I sigh deeply. “No, I can’t believe that she did. Samantha was trustworthy. But she and Niklas are the only two people besides you and me who knew where you were.” I step forward and place my hands on her upper-arms in an attempt to make her understand and when she doesn’t push me away I’m relieved. “It had to have been one of them and I’m only trying to get the facts.”

“Then it was Niklas,” she spats angrily at the thought of him. Her eyes are wild and narrowed. “He hates me, Victor. He hates it that you’ve been helping me. He all but said so when I was in the SUV with him. I know it was him!”

I step away from her, my hands falling away from her arms and I cross one arm over my stomach, propping the other on it. Rubbing my hand over the short scruff of my face, I contemplate the situation. Sarai is right. Niklas is the obvious answer and although often the obvious turns out not to be the answer after all, this time it must be. Because it’s the only thing that makes sense.

My brother betrayed me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

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.”

My brows wrinkle in confusion.

“Incapable of love?” I ask. “No one’s incapable of that.”

“You can’t fall in love with someone who isn’t there,” he says matter-of-factly. “I left before she had the chance.”

“Did you love her?” I mentally hold my breath.

“No I did not. Love is an impediment in this business. It’ll only get you killed.”

Although his answer leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, I can’t deny that maybe he’s right. Though I think about how Victor, or anyone for that matter, could go through life without loving someone. But then I realize that I’ve never loved anyone, either.

“And I know you have no place to go,” he adds, “but when this is over and I know you’re safe, you will have to be on your own. I will help set you up, give you a decent start.” He stops and looks at me intently, his eyes locking on mine as if to seize my undivided attention. “But this ends soon. You’ve been with me too long already as it is.”

It feels like suddenly he’s angry with me, or at least angry with himself for helping me. Maybe it has to do with whatever’s going on between him and Niklas, I could never know, but since his phone call with Niklas, Victor is different.

And it fills me with dread.

He turns and walks through a marble archway that leads to another part of this massive house. In a way it reminds me of the places Javier used to take me all dressed up and on his arm, but this house, although massive from what I’ve seen, is smaller than the others were. And darker, with dark cherry hardwood floors so shiny I can see my reflection, and covered with expensive rugs of the deepest reds and browns and grays. Tall rust-colored curtains dress the expansive windows that cover the entirety of one wall from ceiling to floor and overlooking the turbulent ocean below. Even outside the beach isn’t a bright ocean-side paradise with white sands and blue skies. Here it’s gray and gloomy and the waves crash angrily against the rocks many feet below, yet it’s not even storming.

For the next several hours, Victor stays out of sight. I don’t feel like he’s intentionally ignoring me, but I know that he wants to be alone.

I think a lot about Samantha. And Lydia. And Izel. And Javier. I’ve seen so much death. I killed a man tonight, yet, the only thing that picks at my mind more is the fact that I’m already over it. For the most part, that is; I still can’t get it off my mind. I still see Javier’s dark, almost black eyes staring back at me with that jammed gun in his hand. I still shake—I’m shaking right now—when I think about pulling the trigger, when his eyes followed mine all the way down until his body hit the floor. And I’ll never forget what he said to me just before he died:

“I knew you had it in you, Sarai.”

And I hate myself for it, but I…well, I feel an out-of-place sense of sadness over Javier. A void. That part of me which grew to accept him as being the only life I had, whether I wanted him to be or not, misses him. I guess because I was used to him after so long.

“Sarai?” Victor’s voice snaps me out of the memory.