Killing Sarai

“Open it,” he instructs.

As I’m doing that, Victor turns back to him.

“The death will be ruled as a suicide,” Victor says and I’m growing even more confused. “She left a note signed by her hand. All you have to do is wait one hour after we leave to call it in.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Arthur Hamburg snaps, despite a gun being pointed at him.

I can’t decide who to look at more, the sick man on the floor or the poor woman lying on the cot.

Suddenly she looks up at me with sad, weak, tormented eyes and a chill runs through my body.

“Victor we have to help her.” I start to move toward her.

“No,” Victor says. “Leave her be.”

“But—”

“Remove the contents of the envelope,” he interrupts.

I take out a folded piece of paper first, trying to grasp the feel of it through the tight rubber gloves sealed to my hands.

“Read it,” he says.

Carefully, I unfold it and look down into the pretty handwriting in a blue ink flourish. And as I begin to read the letter aloud, I start to feel queasy and my heart hurts.

My Dearest Husband,

I can’t do this with you anymore. I’ve shamed my family, our children, we’ve shamed ourselves, Arthur. I don’t love you anymore. I don’t love myself. I don’t love anyone because I can’t. I haven’t been able to feel a valid emotion in twelve years of the thirty I’ve been married to you for. I can’t live like this anymore. So many times I wanted to seek help, maybe get on medication. I don’t know, but after so long, after years of wanting to get help I started not to care.

I am so sorry that you had to see me this way. I’m so sorry that I couldn’t come to you for help. But I didn’t want help. I just wanted it to end.

And that’s what I’m doing.

I’m ending it.

Goodbye, Arthur.

Sincerely,

Mary

The man can’t take his eyes off his wife. His flabby chin vibrates as he tries to hold in his tears. But I still don’t feel a shred of remorse for him. Not only because I’m still struggling to figure out why this has happened, but because I know he’s a sick man and doesn’t deserve remorse.

“Why are you here?” he asks, his husky voice shuddering.

Victor looks to me. “Give me the SD card,” he says.

I pull the tiny square card from the corner of the bottom of the envelope and place it into Victor’s free hand. He holds it up to Arthur Hamburg wedged between his thumb and index finger.

“All of the information on this card has already been transferred to my employer. The names on your extensive client list, the locations of your underground operations, the video evidence that your dear wife recorded that you knew nothing about. It’s all here.” He throws the SD card onto Arthur Hamburg’s chest. “If anyone comes looking for me or Izabel for the death of your wife and it’s not ruled a suicide, all of that information will be released to the FBI. We are to walk out of here unharmed and as welcomed as we were when we walked through your front doors. Is that understood?”

I’m shaking I’m so confused and nervous and unsure. Unsure of everything.

Arthur Hamburg nods, sweat still dripping from his chin and eyebrows.

The woman reaches out her hand, but then it drops back to her side. Two syringes lay empty near her legs. She’s heavily drugged. My eyes sweep the rest of her, seeing that the bends of her arms and around her ankles are painted by needle marks.

I can’t help it anymore, I rush over to her fully intent in helping her up. But Victor reaches out and grabs me by the arm, stopping me. He looks fiercely into my eyes, the gun still pointing at Arthur Hamburg.

“She is the target,” he says to me, pulling me closer to him. “Go into the room to the nightstand on the side of the bed where the window is. There is another gun in the drawer. Bring it to me.”

I want to say no, that I won’t do it, but the stand I take only goes as far as my mind. I do it because a part of me still trusts Victor as much as the rest of me wants to stop this before it goes too far.

“OK,” I say and run back into the main room. I find the gun right where Victor said it would be and I pick it up nervously by the handle and carry it so carefully back into the hidden room it’s as if I’m terrified it’s going to explode in my hand. Maybe it’s because I know what he’s about to do with it. It feels heavier, deadlier, more ominous than any gun I’ve ever held. Even the one I used to shoot Javier with didn’t feel like this.

I feel my heart beating in the bottoms of my feet.

“Now trade with me,” Victor says.

He’s wearing a pair of black gloves now.

I step up to him, wobbling on my shaking legs, and hand him the gun. I take the other one and make sure to keep it pointed at Arthur Hamburg. I can barely hold it straight. I feel like I did when I hid in Victor’s car, the gun so heavy in my hands that I just wanted to drop it and be free of it.

Victor looks at me, his blue-green eyes intense and faintly empathetic.

“Do you trust me?”

I nod slowly. “Y-yes. I trust you.”

“Plug your ears,” he instructs and I don’t hesitate.

Without another word he walks over to the wife and leans forward, lifting her from the cot into a slouched sitting position. Her body is so weak and disco

Victor positions his body in front of her and shoves the gun underneath her chin and pulls the trigger with her finger. I hear the shot reverberate through the thick-walled room, but my eyes close before I see the blood.

Arthur Hamburg cries out his wife’s name and then slumps over onto the floor, his oversized body trembling with emotion.

Victor stands behind me in a way that makes me think he’s trying to shield my eyes from the gruesome sight of the wife. It’s a quiet gesture that I find unexpected and sheltering.

“You have one hour,” Victor says. “You might want to get your story in order.”

“Fuck you! Fuck you!” Arthur Hamburg shouts, spit spewing from his mouth. He points at us coldly, barely raising his face from the floor an inch. “Fuck you!”

“It never would’ve happened,” Victor adds.

Then he wraps one arm around my shoulder and walks me out of the hidden room, still shielding me from the sight as best he can. I want to break away from him long enough to run back over and kick the disgusting bastard in the stomach with my heels, but I can’t knowing the woman is lying dead just feet away from him. It’s not the bloody sight of her that makes looking at her so chilling—I have seen too much death to be affected in that way—but it’s the terrible feeling of her being i

What has Victor done?

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Victor

I stop Sarai at the doors to the suite and turn her around to face me, my hands on her arms. I shake her. “Listen to me,” I say and she raises her eyes. “You’re still in character when we walk out of here. Act as you did before any of this happened. Do you understand?” I shake her again.

She nods erratically and then takes a deep breath, swallowing the lump in her throat.

We step out into the hall and I turn the lock on the inside of the suite door before closing it. How safely we get out of this mansion and off this property all now lies in the hands of Hamburg. If he decides he wants us dead more than he wants to stay out of prison and lose his entire fortune, then the next five minutes are going to be complicated. I have one weapon, the gun from the briefcase in the closet. Nine bullets are in the chamber. I’m not entirely confident that I can take out the guards who will be shooting at us with only nine bullets. If I were alone and didn’t have Sarai to protect, I could pull it off.