Killing Sarai

39

Sarai

"What are you doing?" I ask as Victor starts for his jacket on the chair.

He reaches inside the pocket and pulls out a cell phone I've never seen him use before and punches in a number.

"I'm going to bring Niklas here."

Stunned, at first I just look at him. But then I start to panic inside.

I rush toward him, grabbing him by the elbow.

"No, you can't let him know where we are," I say breathily. "Why bring him here? What are you going to do?"

My mind is frantic with scenarios, none of which I can envision ending happily.

I zip my lips when he holds up his hand to hush me as Niklas answers on the other end of the phone.

"Javier Ruiz has been eliminated," Victor says, as calmly and professionally as any other time I've heard him speak to Niklas.

"Yes," he answers a question I can't hear but I still dumbly push my head forward a little as if it'll amplify the volume in some way. "Police arrived at the scene before I made it out of the neighborhood. It was not a clean kill." He listens to Niklas for a moment and goes on, "I believe Samantha led them there. The girl was alive when I arrived just before I took Javier out. He had shot her, but she managed to tell me that she overheard Samantha on the phone with someone just after I left for Tucson. Yes. No, Samantha is dead. Inform Vonnegut that Safe House Twelve has been compromised. A Cleaner should be sent there immediately to confiscate her files. Yes. Yes." He glances at me. "That will not be necessary. The girl died of her wound. I left her there."

My stomach twists into knots. I cross my arms over it.

"Niklas," he says, dropping the professionalism in his tone a degree. "Come to my New England location as soon as you can. We will get the payment squared away and then...I wish to tell you what happened in Budapest."

I tilt my head gently to one side upon hearing those last words. Everything else that Victor told Niklas, I understand it all for what it was: a lie, a ploy to get him here. But the last part felt real, personal. The fact that he said it in front of me strikes me as peculiar. I know it has nothing to do with me, so why would he include it in this particular conversation? It's in this moment that I begin to understand that Niklas is something more to Victor than his liaison, more than someone he works with and that whatever happened in Budapest needs to be said because his conscience needs to be cleared.

That's what people do when they say their goodbyes.

I don't know why, but despite Niklas trying to get me killed, I feel this pain and sadness inside. Because I know what Victor is going to do. I know he's going to kill him. Yet, I feel like it's the last thing that he wants...

He sets his phone on the glass end table next to the chair and breaks apart the buttons of his vest.

"I have nowhere else to go," I tell him from the couch again. "I know I've been a burden and I'm sorry. Samantha told me that you're risking everything, even your life to help me and I don't have anything to give you in return. Other than my gratitude and I know that's not much."

I sigh and add, "And I'm sorry about Samantha."

He tosses his vest and afterwards his tie over the back of the chair with his jacket.

"It was my decision to help you," he says while untucking his dress shirt. "And Samantha was a good woman."

"Did she love you?"

I fold my hands together within my lap.

"No," he says, not looking at me. "She wanted to, but she was incapable."