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)
No. It couldn’t be true. I would’ve known.
“Only if he told you,” Peter says, and I realize I spoke my last thought out loud. “They teach them how to conceal their real job from everyone, even their own families. Didn’t you find it suspicious how Cobakis discovered his passion for journalism overnight? How one day he was a biology major, and then he was interning at magazines abroad?”
“No, I—” My chest is so tight I can barely take a breath. “That’s just college. You’re supposed to discover yourself, find your passion.”
“And he did: working for your government.” There’s no mercy in the Russian’s silver gaze. “They trained him, gave him the focus he was lacking. Taught him how to lie to you and everyone else. When he graduated, they got him a job at the paper, and he had an excuse to go to every hotspot in the world.”
I jump to my feet, unable to listen further. “You’re wrong. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He stands up too, his large frame towering over me. “Don’t I? Think back, Sara. Think back to the man you married, to the life you really had together. Not the perfect one you showed to the world, but the one you led behind closed doors. Who was he, this husband of yours? How well did you really know him?”
My insides feel like lead as I take a step back, my head shaking in nonstop denial. “You’re wrong,” I repeat in a choked voice, and spinning around, I run out of the coffeeshop, heading blindly for my car.
It’s only when I stop at a red light near my house that I realize Peter Sokolov didn’t do anything to stop me.
He just stood there and watched me go.
15
Peter
* * *
I watch through the binoculars as Sara enters her parents’ house; then I open my laptop and bring up the camera feed from inside the hallway.
Sara’s parents live in a small, neat house that could use a few upgrades but is otherwise warm and cozy. Even I can tell it’s a home, not just a place to live. For some bizarre reason, it reminds me of Tamila’s house in Daryevo, though this suburban American home is nothing like a mountain village hut.
Sara kisses both of her parents in the hallway, then follows them to the dining room. I switch to the camera feed there, zooming in on her face as she greets the other guests—an older couple and a tall, lean man in his mid-thirties.
It’s the Levinsons and their son Joe, the lawyer Sara’s parents want her to date.
Something ugly stirs inside me as Sara shakes the lawyer’s hand with a polite smile. I don’t want to see her with him; just the idea of it makes me want to plunge my blade between his ribs. Yesterday, when the bartender was smiling at her, I wanted to smash my fist into his grinning mug, and the violent urge is even stronger today.
I might not have claimed her yet, but she’s going to be mine.
Sara helps her parents bring out the appetizers and sits down next to the lawyer. I crank up the audio feed and listen as the two of them make small talk. For someone who just found out about her husband’s double life, the little doctor is remarkably composed, her smiling mask firmly in place. Nobody looking at her would know that before coming here, she hid in her closet for hours and emerged less than forty minutes ago with her eyes red and swollen.
Nobody would suspect she’s terrified because I want her.
It took everything I had to let her stay in that closet and cry on her own. She went in there to escape my cameras, and I let her have this time to herself. She would’ve been even more upset if I’d gone in and embraced her—if I’d tried to comfort her the way I wanted.
I need to give her more time to get used to the idea of us—and to trust I won’t hurt her.
The dinner lasts a couple of hours; then Sara helps her mother clear off the table and makes an excuse to leave. The lawyer asks for her phone number, and she gives it, but I can see it’s mostly out of politeness. Her cheeks are perfectly pale—there isn’t even a hint of the color that floods her face in my presence—and her body language speaks of indifference. Joe Levinson doesn’t excite her, and that’s a good thing.
It means he gets to go home alive.
I follow Sara at a distance as she drives to the clinic, and then I wait in my car until she emerges, entertaining myself by watching her through the cameras I installed inside the clinic. I know what I’m doing is stalker behavior at best, but I can’t stop myself.