Killing Sarai (30 page)

That was six months ago.

Today life is very different. The bank account Victor set up for me had two million dollars in it. When I got on the plane with Mrs. Gregory four days after Victor left, only then did I find the strength to look at the other documents he left inside the box. One was my bank account information and on the back, scrawled in Victor’s handwriting:

Your profit for executing the job.

Sincerely,

Victor

He gave me his portion of the money
Guzmán paid to have Javier killed. I guess it’s only fair since I’m technically the one who killed him.

But
life is definitely different. I’m living back in Arizona with Mrs. Gregory. Over i
n
Lake Havasu City. And I have enough money that I don’t have to work, but to keep my mind busy and try to conform to this life of normalcy I work nights at a convenience store. Mrs. Gregory doesn’t like it. It scares her. She says it’s dangerous working in places like that which are open at all hours of the night.

She happened to be right.

I was robbed my second week there, but as the guy stood on the other side of the counter pointing that gun at me, all I could do was watch his eyes. When he glanced down at the money I put into his view, I smacked the gun aside, managed to grapple it from his hand and then I hit him in the face with it. It was stupid, really. But it was instinct. I’m not much intimidated by low-life meth-heads that rob young women in convenience stores.

That’s child’s play.

But I’m definitely not some kind of reformed badass created by my extraordinary experiences, either. Just ask the spider that crawled on me the other night while I was reading a book in bed. Mrs. Gregory about had a heart attack I screamed so loud.

I went to school to obtain my GED and passed the test two months ago. It wasn’t very hard for me, although I struggled with the math. Now I’m enrolled in community college taking Computer Science, though I don’t know why. I really have no interest in it out in the ‘real world’, but…well, normalcy. That’s my excuse for everything these days, for hanging out with my new friends, to pretending to be interested in their life goals. It makes me feel like an awful person that I have to pretend these things at all, but I can’t force myself to like something just because I should.

But not everything is so unbearable. I love Mrs. Gregory and I spend most of my time with her. She has arthritis so bad that her fingers are gnarled and she can’t play the piano much anymore, but she still teaches me and I still play, sometimes for hours until my fingers are cramped and my back is stiff. I finally mastered
Moonlight Sonata
. And each time I play it I think of Victor and the night he sat with me at the piano.

Mrs. Gregory’s health is getting worse. I take care of her, but I know she won’t be around forever and that one day I’m going to be alone again. I like to think that maybe Victor is still out there watching over me and sometimes I trick my mind into believing that he is. But the reality is that I don’t even know if he’s still alive. I try not to think about that, but it ends up being all that
I
ever
think about except when I’m lost in the piano.

I miss him. I miss him so much. Some people believe that when two people separate that over time they heal. They start to find interest in other people. They go on with their lives. But that hasn’t been the case with me at all. I feel a deeper void now than the one I felt when I lived at the compound. This is more painful, more unbearable. I miss everything about Victor. And I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t think about him sexually on a daily basis. Because I do. I think I’m addicted to him.

It has been so hard for me to adjust to just about everything, but in the grand scheme of things, six months isn’t a very long time. Not compared to the nine years I was at the compound. So, I’m hopeful that by the time another six months rolls around, I’ll be better. I’ll be ‘normal’. My friends, although I can’t tell them about my life—and I think that’s why I’ve had such a difficult time getting close to them—are really great. Dahlia is a year older than me. Average beauty. Average intelligence. Average car. Average job. We are alike in the ways of average, but we couldn’t be more different when it comes to everything else. Dahlia doesn’t jump at any sound that remotely resembles a gunshot. I do. Dahlia doesn’t look over her shoulder everywhere she goes. I do. Dahlia wants to get married and have a family. I don’t. Dahlia has never killed anyone. I would do it again.

But I’m grateful no matter how often I dream of being somewhere else. Of being
someone
else. I’m grateful because I got away. I’m grateful because I’m home. Though ‘grateful’ is very different from ‘satisfied’ and despite finally having a normal life that a lot of people would love to have, I’m as far away from being satisfied as I can be.

Victor Faust did much more than help me escape a life of abuse and servitude. He changed me. He changed the landscape of my dreams, the dreams I had every day about living ordinarily and free and on my own. He changed the colors on the
palette from primary to rainbow—as dark as the colors of that rainbow may be—and not a day goes by that I don’t think about him or about the life I could’ve had with him. Although dangerous and ultimately short, it’s what I want. Because it would’ve been a life that better suited me and, well, it would’ve been a life with Victor.

I’m just not ready to let him go….

“There you are,” Mrs. Gregory says from the doorway of my room. “Are you going to come and eat?”

I blink back into reality.

“Oh yeah, I’ll be there in a second. I need to wash my hands real quick.”

“Alright,” she says; her smile bright.

I truly am the daughter she never had. And, I guess it’s safe to say that she’s the mother I never had.

Mrs. Gregory, or Dina, always cooks chili dogs on Friday nights. We sit together at the kitchen table watching the HD television mounted on the wall in the kitchen. The news is on. It’s always on around this time.

“So, have you and Dahlia decided on a place to vacation this summer yet?”

I wash my food down with a swig of soda. I start to answer when something on the news catches my eye. A reporter is standing outside a very familiar mansion talking to a very familiar man.

Absently, I set my fork down on my plate.

“I sure wish I could tag along with you two,” Dina goes on. “But I’m too old for that stuff anymore.”

I’m too engrossed in the television to give her my attention:

“Yes ma’am,” Arthur Hamburg says into the microphone. “Every year I do my best to contribute. This summer I’m planning an event to raise one million for my new charity, The Prevention Project, in honor of my wife.”

The reporter nods and looks faintly remorseful, repositioning the microphone in front of him.

“And is that drug or suicide prevention?”

“Drug prevention,” Arthur Hamburg says. “In my heart my Mary didn’t commit suicide. The drug addiction is what killed her. I want to do my part in helping others who are addicted to drugs and also to help prevent drug abuse before it starts. It is such a terrible disease in this country.”

So is lying and sexual violence and murder, you bastard.

“Yes, it is, Mr. Hamburg,” the reporter says. “And speaking of disease, I understand that you’ve also been giving money to cancer research because of
—”

“I have,” Arthur Hamburg cuts her off. “I still feel awful about lying to everyone about my wife’s disease and I doubt I’ll ever feel as though I’ve apologized enough for it. But as I’ve said before, I was only protecting her. People can accept cancer, but they’re not so accepting of drug use and I did what I had to do
to protect my wife. But yes, I feel it’s only right that I also give to cancer research.”

You are such a piece of shit.

I grit my teeth.

“Sarai?” Dina says from the other side of the table. “Did you decide on Florida or New York?”

The rest of Arthur Hamburg’s words fade into the back of my mind. I think about Dina’s question for a long time, staring right through her.

I look at her finally and pick up my fork and answer, “No, actually I think we’ll be taking a trip to Los Angeles this summer.” I cut a piece of hot dog from the bun on my plate and scoop it up with some chili and take a bite.

“Los Angeles?” Dina says inquisitively and
then taking a bite of her own. “Going to do the Hollywood thing, huh?”

“Yeah,” I say distantly. “It’s going to be great.”

I have unfinished business there.

I smile to myself thinking about it and cover it up with another drink of soda.

Look for the continuation of Victor and Sarai’s story in…

REVIVING

IZABEL

To see more of the characters in KILLING SARAI, visit the author’s Pinterest page:

pinterest.com/jredmerski/KILLING-SARAI/

OTHER BOOKS BY J.A. REDMERSKI
 

***

THE EDGE OF NEVER

THE EDGE OF ALWAYS
(Coming November 2013)
 

DIRTY EDEN

-THE DARKWOODS TRILOGY-

#1 – THE MAYFAIR mOON

#2 – KINDRED

#3 – THE BALLAD OF ARAMEI

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J.A. Redmerski,
New York Times
,
USA Today
and
Wall Street Journal
bestselling author lives in North Little Rock, Arkansas with her three children, two cats and a Maltese. She is a lover of television and books that push boundaries and is a huge fan of AMC's ‘The Walking Dead’.

www.jessicaredmerski.com
www.facebook.com/J.A.Redmerski
www.twitter.com/JRedmerski
www.goodreads.com/JRedmerski

Warning: Spoilers ahead! If you haven’t read THE EDGE OF NEVER, do not continue.

~~~

Read
a sneak peek of the first chapter in J.A. Redmerski’s upcoming sequel to THE EDGE OF NEVER, THE EDGE OF ALWAYS:

THE EDGE OF
ALWAYS

CHAPTER ONE

Andrew

A few months ago, when I was laid up in that hospital bed, I didn’t think I’d be alive today much less be expecting a baby and engaged to an angel with a dirty mouth. But here I am. Here
we
are, Camryn and me, taking on the world…in a different way. Things didn’t quite turn out how we planned them, but then again, things rarely do. And neither of us would change the way they turned out even if we could.

I love this chair. It was my dad’s favorite chair and the one thing he left behind that I wanted. Sure, I inherited a fat check that will set Camryn and me up for a while and of course I got the Chevelle, but the chair was equally sentimental to me. She hates it, but she won’t say so out loud because it was my dad’s. I can’t blame her; it’s old, it stinks and there’s a hole in the cushion from my dad’s cigarette smoking days. I promised her I’d get someone in here to clean it at least. And I will. As soon as she figures out whether we’re going to stay in Galveston or move to North Carolina. I’m fine with either, but something tells me she’s holding back on what she really wants because of me.

I hear the water from the shower shut off and seconds later a loud
bang
vibrates through the wall. I jump up from the chair, letting the remote control hit the floor as I rush toward the bathroom, the edge of the coffee table clipping the shit outta my shin as I pass.

I swing open the bathroom door.

“What happened?”

Camryn shakes her head at me and smiles as she leans over to pick the hair dryer up from the floor beside the toilet.

I breathe a sigh of relief.

“You’re more paranoid than I am,” she laughs.

She glances down at my leg as I rub it with my fingertips. She sets the hair dryer back on the counter and comes up to me kissing the side of my mouth. “Looks like I’m not the one of us who needs to worry about being accident-prone.” She smiles.

My hands cup her shoulders and I pull her closer, letting one hand fall down to touch her little rounded belly. I can barely tell she’s pregnant. At four months I thought she’d at least be emulating a baby hippo, but what do I know about this stuff?

“Maybe so,” I say, trying to hide the red in my face. “You probably did that on purpose just to see how fast I could get in here.”

She kisses the other side of my mouth and then goes in for the kill, kissing me fully and deeply while pressing her wet, naked body against mine. I moan against her mouth, wrapping my arms around her.

But then I pull away before I fall into her devious trap.

“Dammit woman, you’ve gotta stop that.”

She grins back at me.

“You
really
want me to stop?” she asks with that up-to-no-good smile of hers.

It scares the shit out of me when she does that. Once after a conversation laced with that smile, she stopped having sex with me for three whole days. Worst three days of my life.

“Well, no,” I say nervously. “I just mean right now. We have exactly thirty minutes before we have to be at the doctor’s office.”

I just hope she’s this horny throughout her entire pregnancy. I’ve heard horror stories about how some women go from wanting it all the time until they get really big and then if you touch them they turn into fire-breathing banshees.

Thirty minutes. Damn. I could bend her over the counter real quick….

Camryn smiles sweetly and jerks the towel from the shower curtain rod and starts drying off. “I’ll be ready in ten,” she says as she waves me out. “Don’t forget to water Georgia. Did you find your phone?”

“Not yet,” I say as I start to ease my way out the door but stop and add with a sexually suggestive grin, “Ummm, we could—”

She shuts the door in my face. I just walk off laughing.

I rush around the apartment, searching under cushions and in odd places for my keys and finally find them hiding underneath a stack of junk mail on the kitchen counter. I stop for a moment and take a particular piece of mail into my fingers. Camryn won’t let me throw it away because it was the one she looked at when giving the nine-one-one operator my address the morning I had that seizure in front of her. I guess she feels like that piece of paper helped save my life, but really what it did was help her eventually understand what was going on with me. The seizure was harmless. I’ve had several. Hell, I had one when we were staying in the hotel in New Orleans before we started sharing a room. When I finally told her about that later, needless to say, she was not happy with me.

She worries all the time that the tumor will come back. I think she worries about it more than I do.

If it does, it does. We’ll get through it together. We’ll always get through everything together.

“Time to go, babe!” I yell from the living room.

She comes out of our room dressed in a rather tight pair of jeans and an equally tight t-shirt. And heels.
Really
?
Heels
?

“You’re going to squeeze her little head in those jeans,” I say.

“No, I’m not going to squeeze her
or his
head,” she counters as she grabs her purse from the couch and shoulders it. “You’re so sure of yourself, but we’ll see.” She takes my hand and I walk her out the door, flipping the lock on the knob before I close it hard behind us.

“I know it’s a girl,” I say confidently.

“Care to wager a bet?” She grins looking over at me.

We step out into the mild November air and I open the car door for her, gesturing inside, palm up. “What kind of bet?” I ask. “You know I’m all for betting.”

Camryn slides onto the seat and I jog around to my side and get in. Resting my wrists on the top of the steering wheel, I look over at her, waiting.

She smiles and chews gently on the inside of her bottom lip in thought for a moment. Her long, blonde hair tumbles down over both shoulders, her blue eyes shining with excitement.

“You’re the one who seems so sure,” she finally says. “So, you name the bet and I’ll either agree to it, or I won’t.” She stops abruptly and points her finger sternly at me. “But nothing sexual. I think you pretty much have that area covered. Think of something…," She whirls her hand around in front of her, "I don’t know…daring or meaningful.”

Hmmm, I’m officially stumped.

I slide the key in the ignition, but pause before turning it.

“OK, if it’s a girl then I get to name her,” I say with a soft, proud smile.

Her eyebrows twitch a little and she turns her chin at an angle. “I don’t like that bet. That’s something both of us should take part in, don’t you think?”

“Well yeah, but don’t you trust me?”

She hesitates. “Yes…I trust you, but—”

“But not with a baby name.” I raise an eyebrow interrogatively at her, but really I’m just messing with her head.

She can’t look me in the eyes anymore and she appears uncomfortable.

“Well?” I urge her.

Camryn crosses her arms and says, “What name did you have in mind, exactly?”

“What makes you think I already have one picked out?”

I turn the key and the Chevelle purrs to life.

She smirks at me, cocking her head to one side. “Oh please. You obviously have one picked out already, or you wouldn’t be so sure it’s a girl and making bets with me when we have an ultrasound to get to.”

I look away grinning and put the car into reverse.

“Lily,” I say and just barely catch Camryn’s eye as we back out of the parking space. “Lily Marybeth Parrish.”

A little smile tugs the corners of her lips.

“I actually like that,” she says, and her smile gets bigger and bigger. “I admit, I was slightly worried—why Lily?”

“No reason. I just like it.”

She doesn’t seem convinced. She playfully narrows her eyes at me.

“I’m serious!” I say, laughing gently. “I’ve been going over names in my head since the day after you told me.”

Camryn’s smile warms and if I wasn’t such a guy, I’d cave to the moment and allow myself to blush like an idiot.

“You’ve been thinking of names all this time?” She seems happily surprised.

OK, so I blush anyway.

“Yeah,” I admit. “Haven’t thought of a good boy name yet, but we’ve got several months to think about it.”

Camryn is just looking at me, beaming. I don’t know what’s going on inside her head, but I realize my face is getting redder the longer she stares at me like that.

“
What?
” I ask and let out a laugh.

She leans across the seat and raises her hand to my face, her fingertips pulling my chin to the side. And then she kisses me.

“God, I love you,” she whispers.

It takes a second to realize I’m grinning so big my face feels stretched out.

“I love you, too, now get your seatbelt on.” I point to it.

She slides back over onto her side and clicks the seatbelt into place.

As we ride toward the doctor’s office we both keep glancing at the clock in the dashboard. Eight more minutes. Five. Three. I think it hits her as hard as it does me when we pull into the parking lot of the building. In no time at all we might meet our son or daughter for the very first time.

Yeah, a few months ago, I didn’t think I’d be alive…

~~~

“The wait is killing me,” Camryn leans over and whispers to me sitting next to her in the waiting room.

This is so strange. Sitting in this doctor’s office with pregnant chicks on all sides of us. I’m kind of scared to make eye contact. Some of them look pissed. All of the magazines for guys seem to have a man on the cover in boat holding up a fish with his thumb in its mouth. I pretend to be reading an article.

“We’ve only been sitting here for about ten minutes,” I whisper back and run the palm of my hand across her thigh, letting the magazine rest on my lap.

“I know, I’m just nervous.”

As I go to take her hand, a nurse in pink scrubs steps out from a side door and calls Camryn’s name and we follow her back.

I sit against the wall while Camryn undresses and then puts on one of those hospital gowns. I tease her about her butt being on display and she pretends to be offended, but the blush gives her away. And we sit here and wait. And wait some more until another nurse comes in and has our full attention. She washes her hands in the nearby sink.

“Did you drink enough water an hour before your appointment?” the nurse asks after the hellos.

“Yes ma’am,” Camryn says.

I can tell she’s afraid something might be wrong with the baby and the ultrasound will show it. I’ve tried to tell her that everything will be fine, but it doesn’t keep her from worrying.

She looks across the room at me and I can’t help but get up and move over to the side of her. The nurse asks a series of questions and snaps on a pair of latex gloves. I help answer the questions that I can because Camryn seems increasingly more worried every second that goes by and she doesn’t talk much. I squeeze her hand, trying to ease her mind.

After the nurse squirts that gel stuff on her belly, Camryn takes a deep breath.

“Wow, that’s some tattoo you’ve got there,” the nurse says. “It must’ve been pretty special to sit through one as large as that on the ribs.”

“Yeah, it’s definitely special,” Camryn says and smiles up at me. “It’s of Orpheus. Andrew has the other half. Eurydice. But it’s a long story.”

I proudly raise my shirt over my ribs to show the nurse my half.

“Stunning,” the nurse says, looking at both of our tattoos in turns. “You don’t see that in here every day.”

The nurse leaves it at that and moves the probe through the gel pointing out the baby’s head and elbow and other various parts. And I feel Camryn’s grip on my hand slowly ease the more the nurse talks and smiles while explaining how ‘everything is lookin’ good’. I watch Camryn’s face go from nervous and stiff to relieved and happy, and it makes me smile.

“So are you sure there’s nothing to worry about?” Camryn asks. “Are you
positive
?”

The nurse nods and glances at me briefly. “Yes. So far I don’t see anything of concern. Development is right where we want it to be. Movement and heartbeat is normal. I think you can relax.”

Camryn looks up at me and I have a feeling we’re thinking the same thing.

She confirms it when the nurse says, “So, I understand you’re curious about the gender?” And the two of us just pause, looking at one another. She’s so damn beautiful. I can’t believe she’s mine. I can’t believe she’s carrying my baby.

“I’ll take that bet,” Camryn finally agrees, catching me off-guard. She smiles brightly and tugs on my hand and we both look at the nurse.