I picture his mouth on my nipple…
I force that ridiculous thought away and I watch him, his intent eyes and how deftly, yet at the same time, aggressively, his hands move across every inch of my body. Furtively I inhale the scent of his skin, his natural scent that somehow makes me want him to kiss me. He leans up and away from me, but he isn’t done. He goes for my thighs next, starting with the left and kneading his fingers around the flesh using both hands. And then the other thigh.
When his fingers touch the sensitive skin of my inner thighs, right at my panty line, I gasp.
He stops. He looks up at me, across the naked landscape of my body. I can only wonder what he’s thinking, but this time I get the feeling his gaze isn’t to ease my fear of him, but instead to study my reaction to his hands being on me, so close to the most intimate part of me. I wonder why he would study my face at all, why he wouldn’t take my obvious reaction and reject it by moving his hands away as I expected him to do. But instead, he leaves them there, the pad of one of his fingers I feel grazing the flesh at the bend of my leg just on the edge of my panties, conflicted about what he should do. What he might want to do.
He pulls away and abruptly flips me over onto my stomach.
“What are you doing exactly?” I ask, adapting to the quick change of the moment.
He pulls my panties down halfway over my butt cheeks, moves his hands here and there in the same manner and then back up to my hips.
“I’m looking for something.”
“What?” I ask.
Then suddenly he stops, his thumb moving in a circular motion on one particular spot just above my right butt cheek, on the back part of my hipbone. The same general area where I removed his bullet.
“A tracking device,” he says. “You have one.”
I try to twist my head around to see him better, but it hurts my neck.
The flash of a silver blade catches my eye. I panic when I glimpse the knife in his hand and start to twist my body awkwardly. But he holds me down, putting the weight of his hand on the small of my back, the hand with the knife wrestling with my left shoulder.
“What are you going to do?!” I shriek.
“I have to cut it out.”
“Victor, no!”
I thrash around more violently, trying to roll over onto my back so that I can get up. Suddenly he’s lying fully on top of me, and his closeness, the warmth of his breath on the side of my neck, takes my breath away. My entire frame solidifies beneath him and then begins to relax, melting into his body as his voice dances along the shell of my ear.
“I will be gentle,” he whispers and my skin shivers from my ear down the full length of my spine.
He presses himself into me from behind, his hardness obvious behind the thin layer of his pants that separates us.
“I promise,” he says onto my ear. “But it has to come out. Do you understand? Do you trust me?” He presses his hips toward me again and I feel me moving against him involuntarily. I shut my eyes when the tingling sensation between my legs moves through my back and into my eyelids.
“Yes,” I whisper. “I trust you.”
“Good,” he says softly and slowly raises himself off of me.
I remain very still, thinking so much more about Victor and what he just did to me than the more imperative threat. A part of me doesn’t even care about what he’s going to do, that he’s about to cut into me with a knife, that it’s going to hurt like hell. And perhaps that’s the only reason he did what he did, knowing somehow that he could control my mood, my emotions, with the hope that he might touch me more than he already has. I feel like a toy and Victor knows every button on me which to push, to touch, in order to make me do whatever he wants, feel whatever he wants me to feel. And I don’t mind. I don’t know how he did it, but I don’t mind at all.
“Bite down on the pillow if you have to,” he says.
I reach up and grab the nearest pillow towards me, crushing it against my chest. I squeeze my eyes shut tight.
The blade goes in and I yell out in pain before burying my face within the pillow, my entire body hardening like a block of cement.
In seconds, the device is out and Victor stands at the foot of the bed looking down into the space between his bloody fingers at something as small as a grain of rice.
With his free hand, he reaches for the towel he used to dry off with after his shower, which had been lying on the floor nearby. He hands it to me. “Put pressure on it to stop the bleeding,” he says and walks across the room into his bathroom.
While I press the towel on the back of my hip, I hear the water running in the sink and then the sound of him rummaging through his medicine cabinet. With one hand holding the towel in place, I get up from the bed to find my shirt, letting the towel drop only long enough to slip it on.
Victor walks out of the bathroom with an orange pill bottle clasped in his fingers and walks right past me and to the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Victor
“Niklas,” I say coming out of the room, “does this look familiar to you?” I step right up to him and hold out the pill bottle with the tracking device inside.
He takes it into his fingers.
I hear soft footsteps behind me as Sarai emerges from my bedroom, but I keep my attention on Niklas.
He peers into the side of the bottle first but then twists the cap off and shuffles the device into the palm of his hand.
He looks up at me.
“Same type of device they use in the girls in Dubai,” he says. He glances at Sarai. “You found this in her?” Then he drops it back in the bottle and tightens the lid. “I hate to ask where.”
Niklas wipes his hand on his jacket.
“If it is one of theirs,” I say, “this means that Javier Ruiz has a much larger operation than any of us knew. I’ve never known of a drug lord like Ruiz to have access to this kind of technology.”
“They don’t care about technology,” Niklas says. “All they deal in are drugs, weapons and girls.”
“Had,” Sarai says and I turn around to see her. “That Javier had a much larger operation. He’s dead, remember?”
“Yes,” I say, “but that doesn’t mean his operation is. It means that it’ll be passed on to whoever else was in line to control it.”
“Well what does that have to do with us?” Sarai asks.
I feel the urge to tell her to put on some pants while in front of Niklas, but I stop myself.
“There is no us,” Niklas says.
Sarai glares at him and readjusts the bloody towel against her hip.
“Then what does it have to do with me?” she snaps. “Or, with either of you?”
“It has nothing to do with you,” I say. “Not anymore. You were Javier’s and if he had sold you or promised you to another buyer you wouldn’t have been in his possession for as long as you were. He had no intention in letting anyone else have you. Now that he’s dead you have nothing more to fear.” I pause. “As far as what it has to do with us—.” I stop right there, knowing better than to tell her any more than she already knows or I’ll only put her in further danger with the Order.
And judging by the look on Niklas’ face I’ve said too much already, in his opinion.
He slips the pill bottle into his jacket pocket.
“I’ll get rid of it,” he says, then without moving his head I see his eyes avert to Sarai for a split second. His hatred for her seethes beneath the calm and disciplined façade he’s wearing. “So then what’s our next move? Will I be covering for you with Vonnegut, or are you going rogue?”
I know what answer he wants me to give and for now, it’s what I choose to do.
“Tell Vonnegut that I’m ready for my next mission,” I say, making up the specifics as I go along. “And to put this house back on the market. We’ll be leaving in the morning.”
Sarai glances over at me with a look of confusion. Niklas nods and accepts it, because unlike her, he knows that t
his house has been compromised by the tracking device he’s carrying in his pocket. Javier Ruiz might be dead, but the device is still in working order and someone is and has been monitoring its locations since Sarai escaped the compound. It is how Izel found us so quickly in the motel in Mexico. When I contacted Javier and gave him my location to come for the girl, Izel had arrived half an hour sooner than she should have given our distance from the compound. At the time, I assumed she had already been on the road with her men searching for us, and in fact, she had been. But I did not know until now that it was because she already knew where we were.
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 fuck 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.