19. Theo

Waiting for Marcel"s phone call, I sneak a glance at Bianca, where she"s lying on the hotel bed, still shaken from what happened. Her entire body is stiff, and she darts her eyes around, almost expecting another attack.

After taking care of her small wound, I try my best to soothe her, but the shock doesn"t seem to wear off. Or so she says. So many things have gone wrong tonight. So many things have happened that I simply can"t wrap my head around.

She killed three men.

I didn"t analyze the cartel men"s bodies, but for a simple civilian to put down three criminals is just beyond me. I"ve seen trained professionals in my day struggle with hitting targets in that amount of time.

No matter her explanations, something doesn"t add up.

"Are you okay?" I ask as I sit next to her and hand her a glass of water.

"Yes… just in shock, I guess." I put my hand over hers to comfort her.

"You just went through massive trauma. It"s understandable. You should sleep."

"I can"t…" she whispers.

"Wait here," I say and quickly go to my car. I remember Marcel leaving some sleeping pills there. They should help her rest.

Returning to the room, I hand her the pills. "Take these, they"ll help you rest."

She eyes the pills and almost reluctantly takes them.

"Thank you," she murmurs.

We lay on the bed, and I spoon her from behind, waiting for the pills to kick in. It doesn"t take long for her breathing to regulate. I slowly get out of bed, leaving the hotel room again.

I head to the car, and I look at the dashcam footage, seeing the three men exit a vehicle and haphazardly organizing their attack. I try to look for some clues in the footage when Marcel calls.

"Can you talk?" Is the first thing he says.

"Yes, why?"

"I"m at the lake house with a cleaning crew. Damn, that aim," he whistles his appreciation. "I never knew you had it in you," he says, and I frown at his praise.

"I didn"t kill them."

"What are you saying? If you didn"t kill them, then…"

"Bianca."

"Are you certain?" Marcel asks, and I get the feeling that whatever Marcel is seeing there isn"t great.

"Yes, positive."

"Man… I don"t know how to tell you this."

"I"m on my way. I"m not far."

"Your wife?"

"Sleeping at a hotel."

"Good. This is… you"ll see."

I end the call and head back to the lake house. That is precisely the issue. I don"t want to see it. Somehow, I know that what I will find at the lake house will forever change my relationship with my wife.

It doesn"t take me long to get there, and I see a few other cars, probably the cleaning crew, in the driveway. Marcel comes to greet me.

I quickly tell him my version of events and ask, "How bad?" He gives me a small grimace.

"I think we may have found our sniper," he says, and I abruptly turn to him with a questioning look in my eyes.

"Marcel…" I start, but he stops me.

"Don"t say anything until you see this."

We enter the house, and I see everything exactly as we"d left it.

"I told them not to touch anything until you got here." I nod.

We go up the stairs until we reach the first two bodies. I crouch down to look at their injuries, and I"m shocked by what I see.

"This… how?"

"It"s a clean kill shot. Both of them actually. Do you know what the odds are to get that aim, not once but twice?"

"Not great, I"m guessing."

"Extremely rare." He waves over a young man standing by on the sidelines.

"Jacob, you do this all the time. What does this shot tell you?" Marcel asks for his opinion. A feeling of dread takes shape in my stomach.

"That"s a pro shot. And I mean pro, pro shot." Marcel thanks him, and I give them leave to deal with these two corpses.

Jacob and another guy come over with what looks like a body bag. They lay it open on the floor and, almost carelessly, they dump one of the bodies inside it. They do the same with the other one. It strikes me as almost inhuman the way they treat the bodies, but then I remember that it"s their job. By now, they"ve probably become too desensitized to it… to death.

"Now, on to the third guy. You already told me that she shot him twice." Marcel snaps me to attention, motioning for the second story of the house.

We get to the top of the stairs, and I see exactly what those shots had been. One shot to his wrist to remove his weapon, and then another kill shot to the head. His hand has a glaring hole in it, suggesting just how clean the shot had been. I slowly peruse the other gunshot wound, and I"m amazed at the alignment of the bullet. Squinting, I look at the distance between the wound and each eye. It"s almost mathematical in precision.

"Again, what are the odds that someone got three perfect kill shots in these conditions? None, unless…" He lets it hang, and I fill the gap.

"Unless it"s a professional."

"This doesn"t look good, Theo. Not only that, but we have her at the scene of Martinez"s shooting too."

"What are you trying to say? That my wife is some sort of trained killer?" I ask, sounding a little more defensive than intended.

"All I"m saying is that the evidence is piling up… and it"s up to you whether you believe it a fluke that she got those shots, or not."

"Damn…" I mutter.

"And I"ve been thinking…" Marcel frowns, bringing his hand to his forehead.

"What?"

"Remember the schoolgirl? I want to watch the footage again." I look at him suspiciously for a second before I realize what he"s hinting at.

I barely nod, a little taken aback by the potential conjecture. Marcel tells the rest of the crew to finish the job, and we head to his car.

Leaving the house behind, I see more staff in special equipment going towards the house with cleaning supplies. These guys sure are thorough. I wonder where Marcel found them.

"I have a laptop with me," Marcel mentions as we get to his car. He opens the computer and plays the footage again. Surely enough, we first see the footage of my wife going inside the hotel and then exiting.

"She was in there for two hours," I say, realizing she couldn"t have taken a shower for that long.

"And then…" Marcel plays the footage for the day of the shooting, where we only see the schoolgirl leaving, but not arriving. We pause on the frame.

"Her height matches," Marcel adds. I squint at the still, but I can"t make out much else.

"That would mean she had another disguise going in."

"Or she didn"t use the main entrance."

"Damn… okay. Let"s say it was her. How did she even know I was meeting with Martinez, or where I was meeting him?"

Marcel and I think on it for a second before we both look at each other in horror.

"The bug we found!" He"s the first to note.

"We thought it was the opposition… Shit."

"Your wife… how well do you know her, Theo?"

"Not at all, it seems… but how? I still can"t believe it. How?"

"You don"t just become that skilled overnight, Theo. She"s had years and years of practice."

"The apartment Rico followed her to. Did you find who it belongs to?"

"Not yet, most likely, I"ll get a reply on Monday." I nod and then frown again.

"So, let me get this straight. My wife"s not cheating on me, but she is a trained killer and a liar. Fuck me, I don"t know what"s worse."

"You"re taking this surprisingly well."

"Trust me, I haven"t fully internalized it. My whole marriage is a farce. Who knows how many other lies she"s told me?"

"Don"t let her know you know. We need to be careful if we want to find out more."

"At this point, I"m terrified what more I could find out."

"There"s something I can do to help," Marcel says and opens a briefcase, withdrawing a tiny device. "It"s small but packs a punch. Integrated GPS and listening device. Might help."

"Thanks," I mumble before adding, "I should head back. I can"t have her wake up and not find me there. Especially now."

"I agree. I"ll take care of the rest here. Just… be on alert. We don"t know how dangerous she is. Or worse… if she works for someone."

"Wait… You actually think she might have been sent by someone?"

"That skill… there are a handful of people who can do what she does, and they all come with an extreme price tag. We can"t let our guard down, especially now that we"re going deeper into the Jimenez shit."

He"s right. I hadn"t even thought of it from that angle until now.

"Fuck! Fine, I"ll be careful."

I leave the lake house, trying to block all thoughts during the ride to the hotel. I wasn"t lying to Marcel when I"d told him I hadn"t internalized the information. Because it"s absurd. Yet… all evidence points to the absurd as truth.

Who are you, Bianca?

I quietly enter the hotel room, take off my clothes, and slide into the bed next to my wife. Instinctively, she snuggles closer to me.

An image suddenly appears in my mind.

The moment I"d opened the door at the lake house when I"d seen her aiming the gun at the intruder, her expression had been cold… blank. I superimpose it to the image I have of my Bianca—sweet and innocent.

It doesn"t match. They are two different people.

I just had the worst realization that the Bianca I love might not even exist.

* * *

So far, Bianca"s maintained her facade. It"s funny because, for all her pretense, she"s never once asked me to notify the police. She has tried to get some information on what Marcel did with the bodies, but I shut her down.

She doesn"t need to know for now.

Because my own wife may be a cold-blooded killer, the less she knows, the better. I can"t believe she might have planted bugs on me. How long has she been doing this? Tracking me? Listening to conversations? There are so many questions going through my head right now, but I cannot allow myself to crack or show that I am in any way suspicious of her. I have to treat her as I"ve always done and figure out who she really is.

I almost want to laugh.

My wife, a killer, and a liar.

Hey, at least she hasn"t slept with another man, my inner voice tells me. I"m almost mad at myself for being relieved she"s not having an affair.

But yes, if I"m being frank, I"d rather she be a killer than a cheater.

What does that say about me? That I"m just as fucked up like her?

Yeah, I"ll take that.

But more than anything, I"m disappointed. A disappointment so deep, I feel like a part of my heart has withered and died. After spending most of my teens and early twenties in what could only be described as hell on earth, doing everything to survive to see another day, I"d thought she was my peace, my salvation.

Instead, it slowly dawns on me that I"d exchanged one hell for another. I can never escape the violence or wash away the blood.

I"m startled out of my thoughts by a beeping sound that indicates we"re running low on gas. I furtively glance at Bianca, and she has her bag on her lap, her hands nervously fidgeting with it.

"Gotta fill the tank," I say, and she just nods absentmindedly.

"I can"t believe after last night, we still have to meet my father."

"Yeah… me too."

We resume our silence until we reach a gas station. I get out to fill the tank. After it"s done, I signal her that I will pay and distance myself from the car. Call it instinct, but I know that she makes a grab for her phone the moment I"m out of sight. I can even see the movement.

Instead of entering to pay, I hide next to the building and open the app Marcel had installed on my phone, clicking in to listen to what"s happening in my car. I hear Russian, and immediately, I record so I can have it translated later.

"не могу говорит. думаю что муж знает. он увидел мне убить три человека."Her words seem hurried, her accent quite flawless, but hey, what do I know about Russian?

A brief pause, and then I hear my name "Да, Тео был подозрительный. ити один завтра. Пока."

After she hangs up, I send the recording to Marcel and tell him to give me a translation before heading to pay. I"m inside the store for maybe five minutes when the message comes through with the translation.

Can"t talk. My husband knows. He saw me kill three men; Yes, Theo was suspicious. Go alone tomorrow. Later.

Marcel follows the text with.

This isn"t good. Convince her you don"t suspect a thing. If she"s a Russian implant, it could really blow in our faces.

I reply that I"ll try before deleting all the messages.

Not even a day ago, Bianca and I were planning to visit a fertility doctor to expand our family. Suddenly, not only is she a killer, a liar, but she might also be a fucking Russian spy.

I school my expression and go back to the car. Inside, Bianca gives me a timorous smile, and I have the urge to both strangle her and kiss her.

Kiss her?

Yeah, I must be as sick as she is.