CHAPTER 12: Paradise
The fireplace sputters as Kellerman sits at his desk, pretends to go over the legislation project his colleagues and him have been trying to pass through the Senate. He makes his tie slide through his fingers—the tie that's still stiff with Sara's saliva.
He doesn't like that story she told about the rat.
Kellerman adjusts his earbuds. Her phone is tucked in her purse right now, so all he sees through the screen is black, but he can hear her just fine.
Yes, yes. If you wanted to get judgmental, you could say Kellerman took things a little too far when he hacked Sara's phone.
It was late, and he was desperate.
She was passed out on his couch, and a hard truth, like a pebble, was slowly gliding down his stomach. This is not going to be enough.
The whole point, of course, was to get Sara out of his mind. To think of her, no longer shrouded in the veil of envy-green bile, but with a satisfied smile, that he'd finally gotten his way with her. But what if it made things worse? Her naked body burned into the tissues of his mind, the smell of her hair deep in his lungs. Can he still smell her in this office, or is it some kind of fever?
The smell is still red, by the way. There's nothing she can do to change that.
So in a way, he worried this might happen.
There wasn't much time to think things through. She might wake up any moment—or he'd have to wake her. First he made sure she wasn't faking it, just seizing a window for a momentary escape. The device he used to plant a spy into her phone is among technology's freshest hurrays. If you're wondering if all senators have espionage gadgets just sitting in their drawers, don't worry. Kellerman wonders about that, too.
But in the end, he's worked for the government too long for those old reflexes to die out. Surveillance is not all bad. Throw the first stone at him if you will, but what can be used against the people can also be used for them. Right?
Anyway, Kellerman won't use half of the devices he jumps through hoops to get a hold of. It's just he wants to know what's out there so when someone tries to use it against him, he'll be prepared. He'd bet his right hand Sara's little team in New York have a host of devices like this one, shit they use during their illegal vigilante operations. Only fair he uses it to keep an eye on them—give her a taste of her own medicine. Or isn't all fair in love and war?
He makes his knuckles crack.
He really doesn't like that story about the rat.
So he's the tyrant, is he, and she's—what? The city? That's kind of a sexist analogy if you ask him. And the rats are guilt, and they'll eat him alive, will they? That's something.
Is he supposed to see one right now, sitting in the office?
He laughs to himself. Well, not to himself.
It might be a good idea to tune out of Sara's phone, get some proper work done, because he swears he's laughing for her right now.
He will tune out, in a little while.
He just wants to make sure she gets back to Michael all right, doesn't do anything stupid.
Rats.
Silly woman talk.
Whatever looms in the office, crisp as the crackling from the fireplace, is not a rat. He can feel something though. It smells of red hair and caramel-flesh. It presses against the back of his brain.
The urge to go down on his knees and look under the desk, just to see. To make sure this office is a hundred percent rat-free.
When I left Kellerman, I have this feeling that I've left him with a rat.
Crazy. Plain crazy.
The chair squeals as Kellerman gets to his feet. He needs to get some coffee. It's enough that he hears things, next he might start seeing them.
Go to hell, Paul, she told him.
Again.
"Ladies first," he says.
After all. He's a gentleman.
…
When the GPS reads twenty minutes to New York, Sara stops being patient. Her feet paddle against the carpet beneath the passenger seat. Lincoln feels it, too. She can tell from how his fingers drum against the wheel, from the hitch of his breath at every red light, betraying impatience.
In the past four hours, Alex has called them, twice. Last time was an hour ago, to find out when they were getting there and let them know, Michael hasn't really regained consciousness yet.
"What do you mean, really?" Lincoln said. "Is he awake or not?"
"He's—" Mahone said. "Uh, it's a little hard to put into words. There've been moments when—but I can't say for certain he's registered he was back home."
"Is he talking?" Sara asked.
"No."
"Physically injured?"
Pause.
Every second a nail raking against Sara's throat.
"He's changed, Sara. I mean—you might want to brace yourselves. He doesn't look like the Michael you remember."
"Good."
Lincoln looked at her like she was mad. "What? What'd you mean, Alex? What's changed?"
But they lost the signal and only caught whiffs of his next sentence.
It has been a long, unusually silent hour.
"How can you be so calm?" Lincoln asks.
"Do you I look calm?"
"Yeah. Yeah, all things considered, you look a hundred percent too calm."
"Well, one of us has to. Wouldn't do much good if we were both punching holes in the car."
"For God's sake."
Yes, she thinks. For God's sake.
Sara can't remember the last time she stepped into a church. It used to matter a lot after her mother died. Not immediately, because then, shooting morphine into the crook of her elbows was about all that mattered. But afterward. When she got sober.
What would Jesus think about what she's done?
Forgive her, probably. That's what Jesus does.
And anyway, she wouldn't have had to let Kellerman fuck her if God hadn't taken her husband to begin with.
Sara twists the wedding ring around her middle finger. It got too big for her ring finger sometime in the past few years. Does Michael still have his?
The hairs in the back of her neck bristle.
What will he think of the new ring she wears carved into her skin?
Time passes slowly, seconds stretch like hot caramel, but the car does roll them closer and closer to the headquarters.
"What do you think it means?" Lincoln asks.
"Huh?"
"What Mahone was trying to say. About Michael."
Sara swallows. Waits so long, Lincoln probably gives up on an answer. "He's been away for four years, Linc. Of course he's changed."
They park into the garage, and Daryl must have heard them come in because he's standing in the reception lobby, where they have their meetings. "Hey," he says. Four years ago, he would have said, Where the fuck have you been? But he's been working on his issues, learning to be more patient.
Not so Lincoln, who walks nearly into his face. "Where's my brother?"
"Upstairs."
Daryl's face darkens.
Not yet.
Sara can't heed the red flags, can't allow herself to grasp the truth everyone is tossing at her.
The man you married is gone.
Michael died four years ago and whoever waits for you upstairs is not the man you remember.
It makes no difference.
For better or worse, in sickness and in health. Till death parts them.
She is not the same woman, either.
The only thing she cares about is holding Michael to her, filling her lungs with his smell. They can both cry then, and fall apart, so their broken pieces can mend them as one.
It doesn't matter what Mahone says, doesn't matter that Daryl looks dark as a graveyard. She's going to get her husband back. She did anything, anything, to get him back.
"We put him in your bedroom," Daryl says. "It—uh, it seemed like the thing to do. Wait!"
But Sara doesn't.
Somehow she beats Lincoln to the stairs, although she doesn't feel the weight of the floor beneath her shoes. She might as well have floated to her bedroom door. It hangs wide open. Her purse drops to the floor.
Michael is half-sitting on the bed, his head into his hands.
Michael.
There must be others, probably, Alex's voice thin as smoke somewhere beyond reach, but she doesn't care, sees no one, hears no one.
No one but Michael.
Even as his hands cover his face, her body knows immediately. The shape of his skull, the beautiful slant of his fingers—his fingers that squeezed hers in the car before their last mission, before the fire and the sound of her own screams put her out of her wits.
"Michael," she says.
To herself, almost, more than to him. But he hears her, and his hands peel from his face. Sara's mouth opens on black-as-midnight silence.
Burns cover every inch of the face she remembers.
The scar runs from the roots of the stubble that covers his shaved skull and disappears beneath his shirt. It has melted the delicate carving of his features, eaten the beauty that used to snatch her breath away, every once in a while, even months after their wedding.
His blue eyes stab into her, deep and familiar, and dark as the ocean.
"Michael," she says, and for that name to fill her mouth again, oh, to look in these eyes again. Nothing matters anymore, and she couldn't care less whether they're demons in paradise or angels in hell.
He gets to his feet and strides toward her.
She doesn't move, doesn't breathe, and when he stands a whisper from her the suspension inside her stops, and time steals back the moment it had lost. The gone, cherished smell of the man she loves fills her completely.
Someone who's had his last dreams served to him on a silver platter, on his deathbed, wouldn't be more at peace.
Then Michael's hands slice the air between them, sharp as a snake that shoots out of the sand. And he strangles her.
The force of his blow knocks her to the floor. Her head thuds against the ground, dizziness swarms her. But it doesn't distract from the vice of Michael's hands crushing her throat, blocking oxygen.
"No!"
The room bursts to life. Alex screams, the bulk of a man enters her peripheral vision—Lincoln?
Nothing exists beyond the immediate reality of Michael straddling her, strangling her, as his blue eyes stare into hers from his burned face.
"Let go of her! Michael let go!"
"Jesus, Michael!"
"Michael!"
Tears prickle at Sara's eyes. Her fingers scratch Michael's shirt, but she can barely feel his touch through the pins and needles that blacken her vision.
Figures dance through her mind, as Michael danced with her on their wedding night. Kellerman's face, laughing at her.
Did you think you knew rock bottom, Sara?
Hey, it's okay. It's not personal. Ghosts get hungry. Did you think your husband would come back to you and he wouldn't need to feast?
"Stop, Michael, stop!"
Eat me.
Drink me.
Sara's hands roll to the floor.
"No!"
Did you consider what this was going to cost you?
Sara closes her eyes.
Now, she knows what anything means.
End of Part 1