J. Redmerski - Reviving Izabel

My eyes start to burn with tears.

I force them back.

“What were you thinking, Sarai?”

“I—”

Victor grabs my face in both of his hands and shoves my body against the elevator wall, closing his lips fiercely over mine. His tongue tangles with my own, his mouth stealing my breath in a passionate kiss that is what ultimately makes my knees buckle. All of the strength I had been using to keep my body upright before vanishes when his lips touch me. He kisses me hungrily, angrily, and I wilt into his arms.

Then he pulls away, his strong hands wrapped around my biceps as he keeps me pushed against the elevator wall. We stare at each other for what feels like an eternity, our eyes locked in some kind of deep contemplation, our lips inches apart. All I want to do is taste them again.

But he doesn’t let me.

“Answer me,” he demands, the corners of his dangerous eyes narrowing with censure.

I’ve already forgotten the question.

He shakes me. “Why did you come here? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

I shake my head in a short, rapid motion, part of me more concerned with that precarious look in his eyes than what he’s saying.

The elevator door opens on the basement floor and I don’t have time to answer as Victor is once again grasping my hand and pulling me to follow. We weave our way through a large storage room with boxes piled high against the walls and then down a long, dark hallway that leads into an underground parking garage. Victor finally releases my hand and I follow him to a car parked between two black vans with the hotel’s logo on the sides. Two beeps echo through the space and the headlights on the car flash as we approach, illuminating the concrete wall in front of it. Wasting no time, I jump inside the passenger’s seat and shut the door.

Seconds later, Victor is driving casually through the parking garage and out onto the street.

“I wanted him dead,” I finally answer.

Victor doesn’t look over.

“Well, you did an excellent job,” he says with sarcasm.

He turns right at the light and the car picks up speed as we get on the freeway.

Stung by his words, I know he’s right and so I don’t argue with him. I screwed up. I screwed up bad.

But I don’t realize just how much until Victor says, “You could’ve gotten your friends killed. You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”

I feel my eyes widen beyond their limits and I turn around further to see him. “Oh no…Victor, what…are they OK?”

I feel like I’m going to be sick again.

Victor glances over at me briefly.

“They’re fine,” he says. “The first room Hamburg’s men went into was empty,” he adds and looks back out at the road. “I arrived as they were leaving it. I followed one of them to the room you were hiding in, let him unlock it and then I made my move.”

The room keys. Both of my extra room keys were in the purse I lost at Hamburg’s. And the room numbers were written on the little paper sleeves the keys had been tucked into when the front desk clerk presented them to me. I was so worried about keeping my gun and knife hidden that I didn’t think to hide the keys.

“Shit!” I look out at the road, too. “I-I lost my purse at the restaurant. My room keys were in it. I left them bread crumbs!”

Thankfully I didn’t have an extra key to Dahlia’s room, or else she and Eric might be dead right now.

What in the hell was I thinking?!

“No, you literally left them the keys to your rooms with the hotel name emblazoned on them. Sarai, I should’ve killed you and saved you and myself all of this trouble, a long time ago.”

I swing my head around to face him, anger and hurt weighing heavily in my chest.

“You don’t mean that,” I say.

He pauses and glances at me. He sighs. “No. I don’t mean that.”

“Don’t ever say that to me again. Never say anything like that to me, or I’ll kill you and save myself anymore trouble.”

I look away.

“You don’t mean that,” he says.

I glance back over into those dangerous greenish-blue eyes that I’ve missed so much.

“No. But it would probably be the wise thing to do.”

“Well, you’re not exactly scoring wisdom points tonight, so I can feel safe for another twenty-four hours at least.”

I hide the smile in my face.

“I missed you,” I say distantly, looking out at the road.

Victor doesn’t respond, but it would be odd if he did, I admit. Despite his lack of emotions though, I know he missed me, too. That kiss in the elevator said things that words never could.

Victor takes an exit and pulls the car underneath an overpass bridge. He puts the car in Park and the area fades to black when the turns the headlights off.

“What are we doing here?” I ask.

“You need to call your friends.”

“Why?”

He reaches into the console between us and retrieves a cell phone.

“Tell them to go back to Arizona,” he instructs. “Do or say whatever you have to to get them to leave Los Angeles. The sooner, the better.”

He places the phone in my hand. At first, I just stare at it, but he urges me with that look of his, the one that screams hurry-up-already but only someone like me, someone ‘close’ to him would ever notice it.

Fumbling the phone in my hands, I hold it steady and punch in Eric’s number. But then I change my mind, hang up on the first ring and call Dahlia instead.

She answers after the fifth ring.

I take a deep breath and do what I do best. Lie.

“The truth is, you both hurt me. I doubt I’ll ever be able to forgive either one of you for what you did.”

“Sarai…God, I am so sorry. We really didn’t mean for it to go that far. I swear to you. I don’t know what happened—”

“Listen, Dahlia, please just listen.”

She becomes quiet.

I turn on the waterworks. I never knew I could cry on cue and it could be completely fake.

“I want to believe you. I want to be able to trust you again, but you were supposed to be my best friend and you betrayed me. I need time alone and I want you and Eric to go back to Arizona. Tonight. I don’t think I can stand seeing either of you again—wait, where are you right now?”

It just dawned on me that if she and Eric were at the hotel then surely she’d know by now that two men were shot to death on the floor where their room is.

“We’re at some rooftop party,” she says. “A-Are you OK with that? I thought it was messed up for us to go out, but Eric said you insisted—”

“No, it’s fine,” I cut in. “I did insist. Where is he now?”

“I left him on the roof so I could talk. It’s really loud up there. What is this number you’re calling me from?”

“It’s a friend’s phone. I lost mine. Did Eric tell you that if anyone comes looking for me—”

“Yeah, he did,” she interrupts. “What’s that all about anyway? Jesus, Sarai, forget about this issue with me and Eric for a moment and please tell me what’s going on. The blood. The weird clothes you were wearing and that thing on your head. Was that a wig cap? You’re in some kind of trouble, I know. I know you hate me and have every right to, but please just tell me what happened.”

“I can’t fucking tell you!” I scream at her, letting the tears strain my voice. “Dammit, Dahlia, just do what I asked you to do. Give me that much! You fucked my boyfriend! Please, just go back to Arizona, let me get myself together and then I’ll be on my way home. Maybe then we can talk. But right now, just do what I ask. OK?”

She doesn’t respond for a moment and a long bout of silence passes between us.

“OK,” she agrees. “I’ll tell Eric that we need to leave.”

“Thank you.”

I’m only a little relieved. I won’t feel good about this until I know they make it back home alive.

I hang up without another word.

“Well, that was convincing,” Victor says, slightly impressed.

“I guess so.”

“I know your friend believed it,” he adds. “But I didn’t believe a word of it.”

I turn to look at him. He knows me as well as I know him, it seems.

“That’s because not a word of it was true.”

He leaves it at that and we pull out from underneath the bridge.

* * *

We arrive at a house tucked at the end of a secluded road on the outskirts of the city, perched on a hilltop with semi-perfect views of the cityscape below. An irregular-shaped pool sits to the west side of the house and snakes around behind it, the light blue water lit by underwater lights making it appear luminescent. It’s quiet here. All I can hear is the wind brushing through the thick of trees that surround the east side and back of the house, which prevent a full three-hundred and sixty-degree view of the brilliantly-lit landscape of Los Angeles. As we approach the front door, a portly woman in a blue housekeeper’s uniform greets us. She has dark, curly hair and olive skin. Her cheeks are plump, encasing her beady dark brown eyes which look at Victor and I with scrutiny.

“Please come in,” she says with a familiar Spanish accent.

She closes the front door behind us. The house smells faintly of Windex and an unnatural mixture of sweet scents that can only be attributed to some kind of store-bought air freshener. It seems that all of the windows have been left open, allowing the summer night breeze to filter through the house. It’s nothing like the wealthy mansions I’ve been in, but it’s still immaculate and cozy and I feel like I could’ve at least cleaned up before coming here. My skin and my clothes are still stained with blood…

Victor is dressed in black slacks and a tight long-sleeved button-up shirt that clings to every muscle in his arms and chest, the sleeves unbuttoned and pushed up near his elbows. The shirt hangs freely over his slacks and the top two buttons have been left open. A pair of rich, casual black shoes dress his feet. A shiny silver watch adorns his right wrist and I can’t help but notice the single hard, ropy vein that moves along the top of his hand and down the length of his wrist bone. When he follows the housekeeper through the large entryway and briefly turns his back to me, I see the grip of his gun poking from the top of his slacks, the end of his white shirt tucked behind it.

He looks back at me, stops and puts out his arm, guiding me to walk in front of him. My skin shivers lightly when his hand touches my lower back.

Before I have time to feel too out of place next to Victor, Fredrik, Victor’s Swedish friend and accomplice whom I met at Hamburg’s restaurant long ago, enters the room through the large glass doors overlooking the backyard.

Sarai

“You’re early,” Fredrik says with a deadly, yet unimaginably sexy smile. He’s dressed much in the same way Victor is except that in place of Victor’s button-up shirt, Fredrik sports a plain tight white tee that clings to his lean, masculine form. His feet are bare.

The first time I saw Fredrik I found him inconceivably gorgeous with soft, almost-black hair and haunting dark eyes; his facial structure appears sculpted by some renowned artist. But I’ve always felt there’s something dark and frightening that lives inside of him. Something I never personally want to get more acquainted with. I’ll settle with the way things were when we met: friendly and charming and mysterious, seeing only the beautiful mask that he wears to conceal the animal that dwells beneath it.

Victor glances at his expensive watch. “Early by only ten minutes,” he clarifies.

Fredrik smiles as he approaches, his white teeth semi-bright amid the backdrop of his tanned skin. “Yes, but you know how I am.”

Victor nods, but doesn’t elaborate. I’m left to wonder what that meant.

“It’s good to see you,” Fredrik says, looking down at me from his tall height and encompassing presence. He reaches for my hand and kisses the top of it, just above my knuckles. “I hear you killed a man tonight.” He raises back up out of his half-bow and releases my hand. A haunting, proud smile lingers on his face, the corners of his eyes warm with something reminiscent or…pleasurable, as if the thought of my killing someone somehow delights him.

I look at Victor to my right. He nods, answering the question that is all over my expression: Did the guard I stabbed in the neck at the restaurant, die?