Tormentor Mine

by Anna Zaires

  Bands of tension loop around my forehead, and I push all thoughts of my husband’s alleged deception away, focusing on the rest of my stalker’s outfit: another pair of dark jeans and black socks with no shoes. For a second, it makes me wonder if Peter has something against wearing shoes, but then I recall that in some cultures, it’s considered disrespectful and unclean to wear outside shoes inside the house.

  Is the Russian culture like that, and if so, is the man who tortured me in this very kitchen showing, in some very roundabout way, that he respects me?

  “Go ahead, wash your hands or whatever you need to do,” he says, dimming the lights before sitting down at the table and uncorking the wine. “The food is getting cold.”

  “You didn’t have to wait for me,” I say and go to the nearby bathroom to wash my hands. I hate how he acts like he knows all my habits, but I’m not about to compromise my health to spite him.

  “Really, I mean it,” I say when I return. “You didn’t have to be here at all. You know feeding me isn’t part of your stalker duties, right?”

  He grins as I take a seat across from him and hang my handbag on the back of my chair. “Is that right?”

  “That’s what all the stalker job postings say.” I spear a piece of tomato and mozzarella with my fork and bring it to my plate. My hand is steady, showing nothing of the anxiety shredding me inside. I want to clutch my bag against me, keep it on my lap and within easy reach, but if I do, he’ll get suspicious. I’m already taking a chance by hanging it on my chair when I normally plop it carelessly on the couch in the family room. I’m hoping he ascribes that to the fact that I came straight to the kitchen/dining area instead of making my usual detour to the couch.

  “Well, if that’s what they say, who am I to argue?” Peter pours us each a glass of wine before placing some of the mozzarella salad on his plate. “I’m no expert.”

  “You haven’t stalked other women before?”

  He cuts a piece of mozzarella, brings it to his mouth, and chews it slowly. “Not like this, no,” he says when he’s done.

  “Oh?” I find myself morbidly curious. “How did you stalk them?”

  He gives me a level look. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

  He’s probably right, but since there’s a chance I might not see him after tonight, I feel a bizarre urge to find out more about him. “No, I actually do,” I say, drawing comfort from the handbag strap brushing against my back. “I want to know. Tell me.”

  He hesitates, then says, “The majority of my assignments have always been men, but I’ve followed women as part of my job, too. Different jobs, different women, different reasons. Back in Russia, it was often the wives and girlfriends of the men who threatened my country; we followed and questioned them to locate our real targets. Later, when I became a fugitive, I tracked a couple of women as part of my work for various cartel leaders, arms dealers, and such; usually it was because they posed a threat of some kind, or betrayed the men I worked for.”

  The bite of tomato I just consumed feels stuck in my throat. “You just… tracked them?”

  “Not always.” He reaches for the linguini, winds a fork in it, and brings a sizable portion of the pasta to his plate without spilling any of the buttery sauce. “Sometimes I had to do more.”

  The tips of my fingers are starting to feel cold. I know I should shut up, but instead, I hear myself asking, “What did you have to do?”

  “It depended on the situation. One time, my quarry was a nurse who sold out my employer—the arms dealer I mentioned to you before—to some terrorist clients of his. As a result, his then-girlfriend was kidnapped, and he was nearly killed rescuing her. It was an ugly situation, and when I found the nurse, I had to resort to an ugly solution.” He pauses, his gray eyes gleaming. “Do you want me to elaborate?”

  “No, that’s…” I reach for my glass of wine and take a big gulp. “That’s okay.”

  He nods and begins eating. I have no appetite anymore, but I force myself to follow his example, transferring some pasta onto my plate. It’s delicious, the seafood and the pasta perfectly cooked and coated in the rich, savory sauce, but I can barely taste it. I’m dying to reach into my bag and take out the little vial sitting there, but for that, I need Peter to be distracted, to look away from his wine glass for at least twenty seconds. I timed it back in the hospital, practicing with a vial of water: five seconds to open the vial, five more to reach across the table and tip the contents of the vial into the wine glass, and three more to yank my hand back and compose myself. That’s about thirteen seconds, not twenty, but I can’t have him suspect anything, so I need the extra cushion.

  “So, tell me about your day, Sara,” he says after most of the linguini on his plate is gone. Looking up, he pins me with a cool silver gaze. “Anything interesting happen?”

  My stomach contracts, knotting around the linguini I forced down my throat. Peter couldn’t know about me running into Joe, could he? My tormentor hasn’t said anything, but if in his mind, this weird thing between us is some kind of courtship, he might object to me talking to—and making plans with—other men.

  “Um, no.” To my relief, my voice sounds relatively normal. I’m getting better at functioning under extreme stress. “I mean, one woman came in with extra-heavy spotting and turned out to have miscarried twins, and we had a fifteen-year-old girl come in with a planned pregnancy—she’s always wanted to be a mom, she said—but that wouldn’t be all that interesting for you, I’m sure.”

  “That’s not true.” He puts his fork down and leans back in his chair. “I find your work fascinating.”

  “You do?”

  He nods. “You’re a doctor, but not just someone who preserves life and cures disease. You bring life into this world, Sara, helping women when they’re at their most vulnerable—and most beautiful.”

  I inhale, staring at him. This man—this killer—couldn’t possibly understand, could he? “You think… pregnant women are beautiful?”

  “Not just pregnant women. The whole process is beautiful,” he says, and I realize that he does understand. “Don’t you think so?” he asks when I continue looking at him in mute shock. “How life comes about, how a tiny bundle of cells grows and changes before emerging into the world? Don’t you find that beautiful, Sara? Miraculous, even?”

  I pick up my wine glass and take a sip before responding. “I do.” My voice sounds thick when I finally manage to speak. “Of course I do. I just didn’t expect you to feel that way.”

  “Why?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” I put down my glass. “You take life. You hurt people.”

  “Yes, I do,” he agrees, unblinking. “But that only makes my appreciation for it stronger. When you understand the fragility of being, the sheer transience of it—when you see how easy it is to snuff something out of existence—you value life more, not less.”

  “So why do it, then? Why destroy something you value? How can you reconcile being a killer with—”

  “With finding human life beautiful? It’s easy.” He leans in, his gray eyes dark in the flickering light of the candles. “You see, death is part of life, Sara. An ugly part, sure, but there’s no beauty without ugliness, just as there’s no happiness without sorrow. We live in a world of contrasts, not absolutes. Our minds are designed to compare, to perceive changes. Everything we are, everything we do as human beings, relies on the basic fact that X is different from Y—better, worse, hotter, colder, darker, lighter, whatever it may be—but only in comparison. In a vacuum, X has no beauty, just as Y has no ugliness. It’s the contrast between them that enables us to value one over the other, to make a choice and derive happiness from it.”

  My throat feels inexplicably tight. “So you what? Bring joy to the world with your work? Make everyone happy?”

  “No, of course not.” Peter picks up his wine glass and swirls the liquid inside. “I have no delusions about what I am and what I do. But that doesn’t mean I don’t comprehend the bea
uty in your work, Sara. One can live in the darkness and see the light of the sun; it’s even brighter that way.”

  “I…” My palms are slippery with sweat as I pick up my wine glass and surreptitiously reach into my bag with my free hand. As fascinating as this is, I have to act before it’s too late. There’s no guarantee he’ll pour himself a second glass. “I’ve never thought of it that way.”

  “No reason why you should.” He puts his glass down and smiles at me. It’s his dark, magnetic smile, the one that always sends heat surging to my core. “You’ve led a very different life, ptichka. A gentler life.”

  “Right.” My breaths are shallow as I pick up my glass and bring it to my lips. “I guess I have—until you came into it.”

  His expression turns somber. “That’s true. For what it’s worth—”

  My glass slips out of my fingers, the contents spilling out onto the table in front of me. “Oops.” I jump up, as if embarrassed. “So sorry about that. Let me—”

  “No, no, sit.” He stands up, just as I hoped he would. Though he’s in my house, he likes to play at being a good host. “I’ll take care of this.”

  It takes him only a few strides to reach the paper towel rack on the counter, but that’s all the time I need to open the vial. Six, seven, eight, nine… I do the mental count as I pour the contents into his glass. Ten, eleven, twelve. He turns back, paper towels in hand, and I give him a sheepish smile as I sink back into my chair, the empty glass vial dropped back into my bag. My back is soaked with icy sweat, and my hands are shaking from adrenaline, but my task is done.

  Now I just need him to drink the wine.

  “Here, let me help,” I say, reaching for a napkin as he mops up the spilled wine on the table, but he waves me away.

  “It’s all good, don’t worry.” He carries my wine-soaked plate to the garbage and dumps the remnants of my pasta—that could’ve been another opportunity, I note with a corner of my brain—and then returns with a clean plate.

  “Thank you,” I say, trying to sound grateful instead of gleeful as he swaps my wine glass for a new one and pours me more wine before adding some to his own glass. “Sorry I’m such a klutz.”

  “No worries.” He looks coolly amused as he sits down again. “Normally, you’re very graceful. It’s one of the things I like most about you: how precise and controlled your movements are. Is it because of your medical training? Steady hand for surgery and all that?”

  Don’t act nervous. Whatever you do, don’t act nervous.

  “Yes, that’s part of it,” I reply, doing my best to keep my tone even. “I also took ballet when I was a child, and my instructor was a stickler for precision and good technique. Our hands had to be positioned just so, our feet turned just so. She’d make us practice each position, each step until we got it completely right, and if we ever slipped from good form, we’d have to go back and practice whatever we got wrong again, sometimes for the duration of an entire class.”

  He picks up his glass and swirls the liquid inside again. “That’s interesting. I’ve always thought you looked like a dancer. You have the posture and the body type.”

  “I do?” Drink. Please drink.

  He puts the glass down and fixes me with an enigmatic stare. “Definitely. But you don’t dance anymore, do you?”

  “No.” Come on, pick up the glass again. “I quit ballet when I started high school, though I did a little salsa later in college.”

  “Why did you quit ballet?” His hand shifts closer to the glass, as if he’s going to pick it up again. “I imagine you must’ve been good at it.”

  “Not good enough to do it professionally, at least not without a lot of additional training. And my parents didn’t want that for me.” My pulse speeds up in anticipation as his fingers curl around the stem of the glass. “The earnings potential of a dancer is fairly limited, and so is the length of her career. Most stop dancing in their twenties and have to find something else to do with their lives.”

  “How practical,” he muses, lifting the glass. “Did that matter to you or to your parents?”

  “Did what matter?” I try not to stare at the wine glass as it hovers a few inches from his lips. Come on, just drink it.

  “The earnings potential.” He swirls the wine again, seeming to derive pleasure from the sight of the light-colored liquid circling the glass walls. “Did you want to be a rich, successful doctor?”

  I force myself to look away from the hypnotic movement of the wine. “Sure. Who doesn’t?” The anticipation is eating me alive, so I distract myself by picking up my own wine glass and taking a big sip. Please mimic me subconsciously and drink. Come on, just take a few sips.

  “I don’t know,” he murmurs. “Maybe a little girl who’d much rather be a ballerina or a singer?”

  I blink, briefly distracted from his non-drinking. “A singer?” Why would he say that? Nobody outside of my seventh-grade counselor knew of that particular ambition.

  Even at ten, I knew better than to bring up something so impractical with my parents—especially after they told me their views on ballet.

  “You have a beautiful singing voice,” Peter says, still toying with his wine glass. “It’s only logical that at some point, you might’ve considered performing. And unlike a dancer’s, a successful singing career doesn’t have to end early. Many older singers are highly respected.”

  “I suppose that’s true.” I eye his glass again, my frustration growing. It’s like he’s torturing me, seeing how long I can take before cracking. To tame my impatience, I take a big sip of my own wine and say, “How do you even know what kind of singing voice I have? Oh, wait, never mind. Your listening devices, right?”

  He nods, not the least bit remorseful. “Yes, you often sing when you’re alone.”

  I gulp down some more wine. At any other time, his casual disregard for my privacy would’ve maddened me, but right now, all my attention is on the stupid wine. Why isn’t he drinking it?

  “So you really think I have a good singing voice?” I ask, then realize I should probably sound more outraged. In a more acerbic tone, I add, “Since I unwittingly performed for you, you might as well give me your honest opinion.”

  His eyes crinkle at the corners as he lowers the glass again. “Your voice is beautiful, ptichka. I already told you so, and I have no reason to lie.”

  Oh my God, just drink the fucking wine! To prevent myself from yelling that out loud, I take a breath and paste a pretty smile on my lips. “Yes, well, you are trying to get into my pants. Like any woman will tell you, flattery helps with that.”

  He laughs and picks up his glass again. “True. Except I have a feeling I could compliment you from now ’till eternity, and it wouldn’t change a thing.”

  “You never know.” I keep my tone light and flirty despite the cold sweat sliding down my spine. If he’s not drinking on his own, I have to force his hand.

  We can’t end this dinner until he takes at least a few good sips.

  Lifting my glass, I smile wider and say, “Why don’t we drink to that? To women’s vanity and you flattering me?”

  “Why don’t we, indeed?” He lifts his glass and clinks it against mine. “To you, ptichka, and your gorgeous voice.”

  We each bring our glasses to our lips, but before I can take a sip, his fingers loosen around the stem of his glass.

  “Oops,” he murmurs as the glass tips forward, spilling the wine in front of him in the exact replica of my earlier goof. His eyes gleam darkly. “My bad.”

  I cease breathing, my blood crystallizing in my veins. “You… you—”

  “Knew that you added a little something to my drink? Yes, of course.” His voice remains soft, but I can now discern the lethal note within. “You think no one’s ever tried to poison me before?”

  My pulse is in hyperdrive, yet I can’t make myself move as he stands up and circles around the table, approaching me with the sleek grace of a predator. All I can do is stare at him, seeing the rage
simmering in those metallic eyes.

  He’s going to kill me now. He’s going to kill me for this. “I wasn’t…” Terror is a toxic burn in my veins. “It wasn’t—”

  “No?” Stopping next to me, he reaches into my bag and pulls out the empty vial. I should run, or at least make an attempt at it, but I’m not brave enough to provoke him further. So I remain still, scarcely breathing as he brings the vial to his nose and sniffs it.

  “Ah, yes,” he murmurs, lowering his hand. “A little diazepam. I couldn’t smell it in the wine, but it’s clear like this.” He puts the vial on the table in front of me. “You got it at the hospital, I assume?”

  “I… Yes.” There’s no point in denying it. The evidence is literally in front of me.

  “Hmm.” He props his hip against the table and gazes down at me. “And what were you going to do when you had me knocked out, ptichka? Deliver me to the FBI?”

  I nod, the words frozen in my throat as I stare up at him. With his big body looming over me, I feel like the little bird he compared me to: small and terrified in the shadow of a hawk.

  His sensuous mouth twists in a parody of a smile. “I see. And you think it would’ve been that easy? Just knock me out and done?”

  I blink up at him, uncomprehending.

  “You think I don’t have a contingency plan for that?” he clarifies, and I flinch as he lifts his hand. But all he does is pick up a lock of my hair and brush the ends of it against my jaw, the gesture tender yet cruelly mocking at the same time. “For you trying to kill or disable me in some way?”

  “You… you do?”

  His lids lower, his gaze dropping to my mouth. “Of course.” The lock of hair brushes over my lips, the ends tickling the sensitive flesh, and my stomach contracts into a hard ball as he says softly, “At this very moment, my men are monitoring your house and everything in the ten-block radius, as well as the little screen that displays my vital signs.” His eyes meet mine. “Do you want to guess what they would’ve done had my blood pressure dropped unexpectedly?”

  I mutely shake my head. If Peter’s men are anything like him—and they must be, to do his bidding—I’d rather not know the specifics of what I just narrowly avoided.