Killing Sarai

37

Crouched as low to the floor as I can possibly be without actually sitting on it, I feel like I'm scuttling across the carpet toward the opened bedroom door. Once I'm inside, Samantha comes in right behind me and dropping the rest of the way to her knees, she thrusts out both arms and presses her hands against the large wooden chest sitting at the foot of the bed. As she's moving the chest, more shadows move across the window and I hear voices whispering outside.

And they're speaking Spanish.

I whirl around to Samantha, tearing my eyes away from the window just in time to see her lifting a small metal door in the floor that had been hidden underneath the chest.

"Get inside! Hurry! Now!"

In that last second, which I don't even think I really have the time to spare, I reach underneath the mattress and grab the gun that Victor left there, shoving it into the back of my pants. Samantha waves her hand at me to hurry and when I'm close enough she grabs my arm and helps me the rest of the way by practically shoving me down into the hole beneath the floor.

The metal door closes over me, shutting out the only light I had which had been shining thinly through the single bedroom window from the streetlight outside. And then I hear the chest being moved back over the metal door and my heart sinks like a stone at the thought of being trapped down here, regardless of what's up there.

Make that one more thing that I fear, Victor: being trapped in a small space.

I hear Samantha's footsteps move across the floor above and then the sound of the bedroom door clicking closed once she makes her way out.

Everything is eerily silent: the heaviness of my breath, the pumping of blood through my ears; I can't hear either of them though I know both should be raucous in the small confined space that conceals me. I can't see a thing, so I reach my hands out in front of me and start feeling my surroundings. I painfully count three walls to my left, right and in front of me, but am relieved that behind me there is no fourth wall to keep me confined. It's a narrow hallway.

I don't have time to investigate it further when I hear the first gunshot, although suppressed like Victor's always sounds, but I know that this time it isn't Victor.

Pepper isn't barking anymore.

I hear a voice. It sounds far off but it echoes from somewhere above me. That's when I feel a small draft on my hairline and I reach up my hand to feel for the ceiling. There's a vent, though far too small of one for me to fit my head through much less the rest of my body, but it's a vent and I know now that's how I heard the echo of the voice.

There's another suppressed shot and this time when I hear the voice that succeeds it, I know that it belongs to Javier.

--

"I have four bullets left in this gun," Javier says to Samantha somewhere in the house. "And I'm going to put one in you every two minutes that my sweet Sarai is still in hiding."

My hand comes up involuntarily and clutches at my heart.

"Victor is coming back," Samantha says in a weak, strained voice.

It fills me with dread to think of where Javier has already shot her.

"You lie, puta! You stink of lies. Now tell me where Sarai is. Because I know she's here."

How did he know I was here?

Then in Spanish Javier shouts, "Search the house! Every room. Turn it upside-down and find her!"

Two seconds later the sound of furniture being overturned, glass shattering and feet stomping across the floor echoes through the walls.

"She's not here," Samantha says as if pushing the words through her teeth. "Victor was here earlier. With a girl. A little black-haired girl he called Izabel. But he took her with him when he left."