I don’t like to kill. I’ll do it if it’s to save my own skin. I’ve had to before, and those times didn’t bother me like this time. Maybe it’s because I want to think that Bull could’ve been better than all of that shit. I can do some digging, find out every little thing he’s ever done, but that still doesn’t make it right. He deserved a second chance, and I robbed him of that just so I could get the upper hand on Hook and for me to be the one to walk away.
But a kidnapper? A terrorist? I have no qualms going after him.
It doesn’t take me long to learn where exactly Ali Khan has been. There’s a bar the town over that he likes to frequent. I do a bit of clothes shopping, dress in much more conservative attire, and wrap a shawl around my head, covering a good bit of my face too.
The entire drive over, I go over what I’m going to do, and everything starts out smoothly. I enter the place, pull the fire alarm, and everyone exits.
Ali Khan, though, lingers a bit, talking to a man with silver hair and dark eyes. He looks at me as I rush over to them.
“Please, please,” I say, keeping my head down, a hand to my chest to keep my shawl in place. “Leave. There is a fire!”
“I don’t smell any smoke,” Ali Khan says.
I lift my head but do not look directly at him, keeping my nose down mostly. “I do, sirs. Don’t you?”
Now, there is the smell of smoke, and Ali Khan glances toward the kitchen.
Yes, so maybe I didn’t just pull the fire alarm.
I grab the arm of the silver-haired man and urge him up. “I can’t bear to see you, my kind, die here. Please!”
Ali Khan grips my arm, and I gasp. The smoke is crowding into the room, and I blink madly, pretending the smoke is bothering me.
The silver-haired man says something to Ali Khan, the voice impossibly deep, and Silver Hair leaves.
And then there were two.
“Let us go too!” I cry, holding onto Ali Khan’s hand on my arm, trying to move toward the door.
“I don’t like to be told what to do,” Ali Khan says in a low, guttural tone.
“No?” I dare to look him in the eye. “I don’t like to be touched without permission.”
Ali Khan suddenly holds a switchblade in his other hand, but I just smile, grab his wrist, and bash it against the table. To his credit, he doesn’t drop the blade until I hit his wrist against the table four times. As soon as the switchblade clatters to the ground, I knee him. He doubles over, his hand reaching for my neck falling short. In one smooth motion, I bend down, retrieve the blade, grip his hair, and hold the blade against his carotid artery.
“One flick,” I say lazily, digging the tip against the skin, not enough to prick him and make him bleed but enough for him to feel the pressure. “One flick, and you’ll bleed out. How do you feel about that?”
“You won’t,” he spits out. “Women are weak. Women are—”
“Women aren’t weak. We are powerful. We can create life within us, and when you go after our children, we fight back, and we don’t fight fair. We fight for our daughters, and we fight for our… sons.” I press even harder now, just to get a tiny drop of blood.
Ali Khan struggles then, but I back him up, the entire length of my arm against his throat, the blade still against his skin until he slams against the back wall of the place. There’s even more smoke now, but that’s all it is. I didn’t set a fire. I set off a smoke bomb, a long-lasting one. It’s non-toxic, and it doesn’t make me cough at all, but Ali Khan’s been struggling not to this entire time. Mind over matter. He thinks the smoke is attacking his lungs, but it’s not. Yes, we’re breathing it in, but it’s not an irritant like normal smoke.
“You’re here because of…” His eyes widen. He mumbles something in another language, and he grips my wrist, forcing me to cut his artery.
Firefighters come storming in as Ali Khan slumps to the ground. I’m sure I’m a sight with his blood on me, but it’s a simple phone call to the general to have matters settled.
After all of this, the phone call with Saad Ahmad better be a piece of cake.
5
Tox
It’s been five days since I’ve seen Sophia. Five days too long, if you ask me, but I shouldn’t feel that way. She has her life, and I have mine.
“Are you listening?” the real estate agent asks me.
I cough into my hand. “I am. I’m sorry. You were saying?”
"This property is right on the water. Beautiful. Step out of your front door, and you'll be right on the beach. Now, insurance is a bit high as a result—"
“Are there storms?” I ask.
She hesitates. “Some, yes—”
“What kind?”
“Hurricanes. Not many tornadoes around this part—”
“What do hurricanes do?”
“They’re storms of wind that originate over the ocean, drawing strength there. Once they hit the land, they slow down and eventually die out.”
“Rain? Wind? Anything else?”
“There can be flooding,” she admits.
“Property damage.”
“Yes, on occasion, but that’s exactly what the insurance is for.”
“I’m not interested.”
“Okay.” She flips through her binder and points to another house. “How about this one? It has four bedrooms, three bathrooms. If you get married and have two kids or even more, it would be great. With that many bathrooms, you won’t fight over them, and—”
“May I?” I reach for the binder.
She nods. I feel bad because I don’t remember her name, but I don’t bother to ask her to repeat it. It’s stupid of me, maybe even terrible, but I can’t see any other woman without comparing her to Sophia. Like this woman. Her hair is yellow, but I much prefer Sophia’s black
