[English] Killing Sarai

Killing Sarai
Killing Sarai Page 40



I’m shaking I’m so confused and nervous and unsure. Unsure of everything.

Arthur Hamburg nods, sweat still dripping from his chin and eyebrows.

The woman reaches out her hand, but then it drops back to her side. Two syringes lay empty near her legs. She’s heavily drugged. My eyes sweep the rest of her, seeing that the bends of her arms and around her ankles are painted by needle marks.

I can’t help it anymore, I rush over to her fully intent in helping her up. But Victor reaches out and grabs me by the arm, stopping me. He looks fiercely into my eyes, the gun still pointing at Arthur Hamburg.

“She is the target,” he says to me, pulling me closer to him. “Go into the room to the nightstand on the side of the bed where the window is. There is another gun in the drawer. Bring it to me.”

I want to say no, that I won’t do it, but the stand I take only goes as far as my mind. I do it because a part of me still trusts Victor as much as the rest of me wants to stop this before it goes too far.

“OK,” I say and run back into the main room. I find the gun right where Victor said it would be and I pick it up nervously by the handle and carry it so carefully back into the hidden room it’s as if I’m terrified it’s going to explode in my hand. Maybe it’s because I know what he’s about to do with it. It feels heavier, deadlier, more ominous than any gun I’ve ever held. Even the one I used to shoot Javier with didn’t feel like this.

I feel my heart beating in the bottoms of my feet.

“Now trade with me,” Victor says.

He’s wearing a pair of black gloves now.

I step up to him, wobbling on my shaking legs, and hand him the gun. I take the other one and make sure to keep it pointed at Arthur Hamburg. I can barely hold it straight. I feel like I did when I hid in Victor’s car, the gun so heavy in my hands that I just wanted to drop it and be free of it.

Victor looks at me, his blue-green eyes intense and faintly empathetic.

“Do you trust me?”

I nod slowly. “Y-yes. I trust you.”

“Plug your ears,” he instructs and I don’t hesitate.

Without another word he walks over to the wife and leans forward, lifting her from the cot into a slouched sitting position. Her body is so weak and disconnected that she can just barely stay upright on her own. Her eyes open and close seemingly from exhaustion or the drugs as Victor puts the gun into her hand, folding her fingers around the handle and her index finger on the trigger. I feel like I’m going to be sick, but the adrenaline won’t let me.

Victor positions his body in front of her and shoves the gun underneath her chin and pulls the trigger with her finger. I hear the shot reverberate through the thick-walled room, but my eyes close before I see the blood.

Arthur Hamburg cries out his wife’s name and then slumps over onto the floor, his oversized body trembling with emotion.

Victor stands behind me in a way that makes me think he’s trying to shield my eyes from the gruesome sight of the wife. It’s a quiet gesture that I find unexpected and sheltering.

“You have one hour,” Victor says. “You might want to get your story in order.”

“**** you! **** you!” Arthur Hamburg shouts, spit spewing from his mouth. He points at us coldly, barely raising his face from the floor an inch. “**** you!”

“It never would’ve happened,” Victor adds.

Then he wraps one arm around my shoulder and walks me out of the hidden room, still shielding me from the sight as best he can. I want to break away from him long enough to run back over and kick the disgusting bastard in the stomach with my heels, but I can’t knowing the woman is lying dead just feet away from him. It’s not the bloody sight of her that makes looking at her so chilling—I have seen too much death to be affected in that way—but it’s the terrible feeling of her being innocent and in need of help that makes it unbearable.

What has Victor done?

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Victor

I stop Sarai at the doors to the suite and turn her around to face me, my hands on her arms. I shake her. “Listen to me,” I say and she raises her eyes. “You’re still in character when we walk out of here. Act as you did before any of this happened. Do you understand?” I shake her again.

She nods erratically and then takes a deep breath, swallowing the lump in her throat.

We step out into the hall and I turn the lock on the inside of the suite door before closing it. How safely we get out of this mansion and off this property all now lies in the hands of Hamburg. If he decides he wants us dead more than he wants to stay out of prison and lose his entire fortune, then the next five minutes are going to be complicated. I have one weapon, the gun from the briefcase in the closet. Nine bullets are in the chamber. I’m not entirely confident that I can take out the guards who will be shooting at us with only nine bullets. If I were alone and didn’t have Sarai to protect, I could pull it off.

“Head up,” I whisper harshly to Sarai on my right.

She raises her chin and I slip my hand around her waist as we walk casually toward the glass elevator. The two guards who had been positioned outside Hamburg’s room are nowhere to be seen, but there is one at the end of the hall. Like the others, he’s wearing an earpiece. We walk by him casually and Sarai works her charm, smiling a venomous little smile at him. Beguiled by her, he grins like an idiot until the elevator drops us below his floor.

“Ah, there you are,” Vince Shaw, Hamburg’s assistant says as we exit the elevator on the ground floor. “Are the two of you leaving already? You should stay a while longer. Lucinda is going to play for us tonight.” He stands with his hands folded neatly in front of him.

I smile and shake my head. “I would love to, but I have an early flight to catch.”

“But I want to stay,” Sarai says as Izabel and with a little whine in her voice.

“Not this time,” I say. “You know I always miss an early flight when I don’t get at least six hours of sleep the night before.”

“Please, Victor?” She lays her head on my arm.

I ignore her artificial efforts altogether and reach out to shake Vince’s hand.

“It was a pleasure to meet you,” I say.

“You as well. Perhaps you can enjoy the party longer next time.”

“Perhaps.”

I pull Sarai along next to me as we head toward the exit. Just before we make it to the tall double-doors, I hear Hamburg’s voice carry through the mansion from the balcony of the fourth floor and we stop cold in our tracks.

“Victor Faust,” he calls out over the crowd.

I feel Sarai’s heart beating in her hand as she grasps mine.

I step away from the door and back into the light so that I can see him fully. He has cleaned up nicely in such a short time, his dress shirt tucked back inside his slacks, his gray hair that had been drenched by sweat, slicked back over his head likely by his fingers rather than a comb.

The moment of silence, although only a few seconds at best, is tense. I think Sarai has stopped breathing.

Hamburg smiles down at us, his hands resting over the balcony railing.

“I look forward to seeing you again,” he says.

I nod. “Until then,” I say.

The doorman swings one side of the door open for us as we exit the mansion. Neither of us feel safe until we drive the length of the two-acre driveway and are allowed past the front gate without being stopped or shot at.

I drive around the city for thirty minutes before going back to the hotel to make certain we’re not being followed. Sarai is silent the entire time, staring out the windshield. She doesn’t have the look of someone who is traumatized. She’s doubting me. She’s regretting her decision to have taken part in what happened.

“Sarai—”

“What was that?” she shouts, her head snapping around to look at me. “Why was that woman the hit? She was harmless, Victor. She needed our help! She was innocent! It couldn’t be more obvious!”

“Are you sure about that?” I ask, retaining my calm demeanor.

Sarai starts to yell at me more, but she stops and drops her chin.

“Maybe not,” she says, second-guessing herself now. “But he kept her in that room. She was drugged. Helpless. A prisoner. I don’t understand….” She looks out the windshield again.

“It appeared that way, yes,” I say. “But Mary Hamburg was just as deserving as Arthur.”

“Then who ordered the hit?” she asks, her gaze fixated on me. “Why kill her and not him?”

“Mary Hamburg ordered the hit on herself,” I say and Sarai’s eyes cloud over with disbelief. “The two of them have been involved in numerous cases of rape and murder, accidental deaths caused by erotic asphyxiation, but murder nonetheless, all covered up by their big bank accounts. They’ve been involved in this lifestyle for most of their marriage. A year ago, Mary Hamburg—according to her—decided she didn’t want to be a part of that life anymore. Her demons caught up to her. When she tried to talk to Arthur about them getting...

Killing Sarai
Killing Sarai Page 41



“She should’ve just killed herself,” Sarai says. “If it was me, I wouldn’t go through all the trouble.”

“You would if you couldn’t bring yourself to take your own life. There are many people like that out there, Sarai. Ready to die, but afraid to do it themselves.”

She doesn’t respond.

“Do you think they’ll come after us?” she asks.

I open my door and get out and then move around to her side, opening hers. “Right now, no. He would’ve done it before we left if that was the case.” I reach out my hand to her. She places her fingers into mine and I help her out of the car.

After shutting the door I add, “Hamburg has far too much to lose. But that’s not to say he won’t devise some kind of plan to take revenge on me in some way that he believes he can’t be linked to it.”

“Or me,” she says and looks at me hopelessly. “He could take revenge on me.”

I hit the alarm on the key ring twice and the car beeps, echoing loudly through the parking garage.

This time I don’t respond.

I walk with her to the elevator and up to our room on the top floor. I don’t think much at all about Arthur and Mary Hamburg or what went down tonight. Mostly I think about Sarai and what she went through with me. She didn’t die, but I feel like another part of her did. And it’s one hundred percent my fault. I knew I shouldn’t have taken her there. I am fully aware of my own actions and how inexcusable they are. I came to terms with it the moment Sarai didn’t back out of the last chance I gave her. It should’ve been me, right then, who put a stop to her having anything more to do with it.

I chose a different path.

And I don’t regret it.

There are a few more things that Sarai and I need to talk about and I fully expect the way I touched her in Hamburg’s suite to be among the first. I prepare myself for it, but when we walk into the room and she kicks off her heels, she stuns me when she says, “I want to kill him.” She sits down on the end of the bed and turns her head to look up at me, resolve at home in her eyes. “That man needs to die, Victor. He needs to pay for what he’s done. He needs to pay with his life. Just like she did.”

There is my proof. Sarai has the blood of a killer; there’s no mistaking it anymore. I know I didn’t make her that way. Life did that, not me. But I know I’m the one who ultimately pulled the shroud from her eyes to make her see it.

“It’s only a matter of time before a hit is ordered on him too,” I say.

I take off my jacket and tie, draping them over the back of a chair.

“We should’ve done it when we had the chance,” she says.

Breaking apart the buttons of my dress shirt, I glance over at her sitting there, staring off at the wall, and I wonder in what way she’s imagining she’s killing Hamburg. It’s bloody. It’s vengeful. I’m sure of it.

I lay my shirt over the chair with my jacket and walk toward her, stepping out of my shoes on the way.

“If we did it tonight,” I say, sitting down on the end of the bed beside her, “we wouldn’t have made it out of there alive. It wasn’t part of the mission. Every mission must be planned precisely. Stray from any part of it and you triple your chances of exposing yourself or getting yourself killed.”

We sit in stillness, both looking out ahead, both married to our thoughts. I wonder if hers are about me. I can’t help but for mine to be about her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Sarai

I never want Victor to leave me. I couldn’t bear the thought of it before, but now…now things are so much different. Our souls have become intimate, whether he wants to admit it to himself or not. We are one in the same and I don’t want to imagine being on my own without him. Ever.

“Sarai, I’m sorry for what I did.”

I look over. I know what he means, but I’m not sure yet what to say in return.

“I hope you believe me when I say I got nothing out of it. It was merely for show. I hope you understand that.”

I do believe him. I know I couldn’t look a normal person in the eye and tell them what happened without them thinking I’ve lost my mind, or that I’ve succumbed to Stockholm syndrome. But Victor could’ve had his way with me many times over. He could’ve raped me. He could’ve given in to me the few times I’ve shown an attraction to him. But he never did and he always pushed me away. Up until a few nights ago when I slipped into his bed. He didn’t push me away then, but I know deep down that he was more attuned to the rage I was feeling in that moment than even I was.

Without looking at him, I ask in a quiet voice, “If he hadn’t of put in the access code to the room sooner…would you have f**ked me?”

I notice him glance over but I don’t meet his eyes.

“No,” he answers in a quiet voice to match mine. He sighs. “Sarai, I couldn’t force him to open the room. He might’ve punched in a panic code and alerted the guards in the house, or—”

I look at him finally, locking my eyes with his. “But would you have wanted to?”

He becomes quiet. I watch the struggle shift in his face.

“Not there,” he says. “Not like that.”

I lift my dress over my head and drop it on the floor.

“Will you now?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer, but I’ve learned by now that the only way to get what I want from him is not to relent.

I get up from the bed and move to stand in-between his legs. Both of his hands move up my thighs slowly and he tucks his fingers behind the elastic of my panties. His lips touch my belly, the tip of his tongue grazing the skin between my ribs so softly it raises chills all over my body. I run my fingers through his hair as he slides my panties over my h*ps and down my legs.

Then I straddle his lap.

I kiss him softly and whisper once more, “Will you, Victor Faust? If that is your name.” I nudge the side of his face with my chin.

“Only under one con***ion,” he whispers hotly onto my mouth.

“What con***ion?”

He kisses my lips slowly.

“That I’m the one in control this time.”

I part my mouth near his, teasing him with a kiss that I want him to take from me, my fingertips gently enclosed around his jaw. He gazes into my eyes for a moment, reading my thoughts. And then both of his arms wrap possessively around my body, crushing me against him. His kiss is ravenous, his strong fingers digging into the skin of my back and I can feel the hardness of his c*ck so distinctly through the fabric of his pants that it makes me tremble. My lips part and my whole body shudders just feeling him there, wanting him inside of me more than I think I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.

He spears one hand within the back of my hair, forcing my head back and exposing my neck to him. He kisses my throat upward in a perfectly straight line until he finds my mouth again and takes my bottom lip into his teeth.

I feel two of his fingers slip into me below.

I gasp, my head still forced backward in his grasp, and I thrust my h*ps gently against his fingers.

“I want you inside of me,” I say breathily.

I can’t f**king take it anymore.

With my lips on his, our warm tongues tangled, I fumble the button on his pants and then slide the zipper down.

He flips me over onto the bed, crawling on top of me and never breaks the kiss while stripping off his pants with one hand. And when I feel the warmth of his nak*d body, I wrap my legs around him, crushing him with my thighs, pushing myself toward him so I can feel the swell of his c*ck against my wetness. His mouth searches my neck and my chest until his teeth find my n**ples and he bites them just hard enough to make me whimper.

“This goes against everything that I am, Sarai,” he says and then kisses me.

“No, it doesn’t,” I whisper and kiss him back. “It’s you becoming more of who you really are.”

And then he slides his c*ck inside of me slowly. I can barely keep my eyes open anymore. My legs tremble and my body shudders with tiny tremors that explode and infiltrate my insides. I gasp and shove my h*ps forward to force him deeper.

I never imagined that *** could feel like this, that the way my body is reacting to him could ever feel like this.

He raises his body from mine, still on his knees between my legs and he grabs my thighs tight in his hands, pulling me toward him. He f**ks me slowly at first, so slowly that it drives me mad. With each thrust he pushes deeper until my thighs are trembling and I can’t hold them steady around his body anymore. The back of my head arches against the pillow and I moan and gasp and dig my fingers into the flesh of his hips. He starts to f**k me harder and I grip the pillow above my head before pressing my hands against the headboard, forcing myself against him, feeling his c*ck swell inside of me.

He collapses over me again and I feel the wetness of his mouth on my breast. My throat. My lips. His chest heaves with rapid breath and I can feel his heart beating against mine. He begins to pace himself and while he f**ks me slowly, his kiss deep and hot and hungry, he reaches one hand down between...

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I want to cry, but I don’t.

I lay my head back on his chest, too disheartened to look at him anymore. I stare out across the spacious room, my fingers arched on his upper chest muscle.

“I think the only thing I can do is to let you live your life—”

“But—”

He squeezes me again.

“Let you live your life,” he goes on, “but I’ll visit you from time to time. Make sure you’re doing OK, that you’re safe and you have everything you need.”

I’m not satisfied with that, but I know too that it’s all I’m going to get out of him. And it’s better than nothing. He’s right and I can’t deny it. I want to be with him always, in whatever way he’ll allow himself to have me, but I can’t expect him to risk either of our lives to make that happen.

I have to let him go…

“That is if you want me to visit,” he says.

I detect a shift in the moment to something more lighthearted. It strikes me as odd coming from him. I raise up from his arm and prop my upper body on the weight of one arm, looking down at him.

He’s smiling. Not just his eyes, but his lips, too. He’s so beautiful to me. So dangerously beautiful.

I go with the moment and shove my free hand playfully against his side, laughing lightly under my breath.

“Of course I want you to,” I say.

Then he takes my wrist and carefully pulls me down on his chest. He runs his fingertips down one side of my face and then the other, all the while peering into my eyes, though beyond them. I wonder what he’s looking for in their depths. Whatever it is, I hope he never finds it so that we can stay like this forever.

He places both of his hands on the sides of my face and draws my lips to his.

“What have you done to me?” he says.

“I was going to ask you the same question.”

I nibble his bottom lip. He presses his c*ck against me gently.

“It seems we’ve created a bit of a problem,” he says and pushes against me a little harder.

I do the same. I gasp lightly, my skin breaking out in shivers and heat.

He kisses me, but then pulls his mouth away an inch from mine, teasing me. I lean over farther, pressing my br**sts against his chest, wanting the taste of his mouth but he only gives me a little. He thrusts his h*ps again, holding his c*ck against me, his firm hands gripping my ass. He’s so f**king hard. I want it. My mouth parts halfway and my breath shudders through my lips.

“Do you want me to f**k you?” he whispers. “Is that what you want?”

I gasp at his words on my ear. I can’t answer. I can’t think straight.

“Do you, Sarai?” he adds, the heat of his breath dancing on my parted lips.

I force my h*ps against him, trying to position myself on his c*ck in a way that I can push it inside of me without either of our hands having to do it.

“Yes…,” I gasp. “**** me like you would’ve f**ked Izabel.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes….”

I can’t breathe.

“Say it again…Izabel.”

My eyes open heavily as I look down at him. I pant lightly through my lips. He touches them with his.

Before I can respond, he lifts up from the bed into a sitting position, keeping me on his lap. The tip of his tongue moves along my collarbone. Both of my br**sts are crushed in his hands.

“Say it, Izabel,” he demands and flicks his tongue against one nipple. “Tell me you want me to f**k you.”

“I want you to f**k me.”

He twists the back of my hair in his hand and stands up from the bed with my legs straddled around his sculpted hips.

He carries me to the table by the window and forces me on top of it on my belly. My arms come out ahead of me knocking his cell phone and his gun onto the floor, my hands gripping onto the rounded edge of the table. His fingers dig into my h*ps as he jerks my body backward toward him. He squeezes my ass. Hard. I inhale sharply when I feel his hands between my legs, spreading me apart for him. The heat of his hard body encompasses me when he leans over across my back, dragging the tip of his tongue across the back of my neck. I feel his c*ck right there waiting for me and I try to force myself backward against him, but his hand braces the back of my neck, forcing my cheek against the tabletop.

“Please, Victor,” I say breathily, every part of me opening up to him.

I gasp and moan loudly when he shoves his c*ck inside of me, my teeth clamping down on his index finger as his hand presses gently against the side of my face.

No, I never imagined that *** could be like this….

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

We oversleep the next morning and are awoken by the housekeeper knocking on the door outside the room. I guess he wasn’t just putting on a show at the Hamburg mansion when he said he always misses an early flight if he doesn’t get enough sleep the night before. Or, maybe it was just my fault. I guess I have thrown him completely out of his normal routines.

Victor gets out of the bed and I can’t help but admire his nak*d form before he gets dressed quickly. He opens the door to tell the housekeeper that we’ll be leaving late and not to come back for at least an hour. I don’t want to go anywhere. After last night, I just want—

“You get ready to go,” he says walking back into the room with me. “I’m going to take you to stay with a lady I know in San Diego. You’ll be safe there until I can get the rest sorted out, get you set up in a place of your own. But right now, I have to make a call to Niklas to let him know about last night. And I’m fairly certain I’ll be making a trip to Germany soon to meet with my employer.”

I just want to talk about last night, or do last night over again right now.

“That doesn’t sound good,” I say as I get out of the bed. I got a bad feeling when he said the part about meeting his employer.

He steps into his shoes and drops his duffle bags on the foot of the bed.

“No, it’s usually not,” he says, rummaging through the bag. “These last two missions have created a lot of questions about me and my ability to carry them out as ordered. I’ll have to report to him face to face to give him a more thorough explanation of what went on and why things happened the way they did.”

“What are you going to tell him about me? Do you think he’ll know I’m still alive?”

He finds a small handful of bullets and starts loading his 9MM.

“I’ll figure that out on the way.”

That too, gives me a bad feeling.

“OK, so who’s this lady in San Diego?” I look at him now with a wary eye. “She’s not someone you—”

“No,” he says, hiding the gun in the back of his pants. “She has nothing to do with my Order and doesn’t know anything about what I do. She’s just a friend. Met her and her husband on a mission five years ago. It’s a long story, but no, it’s nothing like that.”

“What about her husband?”

He looks up at me once.

“He’s not there anymore,” he says.

“Why not? Did he die? Are they elderly?”

I can’t help but ask all these questions; I want to know as much as I can about the place he’s going to take me.

Victor pauses and then says, “Yes, he’s dead. He was my target.”

“Oh….”

I don’t feel so confident anymore about going there.

“You’ll be fine,” Victor says, noticing the worry on my face. “She doesn’t know that it was me.”

He walks over to me, placing his hands on my shoulders. “I’m going to go downstairs to the front desk and get the room squared away and call Niklas.” He leans in and kisses my forehead. “Take your time. I’ll be back in a few and then we’ll leave.”

I nod, looking into his eyes. “OK.”

Victor leaves the room and I grab a more casual dress this time and a clean pair of panties and head for the shower.

Victor

Niklas is angry with me. I can hear it in his voice though he’s trying hard not to be too obvious, which in itself is out of character for him.

“You said you’d contact me as soon as the mission was over,” Niklas says into the phone. “If it was carried out last night as planned then why are you only now calling me half a day later?”

I let out my breath through my nose.

“Take it for what it is, Niklas,” I say, growing as irritated with him as he has been with me. “You’ve got to stop concerning yourself so much with me.”

“I am your liaison,” he snaps.

“Yes, but the part of you that has become so painfully assiduous about how I choose to do things, is my brother. Perhaps you should reacquaint yourself with your liaison half, that way we can both go back to a simpler, strictly professional relationship.”

“I see,” he says. “You don’t need a brother anymore now that you have that girl. Obviously she’s still alive.”

I should’ve seen that coming but I didn’t.

“You have not been replaced, least of all by a woman,”...

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I swipe my hand over the mirror in the bathroom, clearing a path through the humi***y fogging up the glass. And I smile in at my reflection. For the first time since I met Victor, I’m starting to feel content, relieved by the outlook of my future. Because before, all I could see of it was blackness, a void that had no beginning or end, everything hanging there in uncertainty. But now I have something to look forward to. I have a purpose. And I’m not going to waste a second of it.

I squeeze the water from my hair with a towel and then pin it up sloppily at the back of my head. After drying off and getting dressed, I head into the main room and start to turn the television on when there is a knock at the room door. I glance at the clock beside the bed.

It hasn’t been an hour already.

Setting the remote control back on the bed, I walk toward the door to answer it, but just as I set my hand on the lever, the voice on the other side freezes me in place.

“It’s Niklas. Victor sent me to get you.”

My fingers fall away from the lever very slowly. I take one step away from the door.

He knocks lightly again.

“Are you in there? Sarai? Come on and let me in. I know you despise me, and quite honestly I’d rather be having a beer in a quaint little bar somewhere, but Victor needed my help.”

He’s lying. Victor would’ve told me if he had sent Niklas here. He would’ve told me before he left, or he would’ve called.

I glance at the phone by the bed. Maybe he did call while I was in the shower.

I take another step away from the door, my instincts pulling me backward like a dozen reaching hands. There’s one more series of knocks and then it’s silent. I stand in the center of the room, perfectly still, perfectly quiet. The only sound I hear is a faint, buzzing coming from a light bulb. Moving quickly across the room I press my face near the door and try to peer out through the peephole. What I can see of the hallway is empty. He’s gone. But then if he’s really gone, why am I still so afraid that he’s right outside the door somewhere, waiting for me to stick my head out and look? I press my eye at an angle against the peephole, trying to get a better visual to the left and the right. Then I hear voices and see a shadow moving along the wall. My heartbeat speeds up and I hold my breath until two men walk past. I let the breath out long and heavily.

But the relief is short-lived when I see Niklas again.

I jump back and away from the door fast and rush over to Victor’s duffle bag, rummaging through it to find Arthur Hamburg’s gun. Victor left it for me. Just in case. But I get the feeling he left it in case of Arthur Hamburg. Not his brother.

There’s nowhere to hide in this place. Absolutely nowhere that Niklas couldn’t easily find me in under a minute.

I inhale a quick, sharp breath when I hear the tiny clicking sound of a card key being slid through the door and unlocking it. He must’ve taken the housekeeper’s master key. In half a second, and too late for me to realize and remedy my mistake, I see the chain on the door is still unlocked. I make a run for it, knowing in my heart that I won’t make it to the door in time to slide the chain lock in place before Niklas is inside the room. And just as the door opens, I’m falling against the wall behind it, gripping the gun in both hands up against my chest, my heart pumping blood so fast through my veins that my eyes twitch near the corners and I feel my jugular throbbing.

The door shuts and locks automatically and Niklas and I stand face to face, each with a gun pointed at the other.

“Ah, there you are,” he says with that glaring look in his eyes that shows just how much he hates me.

I keep my finger pressed against the trigger and although I’m shaking, I manage to hold the gun steady and pointed right at his head.

“I will kill you,” I warn.

“Yes, I know,” he says, exuding more confidence than me by far. “You were the one who shot Javier Ruiz, after all.” He sighs dramatically and shakes his head. “Sarai, I want you to know that I don’t get off on this, on killing innocent women. I never wanted to kill you or hurt you for that matter, but what you’ve done to my brother…well, I can’t have that.”

Keeping the gun trained on him and my finger firmly on the trigger, I start to back away from the door. He moves with my movements.

“Why do you care what Victor does with his personal life?”

He ****s his head to one side. “Victor doesn’t have a personal life. None of us can have that. It’s like oil and water. Surely you know that by now.”

“He’s taking me somewhere today,” I say quickly, losing any confidence I had, which wasn’t much to begin with. “He’s getting rid of me. He already told me that I can’t stay with him. Why can’t you just leave it at that? He’s doing what you want.”

“It’s not what I want, Sarai.” We’ve managed to steer far away from the door and are in the center of the room now. “I’m only trying to protect him. He’s my f**king brother!” His sudden anger makes me tremble. I notice his trigger finger twitch.

“Niklas, please just let me go. You’re right and I know it. I’ve known it for a while, that I’m only making things harder for Victor.”

“You’re going to get him killed!” he cries out, pushing the words through his teeth and the barrel of his gun toward me. “Even if he leaves you alone today, even if he never sees you again—****, even if he kills you—what has already happened is enough for the Order to kill him! Don’t you see?” His face is red hot with anger, his expression distorted by pain. “They will kill him! If he goes to Germany he’s dead, Sarai. Did he tell you that? I bet he didn’t tell you that.”

I don’t want to believe it. I shake my head and almost lose focus, gripping my gun tighter.

“You don’t know that,” I say, but deep down I believe him. “If that’s true then why would he even go?”

A sneer crinkles the edge of Niklas’ mouth. His teeth grind together behind his closed lips.

“Because Victor is stubborn,” he says. “And a little too trusting when it comes to Vonnegut. Victor has always been his Number One, he’s always been the best. He’s better at what he does than all of the ones under Vonnegut who came before him and he’s still the best. But being the best doesn’t make him immune to the Code. He has f**ked up far too much since he’s been involved with you that there will be no exoneration.”

“Then let me talk to him—”

“You’ve done enough!” he roars.

CHAPTER FORTY

Victor

The client is late. Five minutes late, but even one minute by someone who Niklas described as ‘meticulous’ doesn’t sit well with me. Two more minutes and I’m leaving.

I watch people walk by on the street and I study them from the clothes they wear to the way they hold their heads when they talk to those walking alongside them. Are they really just tourists and residents? Or, are they decoys? Spies? I can never be too careful. This could be a setup, like any mission, but ones like this that put a knot of uncertainty in the pit of my stomach—

Wait…

I recall my phone conversation with Niklas earlier:

“Meet with her outside at 639 South Spring Street. She will be wearing a white blouse with a silver butterfly broach on the left breast. She’ll be there at one-thirty.”

“That’s in less than an hour,” I say.

“You have plenty of time to get there from the hotel.”

I had plenty of time to get here from the hotel…

I grip the steering wheel with both hands, my mind running a hundred miles per second. How would Niklas have known that? He had no idea where in Los Angeles Sarai and I were staying. He couldn’t have known that I could make it to that address from where I was in that amount of time.

Unless he knew exactly where we were all along.

Sarai

“Niklas…if you kill me, you’ll make an enemy of your brother.” My throat is dry like sandpaper, my lungs heavy. “If everything you’re saying is true, if Victor’s fate is already sealed then what would killing me accomplish?” I raise my voice out of desperation and fear. “It won’t solve anything!”

He doesn’t want to kill me. I don’t know whether it’s because of what I said, about making Victor his enemy, or if he’s just conflicted, but whatever it is it’s the only thing keeping me alive right now.

“Look what you’ve done!” He shoves the gun in the air toward me, his hand gripping the handle so tight his knuckles are white.

He moves forward. I move backward.

“Niklas…please,” I beg him. I don’t want to shoot him. I know he’s more likely to kill me, but I don’t want to shoot him.

Anger flickers through his eyes in an instant and he rounds his chin defiantly, his jaw clenching, his eyes narrow and his nostrils flaring.

Yes, he does want to kill me after all.

The door swings open and I hear a shot just as Niklas turns his head to see Victor storming...

Killing Sarai
Killing Sarai Page 44



I try to lift my head but I’m so weak that my cheek stays pressed against the scruffy carpet.

“Niklas is all that you have, the only family you have left,” I say. “I would do anything to have someone who cares for me as much as he cares for you. Anything.”

The room gets very quiet. I can see Victor’s eyes, clouding over with…I’m not sure. Is he even really looking at me at all? I feel like I can hear Niklas speaking but it sounds muffled and distant in my ears. I see the ceiling now. Just the ceiling. Thousands of minuscule holes open up to me from within the material and I feel like I can see every single one of them as they push down on me from high above. That warmth. What is that warmth I feel all around me like a blanket?

“Sarai?” I hear a voice say, but whose voice it is I can’t tell.

All I see is blackness. I try to lift my eyelids, but they’re too heavy.

I hear the voice again and a shot of pain radiates through my body when I feel like I’m being lifted into the air. I try to cry out, but I don’t think anyone can actually hear my voice.

I try to cry out….

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

I feel like I’ve been dreaming for days. The same constant series of images and voices all around me always sound calming yet persistent. The images, they’re what tells me that it’s not real because everyone I see are already dead. Javier. Izel. Lydia. Samantha. My mother. They walk by me in a sort of quiet, contemplative state as if I’m not even here. I can almost touch my mother’s hair when she passes.

I must be dreaming.

But the dreams are slowly fading and the strange, unfamiliar voices I hear are becoming more distinct. I feel like I’m trapped inside my own mind and it has forgotten that it controls my body. Because I can’t move anything. Not my eyes or my lips or my hands. I can’t even tell if I’m breathing on my own. But mostly what I think about are the voices, how clearer they’re becoming. I find myself concentrating as hard as I can so that I can focus on their words, but I never get further than the sound.

At least not until I hear Victor’s voice in the distance.

“I won’t be here long today,” I hear him say to someone.

I try to wake up, but I think the effort has the opposite effect because in an instant I’m consumed by blackness and all of the voices disappear.

More time passes. More dreams. More voices.

And then just like that as if a switched had been flipped in my brain, my eyelids break apart and I see that I’m lying in a hospital bed.

Victor is sitting next to me in a chair.

“You’re awake,” he says and smiles down at me.

“How long have I not been?” I’m still trying to put my mind back together.

“Three days,” he says. “But you’re going to be fine. They kept you sedated most of the time you’ve been here.”

I try to raise my back from the pillow, but the pain in my stomach is too much. I wince and my hands come up to put pressure on the area, but Victor takes my hands and guides me back down. “You can’t be moving around yet,” he says and stands up. He takes the extra pillow from a nearby chair and positions it underneath the back of my head. Then he pushes a button on the side of the bed to raise it to allow me to sit upright. An IV snakes along the top of my hand, plastered to my skin with white tape. It itches like mad.

“The bullet missed every organ,” Victor says as he sits back down in the chair. “You were lucky.”

Niklas’ face flashes in my mind.

“Or your brother is just a bad shot.”

I look down at my arms resting on the bed at my sides. I want to know what happened to Niklas and I feel like I should hope that he’s dead, but I can’t.

“Is he—?”

“No,” Victor says. “Half of me wanted to kill him, but the other half couldn’t do it. I just wonder which half would’ve won if you hadn’t been alive in that moment.”

I reach across the bed a few inches with my hand in search of his. He interlocks his fingers with mine.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” I say, pushing a faint smile through to the surface of my face. “I couldn’t live with myself if I had been the reason you killed your brother. I-I never should’ve come between you. I didn’t know what I was doing, Victor. I am so sorry.”

He squeezes my hand.

“You did something that no one else could,” he says and I eagerly wait for him to tell me what that could possibly be. “You made me remember that I have a brother, Sarai. He and I have practically sat side by side at a table as strangers for the past twenty-four years. And I see now that despite his faults, he has never once betrayed me.”

He pauses and his gaze veers off.

Then he looks back at me.

“In a sense he did betray me when he went there to kill you,” he goes on. “He betrayed me when he misled me so that he could get to you. Yes, that is a betrayal. But it’s a very different kind of betrayal.”

“I know,” I say. “Look at me.” He does. “You did the right thing. Regardless of what he did to me, you did the right thing and I don’t ever want you think I’ll feel differently.”

He doesn’t speak, but I know that look on his face, it’s the conflict that’s always there. I wonder if he’ll ever be rid of it.

Then he says, “But you did something else that no one else ever could.” His features soften and my heart is slowly melting. “You made me feel real emotions. You unlocked me.”

I reach out and touch his lips with my fingers, my hand cradling his chin.

The subject changes all too fast.

“Niklas will never hurt you again,” he says. “He gave me his word. And besides, he knows that if he ever tries that I won’t hesitate to kill him the next time.”

Then suddenly he adds, “You’re just as important to me as he is.”

I’m quietly stunned.

Victor stands up and walks to the window, crossing his arms looking out at the brightly-lit day. I can see that there are so many things he wants to say, so many loose ends he wants to tie up with me. But things have changed since Niklas shot me. I can feel it. And I won’t fight him anymore because I know that it has to be the way it is, that it has to end the way it’s going to end.

“I don’t expect to ever see you again, Victor, and I understand.” I swallow hard. I don’t want to say these words. “It’s better this way, I know.”

“Yes, unfortunately it is,” he says distantly with his back to me. “I can’t keep you safe with the life that I live. I wanted to, but in the end, I couldn’t. I knew better, but I…”

I wait quietly.

“…but I was wrong,” he says, though I feel like he wanted to say something else. “I’m sorry, but there’s no other way.”

My heart is breaking….

“Promise me one thing,” I say and he turns only his head to look at me. “Don’t go to Germany. Don’t go to that man, your employer or whatever the hell he is. Niklas told me about what will happen if you go there. Please don’t go there….”

I hear him sigh softly and he looks back out the window.

“I can’t promise that,” he says and my heart crumbles. “But I can promise that I won’t just stand there and let someone kill me.”

That doesn’t make me feel any better, but I know it’s all he’ll give me.

He leaves the window and produces a package from a briefcase lying on the nearby table. He walks back over beside me and places it in my hand. It’s an elongated black box stuffed inside a tattered paper package that had been covered in tape at some time. I pull the box from the package and open the lid. A single stack of cash is inside along with an envelope that has been folded over length-wise to fit and a few other random pieces of paper.

“What’s all this?”

“Your real birth certificate, social security card, shot records, which you are behind on a few that you should get taken care of soon.” He points to the folded envelope as I’m opening it to see the contents.

I look at my birth certificate first.Sarai Naomi Cohen. Born July 18, 1990. Tucson, Arizona.I say my full name over in my head three times just so that it might feel real to me, real like it used to feel.

It doesn’t.

“How’d you get this?” I look up at Victor.

“I have my ways,” he says with a smile behind his eyes. “I also set you up a bank account. The details are on the rest of the documents in the box.”

“Thank you, Victor,” I say, setting my birth certificate down on my lap. “For everything.”

I mean what I’m saying to him. I would’ve been dead many times over if it weren’t for him. But saying these things to him, these goodbyes, are shredding every last bit of what’s left of my heart.

“When are you leaving?” I ask.

I don’t really want to know the answer.

I put the documents back into the envelope and close them away inside the box.

“In...

Killing Sarai
Killing Sarai Page 45



But life is definitely different. I’m living back in Arizona with Mrs. Gregory. Over in Lake Havasu City. And I have enough money that I don’t have to work, but to keep my mind busy and try to conform to this life of normalcy I work nights at a convenience store. Mrs. Gregory doesn’t like it. It scares her. She says it’s dangerous working in places like that which are open at all hours of the night.

She happened to be right.

I was robbed my second week there, but as the guy stood on the other side of the counter pointing that gun at me, all I could do was watch his eyes. When he glanced down at the money I put into his view, I smacked the gun aside, managed to grapple it from his hand and then I hit him in the face with it. It was stupid, really. But it was instinct. I’m not much intimidated by low-life meth-heads that rob young women in convenience stores.

That’s child’s play.

But I’m definitely not some kind of reformed badass created by my extraordinary experiences, either. Just ask the spider that crawled on me the other night while I was reading a book in bed. Mrs. Gregory about had a heart attack I screamed so loud.

I went to school to obtain my GED and passed the test two months ago. It wasn’t very hard for me, although I struggled with the math. Now I’m enrolled in community college taking Computer Science, though I don’t know why. I really have no interest in it out in the ‘real world’, but…well, normalcy. That’s my excuse for everything these days, for hanging out with my new friends, to pretending to be interested in their life goals. It makes me feel like an awful person that I have to pretend these things at all, but I can’t force myself to like something just because I should.

But not everything is so unbearable. I love Mrs. Gregory and I spend most of my time with her. She has arthritis so bad that her fingers are gnarled and she can’t play the piano much anymore, but she still teaches me and I still play, sometimes for hours until my fingers are cramped and my back is stiff. I finally mastered Moonlight Sonata. And each time I play it I think of Victor and the night he sat with me at the piano.

Mrs. Gregory’s health is getting worse. I take care of her, but I know she won’t be around forever and that one day I’m going to be alone again. I like to think that maybe Victor is still out there watching over me and sometimes I trick my mind into believing that he is. But the reality is that I don’t even know if he’s still alive. I try not to think about that, but it ends up being all that I ever think about except when I’m lost in the piano.

I miss him. I miss him so much. Some people believe that when two people separate that over time they heal. They start to find interest in other people. They go on with their lives. But that hasn’t been the case with me at all. I feel a deeper void now than the one I felt when I lived at the compound. This is more painful, more unbearable. I miss everything about Victor. And I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t think about him ***ually on a daily basis. Because I do. I think I’m addicted to him.

It has been so hard for me to adjust to just about everything, but in the grand scheme of things, six months isn’t a very long time. Not compared to the nine years I was at the compound. So, I’m hopeful that by the time another six months rolls around, I’ll be better. I’ll be ‘normal’. My friends, although I can’t tell them about my life—and I think that’s why I’ve had such a difficult time getting close to them—are really great. Dahlia is a year older than me. Average beauty. Average intelligence. Average car. Average job. We are alike in the ways of average, but we couldn’t be more different when it comes to everything else. Dahlia doesn’t jump at any sound that remotely resembles a gunshot. I do. Dahlia doesn’t look over her shoulder everywhere she goes. I do. Dahlia wants to get married and have a family. I don’t. Dahlia has never killed anyone. I would do it again.

But I’m grateful no matter how often I dream of being somewhere else. Of being someone else. I’m grateful because I got away. I’m grateful because I’m home. Though ‘grateful’ is very different from ‘satisfied’ and despite finally having a normal life that a lot of people would love to have, I’m as far away from being satisfied as I can be.

Victor Faust did much more than help me escape a life of abuse and servitude. He changed me. He changed the landscape of my dreams, the dreams I had every day about living ordinarily and free and on my own. He changed the colors on the palette from primary to rainbow—as dark as the colors of that rainbow may be—and not a day goes by that I don’t think about him or about the life I could’ve had with him. Although dangerous and ultimately short, it’s what I want. Because it would’ve been a life that better suited me and, well, it would’ve been a life with Victor.

I’m just not ready to let him go….

“There you are,” Mrs. Gregory says from the doorway of my room. “Are you going to come and eat?”

I blink back into reality.

“Oh yeah, I’ll be there in a second. I need to wash my hands real quick.”

“Alright,” she says; her smile bright.

I truly am the daughter she never had. And, I guess it’s safe to say that she’s the mother I never had.

Mrs. Gregory, or Dina, always cooks chili dogs on Friday nights. We sit together at the kitchen table watching the HD television mounted on the wall in the kitchen. The news is on. It’s always on around this time.

“So, have you and Dahlia decided on a place to vacation this summer yet?”

I wash my food down with a swig of soda. I start to answer when something on the news catches my eye. A reporter is standing outside a very familiar mansion talking to a very familiar man.

Absently, I set my fork down on my plate.

“I sure wish I could tag along with you two,” Dina goes on. “But I’m too old for that stuff anymore.”

I’m too engrossed in the television to give her my attention:

“Yes ma’am,” Arthur Hamburg says into the microphone. “Every year I do my best to contribute. This summer I’m planning an event to raise one million for my new charity, The Prevention Project, in honor of my wife.”

The reporter nods and looks faintly remorseful, repositioning the microphone in front of him.

“And is that drug or suicide prevention?”

“Drug prevention,” Arthur Hamburg says. “In my heart my Mary didn’t commit suicide. The drug addiction is what killed her. I want to do my part in helping others who are addicted to drugs and also to help prevent drug abuse before it starts. It is such a terrible disease in this country.”

So is lying and ***ual violence and murder, you bastard.

“Yes, it is, Mr. Hamburg,” the reporter says. “And speaking of disease, I understand that you’ve also been giving money to cancer research because of—”

“I have,” Arthur Hamburg cuts her off. “I still feel awful about lying to everyone about my wife’s disease and I doubt I’ll ever feel as though I’ve apologized enough for it. But as I’ve said before, I was only protecting her. People can accept cancer, but they’re not so accepting of drug use and I did what I had to do to protect my wife. But yes, I feel it’s only right that I also give to cancer research.”

You are such a piece of ****.

I grit my teeth.

“Sarai?” Dina says from the other side of the table. “Did you decide on Florida or New York?”

The rest of Arthur Hamburg’s words fade into the back of my mind. I think about Dina’s question for a long time, staring right through her.

I look at her finally and pick up my fork and answer, “No, actually I think we’ll be taking a trip to Los Angeles this summer.” I cut a piece of hot dog from the bun on my plate and scoop it up with some chili and take a bite.

“Los Angeles?” Dina says inquisitively and then taking a bite of her own. “Going to do the Hollywood thing, huh?”

“Yeah,” I say distantly. “It’s going to be great.”

I have unfinished business there.

I smile to myself thinking about it and cover it up with another drink of soda.