Kellerman paces his office, palms sweaty. He checks his phone—really, he checks on Sara, whose phone he's never been happier to have hacked into. For the millionth time, he glances at the screen to see if she's come back to the bedroom. She hasn't.
Her cell tumbled out of her purse when she dropped it to the floor upon seeing Michael.
Everything her screen sees gets relayed directly to his. So Kellerman didn't miss a drop of the husband and wife reunion.
And Jesus.
Leading the sort of life that he has, Kellerman's not sure he can believe in justice, any more than a kid can believe in Santa Claus past the age of nine. But injustice to the point of cruelty?
Oh, there was a certain cruelty to it.
The way Sara went to Michael—an older, disfigured Michael, but true love doesn't stop at this sort of thing, does it? Still, an ache was beginning to lodge below Kellerman's breastbone. It was the first he saw of Sara since she left his office.
The way she bristled at his touch as he tried to catch her wrist—he can still see it.
She broke free from his hand like he was a snake, and he could bite her again and again, all he wanted. And he still couldn't bring her closer to temptation. She would stay with her husband in the garden of Eden while he went on to slither around, crawling the earth. Craving her.
Go to hell, Paul.
It looks like she's in hell herself.
And damn it, she might wish that on him, but he doesn't wish it on her.
You don't have to believe in justice to think that, when a woman does anything—and he means anything—to get her husband back, and that husband tries to strangle her on sight, the universe has crossed a line.
It's not really fair for him, either.
When Michael grabbed her throat onscreen, Kellerman snapped to his feet, his heartbeat shooting up with adrenaline. He kicked a bottle of liquor off a shelf, but didn't know it until it was over, and the smell of whiskey had soaked into the floor.
He drank in the scene on his phone, furious, helpless.
Somewhere in New York Sara was dying.
The woman he loved was being murdered by the man she loved—
Wait, the woman I love?
There was no time to second guess it, to deny that sort of terminology when a monster was breaking loose inside Kellerman, rabid with fear.
What the hell was Michael doing?
Why weren't those damned friends of hers tearing him off her?
Was she really going to die, before his eyes, miles and miles from here, while he could do nothing but watch her and lose his wits?
Finally, the men managed to pry Michael away. Kellerman was too focused on Sara to pay attention to her scarred, apparently mad husband. But she got to her feet so fast and whipped out the door that he had no choice but to settle for the others.
Stabs of relief shot into his chest, that she was alive—but pretty soon, it faded out, gnawed away by the rat that had sat atop Kellerman's heart, since the rape.
On the screen, Lincoln shook his brother's shoulders. "What the fuck, Michael? What the fuck was that? That was your wife here, you idiot. You fucking brilliant idiot. You know what she did to get you back?"
That had been the last straw for Kellerman.
He turned from the screen—he wasn't going to listen to this. What good could it do? Sara wasn't even there, anyway.
Though she has to get her phone back sometime.
That's why Kellerman has been checking it—waiting to see her face, just one last time. It can't be the last image he takes with him, her husband straddling her body, like a giant tearing the wings off a butterfly. And Christ, that dead look in his eyes. Like he was some kind of machine. Like there was nothing there but wires connecting, a dead brain processing data, and the only word left in his vocabulary was KILL.
Kellerman fingers his tie, absently lingering on the stiff places where Sara's saliva has dried.
He's not bothered by that thought that flashed through his mind, when he believed she was going to get murdered right there before his eyes.
The woman I love.
He has a fondness for Sara, sure. Ever since those AA meetings, hanging out at her apartment. There's no denying it. No real shame in it, either. After all, he's not made of stone. But he's not obsessed with her or anything.
Soon, he's going to tune out of her phone. He didn't hack it so he could spy on her twenty-four seven. He was just going to make sure she got home to her husband all right.
After what he just saw, he can't very well be satisfied.
Kellerman sits on the sofa—the sofa. His eyes stray to the charred spot where he burned the carpet while he was marking her.
"I can't tune out," he says.
A flood of relief hits his bloodstream, as he hears the words aloud.
The way he sees it, at this point, it's a matter of honor. Sara fulfilled her end of the deal, and yet he didn't—he cheated her out. He didn't mean to. But the deal was he'd give Sara her husband back, and the thing Kellerman sees whenever he looks at his phone doesn't look, talk, or act like Michael.
So, the least that Kellerman can do, as a gentleman, is hold up to his end.
Somehow.
He's going to have to find a way to get Michael back the way he was.
Of course, Sara won't like him, even if he does that. But at least, she might look back on their time together with acceptance. A transaction that they both got gained from.
What he heard her tell Lincoln in the car—
There is no line, no limit to what I would have done to get Michael back. I would have let the whole Senate fuck me, I would have pried him out from the jaws of hell. If you'd had to rip the skin off your body to do it, I would have handed you the knife.
It doesn't matter. Kellerman didn't hear that, really. There's knowing and then there's knowing.
He prefers to think of what happened between him and Sara as just that—something strictly between the two of them. That's why he didn't like what Lincoln said, earlier, You know what she did to get you back?
Lincoln has no business in this. He couldn't understand the subtleties of what he shared with Sara if Kellerman explained it to him in a step by step guide.
What happened last night was inevitable. The whole situation with Michael was only the trigger. Now that he's buried his face in her hair—that he's been in her flesh—it seems sure as the earth is round that it was one of those things in life that couldn't not happen.
She would not have let herself be raped by anyone in order to save Michael.
Kellerman's not anyone.
And Sara knows that. Deep down.
The fire in her eyes, when she bristled at his touch on her way out.
Go to hell, Paul.
That kind of hate doesn't come passion-free.
Kellerman's a man of his word. He's going to find out what happened to Michael back in Yemen, and give him back to Sara, all shiny in gift-wrap.
And if, while he works his way to deliver her stupid husband, he gets an opportunity to whisper in her ear—
It's not so crazy, to think she could be tempted. Eve was tempted by Satan, once.
Kellerman will go on biting, and biting.
Not because I don't have better things to do, or because I'm obsessed with her.
It's just that his honor's at stake.
He doesn't do it because it opens up a door in his mind—the possibility that he might press her hair to his face again, drown himself in the intoxication of her aroma.
He doesn't do it because he has to do it or go mad. Or anything like that.