My theory is confirmed when after lunch things between the two of them begin to…change.

“Will you two be sharing a bed?” she asks from the doorway of the spare bedroom.

There is only one bed in here. It’s a question I’ve been asking myself since I walked in.

“If not,” she goes on, glancing at Victor in a way that perhaps she didn’t expect me to notice, “then I can make up a bed for one of you on the couch.”

“That will not be necessary,” Victor answers and I don’t know why, but my heart leaps inside my chest. “I won’t be sleeping.”

Then my heart goes back to normal. Boring, non-fluttering normal.

Samantha looks pleased.

And for some reason, I’m instantly…jealous.

Trying to familiarize myself with this inane, absurd emotion that just infiltrated my head, I force myself to shake it off. I start looking at random objects within the room: the plain-Jane cream-colored bedspread that covers the full-sized bed, the matching dresser and chest of drawers placed against opposite walls, the large oak chest situated at the foot of the bed with a horse carved into the side, the window with equally plain white curtains where a beaded necklace of some sort dangles from one end of the curtain rod.

“Alright then,” she says standing in the doorway with her hands cradled in front of her. “Make yourselves at home. And Victor…,” she glances downward below his waist, “when you’re ready to patch that up, you know where to find me.”

“I’ll be there soon,” Victor says and then she smiles politely at both of us and walks down the hallway, leaving us alone in the room.

“Why are we here exactly?”

Victor opens his gun suitcase on the bed and takes out two sleek black handguns. He puts one underneath the mattress and the other on a small desk in the corner of the room. Then he opens the closet, taking down a new suit after sliding back several others dangling from hangers. Slacks first, then a long-sleeved button-up shirt, lastly, a matching jacket.

“You’re going to stay here,” he says, “until I kill Javier. I’ll be going back to Tucson later tonight, or wherever it is I am told that Javier was last seen and then I’ll find him and I’ll kill him.”

“But why Houston?” I ask, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Wasn’t there a…‘Safe House’ in Arizona somewhere closer? You know, maybe you should’ve used me as bait, after all. I could help you. I mean, it’s likely that whoever is looking for me that one of the first places they’ll check is where I used to live, around people I used to know.” I pause, thinking to myself how glad I am now that Mrs. Gregory no longer lives where she used to.

“You’re right,” he says. “And that’s why it’s likely I’ll be heading right back to Tucson. I’ve seen where you once lived, where the woman you spent most of your time with, once lived. By taking you there last night, you’ve already helped me by showing me precisely where Javier might be found. There’s no need to risk your life anymore by keeping you there.”

“So then you did have another agenda by taking me home,” I say, feeling very small right now. “You just wanted to see the location.”

Victor shakes his head and closes the top drawer on the dresser. He turns to face me and something unfamiliar is evident in his greenish-blue eyes.

A long breath emits from his nostrils.

“I took you home because it’s what you wanted,” he says and goes to the door with all of his clothes draped carefully over one arm.

“Even though you knew they’d go back there looking for me?”

He stops at the door with his back to me, his fingers placed on the knob ready to open it. His head tilts back some and his shoulders fall.

Instantly, I feel like I’ve offended him.

“I’ll use the shower in Samantha’s room,” he says and it stings. “You should get cleaned up, change into your new clothes.”

And then he walks out, leaving me in here all alone.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Instead of a shower, I soak in a long, hot bath. My muscles ache something awful and it wasn’t long after I slipped into the water that I started feeling the tiny scrapes and cuts all over my body that I hadn’t realized were there before. I’m just surprised I don’t have a gunshot wound to go with them.

By the time I get out, I’m cleaner than I feel like I’ve ever been now that I have new clothes to put on and that I’ve gotten to shave. Victor had told me back at the department store that I could pick whatever I wanted and that it didn’t matter how much it cost, just that I needed to be quick about it. I chose the most unfashionable, casual thing I could find. Because I don’t care about fashion and honestly can’t remember the last time that something like that mattered.

After I’m dressed I pull my wet hair up into a ponytail and then rummage through the things left out on the bathroom sink. Deodorant, toothpaste and toothbrush, various bottles of lotion and other random creams of sorts are lined neatly against the mirror. Everything is new and there’s no telling how long it’s all been sitting here waiting for a guest like me to come along and put it to use. And I definitely put it to use, starting with the deodorant first, a luxury that I rarely had at the compound. Javier, for the most part, made sure that I had necessities and nice things, but he left the shopping up to Izel and since she despised me immensely, she made it a point to go out of her way to buy the cheapest, most useless stuff that she could find. When it came to deodorant, the best I ever got was some strange brand of liquid roll-on that left red, inflamed spots underneath my armpits.

I brush my teeth and even use dental floss for the first time in years and then I find myself standing blankly in front of the mirror. I don’t see myself really, but I think about Victor and what he’s doing in Samantha’s room. Explicit pictures of him f**king her spring up in my mind and it upsets me more than I want to admit to myself.

I can’t really be attracted to a man like him, can I? A man who has killed no telling how many people. It doesn’t matter that I feel safe with him, or that I trust him; the truth is that he is what he is and I’d be stupid to ever think he wouldn’t kill me if he found it in any way necessary.

But I am attracted to him. I do have strange, unfamiliar feelings for him.

And I hate it!

I shake my head angrily at myself, finally taking notice of my own reflection. The area around the outside of my right eye is yellowed by a bruise. My lips are dried and chapped. There’s a tiny cut along my left brow bone. I look tired and…used up.

Only the sound of something falling on the floor in another room down the hall snaps me out of my self-loathing.

I crack open the bathroom door first to peer down the hallway. I hear Samantha’s voice, but I can’t make out what she’s saying. Finally leaving the bathroom, I walk quietly down the length of the hall toward her room, tiptoeing across the carpet as carefully as possible. Her door is closed, so I press my ear against the wood and try to listen in, but the moment I touch it, it creaks open a little and my heart falls into my stomach. I shut my eyes tight and hold my breath until I know that I didn’t just give myself away.

I shouldn’t be doing this, I think to myself, but I just can’t help it.

I peer inside the dimly-lit room. A television is on, but has been turned down really low or muted, the glow from it providing the room with most of its light. I see Victor’s bloody shirt and the rest of his suit hanging partially over the side of a laundry basket pressed against the wall near the master bathroom. That door is cracked open, too.

Pushing the bedroom door open a little more, just enough for me to squeeze through, I walk inside Samantha’s room. And every step I take makes me feel that much more violating and uncouth. But I have to know. Because the thought of him with her is torturing me on the inside. Maybe later I’ll try to figure out why. Right now, I just want to know.

I make my way through the room and to the bathroom door, where I wait just outside of it, my heart pounding in my chest, worried they’ll catch me eavesdropping. When after a few seconds pass and Samantha is talking again, I feel safe enough to peek inside to get a better look, only hoping that the partial darkness of the room helps to keep me from being seen.

Victor

I stand with my hands pressed against the counter, a towel wrapped around my lower body after having just showered. I peer into the mirror over the sink, tilting my chin to one side and then the other, feeling like I should probably shave but decide against it. Samantha sits down on the closed toilet seat with a suture needle and thread in one hand, ready to stitch me up.

“Are you going to drop the towel?” she asks. “I can’t very well do this with it in the way. And it’s not like I haven’t seen it before.”

I start to remove the towel just as she says that, but then I notice a sound so faint, like the sound of a sharp breath, that I’m surprised I heard it at all. I glance into the mirror and look behind me at the door seeing nothing but knowing that Sarai is on the other side of it.

“Victor?” Samantha urges me, getting irritated with my slow response.

“No,” I finally answer, turning around so that the side where the wound is, is facing her. I reach down and strategically adjust the towel over the back of my hip so that she can access it, afterwards tying it firmly together on the other side to hold it in place.

“If you insist,” Samantha says and goes right to work.

I feel the needle slide in once and I grit my teeth for a moment until the pain fades.

“You never did tell me why you stopped coming here,” Samantha says.

“It was for the best.”

“Bullshit. It was something I did, or said, or maybe it was something I didn’t do. I just want to know. No hard feelings. No awkwardness. Just answer the question that’s been bugging the shit out of me for ten years. I deserve that much.”

After the second pass of the needle through my skin, I no longer feel it.

“I respected you,” I say. “It didn’t feel it right to use you anymore.”

“Honey, you know better than that.” She smiles up at me briefly. “I didn’t mind; hell, I enjoyed it.”

“But I did mind.”

Samantha pushes the needle through again, always carefully. Then she shakes her head. “I wonder how you manage to pull off this job with that conscience of yours. I think you’re the only one with a conscience who can.”

“Well, it was nothing you did or didn’t do,” I say, skipping over her comment entirely. “So, I hope I’ve answered the question enough to satisfy you.”

“Stop being so technical with me, Victor. You know I hate it.”

She stands up from the toilet seat and reaches for the iodine, spilling a small amount onto a wash cloth. She dabs it all over and around the stitched bullet wound.

“I hear you started staying at Safe House Nine over in Dallas when you came through these parts,” she goes on and I can predict where she’s going with the rest of it. “Is it because that one was younger than me? I mean, it’s perfectly fine. I am getting up in the years, I admit.”