As usual, his face is vague in my mind; I can only make out his gray eyes and the scar bisecting his left eyebrow. Those eyes pin me in place as he holds a knife against my throat, his gaze as sharp and cruel as his blade. Then George is there too, his brown eyes vacant as he comes toward me.
“Don’t,” I whisper, but George keeps coming, and I see the blood trickling from his forehead. It’s a small, neat wound, nothing like the gaping hole the real bullet left in his head, and some part of me knows I’m dreaming, but I still sob and shake as the gray-eyed man picks me up and carries me to the sink.
“Don’t, please,” I beg the man, but he’s relentless, holding my head over the sink as George continues shuffling toward me, his dead face twisted with hatred.
“For what you did to me,” my husband says, turning on the water. “For everything you did.”
I wake up screaming and wheezing, my sheets soaked with sweat. When I calm down a little, I go downstairs and make myself a cup of decaffeinated tea, using the water from the refrigerator filter. As I drink my tea, the microwave clock stares at me, the blinking green numbers informing me that it’s not even three in the morning—far too early for me to get up if I’m to have any hope of making it through the upcoming day’s extra-long shift. I have a surgery in the afternoon, and I need to be sharp for that; anything less would endanger my patient.
After a few moments of internal debate, I get up and get Ambien from the medicine cabinet. Cutting a pill in half, I swallow it with the remnants of my tea and go back upstairs.
As much as I hate drugging myself, there’s no other choice today. I only hope that I won’t dream of the fugitive again. Not because I’m afraid of the waterboarding nightmare—it never comes twice on the same night—but because in my dreams, he’s not always torturing me.
Sometimes, he’s fucking me, and I’m fucking him back.
9
Peter
* * *
I stand over her bedside, watching her sleep. I’m taking a risk by being here in person instead of watching her through the cameras my men installed throughout her house, but the Ambien should keep her from waking up. Still, I’m careful not to make a sound. Sara is sensitive to my presence, attuned to me in some strange way. That’s why she’s taken to carrying that pepper spray, and why she looks like a hunted doe each time I get near.
Subconsciously, she knows I’m back. She senses I’m coming for her.
I still don’t know why I’m doing this, but I’ve given up trying to analyze my madness. I’ve tried to stay away, to remain focused on my mission, but even as I tracked down and eliminated all but one name on my list, I kept thinking about Sara, picturing how she looked that day at the funeral and recalling the pain in her soft hazel eyes.
Remembering how she wrapped her lips around my fingers and begged me to stay.
There’s nothing normal about my infatuation with her. I’m sane enough to admit that. She’s the wife of a man I killed, a woman I tortured like I’d once tortured suspected terrorists. I should feel nothing for her, just like I’ve felt nothing for my other victims, but I can’t get her out of my mind.
I want her. It’s completely irrational, and wrong on so many levels, but I want her. I want to taste those soft lips and feel the smoothness of her pale skin, to bury my fingers in her thick chestnut hair and breathe in her scent. I want to hear her beg me to fuck her, and then I want to hold her down and do exactly that, over and over again.
I want to heal the wounds I inflicted and make her crave me the way I crave her.
She continues to sleep as I watch her, and my fingers itch to touch her, to feel her skin, if only for a moment. But if I do that, she might wake up, and I’m not ready for that.
When Sara sees me again, I want it to be different.
I want her to know me as something other than her assailant.
10
Sara
* * *
Over the next several days, my paranoia intensifies. I constantly feel like I’m being watched. Even when I’m alone at home, with all the shades drawn and doors locked, I sense invisible eyes on me. I’ve taken to sleeping with the pepper spray under my pillow, and I even bring it with me to the bathroom, but it’s not enough.
I don’t feel safe anywhere.
On Tuesday, I finally break down and call Agent Ryson.
“Dr. Cobakis.” He sounds both wary and surprised. “How may I help you?”
“I’d like to talk to you,” I say. “In person, if possible.”
“Oh? What about?”
“I’d rather not discuss it over the phone.”
“I see.” There are a couple of beats of silence. “All right. I suppose I can meet you for a quick coffee this afternoon. Would that work for you?”