KILLING SARAI (A NOVEL)

CHAPTER FORTY





Victor





The client is late. Five minutes late, but even one minute by someone who Niklas described as ‘meticulous’ doesn’t sit well with me. Two more minutes and I’m leaving.

I watch people walk by on the street and I study them from the clothes they wear to the way they hold their heads when they talk to those walking alongside them. Are they really just tourists and residents? Or, are they decoys? Spies? I can never be too careful. This could be a setup, like any mission, but ones like this that put a knot of uncertainty in the pit of my stomach—

Wait…

I recall my phone conversation with Niklas earlier:



“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.

“You have plenty of time to get there from the hotel.”



I had plenty of time to get here from the hotel…

I grip the steering wheel with both hands, my mind running a hundred miles per second. How would Niklas have known that? He had no idea where in Los Angeles Sarai and I were staying. He couldn’t have known that I could make it to that address from where I was in that amount of time.

Unless he knew exactly where we were all along.





Sarai





“Niklas…if you kill me, you’ll make an enemy of your brother.” My throat is dry like sandpaper, my lungs heavy. “If everything you’re saying is true, if Victor’s fate is already sealed then what would killing me accomplish?” I raise my voice out of desperation and fear. “It won’t solve anything!”

He doesn’t want to kill me. I don’t know whether it’s because of what I said, about making Victor his enemy, or if he’s just conflicted, but whatever it is it’s the only thing keeping me alive right now.

“Look what you’ve done!” He shoves the gun in the air toward me, his hand gripping the handle so tight his knuckles are white.

He moves forward. I move backward.

“Niklas…please,” I beg him. I don’t want to shoot him. I know he’s more likely to kill me, but I don’t want to shoot him.

Anger flickers through his eyes in an instant and he rounds his chin defiantly, his jaw clenching, his eyes narrow and his nostrils flaring.

Yes, he does want to kill me after all.

The door swings open and I hear a shot just as Niklas turns his head to see Victor storming through the room. And then another suppressed shot zips through the room, but Niklas, already running toward Victor too, manages to keep from getting hit and I hear the bullet move through the air just feet from me and embed inside the wall.

My gun falls from my hand and I fall to my knees. It takes a few seconds for me to realize that I’ve been hit, and once I do, I feel the burning hot pain in my stomach. Warm blood soaks the fabric of my dress. I lay on my side, both hands pressed firmly over the wound.

The table out ahead of me wobbles on its wooden base as Victor and Niklas crash against it. My little jewelry box falls from it and hits the floor, breaking apart the latch and scattering the jewelry about. Victor, on top of Niklas, rains his fists down on him, blow after blow until the table can no longer hold their weight and tumbles over onto its side, sending them both crashing onto the floor with it. The tall lamp that stood over the back of the chair hits the table, the cord ripped from the wall and the light bulb shattering into pieces.

Niklas is on top of Victor now, hitting him repeatedly in the face, but Victor reaches up and grabs Niklas’ throat and lifts him off of him, slamming his back hard against the floor. Victor stands up and kicks Niklas in the face before forcing his way through the room to get his gun.

In seconds, he’s standing over his brother’s surrendering body with the barrel pointed at his face.

“Victor, don’t kill him!” I manage to shout through the pain.

He blinks back into focus having been momentarily lost in a blind rage, and he glances at me.

“Please, don’t kill him,” I repeat in a soft, desperate voice.

“He tried to kill you,” he says, looking at me with a confused expression as though he can’t believe what I’m saying. “He shot you.”

I press my right hand harder over the wound, blood moves in-between all of my fingers. I’m starting to feel faint.

“Victor, he’s your brother. He’s only here because he was trying to protect you.”

He looks back and forth between me and Niklas, both of us lying bloody and helpless on the floor on opposite sides of the room. His face is consumed by conflict and pain and things that I can’t possibly understand because I’ve never had a brother or sister, I don’t know what it feels like to be loved in that way. Maybe Victor never knew either, until now.

I try to lift my head but I’m so weak that my cheek stays pressed against the scruffy carpet.

“Niklas is all that you have, the only family you have left,” I say. “I would do anything to have someone who cares for me as much as he cares for you. Anything.”

The room gets very quiet. I can see Victor’s eyes, clouding over with…I’m not sure. Is he even really looking at me at all? I feel like I can hear Niklas speaking but it sounds muffled and distant in my ears. I see the ceiling now. Just the ceiling. Thousands of minuscule holes open up to me from within the material and I feel like I can see every single one of them as they push down on me from high above. That warmth. What is that warmth I feel all around me like a blanket?

“Sarai?” I hear a voice say, but whose voice it is I can’t tell.

All I see is blackness. I try to lift my eyelids, but they’re too heavy.

I hear the voice again and a shot of pain radiates through my body when I feel like I’m being lifted into the air. I try to cry out, but I don’t think anyone can actually hear my voice.

I try to cry out….