Victor walks into the room. He leaves the door open to let the light from the hallway filter inside instead of flipping on the switch. I get the feeling he thought at first I might’ve been asleep.
He’s dressed from head to toe in refined sophistication, more-so than I’ve ever seen him and I can’t help but stare across the room at his dangerous beauty. His tall form moves through the path of light at the door and then is bathed in shadow when he approaches the bed where I lay.
“You’re leaving, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he says and sits down beside me, his back straight, his hands resting along the tops of his legs.
“Are you going to come back?”
It takes him a moment to answer. He keeps his eyes trained on the window out ahead.
“It will probably be best that I didn’t,” he says.
My heart lurches. I swallow.
“When Javier is dead, either Samantha will take you where you need to go, or I’ll send Niklas for you.”
The back of my throat is beginning to burn, the top of my nose, just between my eyes is starting to itch.
I force the tears back.
I don’t want him to go at all, much less never come back. I want to stay with him, though I don’t know why.
“But what if others know?” I remind him, hoping to change his mind without him knowing the real reason why. “What about John Lansen? What about all of the other men I saw? Victor, they might know and maybe Javier won’t be the last to come looking for me.” I really don’t care if they do. That’s not what I’m afraid of. I’m afraid of Victor walking out that door and never seeing him again.
Finally, I manage to sit up, anger twisting my features at first, until I notice it and let them soften.
I cross my legs Indian-style on the bed and reach out to take his wrist, tugging on the sleeve of his jacket. I halfway expected him to retract it from me, but he doesn’t. He rests his hand upon the tops of my crossed ankles and just that simple touch, that single gesture, causes my throat to close up with emotion. I look down at his hand, my fingers shaking nervously against the cuff of his dress shirt.
He didn’t move his hand away…, I keep thinking to myself.
Tears brim my eyelids, but I breathe them back quickly.
“I am sorry, Sarai,” he says looking me in the eyes as his churn with conflict and indecision.
I get the feeling that he doesn’t want to leave me here. I feel it…I know it….
Slowly he stands up from the bed. I sit here, frozen in a chasm of self-defeat and anger and fear. Fear! How can he accuse me of fearing nothing?! I want to shout at him, tell him how wrong he is as he shoulders his bags and takes up the gun suitcase in one hand.
Instead, I wipe the few tears that did manage to fall from my eyes and I say across the room to him softly:
“Victor, you were wrong.”
He turns only his head to look back at me.
“You were wrong when you said I fear nothing. You were so wrong….”
He holds his gaze on me for only a second and then turns and walks away, closing the door and letting the darkness of the room consume me again.
~~~
Samantha left me alone for the next hour and a half. I guess she wanted to give me time to myself because when she did finally come into the room with me minutes ago, I could tell that she felt something for me as I lay curled up on the bed, staring at that window. It makes me wonder what they talked about in her bathroom earlier, makes me regret not staying longer to have found out.
I would hate her for knowing more than me, if she was an easy person to hate.
But I realize I like her too much for that.
“You know, Victor does this stuff all the time, Izabel.” She pats me on the hip with the palm of her hand. She’s sitting in the same spot next to me where Victor last sat.
“He’ll be fine.” She smiles. “And I’m sure he knows you’re grateful to him for helping you.”
“What can you tell me about him?” I ask.
She inhales a deep, concentrated breath and her eyebrows rise with that loaded-question sort of look.
“Well, I’m guessing you know what he does for a living already, so you can probably imagine that I’m sworn to a certain amount of secrecy that if I break could get me in a lot of trouble.”
True, but she’s smiling and really seems kind of itching to talk to me, regardless. It may not turn out to be much, but something is better than nothing, I suppose.
I sit upright, dropping my legs over the side of the bed to sit like her. I rest my hands within my lap.
She smiles over at me in a short glance and reaches out her hand. “Let’s talk about it over a cup of coffee.”
She stands up and I put my hand in hers and accept.
“I swear it’s perfectly poison-free,” she jokes as I follow her out the door and into the hall.
“I believe you.”
I believe her mostly because if Victor trusted her enough to leave me alone with her then that’s enough for me.
And they’re speaking Spanish.
I whirl around to Samantha, tearing my eyes away from the window just in time to see her lifting a small metal door in the floor that had been hidden underneath the chest.
“Get inside! Hurry! Now!”
In that last second, which I don’t even think I really have the time to spare, I reach underneath the mattress and grab the gun that Victor left there, shoving it into the back of my pants. Samantha waves her hand at me to hurry and when I’m close enough she grabs my arm and helps me the rest of the way by practically shoving me down into the hole beneath the floor.
The metal door closes over me, shutting out the only light I had which had been shining thinly through the single bedroom window from the streetlight outside. And then I hear the chest being moved back over the metal door and my heart sinks like a stone at the thought of being trapped down here, regardless of what’s up there.