“Sasha,” Agent Jax says calmly. He’s switching tactics. “Please.”
I shake my head and laugh.
“I don’t know your whole story—”
“You don’t know shit.” My calm is fading just as his is building. I stare up at him, the rage finally getting to me. “You don’t know shit. And whatever it is you think you do know is not even a fraction of what’s happening.”
“I know about the Company, Sasha.”
“Do you want a medal?” Snide and sarcastic Sasha is threatening to come out right now, and I’ve spent all ten of the years between then and now trying to rein her in. This Jax guy is bad news. Bad in every way.
I don’t want that girl to come back. I don’t want to feel these feelings. I don’t want that anger and hate to build inside me to the point of overflowing. So I take a deep breath. I don’t care about the things I’ve gained since Nick left. I love my family and I enjoy my work, but the only gift I got out of all that loss is this girl I became. I am strong, and rational, and normal.
I exhale that breath and say, “I can’t help you. I don’t know that man anymore and I have no intention of seeing him again. And that’s the end of it.” I tip my chin up and set my jaw, making sure he knows this is final. “Arrest me. I will bail myself out. Follow me, bug my apartment, threaten me with twenty-four-hour surveillance. I don’t care. I have nothing to hide. I’m not going to get dragged into some government sting operation just to satisfy your curiosity or give you some upper hand in whatever political war you think you’re fighting.”
He sighs, looking at me from across the table. I see a lot of things in his gaze. Frustration, mostly. “I’m going to do all that, you know. Aside from the arrest.”
“It’s your game, Agent. Not mine. Do whatever you have to do. If you’re not going to arrest me, then I’d like to leave now so I can pick up my luggage before someone at baggage claim steals it.”
“Do you have a ride home?”
“I don’t need a ride.”
“You have a taxi taking you to Fort Collins?” He smiles when I look at him.
“I don’t live in Fort Collins,” I sneer back.
“Taking a bus to Kansas, then? I know you have no connecting flight back to school. And I know you don’t have an apartment.”
I just smile.
“You do have one.” He frowns. “So it’s not in your name? Or your father’s name? And you haven’t been there in a very long time. Because I know a lot more about you than you think.”
“If you follow me, then I guess you’ll find out where I’m going, won’t you?”
He shrugs with defeat. “You’re free to go. But I’ll walk you to baggage to make sure your luggage wasn’t stolen.”
Whatever. I get up and walk to the door. It’s locked from the inside, I know that much, so I stop and wait for him to press in the code that releases the lock. He waves me forward and we head down the corridor the way we came.
Agent Jax clears his throat when we finally get back out to the concourse, and then we get on the moving sidewalk. He stands behind me as I walk, making the gates fly by, and he is quiet all the way to the train.
We are alone there, which is strange, but I don’t doubt they have security manipulating every step of our journey out to baggage, so I just wait.
When the train finally appears—and it takes several minutes, so I know for sure they are manipulating my exit—it’s empty. I step in thinking about how many travelers they had to piss off to make sure we had this time alone.
When we get to the main terminal, I exit the train and take the escalator up to the bustling airport. I walk across the mall-like building, looking up at the atrium ceiling briefly as I find my way to baggage. I stop for a moment when I get there. I don’t know what carousel my flight came out of, and none of the electronic boards have the number on them anymore.
Asshole had to make this difficult for me.
“Miss Aston,” Agent Jax says, tapping me on my shoulder. “Your luggage.”
He points to a porter standing with, yes, my luggage. There are stickers plastered on the hard plastic explaining TSA has rifled through them due to a ‘random inspection’.
“I hope you found what you were looking for,” I say, snapping up the handle of my roll-away and slipping the oversized backpack over my shoulder. My purse makes that three bags I have to maneuver as I make my way over to the rental cars.
And what do you know. Every counter is closed. Every one of them has a sign that says, Out of cars.
I turn to look back at Jax. He frowns, like this is unfortunate. But we both know he did this.
No matter. I walk down the long corridor until I find the doors that will take me out to the taxi waiting area of the garage.
Empty.
I’m not the only one dismayed, either. There are crowds of people looking around for taxis. And I know, the longer I stay here pretending I am not going to be riding home with Agent Jax, the longer they will wait for a taxi.
I turn to him. “Why are you doing this?”
“I’m sure your father can come pick you up.” He offers me his phone. “Give him a try.”
I stare at the phone.
“He doesn’t know you came home early, does he?”
“What?” Asshole. “So you were pretending ignorance about where I was all summer? You knew I was in Peru. You knew I had no car here. You knew my dad wasn’t picking me up.”
“I know school doesn’t start for two more weeks, Sasha Cherlin.” He smiles when he says my old name. “I know you’ve got plans. But what those plans are, I’m still not sure. Which is why you’re being followed. I think you lied to me about Nick. I think you’re a very good little actress and that Nick Tate contacted you while you were in Peru. I also know he’s not in Honduras. Not in Central America at all, in fact.”
My heart skips a little. He’s here.
“And I think you have a secret meeting with him right now.”
I turn and consider my options. I do not have a secret meeting with Nick. I really haven’t talked to him. He’s not why I came back to Denver. But I can’t go where I was going to go either. I can’t call my dad. He thinks I’m in Peru for another eight days. And as far as he knows, I’m not flying into Denver at all. I was supposed to fly right back to Kansas.
So now what?
“Where are you going, Sasha?”
I laugh and turn back to him. “You mean, where am I not going, now that you’re here?” God, I hate this guy. He just fucked up something important to me.
“Where are you going?” His tone is harsher now. “If you tell me, maybe I can help you get there.”
I calculate how many plans just got ruined over this asshole’s quest to find Nick and it pisses me off so bad, I just start walking. There is nowhere to walk to, but I walk anyway. I cross the empty street on the fifth level of the parking garage and start weaving through cars. I drag that stupid suitcase up and over curbs, trying to make Agent Jax give me some space so he can’t see my disappointment, but he’s on my heels the entire time. And when I finally make my way to the very edge of the garage and there is nowhere else to go I stop and lean on the concrete wall, my head in my hands.
“Sasha,” Jax says, putting a hand on my shoulder. I turn and swat it off in a single move. My eyes are blazing with the killer I used to be and not the normal person I’d like to believe I am. “What are you doing?” He’s confused now, but the look on my face must tell him my mood has changed. “You were meeting him, weren’t you?”
I shake my head. “I’m not lying about Nick. And to be perfectly honest, I’d like to see him again. But I’m not home early for him. Or anything that requires your attention. And I just want to go.”
“Who were you meeting? Just tell me, we’ll check it out, and then you can go.”
“I can’t tell you that. I will never tell you that. So whatever. You want to take me somewhere? Or get me a car so I can drive back to school? Because my plans have changed.”