“Sarai,” I say, looking back at her, “you can’t go home. I knew this the first time I sent you back to Arizona. The situation wasn’t nearly as dire as it has become, but now that things have changed, you can never go home.”

“Then I’m staying with you,” she says and for the first time in my life, I can’t bring myself to protest such an issue. Not with her, or even with myself. The largest part of me, the flawed human part, wants her with me and I’ll stop at nothing to make sure that it works.

But I know it’s not going to be easy.

“Yes,” I say, running the palm of my hand across her smooth thigh, “you’re staying with me, but there are many things that you must understand.”

She gets up from my lap and stands in front of me, one arm crossing her abdomen, the other propped atop it at the elbow. Absently, she brushes her fingertips across the softness of her face as she stares out at seemingly nothing. Then she looks down at me and shakes her head with a perplexed look in her eyes. “I expected you to put up more of a fight. What’s the catch? Regardless of what happened between us last night, or what has been going on between us even when we were apart, I still never thought you’d agree to take me with you.”

“Would you like me to put up a fight?” I give her a wry smile.

She smiles back at me and her arms drop back at her sides. “No. Definitely not. I-I just….”

I bring one leg up and rest my foot on the opposite knee.

“I never imagined that I’d be in a situation like this,” I say. “I cannot lie to you and tell you that I think it’s going to work. It very likely won’t, Sarai, and you have to understand that.” Her face falls just slightly, enough that I know my truthful words have discouraged her more than she’ll let her expression reveal. “I cannot change my ways,” I go on. “Not only because it’s all I know, or that it’s what I’m best at, but also because I don’t want to.” I look her straight in the eyes. “I will never stop doing what I do.”

“I would never want you to,” she says with a level of intensity. She pulls the nearby empty chair around and places it in front of me before sitting. “All that I’m asking, Victor, is to stay with you. I will do whatever you expect of me, but I want you to teach—”

I put up my hand and stop her right there.

“No, Sarai, I won’t do that, either. It won’t be like that.” Her expression darkens and she looks away from my eyes, stung by my refusal. “I’ve told you before, I was practically born into this life. It would take you nearly the rest of your life to learn to do what I do, and even still it would not be good enough.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?” she asks with a trace of resentment in her tone. “I want to be with you wherever you go, but I don’t want to sit by and do nothing, sipping on martinis on the beach while you’re out killing people. I’m not useless, Victor, I can do something.”

“There are many things that you can do, yes,” I cut in. “But doing what I do is completely out of the question. Why do you want this so much?” My voice had begun to rise with the question as I suddenly felt desperate to understand the answer.

The palms of her hands come down on the tops of her bare thighs creating a light slapping noise. “Because it’s what I want.”

“But why?”

She throws her hands up beside her and yells, “Because I enjoy it! All right?! I enjoy it!”

I blink a few times, completely stunned by her admittance. Truthfully, that was the last thing I expected her to say. A part of me knew that Sarai was more than capable of taking a human life and be able to sleep soundly every night afterwards, but I never anticipated that she would enjoy killing.

I’m not sure how to feel about this. I need more information.

I lean forward, raising my back from the chair and I come face to face with her. “You enjoy killing?” I ask, though it comes out more like a statement. “So, if you were asked to take someone’s life, would you do it without question?”

“No,” she says, her brows drawing inward. “I wouldn’t kill just anyone, Victor, only men who deserve it.”

Men? This side of Sarai is becoming more intriguing. I wonder if she even realizes what she just said. Men. Not people in general, but men.

I pull away from her and rest my back against the chair again, cocking my head to one side thoughtfully.

“Go on,” I urge her.

She leans back as well, pulling both of her legs up and resting her feet on the seat, letting her knees fall together to one side.

“Men like Hamburg. Men like Javier Ruiz and Luis and Diego. Men like that guard I killed last night. Willem Stephens, for the simple fact that he works for Hamburg knowing what Hamburg does. Men like John Lansen and all of the others who I met at those rich parties when I was with Javier.” Her gaze pierces mine harshly. “Men who deserve to have their throats slit.”

The gravity of her words, the determination in her face, it quietly stuns me into submission for a brief moment. Is it possible that I have not one, but now two killers in my midst who share a similar penchant for bloodlust? And just as his face crosses my mind alongside hers, I hear Fredrik’s car purring into the driveway. It steals the intense moment away and we both look up.

Moments later, Fredrik, dressed casually in a pair of dark-colored jeans and designer shirt, comes outside to join us. He drops the day’s newspaper on the coffee table and says, “You might want to have a look at that.” Then he glances at Sarai momentarily. “You look nice in my clothes, by the way.”

I glare at Fredrik from the side, but bite back my jealousy before either of them notice.

Sarai and I both glance down at the paper, but I’m the one who picks it up. Unfolding the paper, I scan the black text until I find what he is referring to.

Four bodies were found shot to death in an upscale Los Angeles hotel late last night. Only two of the bodies have been identified and are that of twenty-three-year-old Dahlia Mathers and twenty-seven-year-old Eric Johnson, both of Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

A few sentences down:

Sarai Cohen, also of Lake Havasu City, is wanted for questioning.

I suppose it doesn’t matter which identity she used to check into the hotel, her face is the same on both of them.

Sarai snatches the newspaper from my hands before I can finish.

“No…,” she grits her teeth as her darkening face peers down into the tragic news of her friends. She tries to make eye contact with me, but it lasts only a second before the paper seizes her attention again as if her mind hopes to have read it all wrong the first time. “I told them to leave L.A.! Dahlia said they’d leave—.” Her green eyes bore into mine, full of desperation and fractured by guilt.

I stand up.

Sarai takes the newspaper into both hands and rips it in half right down the center, crushing the leftover halves in both of her fists.

“They fucking killed Dahlia and Eric!” she roars. “They killed them!”

The paper falls from her hands and scatters about the intricate rock patio.

Fredrik just looks at me, waiting for whatever I might do or say. He doesn’t speak but I can tell that he wants to.

“Sarai.” I place my hands on her shoulders from behind. “I will take care of it.”

She swings around at me, her hair whirling around her head before falling back against her shoulders, fury burning in her features.

“THEY ARE DEAD BECAUSE OF ME! JUST LIKE LYDIA!”

Trying to calm her down, I forcefully grab her shoulders from the front and I hold her in place.

“I said I will take care of it,” I repeat with even more intensity and sincerity than before. I lean forward to keep her gaze fixed on mine. “I will do this for you, Sarai. Hamburg and Stephens will both be dead before this week is over.”

I’ve lost her. She’s staring right at me, but it feels more like through me instead. Her chest rises and falls with heavy, uneven breaths. Her pupils appear tiny, like pinpricks through a sheet of construction paper, the green of her eyes appears to have darkened.

“No,” she argues in an eerily calm voice. “I don’t want you to do anything.”

Absently she steps backward and my hands fall away from her shoulders.

“I’m going to do this for you,” I say. “I want—”

“I said no!” She takes two more steps back and then turns around, putting her back to me as she faces the pool.

“I’m going to do it,” she says quietly, resolutely. “I’m going to kill them and I want you to back off.”

“I don’t think—”

She turns her head, her dark eyes catching mine. “If you kill either one of them, I’ll never forgive you for it. This one is mine, Victor! Give me that much!”

“Sarai, you can’t kill them.” I walk toward her. “The only person who will end up dead is you. You’re not capable—”

“I don’t give a shit!” Her objective is unshakable. She walks back toward me. “You either help me pull this off, or I figure it out myself. They die by my hands, not yours, or Fredrik’s, or anyone else’s. Only mine. Teach me. Show me what to do. Whatever the best approach is for someone like me. Help me or I die trying to do it myself. I don’t care either way.”

“I won’t…you can’t,” I shake my head.

Sarai gives up and starts to push her way past me intent on leaving. But I can’t let her go anywhere. I can’t because I know that she meant every word of what she said.

I grab her by the wrist, stopping her in her angry march toward the glass door. Fredrik steps out of the way, watching the scene unfold with an odd glint in his eyes that I can only make out as fascination.