Killing Sarai

23

Silence fills the small space between us.

“No one is innocent,” I snap, surprising myself. “Least of all me. For years I let that disgusting murderer violate me and I never said no. I sat back and watched in silence as he and his men and that bitch sister of his beat and raped and sold the girls I became close to. I did nothing. I never screamed or fought back or stood up for any of them. Not a single one.” I hear my voice beginning to rise with anger, but I don’t care. I clench my fists together on my chest, looking up into his eyes as he remains seated on top of me. “I pretended like nothing bothered me, that Carmen’s hands being smashed to bits by that hammer didn’t faze me! I didn’t flinch when Marisol was forced to have an abortion by a butcher doctor who left her to bleed to death on the table! I didn’t shed a single tear when the girl with the red hair and freckles was killed right in front of me because the man who came to purchase her didn’t like what he saw!” I bring up my fists and go to slam them down on the tops of his legs out of anger, but he catches my wrists and holds them solidly. “I am not innocent!” I roar.

I feel his hands wrench my wrists, but my head is too clouded by emotion to care.

The things I’ve admitted are things that have haunted me for the longest time. They’ve been buried in my soul, burning through to the very core of me, rendering me emotionless and turning me into someone entirely different than I was supposed to be.

I let my head fall to the side, feeling the pang of defeat. I can’t look at him anymore. Not out of anger or hatred or revenge, but out of shame. I can’t look a murder in the eye because not only am I no better than he is, it’s possible that I’m worse.

“You are very strong,” he says and raises his body from mine. “With a strong survival instinct. It is the only thing that separates you from those other girls. Like them, you were still held there against your will. You were still made to do things against your will. You were physically and emotionally abused. You should not blame yourself for their weakness.”

He walks back over to the table.

I pick myself up from the floor and just look across at him, trying to make sense of his words. Or, maybe the guilt I’ve harbored for so long is only trying to force me not to believe them.

He glances over at me and adds, “You did the right thing.”

I shake my head. “No. I didn’t. I should’ve done something to help them.”

Victor shoulders his duffle bags and takes up the suitcase in the other.

“You did,” he says, standing in front of me now. “You kept your cool. You waited for your opportunity. You pretended to the point of acceptance and trust. You’re risking your life right now to go back for that girl.”

He walks past me and goes toward the door, turning to look back once he gets there.

“You are innocent,” he says. “And it’s why you’re still alive.”

Then he opens the door and hesitantly, I follow him out.

——

We arrive in Green Valley nearly three hours later. Both of us sat in silence for most of the drive. I had too much thinking to do, too many unresolved issues to work out, which I didn’t come close to doing in such a short time. And it will take me a very long time to lay my guilt to rest, if I ever can. I don’t care that the things Victor said made sense, I still feel like the most selfish person in the world for what I did. I’ll probably feel this way forever.

And I did ask Victor why we were heading to Green Valley. He had said before that he would tell me what was going on, but when it came down to it, he was vague. He told me that he has an exchange to make near Green Valley, but he wouldn’t go into detail.

I guess all that talking he did back at the hotel in Douglas went over his conversational word limit. Because he was back to himself again so quickly, the quiet, reserved, intimidating assassin who, for reasons unknown to me, I almost feel completely safe with.

We pull into a parking lot at the end of a road lined by resort homes. I’ve been here before, once with my best friend when her older sister picked us up from school in her new car. We had gotten lost and she used this place to turn around. It was weeks before my mom forced me to Mexico with her and Javier. This familiar place reminds me that I’m very close to home. I’m so close that I could walk there. It would take several hours, but I could do it.

But where would I go?

Victor shuts the truck’s engine off. I look out through the windshield to see a section of trees and brush separating the parking lot from the interstate. A car flies by every few seconds. But the parking lot is empty save one lone car in the distance parked by a dumpster. On the other side of the lot though, over a low concrete wall there are many cars parked outside a shopping center.

I wonder why he chose a public place, although currently quiet and abandoned, to do whatever it is that we came here to do. Because Javier doesn’t care about the public or risking an innocent bystander getting caught in his crossfire.

“Stay in the truck,” Victor says just before shutting the heavy metal door.

He walks around to the back as a sleek black SUV enters the parking lot from behind the homes. My heart immediately starts pounding. I slink down in the seat, but move around to his side so that I can get a better glimpse out the window. I want to see but I don’t want to be seen.

Victor meets the SUV halfway, about fifty feet from where I am and it stops in the center of the road. I see a man. A white man it looks like and I’m confused by this. Victor nods and then I see his lips moving. I reach over and roll the window down by the old-fashioned crank. It sticks at first, but then the window breaks apart and I manage to open it several inches. But they’re too far away for me to hear anything they’re saying.

Victor starts walking back toward the truck and the SUV follows. I swallow hard and find myself practically all the way in the floorboard now, the top of my head pressing against the hard steering wheel. The driver’s side door opens, exposing me in my awkward position. That other man is standing next to Victor, both of them looking in at me.

The strange man, who I notice looks somewhat like Victor with his tall stature, brown hair, blue eyes and sculpted cheekbones, nods at me as if it’s his way of saying hello. Needless to say, I’m too afraid and unsure of him to give him the same courtesy.

The man, though still looking at me as though I’m a peculiar specimen of sorts that deserves study, says something to Victor in another language. It’s not Spanish. Victor replies to him in that same language, which I’m starting to think is likely German. The man finally looks at Victor.

“This is Niklas,” Victor says to me. “You’re going to ride with him and follow me to another location close by.”

Instantly, I feel my head shaking back and forth in refusal.

Victor reaches out his hand to me, but I reject it. Instead, I start to climb my way out of the floorboard and go toward the other side of the truck. I feel Victor’s hand wrap around part of my thigh.

“He will not harm you,” Victor says. “This truck is not safe for you if Javier or his men open fire on us.”

I glance through the back window at the SUV, assuming it has some kind of bulletproof windows, maybe. I don’t care to ask; I simply don’t want to be left alone with this man, safer vehicle or not.

“This one is not very cooperative,” the man named Niklas says in English. He definitely has an accent, unlike Victor who seems to speak fluently in whatever language he knows.

“Sarai,” Victor says my name and it stuns me immobile; he’s never called me by my name before. “I am asking you to cooperate.”