Killing Sarai

58

We oversleep the next morning and are awoken by the housekeeper knocking on the door outside the room. I guess he wasn’t just putting on a show at the Hamburg mansion when he said he always misses an early flight if he doesn’t get enough sleep the night before. Or, maybe it was just my fault. I guess I have thrown him completely out of his normal routines.

Victor gets out of the bed and I can’t help but admire his nak*d form before he gets dressed quickly. He opens the door to tell the housekeeper that we’ll be leaving late and not to come back for at least an hour. I don’t want to go anywhere. After last night, I just want—

“You get ready to go,” he says walking back into the room with me. “I’m going to take you to stay with a lady I know in San Diego. You’ll be safe there until I can get the rest sorted out, get you set up in a place of your own. But right now, I have to make a call to Niklas to let him know about last night. And I’m fairly certain I’ll be making a trip to Germany soon to meet with my employer.”

I just want to talk about last night, or do last night over again right now.

“That doesn’t sound good,” I say as I get out of the bed. I got a bad feeling when he said the part about meeting his employer.

He steps into his shoes and drops his duffle bags on the foot of the bed.

“No, it’s usually not,” he says, rummaging through the bag. “These last two missions have created a lot of questions about me and my ability to carry them out as ordered. I’ll have to report to him face to face to give him a more thorough explanation of what went on and why things happened the way they did.”

“What are you going to tell him about me? Do you think he’ll know I’m still alive?”

He finds a small handful of bullets and starts loading his 9MM.

“I’ll figure that out on the way.”

That too, gives me a bad feeling.

“OK, so who’s this lady in San Diego?” I look at him now with a wary eye. “She’s not someone you—”

“No,” he says, hiding the gun in the back of his pants. “She has nothing to do with my Order and doesn’t know anything about what I do. She’s just a friend. Met her and her husband on a mission five years ago. It’s a long story, but no, it’s nothing like that.”

“What about her husband?”

He looks up at me once.

“He’s not there anymore,” he says.

“Why not? Did he die? Are they elderly?”

I can’t help but ask all these questions; I want to know as much as I can about the place he’s going to take me.

Victor pauses and then says, “Yes, he’s dead. He was my target.”

“Oh….”

I don’t feel so confident anymore about going there.

“You’ll be fine,” Victor says, noticing the worry on my face. “She doesn’t know that it was me.”

He walks over to me, placing his hands on my shoulders. “I’m going to go downstairs to the front desk and get the room squared away and call Niklas.” He leans in and kisses my forehead. “Take your time. I’ll be back in a few and then we’ll leave.”

I nod, looking into his eyes. “OK.”

Victor leaves the room and I grab a more casual dress this time and a clean pair of panties and head for the shower.

Victor

Niklas is angry with me. I can hear it in his voice though he’s trying hard not to be too obvious, which in itself is out of character for him.