It is exactly what I predicted she’d say.

I sigh and lean against the counter, crossing my arms. She pulls a large square of gauze from a packet to prepare it next.

I look right at her, hoping I can say what I’m about to say without turning her against me. I won’t leave Sarai alone with her if she thinks I chose Safe House Nine over her because of something as absurd as her age. Samantha is a killer. And a woman who feels scorned who is also a killer is a fatal combination.

“I chose Nine because she was a whore and proud of it,” I say, laying the truth out the way it needs to be, to make her understand. “I couldn’t use you like she let me use her. Because you were and still are my friend. I hope you understand.”

She laughs lightly. “You don’t have any friends, Victor.”

Her gaze skirts me as she places the gauze over the wound and presses two strips of dressing tape along its edges. Then she raises up the rest of the way and looks at me with thoughtful green eyes. I feel the same thing in her eyes that I always felt when I came here, when I slept with her. She might have been someone who could fall in love with me, if I had let it go that far. She started getting too close and I couldn’t let that happen. She had always been kind to me. She was different from the others who were more like myself and are only interested in sex. Because anything more is not only reckless and dangerous and foolish, but is completely unacceptable.

“Who do you think you’re fooling, Victor?” she asks with a playful, yet inoffensive smile.

I pull the towel the rest of the way back over my hips, tucking it in on itself at the waist.

“What do you mean?” I ask, looking upon her curiously.

Samantha starts clearing the countertop of the bandage leftovers and rinsing the blood and iodine down the sink with a burst of water.

“That girl down the hall,” she says. “Izabel. Of course we both know that’s not her real name, but regardless, what the hell are you doing with her?” She drops a handful of bloody tissues into the wastebasket beside the toilet.

“I told you,” I say. “I’m just using her until I eliminate my target. After that, she’s on her own.”

I never could completely fool Samantha, but what strikes me the most about right now is that she appears to know more about what’s going on with me than even I do. And I’m not fond of that idea.

I glance toward the bathroom door several feet away, wondering if Sarai is still hiding there, listening to everything between us. I know she is. I can feel it. But Samantha needs to stop. Right now. Because I can’t have her filling Sarai’s head with things that might cause her confusion. The girl is confused enough as it is.

“I need to get dressed,” I say, hoping to deter her from the topic. I reach for my clean boxer-briefs hanging nearby, but Samantha steps around in front of me.

She crosses her arms and the smile she wore before has been replaced by determination.

“You can’t do this. You know that.”

I reach around her and grab my boxers anyway, letting the towel drop to the floor and stepping into them.

“Victor,” she persists, “you can’t be the hero. Not for her or for anyone else. You know this. What you’re doing, what you’re feeling is only going to get you killed.”

I pull my thumbs from the elastic, letting it snap against my h*ps and shut Samantha up with the hard look in my eyes.

“You’re way off the mark, Sam,” I say, glaring at her. “You think you see something in me for her because it’s what you’re used to believing you saw in me for you.” Instantly, I regret my words.

Samantha glares at me coldly, her fingers pressing aggressively into her biceps. “What are you saying? That it’s what you think I—.” She can’t look at me anymore and her eyes stray toward the shower. Because she knows I’m right. I shouldn’t have said it, but she can’t deny the truth.

Finally she looks at me again, hurt and admission on her features. “You’re right,” she says. “I have always thought of you in that way. I read into things between us wrong and saw things that weren’t there.”

I keep silent to let her finish, but it seems that she has.

“I truly am sorry for anything I have done to you,” I say and mean it with everything in me.

She shakes her graying blonde head. “No, Victor, you did everything right. You saw that I was developing feelings for you before I knew it myself and you did the right thing.”

I cup my hands underneath her elbows and she relaxes a little.

“I hope that—.”

Uncrossing her arms, my hands fall away.

“Victor,” she says, putting up both of her hands between us, “please don’t apologize for not having the same feelings for me that I was having for you. That’s not something you can control, I know. And I hope that you’ll believe me when I say that you can always trust me. You’re the one person in the Order that I trust and can truly call…my friend.”

“I thought you said I didn’t have any friends?” I smile faintly.

Relaxing one arm back against her chest, she pats my shoulder with the other.

“OK, maybe you just have me,” she says, smiling back at me. But then she becomes serious again. “And because I’m your only friend, you have to trust me, listen to me when I tell you that what you’re doing with this girl is going to get you exiled, or killed, or both.”

I start buttoning my shirt.

I had hoped she would drop it altogether, especially if Sarai is still listening in from the other room, though I get the strangest feeling that she’s not and that relaxes my mind somewhat.

“I’m not doing anything with her other than keeping her safe until this is all over,” I insist. “She deserves a shot a normal life after what she’s been through and I decided at some point to try and give that to her.”

I slip into my black slacks, tucking in my shirt. Samantha pulls my tie from the hanger on the wall and drapes it around the back of my neck.

She sighs. “OK,” she says, surrendering. “But tell me, and be honest with yourself before you answer…,” she hesitates, her fingers paused around the tie. I nod. “Since she’s been with you, can you tell yourself that she’s going to be any different than you were years after you were taken by the Order?”

Her question quietly shocks me. I had not expected it at all.

“Even I see it, Victor, and I’ve only spent an afternoon with her so I know you see it, too.”

I know now what she’s referring to, but I’m still too taken aback by the revelation to comment. Samantha detects this, my need to hear more of what I already know to be true from someone else’s lips rather than just my own. Subconsciously needing the validation.

“I know you can’t tell me anything about where she came from, who she’s running from or how long she was with those she’s running from, but judging by what I see in her now I can tell two things.” She straightens my finished tie and lets one hand drop to her side, the other briefly holds up two fingers. “One,” she drops one finger, “she’s already so anesthetized to what is normal that she might never live a normal life. She knew I was testing her food for her because you were making sure it wasn’t poisoned, but it didn’t faze her. She sat at that table with us, scarfing down that lunch like we were a simple family of three sharing an afternoon meal in the suburbs.”

She leans against the counter, crossing her arms over her chest.

“And two,” she goes on, “for her to be that way I know she had to have been a prisoner, sex slave or no-telling-what for several years, no less than five. And at her young age—what is she twenty-three, twenty-four? (She gestures her hands around in front of her briefly)—that means she had to have been fairly young when she was taken. Like you. And we both know that the younger one is, the easier it is to mold them into whoever or whatever you want them to be. Also like you.”

Every word that Samantha spoke is true and I know it. I know it better than anyone.

I slip my suit vest on over my shirt and tie and button all four buttons.

“She’s in the fifty-fifty zone,” I say. “She can go either way with an equal shot at both. And she’s strong enough. And intelligent.” Lastly, I put on my suit jacket. “I’m just giving her her one and only shot. Which direction she chooses to take it will be her decision. And I won’t be there to see it. She’ll be on her own then.”

Samantha cocks her head to one side. She probably doesn’t fully believe me, but she has finally exhausted her warnings.

She comes up to me, the same sweetly seductive smile she always wore minutes before I’d have my way with her in the past. She stops directly in front of me and her fingers dance upward along the fabric of my jacket. She rests her hands on both sides of my neck, brushing lightly against my skin.

“One last kiss,” she says looking into my eyes, “for old time’s sake. I just want to feel young again, like I always felt when you’d visit me.”

I bring my hands up and cradle her face within them, kissing her forehead slowly first. “It was never about you being older than me, Sam. You’re still as sexy today as you were to me ten years ago.” And then I touch my lips to hers, dragging the tip of my tongue softly across her bottom lip and into her mouth.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Sarai

They’ve been in the bathroom for a really long time. But it’s none of my business what they do. I left the room right before Samantha started stitching Victor up, resolved to come to my senses and let it go. I feel like I should’ve stayed to hear the things they talked about at least, since I’m pretty sure some of it was about me and I have a right to know, but it was too intrusive. And I admit, I didn’t want to see them together.

Despite feeling some jealousy for Victor, which I realize is only natural given the extraordinary situation I’ve been thrust into with him, I know that he could never be interested in someone like me, or in anyone at all, really.

Except Samantha and others like her, I suppose.

Regardless of their age difference, I know they’ve been intimate before. I heard her say it right before I left the room and I like to think I’m smart enough to put together the rest of the picture on my own, knowing what little I do know. Whatever their past relationship I feel like even though she’s attractive and obviously a kind and smart woman, those probably weren’t the things that brought him here. And it wasn’t just the sex, either. It was that Samantha knew all along that sex was all it would ever be.

I’m no expert, but it’s just what I believe in my heart. Samantha is like him, maybe not exactly in what roles they play in their secretive world of crime and danger and death, but she knows he’s too disciplined and unemotional to become involved.

Victor could probably never trust himself with anyone on the ‘outside’. And when it comes to comparing me with them, I am the epitome of the outside.

I stare off toward the curtain-covered window in the spare room where Victor left me earlier. It’s pitch black outside even though it’s not even nine o’clock yet. I lay on my side on the bed, one arm bent beneath my head underneath my pillow. My feet are cold, but I don’t care to get up and break apart a pair of socks from the package Victor bought me, so I press my feet together at the ankles and slide them underneath the blanket.