I said and did and expressed was a lie. I like to think I’ve...

Killing Sarai
Killing Sarai Page 19



Appearing annoyed with me, Victor takes my hand and yanks me out of the car.

I hardly protest.

We’re only in the store for fifteen minutes tops before we make it back outside, me with a new pair of casual gray yoga pants, a plain white t-shirt and a pair of running shoes. He also let me snag a package of low-cut white socks and a six-pack of white cotton panties. The whole time I felt like I was forgetting something, but it’s not until we’re back inside the car that I remember: I should’ve bought a bra. It’s been so long since I owned one I really did forget their importance.

I had expected to show up at a regular airport and get to fly on a passenger plane, but instead we drive to a place back in Green Valley and board a private jet. It only makes sense I realize, since he can’t very well get past a security check in any public airport with a suitcase full of guns, a duffle bag with a mound of cash and another chock full of suspicious items.

While on the tiny plane Victor presents me with my very own fake driver’s license, which looks so real it could easily pass for something from the DMV. I wondered where he got it, but never asked, assuming that earlier in the morning just before we left he went down to the front desk in the lobby to pick up a ‘package’.

I’m twenty-year-old Izabel Seyfried of San Antonio, Texas, today.

And the photograph, I’m not even sure how he managed to take it, but it’s definitely of me and so recent that I’m wearing the same filthy tank top I had been wearing since I escaped the compound. The natural background of the photo has been removed and replaced with the dull blue DMV background, so I don’t have any idea where I was when he took the photo, either. I don’t know, but I have a driver’s license and that’s good enough for me.

“The place where we are going,” Victor says, “is safe, but the woman there should not know your real name. No one should from here on out. I will refer to you as Izabel and you need to answer to that name as casually as you would your own.”

“OK,” I agree. “Who is this woman?”

“She is a liaison…of sorts. Though more like a contact.”

Confused, I ask, “But if she’s one of you, why lie to her?”

He takes a sip of water and sets the glass down on the little table jutting out from the wall of the plane underneath the elliptical-shaped window.

“It’s just a precaution,” he says, leaning his head back against the headrest. “When one person is wanted by many wealthy others, just about anyone can be swayed.”

I raise my back from the seat. “Wait a second, what are you saying? Do you think everyone else knows I got away from Javier?”

“I’ve received no confirmation of that, but it’s best to prepare in advance.”

As if I wasn’t already on edge enough….

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Our flight lands in Houston just after twelve and there is an ordinary blue car—looks like something my mother used to drive—waiting out front for us. Victor grabs all three bags and conceals them inside the trunk. The woman driving I’m assuming is the contact. But she looks so ordinary, just like her car. I expected more sophistication, like Victor in his black suit and expensive shoes, but really she looks more like me.

“I haven’t seen you in years,” the woman says after Victor gets settled in the front seat. I sit in the back, just behind him.

“Yes, it has been a while,” Victor responds.

When the woman smiles over at him, deep lines form around the corners of her mouth. She has blonde hair, her age showing through her hair most of all, judging by the amount of gray mixed in. And she’s much older than Victor, by ten years at least. But she’s very pretty and clean and I feel embarrassed comparing myself with her in my current state.

We pull away from the building near the private landing strip and head for the freeway.

“I wonder what brought you to my neck of the woods,” she adds. Then she glances back at me briefly. “And who did you bring along? Pretty girl. I get the feeling she’s not—”

“No, she’s not,” Victor interrupts.

I’m not what, exactly?

Then he starts speaking to her in French.

Spanish, German, French? How many languages does this man speak?

I hate it that I can’t understand what they’re saying, but I know they’re talking about me. The woman glances at me in the mirror a few times, a little knowing smile tugging the corners of her lips. But even in a language that I can’t understand, I can tell he’s not being completely honest with her. Or, maybe I can’t. Maybe it’s just because I know deep down that I have nothing to worry about when it comes to Victor.

That fact surprises me more every day.

“It’s nice to meet you, Izabel,” she says.

I smile slimly at her and decide that since I have no idea what all Victor just told her about me that I’ll be better off not speaking much to avoid contradicting his story.

Many minutes later we pull into the driveway of a humble little house situated next to other similar houses. Two boys zoom past along the street on their bicycles when we get out. Directly across the street a man washes his car in the driveway. The woman we’re with raises her hand and waves at him and he waves back. It’s a very typical neighborhood, the kind that all of my friends from school lived in when I was growing up and was more respected by the popular girls than a trailer park.

The woman pops the trunk from a button inside the car and I join Victor at the back as he grabs his bags. But I don’t get a chance to ask him privately about what he might’ve said when she joins us seconds later.

“You’ll have to excuse the mess,” she says, fingering her keys; a purse dangles from the other shoulder. “I did clean up, but if I had a few more days to prepare I would’ve hired the Molly Maids.” She waves at us to follow. “Come on in. My poor Pepper is going to tear up my window blinds the longer we stand out here.”

I hear the barking of a small dog muffled by a side window as we approach the door underneath the carport. The blind moves erratically behind the curtain. There’s another car parked in the drive, under the carport cover, but it’s old and looks like it’s been sitting up like that for several years. When she opens the door, the smell of food, delicious food, instantly causes my stomach to rumble and ache.

“Lunch is ready,” the woman says leading us into the kitchen. She sets her purse down on the counter; already her yapping Pomeranian is making its rounds, deciding whose leg to sniff longer, mine or Victor’s.

“Have a seat,” she says gesturing toward the kitchen table.

Not having to tell me twice, I sit down in the nearest chair where an empty plate awaits me.

Victor takes the chair next to me.

The woman waltzes over with a ceramic bowl filled with whipped potatoes in one hand and a plate full of fried chicken in the other and sets them down in front of us. A smaller bowl of corn and a basket of rolls follow.

Not feeling right about being first, I wait to see if Victor will reach for something before me.

“What would you like to drink?” the woman asks. “I have soda, tea, milk, lemonade.”

“Water is fine,” Victor says and then he looks at me, casually nods his head toward the food, giving me the OK to start filling my plate. “From the tap,” he adds at last second.

I reach for the chicken first and pick up a piece with the tongs.

“I’ll have water, too,” I say, looking up at her as I drop a chicken leg on my plate. “Thank you.”

She smiles sweetly and walks around the bar toward the refrigerator and begins preparing our drinks, scolding the little dog verbally to send it strutting out of the kitchen and away from us.

By the time she makes it back with our glasses, Victor and I both have put all of the food we want onto our plates.

She sets our drinks in front of us.

I thank her again and feeling better about ‘going first’ now, I pick up my spoon and start to eat, but Victor stops me, placing two fingers on my wrist and lowering my hand back onto the table. My face flushes and I lower my eyes, hoping the woman doesn’t think I have the worst meal etiquette ever. I figure she must be the religious type, that we have to hold hands around the table awkwardly while she talks to Jesus and tells Him how thankful we are for this food and for the troops and all that stuff.

“Oh Victor,” she says playfully, “you can’t be serious.”

He doesn’t say anything.

I glance at him to my right, wrinkling my brows. Maybe he’s the one that feels it necessary to pray.

Surely not….

The woman sighs and rolls her eyes a little bit as she reaches over and slides my plate away from me.

I’m thoroughly confused now. I fold my hands in my lap underneath the table because I’m not sure what else to do with them.

I turn to Victor, momentarily lost in the mysterious depths of his eyes under the bright light from the fixture centered above the table. I swallow nervously and come back to reality when I hear the woman’s voice again.

“He...