Silent Run

he’d been drunk and it meant nothing. He still wanted me.” She stared down at her fingers, remembering how beautiful and yet how wrong the ring had looked on her finger. She’d known she was living a lie, but she hadn’t been able to stop. “Growing up without a family, I wanted to be wanted. In the beginning, when I’d go to a foster home I’d try to be perfect, so they would want to adopt me. But no one wanted to make me a permanent part of their lives. I was just a temporary guest. Victor was the first one who wanted a legal contract."
    â€œA legal contract based on a lie. Didn’t he ever ask to meet your family?"
    â€œI put him off. Victor had so much pride and money that he thought it would be fine to get married and tell them afterward. He said he wanted to pay for the wedding anyway; he wanted it to be the highlight of the Chicago wedding season."
    â€œSo you took him back."
    She nodded. “Stupidly, yes. I didn’t realize that Victor was more than just a cheater. He was also dealing in stolen art. I thought he was a reputable businessman. I knew he had some family contacts in Russia, but I didn’t realize they were fencing stolen art from the war. Apparently it brought in millions of dollars. But that money wasn’t enough for him. Victor and his friends wanted more. So they began smuggling heroin inside the frames of the art that came into the gallery. I didn’t know it at the time. That is the truth. And I certainly didn’t imagine that men who were born into such a wonderful life would want to risk what they had to break the law, to smuggle drugs."
    She’d thought she was street-smart, but she’d been naive when it came to how the other half of the world lived. “I grew up with kids who had nothing -- who had to steal to survive. But Victor and his Harvard buddies had everything they’d ever wanted. In retrospect, I realized that they didn’t care about money, because they’d never had to earn it. I thought Victor was my ticket to a good life, the life I’d always wanted to lead, and not just because of his money, but his respectability, his family connections. I didn’t understand that evil could wear an expensive suit and have an Ivy League education. That was a shock to me."
    Sarah glanced out the window as a dozen emotions ran through her. It felt good to let it all out. She’d never told anyone the whole story of her foolish affair with one of the most dangerous men in the world, a man who now wanted her dead. Not even Andy had known everything. He’d known just enough to get him killed. She couldn’t let the same thing happen to Jake. He had to know exactly the kind of people they were up against.
    â€œSo what happened?” Jake asked. “How did you find out what was going on? How did you end up on Victor’s hit list?"
    She turned to face him. “Two agents from the DEA approached me and told me that Victor was smuggling drugs. They presented the facts to me in such a way that they convinced me I could either be charged as an accessory and go to prison for a very long time, or I could help them set up a sting operation. They scared the hell out of me. They made it sound as if I had no choice. It was jail or turning on Victor. They said Victor was going down either way, but their way I could protect myself by helping them, and in return they would put me into the Witness Protection Program. They would give me a new identity, and I would be safe from any repercussions."
    She thought about those terrible moments of shock and fear when she’d learned the truth about Victor. “I wasn’t going to do it at first. I told them I didn’t know anything. That I couldn’t help. But they kept pushing me. They showed me a photo of a woman who’d been strangled. It was the woman I’d seen in bed with Victor. The agents told me that Victor had killed her when she found out too much. I didn’t know if they were lying or not, but I couldn’t get the image of her dead body out of my mind, and I knew they’d been together."
    Her voice caught, but she cleared her throat and kept going. “I had a date with Victor that night. I was earlier than I was supposed to be. I overheard Victor on the phone making a deal. Suddenly all the mysterious phone conversations, the people who came to the door in the middle of the night, the odd times when Victor would have to go