KILLING SARAI(9)

Everything goes silent. All that I can hear now is my heart beating so fast and violently. I’m so scared I can’t even manage tears anymore and my body has stopped shaking. I’m paralyzed with fear.

The acrid smell of gun smoke lingers in the air.

Is the American dead? It’s all I can think about. Maybe they’re all dead and I can get out of here alive.

I go to climb my way out of the tub but then I hear Izel:

“Fuck you. I won’t tell you shit!”

There is a brief bout of silence and then I hear the American say calmly, “You’ve already told me most of what I need to know.”

“How is that?”

“If Javier wanted me alive to kill Guzmán your men never would have drawn on me.”

“He did want you to kill him.”

“So then your men are simply stupid.”

Izel says nothing in response, but I can picture the expression she wears: sour mixed with evil.

Quietly, I crawl out of the tub, careful not to make any abrupt movements and I reach out for the door handle. It comes open the second my fingers touch it as though it hadn’t been shut all the way before, though I know that it had. It must’ve been jarred loose when I heard someone bash against it during the fight.

I push it open barely a crack. The mirror over the sink just outside the door is in view. All that’s left of it now are three large uneven shards of broken glass barely hanging onto the wall.

I can see the American’s back through the reflection.

“I should tell you,” he says. “There will be a new deal now.”

“You’re not the one to be making deals,” Izel spits out the words.

“I believe that I am,” he replies. “First, you will tell me what Javier’s plans were in bringing me to the compound.”

“I’ll tell you shit!”

A muffled shot makes a quick fuddup sound and then Izel screams out in pain. “You f*cking shot me!”

The American moves over and out of sight of the mirror, leaving me to glimpse Izel sitting on the chair next to the wall. Her face glistens with sweat and blood drains from the gunshot wound on her thigh, her hands pressed over it trying to stop the flow. Her bronzed face is contorted in agony and anger. She spits at the floor defiantly.

“Merely a flesh wound,” the American says.

I push myself farther against the door. A pair of hands lay open near Izel’s feet: one of the men the American just killed. I swallow hard and try to calm my breathing. The door moves as my hip brushes against it and I suck in sharply that breath I just took. Izel’s head darts sideways as she faces the mirror. She knows I’m hiding in here. I try to step away from the door and move back into the darkness of the restroom, but she sees me. A grin spreads across her face.

“Come out, Sarai,” she says harmoniously. “Javier misses you.”

I don’t move. Maybe if I remain still, what she sees in the reflection of the mirror she’ll start to believe is just the light playing tricks on her eyes.

She turns her gaze away from me as if the American has done something to regain her attention.

“Javier wants Guzmán dead,” Izel says. “He wouldn’t have hired you and let you leave with that money if he didn’t.” She sneers and shakes her head at the American and adds, “You’re a fool.”

I hear the bed creak as if he just sat on the end of it, facing her. While she’s distracted, I position myself farther back from the edge of the door, but in a way that I can get a better view of the room through the reflection in the mirror. I glimpse another body lying haphazardly against the wall on the other side of her.

“And if I kill Guzmán,” the American says, “I will have no trouble getting the other half of my money.” It was a statement, but at the same time, a question.

Izel grins. “Of course.” She tilts her head to one side. “She’s gotten to you already.”

No answer. I know Izel is referring to me.

“The girl wasn’t bought or sold, just so you know,” she adds.

“I didn’t ask.”

“You didn’t need to.”

Izel looks toward the mirror again, without moving her head.

“Going to be the hero?” she says this with sarcasm lacing her voice.

“Hardly,” the American says. “I’m going to use her as leverage.”

I swallow hard.

Should’ve kept my mouth shut….

“That won’t sit well with Javier. She wasn’t part of the deal. You keep the girl and Javier will not be happy.” A strand of black hair falls away from her face. She reaches up as if to move the rest of her hair away, but her hand stops halfway and she places it back down beside her. Anger helps to hide the fear in her face somewhat. She knows that he’ll blow her brains out the back of her head.

“The girl stays with me until I kill Guzmán and then we will make the trade: her for the rest of my money.”

“And what if Javier doesn’t give a shit?”

“You wouldn’t be here now if he didn’t.”





CHAPTER FOUR





Izel rounds her chin defiantly, the skin around her dark eyes peppered with tiny flecks of blood-splatter.