“You’re going to stay here,” he says, “until I kill Javier. I’ll be going back to Tucson later tonight, or wherever it is I am told that Javier was last seen and then I’ll find him and I’ll kill him.”
“But why Houston?” I ask, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Wasn’t there a…‘Safe House’ in Arizona somewhere closer? You know, maybe you should’ve used me as bait, after all. I could help you. I mean, it’s likely that whoever is looking for me that one of the first places they’ll check is where I used to live, around people I used to know.” I pause, thinking to myself how glad I am now that Mrs. Gregory no longer lives where she used to.
“You’re right,” he says. “And that’s why it’s likely I’ll be heading right back to Tucson. I’ve seen where you once lived, where the woman you spent most of your time with, once lived. By taking you there last night, you’ve already helped me by showing me precisely where Javier might be found. There’s no need to risk your life anymore by keeping you there.”
“So then you did have another agenda by taking me home,” I say, feeling very small right now. “You just wanted to see the location.”
Victor shakes his head and closes the top drawer on the dresser. He turns to face me and something unfamiliar is evident in his greenish-blue eyes.
A long breath emits from his nostrils.
“I took you home because it’s what you wanted,” he says and goes to the door with all of his clothes draped carefully over one arm.
“Even though you knew they’d go back there looking for me?”
He stops at the door with his back to me, his fingers placed on the knob ready to open it. His head tilts back some and his shoulders fall.
Instantly, I feel like I’ve offended him.
“I’ll use the shower in Samantha’s room,” he says and it stings. “You should get cleaned up, change into your new clothes.”
And then he walks out, leaving me in here all alone.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Instead of a shower, I soak in a long, hot bath. My muscles ache something awful and it wasn’t long after I slipped into the water that I started feeling the tiny scrapes and cuts all over my body that I hadn’t realized were there before. I’m just surprised I don’t have a gunshot wound to go with them.
By the time I get out, I’m cleaner than I feel like I’ve ever been now that I have new clothes to put on and that I’ve gotten to shave. Victor had told me back at the department store that I could pick whatever I wanted and that it didn’t matter how much it cost, just that I needed to be quick about it. I chose the most unfashionable, casual thing I could find. Because I don’t care about fashion and honestly can’t remember the last time that something like that mattered.
After I’m dressed I pull my wet hair up into a ponytail and then rummage through the things left out on the bathroom sink. Deodorant, toothpaste and toothbrush, various bottles of lotion and other random creams of sorts are lined neatly against the mirror. Everything is new and there’s no telling how long it’s all been sitting here waiting for a guest like me to come along and put it to use. And I definitely put it to use, starting with the deodorant first, a luxury that I rarely had at the compound. Javier, for the most part, made sure that I had necessities and nice things, but he left the shopping up to Izel and since she despised me immensely, she made it a point to go out of her way to buy the cheapest, most useless stuff that she could find. When it came to deodorant, the best I ever got was some strange brand of liquid roll-on that left red, inflamed spots underneath my armpits.
I brush my teeth and even use dental floss for the first time in years and then I find myself standing blankly in front of the mirror. I don’t see myself really, but I think about Victor and what he’s doing in Samantha’s room. Explicit pictures of him fucking her spring up in my mind and it upsets me more than I want to admit to myself.
I can’t really be attracted to a man like him, can I? A man who has killed no telling how many people. It doesn’t matter that I feel safe with him, or that I trust him; the truth is that he is what he is and I’d be stupid to ever think he wouldn’t kill me if he found it in any way necessary.
But I am attracted to him. I do have strange, unfamiliar feelings for him.
And I hate it!
I shake my head angrily at myself, finally taking notice of my own reflection. The area around the outside of my right eye is yellowed by a bruise. My lips are dried and chapped. There’s a tiny cut along my left brow bone. I look tired and…used up.
Only the sound of something falling on the floor in another room down the hall snaps me out of my self-loathing.
I crack open the bathroom door first to peer down the hallway. I hear Samantha’s voice, but I can’t make out what she’s saying. Finally leaving the bathroom, I walk quietly down the length of the hall toward her room, tiptoeing across the carpet as carefully as possible. Her door is closed, so I press my ear against the wood and try to listen in, but the moment I touch it, it creaks open a little and my heart falls into my stomach. I shut my eyes tight and hold my breath until I know that I didn’t just give myself away.
I shouldn’t be doing this, I think to myself, but I just can’t help it.
I peer inside the dimly-lit room. A television is on, but has been turned down really low or muted, the glow from it providing the room with most of its light. I see Victor’s bloody shirt and the rest of his suit hanging partially over the side of a laundry basket pressed against the wall near the master bathroom. That door is cracked open, too.
Pushing the bedroom door open a little more, just enough for me to squeeze through, I walk inside Samantha’s room. And every step I take makes me feel that much more violating and uncouth. But I have to know. Because the thought of him with her is torturing me on the inside. Maybe later I’ll try to figure out why. Right now, I just want to know.
I make my way through the room and to the bathroom door, where I wait just outside of it, my heart pounding in my chest, worried they’ll catch me eavesdropping. When after a few seconds pass and Samantha is talking again, I feel safe enough to peek inside to get a better look, only hoping that the partial darkness of the room helps to keep me from being seen.
Victor
I stand with my hands pressed against the counter, a towel wrapped around my lower body after having just showered. I peer into the mirror over the sink, tilting my chin to one side and then the other, feeling like I should probably shave but decide against it. Samantha sits down on the closed toilet seat with a suture needle and thread in one hand, ready to stitch me up.
“Are you going to drop the towel?” she asks. “I can’t very well do this with it in the way. And it’s not like I haven’t seen it before.”
I start to remove the towel just as she says that, but then I notice a sound so faint, like the sound of a sharp breath, that I’m surprised I heard it at all. I glance into the mirror and look behind me at the door seeing nothing but knowing that Sarai is on the other side of it.
“Victor?” Samantha urges me, getting irritated with my slow response.
“No,” I finally answer, turning around so that the side where the wound is, is facing her. I reach down and strategically adjust the towel over the back of my hip so that she can access it, afterwards tying it firmly together on the other side to hold it in place.
“If you insist,” Samantha says and goes right to work.
I feel the needle slide in once and I grit my teeth for a moment until the pain fades.
“You never did tell me why you stopped coming here,” Samantha says.
“It was for the best.”
“Bullshit. It was something I did, or said, or maybe it was something I didn’t do. I just want to know. No hard feelings. No awkwardness. Just answer the question that’s been bugging the shit out of me for ten years. I deserve that much.”
After the second pass of the needle through my skin, I no longer feel it.
“I respected you,” I say. “It didn’t fe
el it right to use you anymore.”
“Honey, you know better than that.” She smiles up at me briefly. “I didn’t mind; hell, I enjoyed it.”
“But I did mind.”
Samantha pushes the needle through again, always carefully. Then she shakes her head. “I wonder how you manage to pull off this job with that conscience of yours. I think you’re the only one with a conscience who can.”
“Well, it was nothing you did or didn’t do,” I say, skipping over her comment entirely. “So, I hope I’ve answered the question enough to satisfy you.”
“Stop being so technical with me, Victor. You know I hate it.”
She stands up from the toilet seat and reaches for the iodine, spilling a small amount onto a wash cloth. She dabs it all over and around the stitched bullet wound.
“I hear you started staying at Safe House Nine over in Dallas when you came through these parts,” she goes on and I can predict where she’s going with the rest of it. “Is it because that one was younger than me? I mean, it’s perfectly fine. I am getting up in the years, I admit.”
It is exactly what I predicted she’d say.
I sigh and lean against the counter, crossing my arms. She pulls a large square of gauze from a packet to prepare it next.
I look right at her, hoping I can say what I’m about to say without turning her against me. I won’t leave Sarai alone with her if she thinks I chose Safe House Nine over her because of something as absurd as her age. Samantha is a killer. And a woman who feels scorned who is also a killer is a fatal combination.
“I chose Nine because she was a whore and proud of it,” I say, laying the truth out the way it needs to be, to make her understand. “I couldn’t use you like she let me use her. Because you were and still are my friend. I hope you understand.”
She laughs lightly. “You don’t have any friends, Victor.”
Her gaze skirts me as she places the gauze over the wound and presses two strips of dressing tape along its edges. Then she raises up the rest of the way and looks at me with thoughtful green eyes. I feel the same thing in her eyes that I always felt when I came here, when I slept with her. She might have been someone who could fall in love with me, if I had let it go that far. She started getting too close and I couldn’t let that happen. She had always been kind to me. She was different from the others who were more like myself and are only interested in sex. Because anything more is not only reckless and dangerous and foolish, but is completely unacceptable.
“Who do you think you’re fooling, Victor?” she asks with a playful, yet inoffensive smile.
I pull the towel the rest of the way back over my hips, tucking it in on itself at the waist.
“What do you mean?” I ask, looking upon her curiously.
Samantha starts clearing the countertop of the bandage leftovers and rinsing the blood and iodine down the sink with a burst of water.
“That girl down the hall,” she says. “Izabel. Of course we both know that’s not her real name, but regardless, what the hell are you doing with her?” She drops a handful of bloody tissues into the wastebasket beside the toilet.
“I told you,” I say. “I’m just using her until I eliminate my target. After that, she’s on her own.”
I never could completely fool Samantha, but what strikes me the most about right now is that she appears to know more about what’s going on with me than even I do. And I’m not fond of that idea.
I glance toward the bathroom door several feet away, wondering if Sarai is still hiding there, listening to everything between us. I know she is. I can feel it. But Samantha needs to stop. Right now. Because I can’t have her filling Sarai’s head with things that might cause her confusion. The girl is confused enough as it is.
“I need to get dressed,” I say, hoping to deter her from the topic. I reach for my clean boxer-briefs hanging nearby, but Samantha steps around in front of me.
She crosses her arms and the smile she wore before has been replaced by determination.
“You can’t do this. You know that.”
I reach around her and grab my boxers anyway, letting the towel drop to the floor and stepping into them.
“Victor,” she persists, “you can’t be the hero. Not for her or for anyone else. You know this. What you’re doing, what you’re feeling is only going to get you killed.”
I pull my thumbs from the elastic, letting it snap against my hips and shut Samantha up with the hard look in my eyes.
“You’re way off the mark, Sam,” I say, glaring at her. “You think you see something in me for her because it’s what you’re used to believing you saw in me for you.” Instantly, I regret my words.
Samantha glares at me coldly, her fingers pressing aggressively into her biceps. “What are you saying? That it’s what you think I—.” She can’t look at me anymore and her eyes stray toward the shower. Because she knows I’m right. I shouldn’t have said it, but she can’t deny the truth.
Finally she looks at me again, hurt and admission on her features. “You’re right,” she says. “I have always thought of you in that way. I read into things between us wrong and saw things that weren’t there.”
I keep silent to let her finish, but it seems that she has.
“I truly am sorry for anything I have done to you,” I say and mean it with everything in me.
She shakes her graying blonde head. “No, Victor, you did everything right. You saw that I was developing feelings for you before I knew it myself and you did the right thing.”
I cup my hands underneath her elbows and she relaxes a little.
“I hope that—.”
Uncrossing her arms, my hands fall away.
“Victor,” she says, putting up both of her hands between us, “please don’t apologize for not having the same feelings for me that I was having for you. That’s not something you can control, I know. And I hope that you’ll believe me when I say that you can always trust me. You’re the one person in the Order that I trust and can truly call…my friend.”
“I thought you said I didn’t have any friends?” I smile faintly.
Relaxing one arm back against her chest, she pats my shoulder with the other.
“OK, maybe you just have me,” she says, smiling back at me. But then she becomes serious again. “And because I’m your only friend, you have to trust me, listen to me when I tell you that what you’re doing with this girl is going to get you exiled, or killed, or both.”
I start buttoning my shirt.
I had hoped she would drop it altogether, especially if Sarai is still listening in from the other room, though I get the strangest feeling that she’s not and that relaxes my mind somewhat.
“I’m not doing anything with her other than keeping her safe until this is all over,” I insist. “She deserves a shot a normal life after what she’s been through and I decided at some point to try and give that to her.”
I slip into my black slacks, tucking in my shirt. Samantha pulls my tie from the hanger on the wall and drapes it around the back of my neck.
She sighs. “OK,” she says, surrendering. “But tell me, and be honest with yourself before you answer…,” she hesitates, her fingers paused around the tie. I nod. “Since she’s been with you, can you tell yourself that she’s going to be any different than you were years after you were taken by the Order?”
Her question quietly shocks me. I had not expected it at all.
“Even I see it, Victor, and I’ve only spent an afternoon with her so I know you see it, too.”
I know now what she’s referring to, but I’m still too taken aback by the revelation to comment. Samantha detects this, my need to hear more of what I already know to be true from someone else’s lips rather than just my own. Subconsciously needing the validation.
“I know you can’t tell me anything about where she came from, who she’s running from or how long she was with those she’s running from, but judging by what I see in her now I can tell two things.” S
he straightens my finished tie and lets one hand drop to her side, the other briefly holds up two fingers. “One,” she drops one finger, “she’s already so anesthetized to what is normal that she might never live a normal life. She knew I was testing her food for her because you were making sure it wasn’t poisoned, but it didn’t faze her. She sat at that table with us, scarfing down that lunch like we were a simple family of three sharing an afternoon meal in the suburbs.”
She leans against the counter, crossing her arms over her chest.
“And two,” she goes on, “for her to be that way I know she had to have been a prisoner, sex slave or no-telling-what for several years, no less than five. And at her young age—what is she twenty-three, twenty-four? (She gestures her hands around in front of her briefly)—that means she had to have been fairly young when she was taken. Like you. And we both know that the younger one is, the easier it is to mold them into whoever or whatever you want them to be. Also like you.”
Every word that Samantha spoke is true and I know it. I know it better than anyone.
I slip my suit vest on over my shirt and tie and button all four buttons.
“She’s in the fifty-fifty zone,” I say. “She can go either way with an equal shot at both. And she’s strong enough. And intelligent.” Lastly, I put on my suit jacket. “I’m just giving her her one and only shot. Which direction she chooses to take it will be her decision. And I won’t be there to see it. She’ll be on her own then.”
Samantha cocks her head to one side. She probably doesn’t fully believe me, but she has finally exhausted her warnings.
She comes up to me, the same sweetly seductive smile she always wore minutes before I’d have my way with her in the past. She stops directly in front of me and her fingers dance upward along the fabric of my jacket. She rests her hands on both sides of my neck, brushing lightly against my skin.