KILLING SARAI(49)

“Victor,” Niklas says into the phone, “Javier is not in Tucson. He was reported to have used a known credit card with an old alias, just outside of La Grange, Texas.”

I raise my back stiffly from the seat.

“That’s less than a two hour drive to Houston,” I point out, more to myself. “At what time did the card process?”

“At three-twelve this afternoon.”

My body becomes rigid.

Hanging up the phone, I crush it in my fist down at my side as I make my way to the cockpit.

“Turn the plane around,” I demand.

Less than an hour later I’m driving through traffic heedlessly, I know drawing unneeded attention to me. But I speed on through, running a number of stoplights, not knowing how I managed to drive all the way back to Samantha’s house without having to lose a cop or two in a high-speed chase on my way there.

There’s a car parked out front on the street between Samantha’s house and the one next door. I don’t remember seeing that one before I left. With my gun in my hand, I stay low as I get out and rush up the driveway, using Samantha’s car as a shield just in case. There are no lights on inside the house. It’s unusually quiet. Samantha’s dog would normally be tangled up in the window blind by now, trying to see out after hearing a vehicle pull up.

I hear another, larger dog, barking in the backyard of the opposite neighbor and I stay crouched low, making my way underneath the carport and next to the older car parked there.

One figure emerges from the side of the house just after I move silently across the space and make it to the brick wall underneath the carport. I grab him by the throat too fast for him to react and throw him to the ground. His gun hits the concrete and in that same moment, I put a bullet through his temple before he has a chance to seize it.

Another man calls out a name, looking for the man I just killed. I don’t wait for him to come around the side. I step right out in front of him, raise my gun to his face and get my shot off before he sees me fully. His body hits the grass.

I wait only seconds in case there are anymore and then I rush inside the house through the side door underneath the carport.

The house has been destroyed; Samantha’s dog, shot to death on the kitchen floor. I smell gun smoke, blood, freshly brewed coffee and unfamiliar cologne.

The first body I see is Samantha’s. The second, Javier’s.

“Sarai?” I say when I see her sitting against the wall to my left, partially hidden by the darkness. I take off my black gloves and shove them inside my jacket pocket and go over to her. “Sarai?”

She doesn’t look up at me, so I crouch in front of her.

The gun I left underneath her mattress lies next to her foot. I slip it into the back of my pants. Both of her knees are drawn upward against her chest, her hands lay palm-up beside her on the floor.

“He’s dead,” she says, her words distant as if she’s still trying to process the truth. She raises her eyes to me; pain and confusion and disorientation reside within them. “I killed him, Victor.”

I reach out and lift her into my arms.

“I’m going to get you out of here.”

Holding her close to my chest, I carry her through the death and debris and out of the house. She doesn’t speak, but she holds onto me as if she’s terrified I’ll drop her. Or, perhaps, terrified I’ll intentionally let her go.

I set her carefully in the passenger’s seat.

Three police cars fly past toward Samantha’s house one block over as we leave the scene, doing the speed limit this time around.

Sarai is quiet and motionless, emotionless, all the way back to the private airport where the jet awaits us.

There’s only one place to take her now. Home. To my home on the New England coast.





~~~





My driver picks us up from the airport hours later. Sarai rode all the way to my cliff-side beach house with her head pressed against the backseat window. She never moved. It’s the first time since I found her in my car in Mexico that I would welcome her chatty one-sided conversation and annoying questions. But I get nothing from her. And I find myself silently yearning for it.

The first kill is always the hardest, the one you never forget. But the first kill is also what drops the chances of living a normal life by half.

Sarai is no longer in the fifty-fifty zone.

I shouldn’t have left her there….

Carrying her across the cobblestone driveway and into the house, I take her inside and lie her down on my sofa. It’s been a month since I’ve been here and it still smells as clean as the day I left and set out on a job to kill a man in Columbia. It is because of jobs like that one that I can afford such luxuries. But it’s a shame that because of what has happened with Sarai that I will have to leave here soon, too. I thought perhaps I’d get to stay in one place for at least a year this time, but such is the life I lead, a dark and lonely path lined only with the solitude of death.

Sarai lays on her side, her head propped against a couch pillow.

I remove my suit jacket and drape it over the back of the chair next to me and then start to go into the kitchen to get her some water, but her voice stops me cold.

“The gun jammed.”

Standing in the arched kitchen entrance, I turn to look at her across the expanse of marble tile and expensive furniture. I walk toward her again, slowly, breaking apart the button of my shirt cuff.