It was also because of the device that the two men came into the store pretending to be customers and speaking to the store owner in code. Given the fact that I killed all of the men that came with Izel the first time, I presume that Javier Ruiz wanted to play it safer by sending only two the second time. They were merely sent to gather information and to follow us until Javier devised a better plan.

When I took Sarai over the border it was more difficult to keep up with us. I imagine that he had sent more men to follow, possibly even to ambush us at some point, but that never happened and I have to believe it was due to us already being in the United States. It was even difficult for Javier to get through border patrol and he has powerful sway even with some corrupt American officials.

“I will contact you as soon as I get your new orders from Vonnegut.”

Niklas steps up to me.

He strips away the unemotional liaison part of him and appears more like my brother now.

“I am sorry for what our father did,” I say to him.

Niklas lowers his eyes briefly.

“I will do anything to protect you because you are my brother,” he says. “Just as you did for me.”

We share a quiet moment of understanding, nod and part ways.

“He hates me, as I’ve said before,” Sarai speaks up from behind. “But he is loyal to you.”

I had been staring out the large window from across the room, lost in thought listening to the waves crash against the rocks.

“Yes,” I say. “He is.”

She steps up to me and places her hand on my wrist.

“You couldn’t have known,” she says. “That it wasn’t him. But that doesn’t matter now. I think you cleared the air with your brother in more ways than one.”

“Perhaps,” I say and walk away. “But I can’t concern myself with that right now.” She follows me back into my room. “We should discuss you.”

I enter the bathroom and she stands at the door, the towel still pressed against her hip.

“Get over here,” I say.

She does without question.

I put my hands on her waist and turn her around to face the mirror. Instinctively, she props her hands upon the edge of the counter, letting the bloody towel fall to the floor. Tucking my fingers behind the elastic of her panties, I slip them down over her hips, letting them rest halfway at the center of her bottom.

“Where would you like to go?” I ask as I open the closet to my right. “I will set you up wherever you’d like, but we need to do this soon. I expect to have my new orders before the end of the day tomorrow and I won’t have much time to spare between taking you where you need to go and when I must leave.”

I come back over with my medical kit and set it on the counter.

Sarai doesn’t answer at first, perhaps she’s deciding on a place, but my gut tells me that’s not the case at all.

I can see her reflection in the mirror, but she doesn’t raise her head to look back at me.

“But I want to stay with you,” she says cautiously. “I’ve already told you, I have nowhere to go, no identity—”

“And I have told you,” I remind her, “that all of that can be remedied. You pick the place and I will take care of the rest. For now, you have the driver’s license I gave you.”

I clean the knife wound with peroxide and cover the area all around it with iodine. She barely winces from the stinging pain.

“I don’t need your help settling me into a life I no longer want,” she says.

I push the needle in and start to stitch her up. Not even this pain, although faintly obvious on her face, can deter her from the things she wants to say. I had hoped that it would, but her determination is unshakable right now.

“I used to dream about it,” she says, her eyes raised to the mirror now but all she sees is the reverie. “Though I could hardly remember what Arizona even looked like, I used to picture me living in that god-awful trailer with a boyfriend and friends next door. Real inspiring dream, I know,” she mocks herself. “But that place, after a while, was all I could remember. I would’ve given anything to be able to go back there and continue with the life that was stripped from me. But after the third year or so with Javier, I stopped dreaming about it. I gave up wishing that I could find a way to escape. Slowly over time I learned to accept my life the way it was. I hated it at first, of course. I hated Javier. I hated that even though he never raped me, at least not like you expect rape to happen; he knew at first I was unwilling, that I only gave in to him because I was afraid and yet he still had sex with me and I say that’s rape. But I hated him and I hated that I gave myself to a man that I did not want.”

I glimpse her throat move in the mirror as she swallows down the painful memory and she pauses before she goes on, trying to recollect her thoughts.

“At some point,” she says, “I even stopped hating him. I-I know that sounds crazy, and-and-and I never loved him,” she stutters over her words and I sense she’s conflicted about the things she saying. “But I stopped hating him….”

She catches my eyes in the mirror.

“Does that make me sick? I mean…,” she licks the dryness from her lips. I thread the last stitch and clean the area again with alcohol, only glancing away from her long enough to make sure of my technique. “I mean, because I stopped hating him, does that mean there’s something wrong with me?”

She desperately wants me to tell her no.

I slip her panties back over her stitches and go to wash my hands.

“It means that you’re human,” I say.

Trying to avoid her desire to remain with me, I leave her standing in the bathroom and offer no more of my own thoughts on the matter.

But she’s relentless and follows me out.

I continue about my business, intent on getting some much-needed sleep. I remove my shirt and step out of my pants, flipping the light switch off as I walk past, leaving the room bathed in a dark blue hue.

“Victor,” she says softly from behind. “Please take me with you. I’ve told you before, I can help. You can teach me, train me to be whatever you think I’d be good at.”

“You don’t really want that, do you?” I ask, knowing her better than she knows herself. I pull back my comforter and sheets and slip into my bed. “You just don’t want me to leave you. Alone in the world. Free to be what and who you want, to make your own decisions. To have sex with men of your choosing. To have a normal life. Because it’s foreign to you.” I pause. “If I told you to kill someone for the sake of a job, you wouldn’t be able to do it. You couldn’t bring yourself to kill any human being in cold blood, knowing nothing of their crimes or their families or even why they are being killed. You could never become like me. No amount of training could make you a murderer, Sarai.” I lie down fully upon my pillow, bringing the sheet up to my waist. “Now get some sleep. We’ll be leaving at six a.m. and I expect you to have chosen a place you’d like to go by then.”

She looks defeated. Beautiful and soft and damaged standing there before me partially clothed in the light of the moon beaming through the tall window. Beautiful, but defeated. That look in her eyes, it somehow latches onto my soul and all I want is for her to turn and walk away. Because I know that if she doesn’t, if she presses me further with those soft lips and sad, vulnerable eyes that I’ll succumb to the moment and either f**k her or kill her.

She turns and walks toward the door.

I stop her.

“Sarai,” I say, but she doesn’t turn around. “You never accepted your life with Javier, or you wouldn’t…be here with me now.” I had started to say: Or you wouldn’t have killed him, but decided against that.

She says nothing and closes the door on her way out.

I lie here staring at the thick clouds covering the sky and I think about the things I told her, the lies I told her.

She could kill in cold blood. Every part of me tells me that she can and that she would. In a way, it pains me to believe it, to know that her innocence was taken from her so long ago and that although she still has a decent shot at living a normal life, the fact that she chooses to want my life, is difficult to swallow.

It’s difficult mostly because I almost want to give it to her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Sarai

I listen to the thunder and the rain for an hour, unable to fall asleep. Despite the weather it’s so quiet in this house, so spacious and empty. Empty in nearly every sense of the word. I lie against the cool sheets in the spare bedroom, watching the dark clouds churn in the sky through that enormous window. I hear the waves crashing below and see the endless ocean in an eerie flash as lightning streaks across the turbulent sky.

Empty.

This house. My soul. Victor’s soul. It’s the only word suited for the way I feel, the way that I believe Victor feels, though him more-so than me.

How can anyone go through life so surreptitious, emotionless, so unattached to anyone or anything? When I look into his eyes I see something there, although dormant and completely indistinct, I know it’s there. And it’s powerful. I want to understand it, to feel it, to taste it on my lips.

As the thunder begins to fade as it moves off in the distance, the rain fails to a soft drizzle. I can’t hear it anymore, but I can still see it streaming against the glass in poetic rivulets. The chill in the air raises goose bumps on my bare legs even underneath the covers, evoking visions of Victor lying next to me to help keep me warm.

I decide to get up.

I feel foolish and reckless for what I’m about to do, but I don’t care. If he’s going to get rid of me tomorrow, what does it matter how this turns out?

My bare feet move quietly across the hardwood floors and then through the center of the house. Placing my reluctant fingertips on the door lever outside Victor’s room, I pause before pushing it down gently. The door clicks open and I walk inside. I see him across the large space, lying on his back, his head fallen to one side, facing me. His eyes are closed, his breathing steady. The sheet covers only his midsection and thighs, leaving the rest of his nak*d body exposed to the chill in the air. I recall earlier in the night when he was on top of me, pressing himself into me from behind and it makes my stomach and h*ps quiver.

I move closer, trying to stay as quiet as possible but at the same time wondering why be quiet at all. He’s going to know I’m in here eventually, and well, that’s kind of the point.

Stepping up to the side of his bed, I watch him for a moment, how his toned chest rises and falls with every quiet breath. How his lips are unopened, pressed gently against each other, signifying that whatever he’s dreaming, if he’s dreaming at all, it’s peaceful, undisturbed by the violence that eclipses his life. Like me, the nightmares of his experiences have long since vanished, leaving only a morbid sense of normality to which nightmares no longer deem fit to visit.

I slip off my shirt and drop it on the floor.

Pressing my hands and knees against the bed, I crawl onto it, straddling his waist.

In only a second, the back of my hair is wrenched in his hand and his gun is shoved underneath my chin, forcing my neck backward so far that I fear if I move it’ll snap.