I used to know what was right and what was wrong. I may not always have reacted to a situation appropriately, but I always knew, and was prepared to face the consequences of whatever decision I made. But right now, in this moment as I watch Victor get farther away and disappear at the end of the hall, I…don’t know anything anymore. Except that I love him.
Pressing my back against the wall, I slide down and sit on the floor with my knees drawn up. And I stare at the door in front of me where just on the other side of it is a woman…a single person, a living, breathing weapon, who came in here and managed to turn all of our lives upside-down. And I think of Niklas and I want nothing more than to go find him and talk to him and try make things right. And I think of Fredrik, a man so cold and dark and…could he truly be lost forever? I don’t want to believe it. I want him to be OK…but I think I know that he will never be. And I think of Dorian sitting in that cell, and I can’t help but believe that he is not our enemy, but the proof is more than my need to believe. And Victor is not known for being a forgiving man.
And I think of Javier…I think of the child we had together and I wonder where he or she is right now. What is her name? Is he happy with the family he was sold to?
Being a killer is hard. It’s hard not just because of the obvious, but because in living this kind of life, you don’t just kill criminals and enemies and targets…you also kill everything and everyone you love.
I’m beginning to think Fredrik is the sanest one of us all…
19
Izabel
I run right into Dina’s arms when James walks into the building with her.
“Dina! I’m so happy you’re OK.” My arms engulf her.
She kisses my head and my cheeks and for a moment I feel like a little girl again. An innocent little girl happy to see her mother, who was never a sex slave and who has never killed anyone.
“I’m good, I’m good, baby,” she says, hugging me tight.
She’s wearing a light pink blouse tucked into a pair of tan slacks. Her gray-blonde hair is done up in a wave of loose curls that fall around her aging face where even more wrinkles than from when I saw her last are set around her eyes.
I take a step back with her hands clasped in mine and I look her over.
“You look…fine,” I say, having expected—and feared—to see her covered with bruises and blood, maybe a few broken bones.
“Well, of course I do,” she says as if I should already know she was fine the whole time.
I glance over at James standing behind her with a look of deep question on my face.
Victor enters the meeting room behind them.
“What’s going on?” I ask, looking to Victor and then back at James.
“Well,” James begins, “seems like Nora never hurt any of them. With Mrs. Gregory—”
“Oh, please call me Dina,” Dina cuts in, “that proper stuff makes me feel old.”
I smile to myself.
James smiles likewise and nods. “Nora told Dina that she was sent by you and Victor to take her to safety.”
“Oh but I didn’t believe her right away,” Dina says, shaking her graying head. “I knew better than that and when she killed that nice man that watched me a lot from the street, I was scared. I thought she was going to kill me next.”
I look back and forth between Dina and Victor, anxiously waiting for the rest of the story.
“Needless to say,” Dina goes on, “that woman put on some show I guess, because next thing I knew she was telling me to ‘get down!’ and she was lookin’ out the windows and I was really afraid there were other men there to kill me. She told me that man on the floor she killed was a traitor, or—I think she used some fancy movie word like conspirator or infiltrator”—I want to tell her to skip all that stuff, but I don’t have the heart—“or somethin’ like that—anyway, she had me believing her, that’s for sure. She took me out of that house and set me up real nice in another one and told me not to leave or go outside or make any phone calls. She took my cellular phone. Said it was for my own good. But I had everything I needed.” She combs her long, weathered fingers through the length of my hair. “And I didn’t want to put you in danger so I stayed put like I was told and waited.”
“She didn’t hurt you at all?”
I’m baffled by this. Completely baffled.
Dina shakes her head. “No,” she says, “she was real kind. So imagine my surprise when Mr. Woodard here told me she was going to kill me. I just couldn’t believe it.”
Victor and I glance briefly at each other.
“I suppose Tessa got fed the same story?” I ask.
“No,” James says. “Well, in a way. After Nora convinced Tessa she wasn’t there to hurt her, and after Tessa unknowingly gave Nora the ammunition she needed against Dorian—just like she told Dorian she did—Tessa believed Nora was U.S. Intelligence and so she cooperated.”
“So Tessa wasn’t hurt either?” I ask.
“Nope,” James answers.
“Where is she now?”