Killing Sarai (28 page)

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

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 naked 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 9
MM
.

“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,” I say.

Maybe Sarai hasn’t replaced my brother, but she’s become something so much more to me and I can’t explain it. Not to myself and definitely not to Niklas.

“I have new orders,” Niklas announces, leaving the bitter topic alone. “They are last minute, but I think it’s best to get them over with before you head to Germany to meet with Vonnegut. Don’t give him any more reason to doubt your abilities.”

“Is it a mission?”

“It will be one,” he says. “The client is there in Los Angeles and would like to meet with you personally.”

“That is not standard,” I say. “First Javier Ruiz, now this one wants to meet face to face?”

I prefer to go only through Vonnegut and never meet a client in person, but unfortunately sometimes bigger risks must be taken.

“She’s a very meticulous woman,” Niklas says.

“What are the orders?”

“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, glancing at the clock high on the wall in the lobby.

I lower my voice to a whisper when a hotel guest walks by.

“You have plenty of time to get there from the hotel,” he says. “And please…contact me this time the moment the meeting is over.”

I sigh quietly. “I will,” I say and hang up the phone.

After paying for another full day for use of the room since it appears we’ll be here for longer than another hour, I take the elevator back up to let Sarai know of our minor change of plans. Afterwards I head out, leaving her in the room so that I can meet with the client privately. I drive toward the location, arriving with several minutes to spare and park in a side lot just feet from where I am to meet her.

I stay inside the car and wait.

And all I can
really think about is Sarai.

Sarai

I’ve never been to San Diego before. Technically, this is my first time in California. I wonder what this lady will be like, what she knows, how she and Victor are friends. I have a lot of questions, as usual, that I won’t let Victor get away without answering while on the way there.

I swipe my hand over the mirror in the bathroom, clearing a path through the humidity 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 cocks 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
fucking
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—
fuck
, 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 fucked 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.