Killing Sarai

18

Victor

I’m awoken at 3:42 A.M. staring down the barrel of my 9MM.

“What’s the password?” the girl demands.

She’s keeping a respectable distance. Impressive.

“The password,” she repeats sternly, motioning her head toward the table where my iPad sits.

I don’t move. She may have guts, but she’s still fidgety and it would be unfortunate if she shot me by accident.

“Uppercase F, six, eight, lowercase ‘k’, three, zero, zero, five, uppercase L, uppercase P, lowercase ‘w’, six.” I could easily take the gun from her before she got a shot off, the angle she’s standing, but I’m not ready to. Not yet.

She tries to recall each character precisely the way I said them. Without her having to ask, I repeat it for her and even that gesture seems to confuse her.

Carefully, I lift my back from the bed and she grips the gun tighter. If she happened to pull the trigger, she’d only hit my cheekbone. The bullet might pass through my jaw. I’d be disfigured, but I’d live.

“You don’t want to see what’s on that computer,” I say.

“You admit it, then,” she says nervously. “Something happened. You found out while I was in the shower.”

I’m standing up now. She still hasn’t shot me. She’s not going to unless I try to go after her. Though I’m not so impressed anymore. If I was her, I would have put a bullet in my skull by now.

I nod my answer. I’m only mildly surprised that she figured that much out. I should never have asked about her mother. She’s a smart girl, this one, though still far too sympathetic and human to get out of this by herself alive.

“You don’t want to see what’s on that computer,” I say.

“You admit it, then,” she says nervously. “Something happened. You found out while I was in the shower.”

I’m standing up now. She still hasn’t shot me. She’s not going to unless I try to go after her. Though I’m not so impressed anymore. If I was her, I would have put a bullet in my skull by now.

I nod my answer. I’m only mildly surprised that she figured that much out. I should never have asked about her mother. She’s a smart girl, this one, though still far too sympathetic and human to get out of this by herself alive.

Leaving the gun in her right hand and keeping her eyes on me, she takes three and a half steps backward and reaches for the iPad, glancing between it and me, one second each, long enough to type in the password. After one full minute of frustration, unable to find anything, the girl points the gun at the iPad and steps away from the table closer to the wall.

“You pull it up,” she demands. “Whatever it is.”

Her hands, both gripping the gun handle now, are shaking.

“I will tell you one last time, you don’t want to see it.”

“Just show me!”

She’s crying now. Tears roll down her cheeks. I notice her lip quiver on the right side. She’s probably sick to her stomach, her nerves frayed to nothing. I glimpse the ropes I tied her up with lying on the floor. They haven’t been cut. She has small hands, small wrists. Quite the escape artist to have worked herself free from those knots. I glimpse the clock between the beds. But it took her far too long to pull it off, I see.

“Hurry!”

Her eyes are red and glistening with moisture.

I turn the iPad around on the table to face me. Using my finger, I open my private email account and then the folder where I filed away the attachment message I received last night from my liaison: