Behind the Hands That Kill

“The money you’re worth alive,” he said, “will benefit me more than the satisfaction.”

“Maybe so,” I said, still breathless, “but you have to take me in before you see a penny of it.” I grabbed the knife with my dreaded thirty-percent hand, and sent it hurling at him. And in that second it took to hit the target, I held my breath hoping that my aim had improved over the years.

“And I take it,” Izabel says, “that because we’re still alive, that your aim did improve?”

I want to smile at her, mostly because I am happy to see her here, but I refrain.

I nod. “Yes,” I say. “It did not take him long to bleed out from the neck. I waited for him to die. I sat there, drenched in blood and sweat, thinking of you”—I look Izabel right in the eyes, but then just as quickly, I look away—“and once he was dead, I dragged his body by the ankle over to me, and I fished the handcuff key from his pocket. I took his gun, and I left.”

“But what about Izabel’s bounty?” Niklas says, as if he is stepping in for her.

Back off, little brother, or you and I will have that much more added to our growing list of problems.

“That information came later,” I say out loud, “after I went looking for Izabel and the woman who took her. As I ran down the street, barefoot and bloody, I began to doubt that the woman could be trusted, that I, in my most desperate moment, fell for the most basic of tricks, and that there was no way she really took Izabel to a public hospital for treatment.”

I pause, and turn to the window again.

“But she did,” I say, staring into the distance, letting the scene materialize in front of me. “And when I arrived, and saw that Izabel, although unconscious and near death, was still alive, and when I saw the woman sitting in the room watching over her, not only was I thankful, but I somehow knew right away, that I was looking directly into a mirror.”

“A mirror?” Niklas asks.

“Yes, brother,” I say, still with my back to everyone. “A mirror.”

Victor

Venezuela…

I did not know how long I had been with Morrison before I killed him and set myself free, or how long it took me to find the hospital, but by the time I arrived, Izabel had just come out of surgery.

“Señor! Señor! You can’t go in there!” a nurse screamed at me in Spanish. And when she ran into the room behind me, saw the extent of the blood on my clothes, she instantly backed away.

Two more nurses rushed in; they took one look at me, eyes wide and panicked, and either thought I was in need of a doctor myself, or I was the one who cut open Izabel’s throat.

The woman who had brought Izabel to the hospital, shot up from the chair. “It’s OK,” she also spoke in Spanish, motioning her hands, “he’s not the man who did this; he is her husband; he was attacked, too.”

The nurse’s eyes darted between me, the woman, and Izabel lying on the bed.

I ignored them all and went quickly over to the bedside.

The police were there in under five minutes, and as I sat with Izabel, holding her hand, the woman did most of the talking, reiterating what she apparently had told them when she first arrived without me. After they asked me questions, and I told them what happened—a fabrication, of course—they left us alone.

I stayed with Izabel for a long time before I went outside into the hall, and I sat down next to the young woman who looked to be in her mid-twenties, but I got the feeling was a little older. She had soft brown hair that fell to her breasts, bright blue-green eyes, and freckles splashed across the bridge of her nose.

It was eerily quiet in the hospital; I could vaguely hear the nurse’s rubber-soled shoes squeaking against the floor, and a computer keyboard being tapped, and a life-support machine—Izabel’s life-support machine—beeping steadily from the cracked door of her room.

I sat hunched over, my forearms on the top of my legs; my feet were still bare, and my injured hand was wrapped in a bloody cloth. The woman beside me sat with the back of her head against the white brick wall. The bench beneath us was made of wood; I could distinctly smell the black paint that it had been coated with last.

“If she’s as tough as everybody says she is, she’ll—”

“Who are you?” I cut in; I did not look at her.

I heard her sigh. She began to adjust her position next to me on the bench; she placed her folded hands on her lap.

Finally she answered, “My name is Naeva. Though you might remember me as the little blond-haired girl who always tried to play with you and Niklas when we were children. Niklas slapped me in the face with a dead snake once. And you—”

“I took the snake from him and forced it in his mouth,” I finished.

I looked over, and Naeva, my baby sister, smiled.

I smiled, too. But it was short-lived. Izabel, clinging to life on the other side of the door just feet from me, controlled all of my emotions.

“Your hair is different,” I said. “It used to be white.”

“I grew up,” she said. “And it turned brown. Like yours.”

I nodded.

After a long time, she asked, “Is he dead?”

“Brant Morrison?”

“Yeah.”

I nodded again. “Yes. He is dead.” Then I glanced over briefly. “Does that bother you?” I hoped she would say no.

She shook her head. “Not at all; actually, I’m relieved.”

The silence went on for another stretch.

I sighed.

Naeva sighed.

There were many questions she and I both wanted, needed, to ask one another: our separation as children; where we have been all these years; what kind of life outside of The Order had we lived, experienced, and shared with others; how long she had been in The Order; how she ended up there in the first place; who raised her after our mother was killed; if she forgave me for killing our father. But this was not the time nor the place to open that book. There were other, more important questions that needed immediate answers, and so I spoke to her not as my long-lost sister, but as any other young woman who might be able to tell me what I needed to know.