KILLING SARAI(41)

“So then you did have another agenda by taking me home,” I say, feeling very small right now. “You just wanted to see the location.”

Victor shakes his head and closes the top drawer on the dresser. He turns to face me and something unfamiliar is evident in his greenish-blue eyes.

A long breath emits from his nostrils.

“I took you home because it’s what you wanted,” he says and goes to the door with all of his clothes draped carefully over one arm.

“Even though you knew they’d go back there looking for me?”

He stops at the door with his back to me, his fingers placed on the knob ready to open it. His head tilts back some and his shoulders fall.

Instantly, I feel like I’ve offended him.

“I’ll use the shower in Samantha’s room,” he says and it stings. “You should get cleaned up, change into your new clothes.”

And then he walks out, leaving me in here all alone.





CHAPTER NINETEEN





Instead of a shower, I soak in a long, hot bath. My muscles ache something awful and it wasn’t long after I slipped into the water that I started feeling the tiny scrapes and cuts all over my body that I hadn’t realized were there before. I’m just surprised I don’t have a gunshot wound to go with them.

By the time I get out, I’m cleaner than I feel like I’ve ever been now that I have new clothes to put on and that I’ve gotten to shave. Victor had told me back at the department store that I could pick whatever I wanted and that it didn’t matter how much it cost, just that I needed to be quick about it. I chose the most unfashionable, casual thing I could find. Because I don’t care about fashion and honestly can’t remember the last time that something like that mattered.

After I’m dressed I pull my wet hair up into a ponytail and then rummage through the things left out on the bathroom sink. Deodorant, toothpaste and toothbrush, various bottles of lotion and other random creams of sorts are lined neatly against the mirror. Everything is new and there’s no telling how long it’s all been sitting here waiting for a guest like me to come along and put it to use. And I definitely put it to use, starting with the deodorant first, a luxury that I rarely had at the compound. Javier, for the most part, made sure that I had necessities and nice things, but he left the shopping up to Izel and since she despised me immensely, she made it a point to go out of her way to buy the cheapest, most useless stuff that she could find. When it came to deodorant, the best I ever got was some strange brand of liquid roll-on that left red, inflamed spots underneath my armpits.

I brush my teeth and even use dental floss for the first time in years and then I find myself standing blankly in front of the mirror. I don’t see myself really, but I think about Victor and what he’s doing in Samantha’s room. Explicit pictures of him f*cking her spring up in my mind and it upsets me more than I want to admit to myself.

I can’t really be attracted to a man like him, can I? A man who has killed no telling how many people. It doesn’t matter that I feel safe with him, or that I trust him; the truth is that he is what he is and I’d be stupid to ever think he wouldn’t kill me if he found it in any way necessary.

But I am attracted to him. I do have strange, unfamiliar feelings for him.

And I hate it!

I shake my head angrily at myself, finally taking notice of my own reflection. The area around the outside of my right eye is yellowed by a bruise. My lips are dried and chapped. There’s a tiny cut along my left brow bone. I look tired and…used up.

Only the sound of something falling on the floor in another room down the hall snaps me out of my self-loathing.

I crack open the bathroom door first to peer down the hallway. I hear Samantha’s voice, but I can’t make out what she’s saying. Finally leaving the bathroom, I walk quietly down the length of the hall toward her room, tiptoeing across the carpet as carefully as possible. Her door is closed, so I press my ear against the wood and try to listen in, but the moment I touch it, it creaks open a little and my heart falls into my stomach. I shut my eyes tight and hold my breath until I know that I didn’t just give myself away.

I shouldn’t be doing this, I think to myself, but I just can’t help it.

I peer inside the dimly-lit room. A television is on, but has been turned down really low or muted, the glow from it providing the room with most of its light. I see Victor’s bloody shirt and the rest of his suit hanging partially over the side of a laundry basket pressed against the wall near the master bathroom. That door is cracked open, too.

Pushing the bedroom door open a little more, just enough for me to squeeze through, I walk inside Samantha’s room. And every step I take makes me feel that much more violating and uncouth. But I have to know. Because the thought of him with her is torturing me on the inside. Maybe later I’ll try to figure out why. Right now, I just want to know.

I make my way through the room and to the bathroom door, where I wait just outside of it, my heart pounding in my chest, worried they’ll catch me eavesdropping. When after a few seconds pass and Samantha is talking again, I feel safe enough to peek inside to get a better look, only hoping that the partial darkness of the room helps to keep me from being seen.





Victor





I stand with my hands pressed against the counter, a towel wrapped around my lower body after having just showered. I peer into the mirror over the sink, tilting my chin to one side and then the other, feeling like I should probably shave but decide against it. Samantha sits down on the closed toilet seat with a suture needle and thread in one hand, ready to stitch me up.