Spiders in the Grove (In the Company of Killers #7)(47)

“Let me see you,” he said.

I walked closer, my bare feet moving over magazines scattered about the floor. The grandfather clock standing tall in the corner ticked ominously behind me.

“Javier, she’s going to die if we don’t call for an ambulance,” I urged as I got closer. “Let me call nine-one-one. Then we can leave.”

I saw Samantha’s knees then, but the rest of her was obscured by the chair and the darkness.

Javier reached out his hand.

“Did you fuck him?” he asked and pulled me close. “Or are you still mine?” He leaned in and inhaled my scent like an animal; coiled a loose strand of hair that had fallen from my ponytail, around his fingers.

“No,” I said breathily. “I’ll always be yours.”

“You don’t know what you’ve done to me,” he said, and I felt his breath on my neck. “You shouldn’t have left me.”

I reached up and curled my fingers around the back of his neck. I leaned into him, the side of my face navigating the open buttons of his shirt until I felt his chest on my cheek. “I know, and I’m sorry.” I kissed his hot skin. “I am so sorry for leaving you,” I added in Spanish.

I shuddered, both from pleasure and disgust, when he slid his hand down the front of my pants and put two fingers inside of me. It didn’t matter that he was insane or that he was a murderer or that he might kill me any second; the touch still made me wet. It was my body betraying me, human nature betraying me, not my mind or my heart. I had conformed years ago to react to him in this way; a twisted survival instinct that they don’t teach in self-defense classes. Javier had to believe he was turning me on or he’d know everything else about me was a lie, too.

He pulled his fingers out and brought them to his lips, inhaled deeply, his eyes closed as if to savor it. Then he put them into his mouth and suckled.

I stepped back while he was distracted, to put as much distance between us as I could, although small.

“I’m not sure I want you anymore,” he said.

My heart stopped. If he didn’t want me, then I knew he’d kill me, especially after everything I’d done, all the trouble I’d caused.

“Javier,” I said, trying to hide the nervousness in my voice, “let’s just go. I’m ready to go back.”

I took another step back and to my right, pressing my hands against the wall behind me. And then I saw her, Samantha. She wasn’t moving. She sat slumped over with her back against the wall; her bloody legs were splayed out into the floor; her arms lay limply beside her, her fingers uncurled. Her eyes; they were open, dead.

Bile churned in my stomach, my hands stiffened down at my sides. I shook all over from anger and hatred and guilt, and goddammit, fear.

“You killed her,” I said, my lips trembling.

“I did,” he admitted. “On the fifth shot.”

“But you said…” I looked to and from him and Samantha’s body; my heart felt like it was closing in on itself. “You said if I didn’t—”

Javier raised his gun at me; that last bullet I knew then why he didn’t use it on her.

I stood frozen, one hand on the wall behind me, the other somehow made its way to my stomach as if it could keep the vomit down by being there. I stumbled on more debris and then pressed my back against the wall to let it hold me up. There was a shelf beside me; my hand fumbled its contents in the darkness.

I stared across the small space separating Javier and me; stared into his cold, bottomless dark eyes, not the barrel of his gun pointed at me, but his eyes. I heard a click, just a click, and we looked blankly into each other’s faces, confused by what just happened. Then a shot rang out and I fell against the wall; my body slid down until I was sitting on the floor just like Samantha. Limp and spent, just like Samantha. The room spun around in my vision like a thick haze of gray.

And I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me, the kind of darkness that suffocates with guilt and regret and brokenness.

Javier crouched in front of me; I felt his fingers touching my hair again; I felt the warmth of his hand engulfing my cheek; the tenderness of it, the…forgiveness.

The gun I had found on the shelf, I’d known it was there all along. The first click, it was the real Sarai, the bullet meant for Javier, and with my whole heart when I pulled that trigger the first time, I wanted him dead. But fate spared him, and the shot failed. And he just looked at me, shocked and…hurt that I’d done it, that I could ever do it. And in that few seconds of quiet and stunned confusion between the first and second attempt, I thought of our child; I thought of how if I ever did kill Javier, that I’d surely never see my child again.

The second try, and the successful bullet struck the floor—intentionally.

“Why?” he asked after a moment. “Tell me the truth, Sarai.”

“Because…” I paused, searching for the words. “…Because I…still love you.”

It was a lie; the greatest lie I’d ever told. No, not that I still loved him—a part of me did; the part that had not yet healed; the part still brainwashed by my captor—but that I’d claimed to have killed him. But truly, I did not spare his life because of love for him; I just knew they were the only words he would believe, the only way he would trust me again; the only way he wouldn’t use that last bullet on me. Not killing Javier when I had the chance was proof—for Javier at least—that I did still love him, and that I would do anything for him. Even betray Victor.