by Anna Zaires
“Okay, let’s backtrack for a second.” His tone is both warm and professional. That’s part of what makes him a good therapist, that ability to project caring while remaining detached at the same time. “You said you went out for breakfast with some coworkers; then you were walking back to your car, right?”
“Right.”
“Did you hear anything? Or see anything? Anything that might’ve triggered you? A car door slamming, leaves blowing… a bird, perhaps?”
“No, nothing specific that I can recall. I was just walking, listening to music, and then I felt it. I don’t know how to explain it. It was like—” I swallow, my heart rate quickening at the memories. “It was like that time in my kitchen, when I sensed him a second before he grabbed me. That same kind of feeling.”
The therapist’s thin, intelligent face takes on an expression of concern. “How frequently is this happening now?”
“It was the third time this week,” I admit, embarrassment heating my cheeks as he jots down something in his notepad. I hate this out-of-control feeling, the knowledge that my brain is playing tricks on me. “The first time was in a grocery store, then as I was entering the clinic, and now in the hospital parking lot. I don’t know why this is happening. I thought I was getting better; I really did. I only had one small panic attack in the last two weeks, and I felt genuinely hopeful after that breakfast yesterday. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“Our minds take time to heal, Sara, just like our bodies. Sometimes you have a relapse, and sometimes the illness takes a different course. You know that as well as I do.” He makes another note in his notepad, then looks up. “Have you considered speaking to the FBI again?”
“No, they will think I’ve gone crazy.”
I talked to Agent Ryson after the first paranoid episode a month ago, and he told me that at that very moment, Interpol was tracking my husband’s killer somewhere in South Africa. Just in case, though, he put a protective detail on me. After following me around for several days, they determined there was no threat of any kind, and Agent Ryson pulled them off with mumbled apologies about limited funds and manpower. He didn’t accuse me of being paranoid, but I know he secretly thought it.
“Because the man you fear is far away,” Dr. Evans says, and I nod.
“Yes. He’s gone, and he has no reason to return.”
“Good. Rationally, you know that. We’ll work on convincing your subconscious of that, too. First, though, you need to figure out what triggers your paranoia, so you can learn to spot the triggers and manage your response to them. The next time it happens, pay attention to what you were doing and how you were feeling when you first got that sensation. Are you in a public place or by yourself? Is it noisy or quiet? Are you indoors or outdoors?”
“Okay, I’ll make sure to note all that as I’m freaking out and clutching my pepper spray.”
Dr. Evans smiles. “I have faith in you, Sara. You’ve already made tremendous progress. You can go near your kitchen sink again, right?”
“Yes, but I still can’t touch the faucet,” I say, my hands tightening on my lap. “It’s kind of useless without that.”
The sink in my kitchen is one of the many reasons I’m selling the house. At first, I couldn’t even go into the kitchen, but after months of intensive therapy, I’m at the point where I can approach the sink without a panic attack—though not yet turn on the water.
“Baby steps,” Dr. Evans says. “You’ll turn on the water someday too. Unless you sell the house first, of course. Are you still planning to do that?”
“Yes, my realtor is having an Open House in a few days, in fact.”
“Okay, good.” He smiles again and puts his notepad away. “Our session is over for today, and I’m away on vacation for the next week and a half, but I’ll see you later this month. In the meantime, please keep doing what you’re doing and take detailed notes if you have any more paranoid episodes. We’ll discuss that and tackle your feelings about the house sale in the next session, okay?”
“Sounds good.” I get up and shake the doctor’s hand. “I’ll see you then. Enjoy your vacation.”
And walking out of his office, I head to my car, forcing my hand to be at my side and not inside my bag, curled around the pepper spray.
* * *
I sleep well that night, and the night after. It’s because I work so much that I literally pass out. When I’m that tired, I can sleep anywhere, even in my big, oak-shielded house. The Feds couldn’t figure out how the fugitive got in without setting off the alarm or breaking any locks, so even though I’ve upgraded my security system, I feel about as safe in my home as I would sleeping out on the street.
It’s on the third night that the nightmares find me. I don’t know if it’s because I had another paranoid episode earlier that day—this time, on a busy street next to a coffeeshop—or because I only worked twelve hours, but that night, I dream of him.
As usual, his face is vague in my mind; I can only make out his gray eyes and the scar bisecting his left eyebrow. Those eyes pin me in place as he holds a knife against my throat, his gaze as sharp and cruel as his blade. Then George is there too, his brown eyes vacant as he comes toward me.
“Don’t,” I whisper, but George keeps coming, and I see the blood trickling from his forehead. It’s a small, neat wound, nothing like the gaping hole the real bullet left in his head, and some part of me knows I’m dreaming, but I still sob and shake as the gray-eyed man picks me up and carries me to the sink.
“Don’t, please,” I beg the man, but he’s relentless, holding my head over the sink as George continues shuffling toward me, his dead face twisted with hatred.
“For what you did to me,” my husband says, turning on the water. “For everything you did.”
I wake up screaming and wheezing, my sheets soaked with sweat. When I calm down a little, I go downstairs and make myself a cup of decaffeinated tea, using the water from the refrigerator filter. As I drink my tea, the microwave clock stares at me, the blinking green numbers informing me that it’s not even three in the morning—far too early for me to get up if I’m to have any hope of making it through the upcoming day’s extra-long shift. I have a surgery in the afternoon, and I need to be sharp for that; anything less would endanger my patient.
After a few moments of internal debate, I get up and get Ambien from the medicine cabinet. Cutting a pill in half, I swallow it with the remnants of my tea and go back upstairs.
As much as I hate drugging myself, there’s no other choice today. I only hope that I won’t dream of the fugitive again. Not because I’m afraid of the waterboarding nightmare—it never comes twice on the same night—but because in my dreams, he’s not always torturing me.
Sometimes, he’s fucking me, and I’m fucking him back.
9
Peter
* * *
I stand over her bedside, watching her sleep. I’m taking a risk by being here in person instead of watching her through the cameras my men installed throughout her house, but the Ambien should keep her from waking up. Still, I’m careful not to make a sound. Sara is sensitive to my presence, attuned to me in some strange way. That’s why she’s taken to carrying that pepper spray, and why she looks like a hunted doe each time I get near.
Subconsciously, she knows I’m back. She senses I’m coming for her.
I still don’t know why I’m doing this, but I’ve given up trying to analyze my madness. I’ve tried to stay away, to remain focused on my mission, but even as I tracked down and eliminated all but one name on my list, I kept thinking about Sara, picturing how she looked that day at the funeral and recalling the pain in her soft hazel eyes.
Remembering how she wrapped her lips around my fingers and begged me to stay.
There’s nothing normal about my infatuation with her. I’m sane enough to admit that. She’s the wife of a man I killed, a woman I tortured like I’d once tortured suspected terrorists. I should feel nothing for her, just like I’ve fel
t nothing for my other victims, but I can’t get her out of my mind.
I want her. It’s completely irrational, and wrong on so many levels, but I want her. I want to taste those soft lips and feel the smoothness of her pale skin, to bury my fingers in her thick chestnut hair and breathe in her scent. I want to hear her beg me to fuck her, and then I want to hold her down and do exactly that, over and over again.
I want to heal the wounds I inflicted and make her crave me the way I crave her.
She continues to sleep as I watch her, and my fingers itch to touch her, to feel her skin, if only for a moment. But if I do that, she might wake up, and I’m not ready for that.
When Sara sees me again, I want it to be different.
I want her to know me as something other than her assailant.
10
Sara
* * *
Over the next several days, my paranoia intensifies. I constantly feel like I’m being watched. Even when I’m alone at home, with all the shades drawn and doors locked, I sense invisible eyes on me. I’ve taken to sleeping with the pepper spray under my pillow, and I even bring it with me to the bathroom, but it’s not enough.
I don’t feel safe anywhere.
On Tuesday, I finally break down and call Agent Ryson.
“Dr. Cobakis.” He sounds both wary and surprised. “How may I help you?”
“I’d like to talk to you,” I say. “In person, if possible.”
“Oh? What about?”
“I’d rather not discuss it over the phone.”
“I see.” There are a couple of beats of silence. “All right. I suppose I can meet you for a quick coffee this afternoon. Would that work for you?”
I glance at my schedule on my laptop. “Yes. Could you meet me at Snacktime cafe by the hospital? Around three?”
“I’ll be there.”
* * *
I end up getting held up with a patient, and it’s ten minutes after three by the time I rush into the cafe.
“I was just about to leave,” Ryson says, standing up from a small table in the corner.
“So sorry about that.” Breathless, I slide into the seat across from him. “I promise to make this quick.”
Ryson sits down again. The server comes by, and we place our orders: a shot of espresso for him and a cup of decaf coffee for me. My jitters don’t need the added caffeine today.
“All right,” he says when the server is gone. “Go ahead.”
“I need to know more about this fugitive,” I say without preamble. “Who is he? Why was he after George?”
Ryson’s bushy eyebrows pull together. “You know that’s classified.”
“I do, but I also know that this man waterboarded me, drugged me, and killed my husband,” I say evenly. “And that you knew he was coming and never bothered to inform me. Those are the things I know—the only things I know, really. If I knew more—say, his name and motivation—it might help me understand and get over what happened. Otherwise, it’s like an open sore, or maybe a blister that hasn’t been lanced. It just festers, you see, and it’s constantly on my mind. Someday, I might not be able to hold it in, and the blister might pop on its own. Do you see my dilemma?”
Ryson’s jaw tightens. “Don’t threaten us, Sara. You won’t like the results.”
“It’s Dr. Cobakis to you, Agent Ryson.” I match his hard stare. “And I already don’t like the results. George’s colleagues at the paper wouldn’t like them either—if they were to catch wind of them. That’s why you told me about the fugitive, right? So I’d keep my mouth shut and go along with the whole ‘he died peacefully in his sleep’ bullshit? You knew George’s colleagues would’ve investigated the hell out of the supposed mafia hit, and you didn’t need that. You still don’t, am I right?”
He glares at me, and I see his internal debate. Share classified information and potentially get in trouble, or not share it and definitely get in trouble? Self-preservation must win out, because he says grimly, “All right. What do you want to know?”
“Let’s start with his name and nationality.”
Ryson glances around, then leans in closer. “He goes by many aliases, but we believe his real name is Peter Sokolov.” He pitches his voice low even though the tables around us are empty. “According to our files, he’s originally from a small town near Moscow, Russia.”
That explains the accent. “What is his background? Why is he a fugitive?”
Ryson leans back. “I don’t know the answer to that last question. I don’t have sufficient security clearance.” He falls silent as the server approaches with our drinks. After the server leaves, he says, “What I can tell you is that prior to him becoming a fugitive, he was Spetsnaz, part of the Russian Special Forces. His job was tracking down and interrogating anyone deemed a threat to Russian security—terrorists, insurgents from the former Soviet Union republics, spies, and so on. He was reportedly very good at it. Then, about five years ago, he switched sides and started working for the worst of the criminal underworld—dictators convicted of war crimes, Mexican cartels, illegal arms dealers… In the process, he came up with a list of names—people he believes have harmed him somehow—and he’s been systematically eliminating them ever since.”
My hand is unsteady as I reach for my coffee cup. “And George was on that list?”
Ryson nods and knocks back his espresso in one big gulp. Putting down the cup, he says, “I’m sorry, Dr. Cobakis. This is all I can tell you, because this is all I know. I have no idea what your husband or any of the others did to end up on that list. I understand you’d like more answers, and believe me, so would we, but a lot of Sokolov’s file is redacted.” He stops to let the server pass by again, then adds quietly, “You need to forget about this man, Dr. Cobakis, both for your safety and ours. You don’t want to attract his attention again, believe me.”
I nod, my stomach knotted tight. I don’t know why I thought that knowing a few details about the man who haunts my dreams would be better than remaining in the dark. If anything, I’m more anxious now, my hands and feet icy with anxiety.
“Are you sure he’s gone?” I ask as the agent gets to his feet. “Are you certain he’s nowhere near here?”
“Nobody can be certain of anything when it comes to this psychopath, but for what it’s worth, a little over six weeks ago, he killed another person on his list—this one in South Africa,” Ryson says bleakly. “And before that, he took out two more in Canada despite our best attempts to safeguard them. So yes, as far as we know, he’s far from US soil.”
I stare at him, rendered mute by horror. Three more victims in the last six months. Three more lives lost while I’ve been battling nightmares and paranoia.
“Good luck, Dr. Cobakis,” Ryson says, not unkindly, and places a few dollar bills on the table. “Time really does heal, and one day, you’ll move past this too. I’m sure of that.”
“Thank you,” I say in a choked voice, but he’s already walking away, his stocky figure disappearing through the glass doors of the cafe.
* * *
That night, I dream of Peter Sokolov’s attack again, and the nightmare takes the turn I dread the most. Instead of him holding me under the faucet, he has me pinned under him on a bed, his steely fingers shackling my wrists. I feel him moving inside me, his cock long and thick as he invades my body, and heat thrums under my skin, my nipples taut and aching as they rub against his muscled chest.
“Please,” I beg, wrapping my legs around his hips as his metallic eyes stare into mine. “Harder, please. I need you.”
I’m slick with that need; it burns inside me, hot and dark, and he knows it. He feels it. I can see it in the coldness of his silver gaze, in the cruel set of his sensuous mouth. His fingers tighten around my wrists, cutting into my skin like a zip tie, and his cock turns into a blade, slicing me open, making me bleed.
“Harder,” I plead, my hips rising up to meet his knife-like thrusts. “Don’t leave me. Take me harder.”
He does exactly that, each stroke ripping me open, and I scream with pain and twisted pleasure, with relief and sweet agony.
I scream as I die in his arms, and it’s the best death I can imagine.
* * *
I wake up with my sex slick and throbbing and my stomach churning with nausea. Out of all the tricks my brain’s been playing on me, these perverted dreams are the worst. I can understand the panic attacks and the paranoia—they’re a natural result of what I’ve been through—but there’s nothing natural about the sexual slant of these nightmares. Just thinking about them makes me physically ill with shame.
Getting up, I pull on a robe over my pajamas and go down to the kitchen. My breathing is unsteady and my heart is racing, but this time, it’s not from fear. I feel flushed and agitated, my body aching with frustrated arousal.
I almost came during that dream. Another few seconds, and I would’ve orgasmed—like I’ve orgasmed during these dreams twice before.
Self-disgust is a heavy brick in my stomach as I make my decaf tea. What kind of twisted person has sexual dreams about her husband’s killer? How messed up does one have to be to enjoy dying in said killer’s arms?
I’ve considered discussing this with Dr. Evans, but whenever I try to bring up the topic in our sessions, I shut down. I simply can’t bring myself to form the words. Verbalizing the dreams would give them substance, transforming them from a nebulous product of my sleeping subconscious to something I think and talk about when I’m awake, and I can’t have that.
In any case, I know what the therapist would tell me. He’d say that I’m a young, healthy woman who hasn’t had sex in a long time, and that it’s normal to feel those types of urges. That it’s my guilt and self-loathing that are transforming my sexual fantasies into something dark and twisted, and the dreams don’t mean I’m actually attracted to the man who tortured me and killed George.
