Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91004 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91004 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
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?”
I glance at my schedule on my laptop. “Yes. Could you meet me at Snacktime cafe by the hospital? Around three?”
“I’ll be there.”
* * *
I end up getting held up with a patient, and it’s ten minutes after three by the time I rush into the cafe.
“I was just about to leave,” Ryson says, standing up from a small table in the corner.
“So sorry about that.” Breathless, I slide into the seat across from him. “I promise to make this quick.”
Ryson sits down again. The server comes by, and we place our orders: a shot of espresso for him and a cup of decaf coffee for me. My jitters don’t need the added caffeine today.
“All right,” he says when the server is gone. “Go ahead.”
“I need to know more about this fugitive,” I say without preamble. “Who is he? Why was he after George?”
Ryson’s bushy eyebrows pull together. “You know that’s classified.”
“I do, but I also know that this man waterboarded me, drugged me, and killed my husband,” I say evenly. “And that you knew he was coming and never bothered to inform me. Those are the things I know—the only things I know, really. If I knew more—say, his name and motivation—it might help me understand and get over what happened. Otherwise, it’s like an open sore, or maybe a blister that hasn’t been lanced. It just festers, you see, and it’s constantly on my mind. Someday, I might not be able to hold it in, and the blister might pop on its own. Do you see my dilemma?”