Spiders in the Grove (In the Company of Killers #7)(48)

“Just take me home,” I said, defeated.

Javier sat on his bottom in front of me, and he raised my chin with his fingers, and he looked into my eyes the way he always did just before we would present ourselves in front of those powerful people in those rich mansions. And that’s when I knew Javier wasn’t going to take me anywhere—he wanted me to do something for him.

“The man who took you,” he began in Spanish, “he’s worth a lot of money—”

“You want me to lure him,” I cut in, already hating everything about this…arrangement.

Javier shook his head. “No,” he said, “I want you to continue as you have been with him; get inside his head, you know”—he smoothed the back of his fingers down my cheek suggestively—“the way you do, the way you’ve done with me. His employer wants him alive, but he also wants to know who else is helping him. You find these things out for me, Sarai; you help me be the one to bring him and his followers in, and I’ll give you the two things you want more than anything in this world.”

“What do I want, Javier?” I felt tears pushing to the surface as I thought about those two things, but I held the tears back, trying to be strong.

“Your freedom,” he said, “and your child.”

I couldn’t hold them down anymore, and they sprang from my eyes—because I believed he was telling the truth. It was my chance, after all those years I’d spent as his prisoner, to be given back my life, left alone to live freely in the world with my child who’d been stolen from me at birth. A normal life. A boring, uneventful life that I wanted so badly I would’ve killed for it.

I didn’t have to think about it, not even for a second—I was going to betray Victor. For my life and my freedom and for my child.

“I’ll do it,” I told him.

Javier kissed me tenderly. He believed me. He believed me because I, too, was telling the truth in that moment.

“You always were my favorite,” Javier said, searching my eyes. “Mi princesa, mi amor, mi todo, Sarai.” The pad of his thumb touched my bottom lip.

He kissed me again, and this time I fell into it, the feel of his warm tongue in my mouth, the memories we shared, the strange and unconventional and forbidden relationship we’d had.

The kiss broke, and he peered into my eyes, and I saw a sort of sadness in his, because even the blackest heart can love.

A muffled shot from outside rang out then, ending our moment.

“It’s Victor,” I whispered in the darkness. “I know it’s Victor.”

“Tell him you killed me,” Javier whispered back. “If he’s as compromised by you as The Order claims, he’ll believe anything you say.”

I nodded nervously, and another muffled shot and movement outside the house made my heart race.

Javier lay on the floor surrounded by debris, and pretended to be dead.

I didn’t think it would work; my heart beating furiously in the side of my neck told me Victor couldn’t be fooled by something so simple.

But I was wrong…

Victor rushed into the room; he took off his black gloves and shoved them inside his jacket pocket. “Sarai?”

I didn’t look up at him, because I was afraid he’d see the lie in my face. He crouched in front of me; my knees were drawn against my chest.

“He’s dead,” I said; I raised my eyes. “I killed him, Victor.”

He reached out and lifted me into his arms.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” he told me.

Holding me close to his chest, he carried me out of the house, never stopping to check Javier’s or even Samantha’s pulses. He had fallen for it. Victor Faust had truly been compromised. By me.





Victor


Weaving my way between buildings in the darkness, gun in-hand, my shoes moving quietly over the concrete, I follow the shadow out ahead. The sound of rushing water is getting closer as I near the bridge.

I stop at the corner of a brick building, concealed by the shadows, when Apollo slows his pace. He slides his hands down into his pockets, and then slips into the darkness cast by the bridge above.

I wait thirty seconds, and then continue to follow, keeping to the shadows and out of sight. Until I lose him.

How could I have lost him so quickly? And then it hits me—he must know.

Pressing my back against the rock wall, I stand perfectly still and silent. And I wait. I have been following Apollo for three hours since I filled his head full of lies and then let him go, so he would lead me right to Artemis.

But something changed in that three hours, and I think he knows that I have been following him. Perhaps it was when he stopped at the twenty-four-hour coffee shop and spent fifteen minutes inside. On the phone. With Artemis, I am certain. I watched him from across the street; he had borrowed an employee’s cell phone. The moment he left the coffee shop, Apollo did seem a bit more alert to his surroundings, casually glancing over his shoulder every once in a while.

Apollo emerges from an alcove within the rock wall out ahead, and I hold my breath and my body stiffens hoping he does not see me. His hands move around at his midsection—ah, I see: he was only relieving himself. Perhaps I have just been paranoid.

I continue to follow him, past the bridge, and toward the park near the river; I keep a safe distance so he cannot hear my footfalls behind him. But where is he going? If I am fortunate, it is to meet Artemis somewhere; I may have been wrong about him knowing he is being followed, but I cannot be wrong about Artemis being the person he called in the coffee shop. I am absolutely certain it was her.