“What about her husband?”

He looks up at me once.

“He’s not there anymore,” he says.

“Why not? Did he die? Are they elderly?”

I can’t help but ask all these questions; I want to know as much as I can about the place he’s going to take me.

Victor pauses and then says, “Yes, he’s dead. He was my target.”

“Oh….”

I don’t feel so confident anymore about going there.

“You’ll be fine,” Victor says, noticing the worry on my face. “She doesn’t know that it was me.”

He walks over to me, placing his hands on my shoulders. “I’m going to go downstairs to the front desk and get the room squared away and call Niklas.” He leans in and kisses my forehead. “Take your time. I’ll be back in a few and then we’ll leave.”

I nod, looking into his eyes. “OK.”

Victor leaves the room and I grab a more casual dress this time and a clean pair of panties and head for the shower.

Victor

Niklas is angry with me. I can hear it in his voice though he’s trying hard not to be too obvious, which in itself is out of character for him.

“You said you’d contact me as soon as the mission was over,” Niklas says into the phone. “If it was carried out last night as planned then why are you only now calling me half a day later?”

I let out my breath through my nose.

“Take it for what it is, Niklas,” I say, growing as irritated with him as he has been with me. “You’ve got to stop concerning yourself so much with me.”

“I am your liaison,” he snaps.

“Yes, but the part of you that has become so painfully assiduous about how I choose to do things, is my brother. Perhaps you should reacquaint yourself with your liaison half, that way we can both go back to a simpler, strictly professional relationship.”

“I see,” he says. “You don’t need a brother anymore now that you have that girl. Obviously she’s still alive.”

I should’ve seen that coming but I didn’t.

“You have not been replaced, least of all by a woman,” I say.

Maybe Sarai hasn’t replaced my brother, but she’s become something so much more to me and I can’t explain it. Not to myself and definitely not to Niklas.

“I have new orders,” Niklas announces, leaving the bitter topic alone. “They are last minute, but I think it’s best to get them over with before you head to Germany to meet with Vonnegut. Don’t give him any more reason to doubt your abilities.”

“Is it a mission?”

“It will be one,” he says. “The client is there in Los Angeles and would like to meet with you personally.”

“That is not standard,” I say. “First Javier Ruiz, now this one wants to meet face to face?”

I prefer to go only through Vonnegut and never meet a client in person, but unfortunately sometimes bigger risks must be taken.

“She’s a very meticulous woman,” Niklas says.

“What are the orders?”

“Meet with her outside at 639 South Spring Street. She will be wearing a white blouse with a silver butterfly broach on the left breast. She’ll be there at one-thirty.”

“That’s in less than an hour,” I say, glancing at the clock high on the wall in the lobby.

I lower my voice to a whisper when a hotel guest walks by.

“You have plenty of time to get there from the hotel,” he says. “And please…contact me this time the moment the meeting is over.”

I sigh quietly. “I will,” I say and hang up the phone.

After paying for another full day for use of the room since it appears we’ll be here for longer than another hour, I take the elevator back up to let Sarai know of our minor change of plans. Afterwards I head out, leaving her in the room so that I can meet with the client privately. I drive toward the location, arriving with several minutes to spare and park in a side lot just feet from where I am to meet her.

I stay inside the car and wait.

And all I can really think about is Sarai.

Sarai

I’ve never been to San Diego before. Technically, this is my first time in California. I wonder what this lady will be like, what she knows, how she and Victor are friends. I have a lot of questions, as usual, that I won’t let Victor get away without answering while on the way there.

I swipe my hand over the mirror in the bathroom, clearing a path through the humidity fogging up the glass. And I smile in at my reflection. For the first time since I met Victor, I’m starting to feel content, relieved by the outlook of my future. Because before, all I could see of it was blackness, a void that had no beginning or end, everything hanging there in uncertainty. But now I have something to look forward to. I have a purpose. And I’m not going to waste a second of it.

I squeeze the water from my hair with a towel and then pin it up sloppily at the back of my head. After drying off and getting dressed, I head into the main room and start to turn the television on when there is a knock at the room door. I glance at the clock beside the bed.

It hasn’t been an hour already.

Setting the remote control back on the bed, I walk toward the door to answer it, but just as I set my hand on the lever, the voice on the other side freezes me in place.

“It’s Niklas. Victor sent me to get you.”

My fingers fall away from the lever very slowly. I take one step away from the door.

He knocks lightly again.

“Are you in there? Sarai? Come on and let me in. I know you despise me, and quite honestly I’d rather be having a beer in a quaint little bar somewhere, but Victor needed my help.”

He’s lying. Victor would’ve told me if he had sent Niklas here. He would’ve told me before he left, or he would’ve called.

I glance at the phone by the bed. Maybe he did call while I was in the shower.

I take another step away from the door, my instincts pulling me backward like a dozen reaching hands. There’s one more series of knocks and then it’s silent. I stand in the center of the room, perfectly still, perfectly quiet. The only sound I hear is a faint, buzzing coming from a light bulb. Moving quickly across the room I press my face near the door and try to peer out through the peephole. What I can see of the hallway is empty. He’s gone. But then if he’s really gone, why am I still so afraid that he’s right outside the door somewhere, waiting for me to stick my head out and look? I press my eye at an angle against the peephole, trying to get a better visual to the left and the right. Then I hear voices and see a shadow moving along the wall. My heartbeat speeds up and I hold my breath until two men walk past. I let the breath out long and heavily.

But the relief is short-lived when I see Niklas again.

I jump back and away from the door fast and rush over to Victor’s duffle bag, rummaging through it to find Arthur Hamburg’s gun. Victor left it for me. Just in case. But I get the feeling he left it in case of Arthur Hamburg. Not his brother.

There’s nowhere to hide in this place. Absolutely nowhere that Niklas couldn’t easily find me in under a minute.

I inhale a quick, sharp breath when I hear the tiny clicking sound of a card key being slid through the door and unlocking it. He must’ve taken the housekeeper’s master key. In half a second, and too late for me to realize and remedy my mistake, I see the chain on the door is still unlocked. I make a run for it, knowing in my heart that I won’t make it to the door in time to slide the chain lock in place before Niklas is inside the room. And just as the door opens, I’m falling against the wall behind it, gripping the gun in both hands up against my chest, my heart pumping blood so fast through my veins that my eyes twitch near the corners and I feel my jugular throbbing.