Betrayal (9 page)

22

Jimmy Sarsley sat on the hood of his car and watched the crowds. He leaned forward as he took a bite of his burger to avoid dripping any sauce on his tie. His glasses, designer Tommy Hilfiger’s he’d bought off a fence he knew, got a spatter of ketchup on them from the burger and he took them off and placed them in his pocket after wiping them with a napkin.

He looked again at the photo of the woman. Kali White. She was attractive
with just the right amount of ass that he liked. To give him something to grab on to. He placed his phone down, which held two photos of her sent by her husband, and watched the people coming out of the building.

He’d been here once before, but he couldn’t remember why. Some of the spaces were offices but most of them were artist’s studios. Rented at cheap rates by an owner who loved artists, he figured. Why else would someone lose money when they could be renting to young professionals?

Jimmy had followed the woman from her home all the way to Santa Monica. She’d been inside quite a while. Almost two hours. He had seen that she went to the third floor. Once she was up the elevator, he scanned the tenants on the third floor. Six art studios. Four of them women, and two men. Although the women weren’t out of the question, he’d certainly seen that a hundred times, the likelihood was that one of those men was the person Kali White was having an affair with.

Jimmy
rode up and went to the first studio for a man named Sebastian Laurent. The door was wide open. In fact, most of the doors to the studios were open and he wondered how it was that someone could live like that. So exposed.

On the couch, he saw a good
lookin’ guy, probably twenty-five, and Kali White. They were holding hands and speaking in hushed tones.

Jimmy walked past them and then
back out to his car. He grabbed a burger from a joint across the street and had hung out the past couple hours waiting for her to come out.

The sun was hot and he squinted and cursed himself for not having his sunglasses with him
, before he leaned back, and tried to relax.

Another hour and still no Kali White.
Jimmy was contemplating heading up there again when he saw her walk out. Sebastian was with her, following behind her. They spoke a bit more… and then she put her arms around his neck and kissed him.

Jimmy quickly lifted his phone. Advancements in technology had made his job so much easier. It appeared to anyone happening by that he was just texting someone, when he was actually snapping photo after photo of their kiss.

They finally parted, holding hands until the last possible moment.

Jimmy smiled to himself and climbed off the hood. He got into the car and headed back to Adam’s White’s office.
Four thousand bucks for two days’ worth of work. Not a bad payday at all.

23

The office was empty at seven in the morning. No one at the clinic would have known the private investigator Adam had hired, but he still didn’t want to take that chance. This was a
secretive matter that no one else needed to be involved in.

The investigator, in many ways, dressed like a pimp. His suit was shiny and his head was freshly shaved and gleaming under the clinic’s lights. He wore gold-rimmed glass and sat across from Adam, resting one leg on top of the other.

“This is always the hardest part of my job,” Jimmy said as he placed the printed photos on Adam’s desk.

Adam held his gaze. He didn’t want to look down. He felt like vomiting and was afra
id he would lose it over his desk. But he had to look. What choice did he have?

He inhaled a deep breath, and picked up the first photo.

A huff escaped his lips. It felt like he’d been punched in the gut and all the wind was knocked out of him. His body went limp, as if his bones had just given out and no strength remained. He leaned back in the seat and gazed up at the ceiling.

“Please put them away,” he said, his voice hardly a whisper.

“Do you want to know who it is?” Adam didn’t respond so Jimmy continued. “Sebastian Laurent. An artist. He has a studio there. His father’s Algerian and his mother’s French. He was born here though. Educated at USC in art. He was actually—”

“I know who he is.”

“You know?”

“That painting you saw on your way in.”

“Oh. I see.”

“Thank you for your help.”

Jimmy rose and buttoned the top button of his suit. “No problem. And Dr. White, I’m really sorry.”

Adam nodded as
Jimmy left the office. He felt nothing right now. Not anger, not fear, not disgust… nothing but a dullness to the world. As though the entire planet were whitewashed. Sounds were quieter, the colors on his screensaver seemed less vivid… when his phone rang, it sounded distant.

Adam sat in his office easily an hour, perhaps longer. He wasn’t entirely certain he had the strength to move. Nothing seemed to work, not arms or
legs, mind or heart. He wondered if this was what it felt like to be dead. He didn’t cry, which surprised him, but at one point he tasted the saltiness of tears on his tongue and realized the tears were just flowing down on their own. He wiped them with the back of his hand and rose.

As he walked out of the office, he saw his
receptionist and someone else in the waiting room, but didn’t acknowledge them. On his way through the door, he shouted back, “Please clear my calendar for the rest of the day.”

“Dr. White, you have a surgery scheduled at ten. Dr. White? Adam?”

He didn’t stop or turn around. He walked straight to his car and sat in the driver’s seat. Once he started the car, there was only one place to go. Nowhere else in the world existed to him right now.

He got onto the interstate and headed to Santa Monica.
But first, he had to make a quick purchase.

24

Kali lay nude on a thick black rug. Sebastian lay next to her. He pulled out a stash of marijuana and rolled a joint. Lighting it, he passed it to her. She took a couple puffs and passed it back.

His studio was decorated eloquently, she decided. When she had first seen it, everything seemed to be thrown together based on a whim. But now she saw the theme running through. Buddhism, animals, African art… it was all exotic. Something different than what was available to people on a daily basis.

The sex had been something that weakened her to the degree she fell asleep afterward. Sebastian let her sleep for a while and then woke her when he’d gotten the marijuana out. This visit was another in a long line where she informed him that she couldn’t see
him anymore, and they ended up sleeping together. He had magnetism. Something that she hadn’t felt before. Like her body responded to him even though her mind told her to run, to get away and never see him again. But once she saw his crystal eyes, his disarming smile, the pearly-white teeth that seemed to shine in the sunlight… there wasn’t a choice anymore. Her will was taken from her. And she felt like a slave.

“I’m going to take a shower,” she said, sitting up.

He gently caressing the small of her back, sending shivers up her spine.

“Tell me you love me,” he said.

“I don’t love you.”

“Bullshit. Say it.”

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because that would be admitting… I don’t know what that would be admitting. But I can’t say it. Please don’t make me.”

He sat up too, and pinched her nipple, sending a small shock of pain through her breast. “Tell me you love me,” he whispered in her ear. “Tell me I own you and that you’d do anything I tell you to.”

“No… no please don’t.”

“Tell me you love me, say it. Say it…”

He lips opened as her eyes closed. His kisses were moving up her neck and she quivered with agony. Already she wanted him inside her. He knew how to flame the fire between her legs in a way no one else could.

She pushed him away and rose. Gathering her clothes, she glared down at him. At his perfect face that owned her. She was filled with equal parts lust and revulsion… and she didn’t know which would win out.

Kali went into the bathroom, and started the shower.

Sebastian lay on the rug, staring at his exposed ceiling. In reality, he knew it was the cheapest design, but it was also the most pleasing to him.
Something about seeing the exposed brick and wires, the vents that pumped hot and cold air through his home. It was like watching something you weren’t supposed to see. Something forbidden.

As he brought up the joint for another hit, he felt something. A feeling like someone was watching him. When he glanced to his door, he saw a man in a suit.

“Shit,” he said, jumping up. He grabbed his boxers off the floor and slid them over his legs. “What the hell are you doing?”

The man stepped closer and he recognized him. Sebastian froze. He had no words. Deep down, he knew this moment would come. Somewhere down the line. He just hadn’t expected it this soon.

“What do you want?” Sebastian said.

“What do I want?
” Adam replied. “What do I want… I want you to stop fucking my wife.” He took a step closer. “I want you to take those images of you inside her out of my mind. I want you to give me back the life that I had before you met her.”

He was speechless. All he could do was swallow, and take it.

“I think you should leave,” Sebastian said.

Adam
looked around the studio. They were quiet a long time before he said, “I like that one,” pointing to a painting in the corner. “The red and the black spatters of paint. It’s like a war.”

Sebastian, hesitantly, glanced over his shoulder at the painting. “That’s what I was thinking of when I painted it. Warring ants.”

Adam nodded. “How long?”

Sebastian hesitated. “About six weeks, give or take.”

“How did you meet?”

“You don’t want to know how—”

“How did you meet!” he shouted.

A long pause followed. Sebastian grabbed his shirt from the couch and
glided it on. “She was in an accident and I saw her car slide off the road. I took her to the emergency room.”

“Why didn’t you call an ambulance?”

He looked to Adam. “She was drunk.”

Adam nodded again, his eyes lowering to the floor. “Did you f
uck her here? In your apartment?”

“Look, Dr. White… Adam. I don’t think we should talk about this.
It’s just going to—”

“Did you?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“In hotel rooms?”

“Yes.”

“Her car?”

He hesitated. “Yes.”

Adam’s eyes widened. His face flushed red. “At my house?” he said, his voice
low.

“No,
never. I would never do that with your kids around.”

“You won’t hurt my kids?” he said with a chuckle. “You tore their mother and father apart. They’ll grow up from a broken home because of you.”

Sebastian looked down, unsure what he should say next. “I didn’t… it wasn’t supposed to happen. It just did.”

Something dropped in the bathroom, followed by the yelp from a woman. Sebastian looked back. He then turned to Adam whose eyes were fixated on the door.

“She’s here now, isn’t she?”

Sebastian sat down on the couch, his elbows on his thighs. “Yes.”

They were silent a long time. So long that the shower turned off. Adam walked to the other side of the room, a wall shared with the bathroom. Whoever came out wouldn’t be able to see him.

Within a minute, Kali stepped out fully dressed. She was pulling her hair back with a
clip.

“I’m leaving,” she said.

Sebastian didn’t reply.

“What? What’s wrong?”

Sebastian glanced to Adam, and Kali’s eyes drifted up.

25

Adam felt the wall behind him. He pushed into it and half-expected to fall right through. Nothing seemed real right now. To contemplate… this, and to see it were two different things entirely. Every cell in his body was screaming. Every instinct demanding justice. He tried to tell himself that he was hurt, and nothing more. But that’s not what it felt like. It felt like…

He pulled out the handgun he’d just bought and held it at his side. Both Kali and Sebastian appeared like they were going to faint.

“Adam, sweetie, you can’t—”

“You don’t get to call me that!”
he shouted. He swallowed, staring at her. “Not anymore,” he said calmly.

“Fine. Hate me. Throw me in the gutter. Do whatever you want. But you’re not a killer. Put the gun away. Please.”

Adam lifted the weapon, admiring it. “This? It’s amazing, isn’t it? I always thought you’d have to be a farmer or something to own one. But the sense of power…” He closed his eyes. “The sense of power, is amazing.”

“Adam, please…”

Adam stepped away from the wall. He stood five feet away from Sebastian and lifted the gun. Kali’s hands covered her face. Sebastian stared at him, his eyes cold and detached. He was trying not to act afraid, Adam thought. But he was afraid. Everybody was. Adam had dealt enough with death to know that at least.

Adam exhaled loudly. He felt the pain in his shoulder. Something he’d incurred during a baseball game in high school that had never healed properly.
He felt every ache and pain of age just then. The gun weighed heavily in his hand, pulling itself to the floor.

Adam lowered the gun.

In a flash, Sebastian had him by the throat. He flung him into the wall and swung wildly with a right, connecting to Adam’s jaw.

Adam lifted the gun. Sebastian grabbed it. He pressed against Adam and gripped the gun with both hands. Kali was screaming behind them.

“No!”

Sebastian twisted the gun around. Slipping his finger inside the trigger guard, he pulled.

A loud boom. So loud, that Adam couldn’t hear. The world had a pleasant hum to it. Quiet and dull.

He suddenly felt
airy, as though he could float away at any moment.

Adam slid to the floor. The blood was pouring out of his chest. How odd it was, he thought. He’d seen so much of it, had so much of it over himself and his hands and scrubs… but he’d never seen it like this.
As the essence of life.

And as it drained from his body, his heart beating faster in an attempt to pump more to his starving muscles and brain, he tried to hold it in. To put
it back. But it wouldn’t go. It just kept pouring and pouring. And as he closed his eyes, he thought of his children, and looked up to Kali. The love of his life. Even after all this, he didn’t hate her.

Adam smiled
and lifted his hand, wanting her to hold it. But she didn’t move. His hand fell to the floor, and he was gone.