KILLING SARAI (A NOVEL)

CHAPTER FOUR





Izel rounds her chin defiantly, the skin around her dark eyes peppered with tiny flecks of blood-splatter.

“You’re making a mistake,” she spats, defeat in her voice. “If you want a girl, Javier will give you one. Just not that one. You’ll only make him your enemy by doing this.”

I know that worry in her voice all too well. When Javier is unhappy, he tends to blame it on Izel. If she doesn’t return to the compound with me, he’ll beat her senseless. As much as I hate her for the things she’s done to me, I can’t help but pity her sometimes, too.

“Your offer offends my intelligence,” the American says. “She is the one I want because she is the one he treasures the most. If Javier has no ill intentions then he should have nothing to worry about.” Izel glances toward the bathroom door quickly while he speaks. “I keep the girl until I kill Guzmán. Javier pays me the remainder of my money. I give the girl back. We all leave with what we want.”

I want to dash out of the bathroom and try for one of the cars outside, but I know I won’t make it. My palms are sweating and stinging. I cut my left hand somewhere at some point. I can’t remember when it happened.

Izel curses him in Spanish and presses the palms of her hands on the seat beneath her and begins to rise into a stand.

The American very casually raises his gun and she freezes, anger and resistance in her face.

“Fold your hands together behind the chair,” the American says.

“Go f*ck yourself.”

Thwap! Izel’s body jerks sideways, almost knocking the chair over with her in it. “Motherf*cker!” she cries out, holding her hand over a fresh bullet wound on the opposite thigh to match the other one.

The American never moves, his expression and posture always casual and controlled.

“Fold your hands together behind the chair,” he says once more with the exact amount of calm as before.

This time, Izel is compliant. Reluctant and defiant as always, but compliant.

“Come out of the bathroom,” I hear the American say.

I don’t want to. I quietly push my back against the wall, thrusting my bound hands over my chest and lock my fingers together nervously in front of me. I sniffle back the tears, the taste of salt draining down the back of my throat. What should I do? If I just stand here like this it’ll only prolong the inevitable. There’s no way out of this bathroom except through that door.

Finally, I do as he says.

Trying to push the door open the rest of the way, I have to shoulder it hard because of the body lying on the floor on the other side. I try not to look when I step around the man’s left arm, contorted unnaturally behind him, but I glimpse enough that it makes my stomach churn. Especially when I see his eyes. It’s always the eyes, lifeless and empty and glazed over, that makes me sick to my stomach. I take a deep breath and step over him. Izel smiles across at me, not as affected by two gunshot wounds as I imagine anyone else might be. Her breathing is labored and she strains to keep her composure for the sake of taunting me.

“Come here,” the American says and I do.

He pulls the knife from his pocket again and his eyes avert to my wrists briefly. Assuming—and hoping—it’s what he wants, I hold my shaking hands out to him. He slides the blade behind the fabric and cuts me loose.

“Did you tell him that you’re a whore?” Izel asks.

I swallow what saliva is left in my mouth. I’m no whore, but she has always had a way with somehow making me feel ashamed by her accusations. I pretend to be more fixated on my wrists, now that they are no longer tied together.

Izel turns to the American, her hands still folded loosely behind her back. She says with a spiteful smile, “If you’re feeling sorry for her, don’t. That little puta is treated better than anyone, even better than me and I am his sister. Javier has her anytime he wants her. And he doesn’t have to take it.”

I feel my fingers digging into my palms down at my sides now, but shame eclipses my anger. What she says is only halfway true, but right now isn’t the time to defend myself. Nothing that I say will matter. Not to the American and certainly not to her. I only care what the American thinks because I need him to help me. If he thinks of me as a whore, he’ll surely be less inclined later on. If I can ever convince him to help, that is, which is doubtful.

Showing absolutely no interest in Izel’s obvious attempt to mar my character, the American points to his bag on the table by the window and says to me, “Left zipper, inside pocket you’ll find a rope.”

I walk across the room carefully, my heart pounding violently against my ribs when I go between the two, the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand on end as I pass them. I halfway expected Izel to use the opportunity to reach out and grab me, but am relieved when she doesn’t dare move. Making my way through more bodies and debris scattered about the small area, this time I’m too afraid of the two still alive in the room to let myself notice the dead eyes staring up at me from the floor. I smell the blood. At least, I’m pretty sure that faint metallic stench is blood. There’s so much of it all around me. The curtain on the broken window blows inward as a small gust of warm wind pushes through. I reach inside the American’s black bag and shuffle around looking for the rope. I’m too nervous to look inside the bag. There’s no telling what he carries in this thing.

With the wad of rope in my hand, I briefly wonder why he didn’t use this tougher stuff on me instead of strips of fabric from the bed sheet. I turn around and look only at the American waiting for whatever he might tell me to do next, trying to make as little eye contact with Izel as possible. It never takes her much to intimidate me.

The American nods toward Izel.

“Tie her hands behind the chair at her wrists,” he instructs.

My heart leaps. Still trying my best to keep from looking at her, the attempt is thrown out the window with his words and look at her is exactly what I do. She’ll surely grab me if I’m standing that close.

The conflict in my eyes tells the American everything that the words I can’t get out, can’t.

He moves the gun in his hand subtly at Izel, his wrist still propped on his leg. “She will not touch you,” he says, looking only at me. “If she so much as flinches in a manner that I feel is threatening, I’ll kill her and she knows it.”

From the corner of my eye, I see Izel’s nostrils flare and her mouth twist in anger.

The American nods toward her again to indicate that I should proceed.

Fumbling the rope in my fingers, I step over the bodies again and slowly make my way toward Izel, finding it impossible not to look at her the closer I get. Her smile spreads. My hands are shaking so conspicuously she takes notice; her brown eyes skirt them briefly without moving her head.

“You really did it this time,” she taunts. “How did you get out of the fence? Did Lydia help you?”

I’m almost behind her when she says Lydia’s name and I stop dead in my tracks. Izel notices my reaction exactly for what it is: worry. And she runs with it.

An even more sadistic grin tugs the corners of her lips. “Ah, I see,” she says. “So she did help you.” She clicks her tongue. “Unfortunate for poor Lydia, she will be punished. But you already knew that, didn’t you, Sarai?”

“Lydia had nothing to do with it!” I yell in Spanish, as if I’m still back at the compound.

I know she’s trying to get to me, but I also know that what she’s saying about Lydia being punished is true and already I’m regretting my reaction. Because it’s exactly what she wanted to see. This entire situation just changed in the worst way. It’s not just about me anymore. I should’ve known this before I crawled out that window. Javier and Izel knew how close Lydia and I became in her short time there.

A large part of me wants to give up and go back, but now with the American controlling the situation, that’s no longer in the cards.

“Stop talking and tie her hands behind her,” the American says from behind.

“Fine. Go ahead. Do what you want with her,” I say to Izel as I walk around behind her chair. “I got out. She didn’t. It’s sad, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not going back to that place, not even for her.” I hope she believes me, that I don’t care what happens to Lydia, so maybe they won’t use her against me.

“I said stop talking.”

The unnatural frustration in the American’s tone, though restrained, is enough to get both of our attention. Izel and I look over at him at the same time.

I do exactly as he says, fearing he might just shoot me in the leg next, and I crouch behind Izel and start tying her wrists together. The American watches Izel seemingly without blinking, waiting for her to slip up and give him more reason to shoot her. I bind her wrists good, wrapping the semi-stretchy rope three times, tying it into a knot each round. Once the rope pinches her skin, Izel tosses her head to the side in an attempt to see me, her teeth gritting in anger. “Watch it,” she snaps and her long black hair falls to one side around her face. I tie the last knot even tighter, just because I can. If looks could kill, I’d be dead ten times over.

“Now step away from her,” the American instructs.

He stands from the bed and slides his elongated suitcase out from underneath it.

I step away and with the backward tilt of his head I continue to follow his instructions and make my way over next to him. He takes my wrist in one hand and his suitcase in the other and walks me toward the door. He only lets go of my wrist long enough to pick his bag up from the table and shoulder it.

He leaves his long black coat. Surely he sees it, but I get the feeling he’s leaving it draped over the back of the chair on purpose.

“I’ll kill you if you leave me here like this,” Izel growls through gritted teeth, but her threat comes out thickly with desperation. She begins to struggle in the chair, trying to work her hands free. “Don’t leave me like this! How can I tell Javier what you want if I’m stuck in this room?”

Sunlight fills the room when the American opens the door with two fingers from the hand holding the suitcase.

“You’ll get yourself free in time,” he says and steps out the door with me at his side. “Inform Javier that I will be in touch and not to lose or discard the cell phone number that I last called him on.” He pulls the door shut with the same two fingers and I hear Izel’s livid voice screaming curses at us from inside as we leave her there.

He guides me around to the front passenger’s seat and closes the door behind me once I’m inside. The trunk pops open and he hides his suitcase and black duffle bag away inside of it.

I hear four muffled shots outside the car as he takes out two tires on each of the trucks parked out front.

He shuts the driver’s side door and looks over at me.

“Put on your seatbelt,” he says and looks away from my eyes, turning the key in the ignition.

The car hums to life as I click my seatbelt in place quickly.

“You shoot women,” I say quietly.

He backs out of the dirt-covered space in front of the odd roadside motel, which really looks more like a five-room shack.

The American presses his foot on the brake and looks over at me again. “Flesh wounds,” he says and shifts the car into Drive. “She’ll live. And that one was hardly a woman.” He pulls away, the sleek black car stirring up a cloud of dirt behind us.

He’s right in that aspect. Izel is a woman, but she doesn’t deserve to be treated like one and it’s her own fault.

As we’re speeding down the dusty highway and away from the motel, the American reaches into the console between us and retrieves a small black cell phone. Running his finger over the screen, the speakerphone comes on and suddenly Izel’s voice fills the car. I’m confused by it at first but soon understand that, if I’m right, there was a reason he left his long coat in the room, after all.

I listen to Izel’s voice stream through the tiny speaker:



“He’s gone! Get up and untie me! Hurry!”

A rustling sound muffles her voice and then other strange, unidentifiable noises.

“Get me out of these ropes!”



One of the men was left alive?

I glance over at the American whose eyes remain fixed on the road out ahead, but his ears are fully open to the voices in his hand. He knew. He knew all along that one of them lay there pretending to be dead. I shudder to think I walked over his body, or around it, so close he could’ve grabbed me by the ankle and took me down with him.

More shuffling and cracking noises funnel through the speakerphone. I hear Izel tell the man to give her a phone and seconds later she’s speaking to Javier:



“Sí, Javier. He took her. He killed them. No.”



She becomes quiet as Javier, I know without having to hear him, threatens her on the other end of the phone.



“Sí,” she says gravelly as if forcing herself to agree though it takes everything in her to do so.



Then I hear a loud shot and shortly after a thump! and I can only assume that she just killed the man who helped her, likely out of anger for whatever Javier said.

Everything becomes quiet now. Maybe Izel left the room. Several seconds pass and still nothing, only the low static hum of the speakerphone itself. The American, although not famous for facial expressions, seems disappointed. He hangs the phone up, rolls the window down beside him and tosses it onto the highway. Then he makes a sharp U-turn and drives in the opposite direction.

“I take it you didn’t hear what you wanted to?” I ask carefully.

His right hand drops from the steering wheel and rests along the top of his leg.

“No,” he answers.

“You still doubt what I told you,” I say.

In my peripheral vision, I see him turn his head slightly to look at me. I’m not comfortable enough with him to meet his eyes when he instigates it. I never will be.

But he doesn’t answer.

A minute later, I say, “I’m not a whore. She was only trying to get to you in case you have any pity for me.”

Maybe I’m insulting his intelligence, just like Izel had at one point, but this is my way of defending myself from her accusation. I want him to know. And I don’t want him to think that way of me.

I go on, finally looking at him now that his eyes are back on the road again.

“But you never had any pity for me to begin with.”

Again, my attempt to engage him in conversation seems to go unnoticed and I give up and lay my head against the car window.

“I know you’re not a whore,” he says.