WARNINGS: it's in this chapter the violence starts proper. Do stop reading now if that's not for you.
...
Sara runs her index over the books sorted in alphabetical order on the shelves. The biographies of great men. Abraham Lincoln. Roosevelt. Kennedy. History books about inglorious events usually glossed over.
My God. Kellerman actually thinks of himself as progressive.
Not that every inch of this room is necessarily performative. But Kellerman put her here deliberately, invited her into his intimacy—is this the room where he goes to relax, when he's weary from paperwork? He wanted her to see this.
Under section A, Sara's finger meets The Complete Works of Jane Austen. She could laugh herself to tears.
Her phone buzzes with an incoming call. Sara's heart somersaults in her chest. Mahone.
Her thumb hovers over the screen, hesitant to swipe answer.
If she talks to her team right now, they might not react much better than Lincoln. Who knows what he's told them.
But Mahone calling her can only mean one thing. They've landed back in the States.
"Hello?" she picks up.
"Sara."
It feels good to hear Alex. Exhaustion and worry soften each word.
"Is everyone okay?" she says. It's too much, suddenly, to speak Michael's name. She doesn't dare. The fear that Alex will repeat the words that have haunted her nightmares—You can't save him. He's gone, Sara—drills hard as diamonds into her core.
She's lost Michael all these years ago, but finds she doesn't have the courage to lose him now.
Damnable hope.
If Alex tells him he died during the flight, and she still has to let Kellerman have his way with her—
"Yes," he says. "Michael's with us."
Oh God.
Sara's mouth opens on chalk-solid air. "Put him—can you put him on the phone?"
She wishes the words back as soon as they're out. Not now. Not until this is over, and she's washed Kellerman off her, obliterated every memory locked in the past thirty-six hours.
"He hasn't—" Alex falters. "Sara, he hasn't recovered consciousness."
"Oh."
Somehow, this makes things easier. Sleeping Beauty, plunging her whole kingdom into a daze until the prince brings her back to life with true love's kiss. If Michael can only go on sleeping for a little while, so he can wake up to find her with him, instead of here—
The door swings open and Sara gasps.
Kellerman stands into the doorframe, tall enough that his head nearly reaches the top. The flames from the fireplace glisten over his Armani suit.
He doesn't need to say anything.
Reality pushes down Sara's throat, hard, and all she can do is hope she still has the nerves to stomach it.
She got what she wanted, and now her creditor has come to settle the bill.
And there's hell to pay.
"Alex, I've gotta go," she says. "I'll meet you as soon as I can."
"Wait, where are you? Aren't you already in New York?"
Sara hangs up. Kellerman's eyes skim over her, and it's impossible not to feel like the mouthwatering pastry the tyrannical boy has finally gathered the coins to buy.
"Heard from my pilot," he says. "Apparently, the whole team got back all right. No wounded. No dead. What you'd call success, right?"
Sara's lips feel overly dry as she licks them. She's barely had anything to drink in the past two days, and didn't so much as nibble the food Kellerman had his people bring her.
A rock sinks down her stomach, tickly as spider legs.
She doesn't break eye-contact with Kellerman.
Has it started?
"Let's get this over with," she says. Regains control, before instinct makes her run for the door. She won't be that woman today. If Kellerman is going to get what he wants, at least she's not going to give him the additional pleasure of letting on how much she dreads it.
He raises an eyebrow, like she's made an indecent proposition. "Are you in a rush? I don't recall we said anything about speed. What were the exact terms? Oh, yes. If I saved your husband, you'd do anything I wanted."
He falls silent, and Sara forces out the words, hard and bitter. "What do you want?"
He smiles. "That's better. Take a seat."
She drops on the velvet-red sofa, the one that makes her think of her old therapist's office. It's big enough that, when Kellerman sits next to her, she can't feel his immediate warmth at her side. He sits at a distance so he can contemplate her, and she can see every inch of his detestable smirk.
"Would you like a drink? A real drink," he says. "I don't know what AA has to say about that, but desperate times and all."
Sara considers this. In a way, it'd make it much more easier to be drunk for the next few hours. How many times has she had men in her bed she barely remembered by daylight? If Kellerman could only be one more on that long list lost to oblivion and morphine—that would be a mercy.
It's surprising he even offered.
The words he spoke to her in Gila snake into her ear.
You may not want to believe this, but I care about you, Sara.
"No, thank you."
Her resolve stiffens against temptation. A drink is never just a drink to a recovering addict. Besides, she is not going to be drunk for her reunion with Michael.
"You're sure?" he says. "It'll help with the pain."
Despite how much it must delight him to startle her, she can't hide her surprise.
"You know I don't want to hurt you, right, Sara?"
She swallows. "Right."
"It's just a matter of reciprocity."
Her heartbeat rockets as he takes her hand. The word swells on her lips—no—but what good is it now? Soap bubbles coming out of a fish's mouth. His thumb strokes the vein of her wrist and her entire body breaks into gooseflesh. She lets him guide her hand to his chest, as he unbuttons his shirt down to his pecs. Her palm encounters rugged, scarred flesh.
That's when she realizes her eyes have shot to the floor. Her gaze grabs hold of the intricate pattern on the Persian carpet.
The heat of his skin, the prickle of hairs that have managed to grow back despite the burn.
She would sooner he had forced her hand into a bucket crawling with snakes.
"You've marked me," he says. "It's only fair I mark you. Right?"
The weight of her own breath brushing against her chapped lips. "What do you have in mind?"
Relief melts into her as he lets go of her hand and gets up. Look at him, she tells herself, but the carpet is such a comfortable thing to look at just now. Baroque designs blooming on a soft wine background.
In her peripheral vision, she sees him moving toward the fireplace, and remove one of the military rings on his left hand.
"Nothing dramatic," he says. "Don't worry. I wouldn't dream to leave such a big scar on you. It'd be a far greater offense to damage your body than mine, I'm sure."
He uses the firewood tongs by the chimney to place the ring directly into the flames.
"Where do you want it?"
Sara jerks into awareness.
"If you don't choose," he says, "I will."
She meets his eyes. Idiot. After she came to him and threw herself at his mercy, the only thing he didn't have to use against her was the element of surprise. And he managed to take even that back.
"I don't care," she says.
"Really?"
Sara lies back against the sofa. Maybe she has to endure this, whatever he's planned for her, but she doesn't have to participate.
She throws her shirt over her head, unzips her skirt, so it's his turn to be surprised. Fuck him, and his revenge is a meal best served cold bullshit. If she lets him have his way, he'll waste hours on preliminaries, and she's got better thing to do than let him play with his food.
"I'd prefer for you to avoid my face," she says.
"That sounds reasonable."
His eyes soak up her body, but he's stuck to the fireplace, holding the tongs. A tinkling flutters down Sara's stomach, which feels like wanting to pee, but she recognizes the work of nerves.
In her underwear, she actually feels better, more in control than when she had her clothes on.
He's just going to fuck me.
She rams in the thought, like with enough buttering it'll finally stick, like she can stop this from being rape if she makes herself accept it as sex beforehand.
But you can knead a lump of clay as long and hard as you want, and it still won't turn into bread dough when you put it in the oven.
She hardens against the fear that runs liquid through her insides, refuses for him to intimidate her. He's just a sad, middle-aged man who never got over the one time a woman made him feel emasculated.
This moment is not going to crawl under her skin and haunt her sleep for years to come. She refuses it, refuses it because it's so obviously what he wants.
To torment her.
To possess her.
Finally, he must decide the ring is hot enough because he steps away from the fireplace, regains the couch in a matter of two strides. The military ring gleams red at the end of the tongs.
Kellerman's gaze skims over her, and maybe he wishes he could get rid of the tongs now, touch her no longer by proxy. Good. Let him get hasty.
Still he kneels patiently by the couch, looming over her body. He puts down the tongs, where they'll scar the carpet. Kind of a shame. It was a nice carpet.
Kellerman takes off his tie. "I hope you don't mind," he says, "but I'm going to have to gag you."
Sara reels back, and damn it. He surprised her again.
"It's just a formality. Not that I don't trust your good will, but I can't risk you screaming. It's late," he concedes, "and everyone will have gone home. But it's a busy street. It wouldn't sit well with my image if passersby said screaming women haunted this building at night."
A salty sweet taste swims to her mouth as she bites her tongue. "I won't scream," she says.
"That's cute."
He slides the tie into her mouth and knots it around her head. Then all at once his nose plunges into her hair and he drags in a breath. Her whole body freezes. She can tell he didn't plan this. His hand embraces her jawline and he smells her the way she inhaled fistfuls of the sheets she shared with Michael, after the explosion, trying to ram in the smell of him down the pit of her soul.
That's when she knows.
He needs to get rid of how he feels about her.
When you can't beat them, join them, isn't that the phrase? And when you can't have the thing you love, burn it, mutilate it, fuck it senseless and leave it for dead.
Please, let it be dead.
Kellerman turns her on her stomach, considers the small of her back just above the line of her panties and settles for her hip instead.
He grabs the tongs, and Sara doesn't look. It's like getting a tattoo. Some people do this for fun.
With his other hand, he grips at the back of her head and pushes it into the cushion, to make sure she won't scream.
Jackass.
I won't scream.
She repeats the words like a mantra, she can have that much dignity at least.
Then the ring melts into the flesh of her hip.
And she does scream.