KILLING SARAI(35)

It dawns on me now that he didn’t even tend to that wound after he dropped me off, that he waited until after…

“Victor?” I ask upon realizing.

He walks over to his duffle bag on the table by the window and reaches inside.

“Yes?” He barely looks over at me, more occupied with the knife he just fished from the bag.

In the last second I decide not to speak my assumptions aloud. Because I’m probably far off the mark and I don’t want to look silly believing something so absurd.

“Never mind,” I say. “Do you need help?”

He contemplates the offer. “No, I can do it. I’ve done it before.”

Maybe that lie I told the front desk clerk had some truth to it, after all. I smile faintly thinking about it and then I move across the room toward him with the alcohol and gauze in my hands.

“You can’t even see it fully,” I point out. “I can help. Just tell me what to do. I’m not completely useless.”

Again, his face appears faintly contemplative and then to my surprise, he takes off his slacks and stands in front of me practically naked, wearing only a pair of tight black boxer briefs that cling to every masculine curve and indentation from his lower waist to the tops of his thighs. It’s only natural that I check him out a little, especially since he’s so physically fit, but I don’t let that distract me. That bullet deserves all of my attention and I make sure to give it.

He burns the blade of his knife with a lighter for a time and hands it out to me. I’ve never done anything like this before and really feel a bit squeamish just thinking about it, but I try not to let that show on my face. I take the knife by the handle and wait for him to instruct me.

“Like I said, it’s not too deep. Just dig it out with the end of the blade.”

I wince at the picture his words create in my mind. “But what if I cut you?”

“It can’t be worse than what the bullet did. Now hurry,” he says, pulling the elastic around his underwear down farther over his hipbone to give me better access.

Covertly, I glimpse the rigid curve of his upper pelvic bone muscle and then get to work.

Hesitantly, I bring the knife up to his skin and glance up at him, hoping he’ll change his mind and do it himself, after all. Because I really don’t think I can do this.

“Go on,” he urges me. “You’re not going to hurt me anymore than it already does.”

I kneel down so my eyes are level with the wound and I feel my face flush red hot when I notice the outline of his manhood through the tight-fitting boxer briefs. But even still, I don’t let his obvious good genes distract me from the matter at hand.

Carefully, I insert the tip of the blade into the wound, my face tightening and twisting into something horrible. Nervous at first, it takes me way too long to push it in farther and I don’t until he gets tired of waiting.

“It’s like pulling a Band-Aid off a sore, Sarai,” he says irritably. “Just do it and get it over with. The longer you drag it out the worse it feels.”

I bite down on my bottom lip, press the fingers of my free hand around the back of this hard thigh to get a better grip around the area and then I sink the knife in deeper. I feel his muscles constrict beneath my hand, but I’m too nervous to look up and see the pain that I know is on his face.

“Why did you come back for me?” I ask, partly to take my mind off what I’m doing, the rest of me just really wanting to know.

“I never left,” he says and I glance up to see his eyes. He looks away and then adds, “I thought you were being followed. I planned to stay back and wait until Javier or whoever he sent for you, showed up where you were.”

Taken aback by his admission, I pull the knife out of his flesh and cock my head backward to glare up at him.

“You were using me as bait?” I don’t know if that pain I suddenly feel is because he risked my life to catch Javier, or if it’s because he doesn’t care about my well-being as much as I had started to believe he might.

Victor sighs faintly, though still irritably, but it seems more-so because of what I said than me taking my time about pulling the damn Band-Aid off.

“No,” he says. “Shortly after I pulled onto the main road, I saw another car drive past. A brand new Cadillac. Black with a nice price tag. I thought it didn’t quite fit with the neighborhood.”

I feel foolish before he even finishes explaining.

“So I turned around and parked on the road and watched it to make sure.”

I remember that car now, the only one that drove past me and made me immensely nervous.

I get back to work on finding the bullet, trying to be extra careful.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“For what?”

Finally, I see the bullet amid the blood and work it out with the end of the blade.

“For accusing you.”

The bullet drops on the floor and a gush of blood pours from the wound.

“Get the gauze,” he says casually, pointing at it on the table.

I do as he says while he pours more alcohol on the bloody wound, gritting his teeth even more than before.

I grab the gauze from the table and break it apart from the wrapping, unrolling it all the way, which isn’t nearly enough to wrap around his waist twice much less as many times as it will take to help keep the blood from draining.