“What the fuck is this?”
It’s a stupid question. I know what this is. A full-fledged case study on Nick Tate. The wall in front of me is filled with pictures of him. It starts on one end, the corner nearest the front of the house, and fills the entire wall. There are even a few pictures and notes pasted over the corner on the far end of the room.
He ages in the images on the wall. They start out with Nick as a young teen, before I met him. Then Nick the same age as I remember him from when we were working together, the golden-haired, brown-eyed surfer boy. And then, at less than a quarter of the way across the montage, he begins to morph in appearance. Head shaved almost bald. A scar across his cheek. One tattoo. Spanish lettering arched across the front of his chest with the words Mara Perro in old English calligraphy.
Then slightly longer hair. More tattoos. Skulls and crossbones. Dogs snarling, their teeth dripping with saliva. Chains encircle his neck and arms. His wrists have thick links inked on them, like he’s a prisoner.
My eyes move on, taking in the next set of pictures. His hair is long now, past his shoulders. And it’s the same bright yellow I remember from when we were kids. The tattoos are more religious. There’s a picture on his back, a man with his head illuminated like an icon. The word Santino rides the space between his shoulders. This one in a pretty script writing. There are flowers and children sitting at his feet.
The two sides of his body couldn’t be more different.
I walk over to that image and touch his back. Tracing a line down his spine.
“That’s him.”
I figured.
My eyes leave that image and move on to the next set of pictures. I take it all in as he ages before my eyes. More or less hair. More scars. More tattoos. And when I get to the end, he is nothing but ink. Every question I had about him is laid out on this wall. A decade’s worth of answers.
“When I said I had more information, I meant it.” Jax is frowning. “You said you wanted to know, right?”
I nod.
“Well, then let me walk you through it.”
I hug myself as my body begins to tremble.
“I met Nick Tate when I was fifteen. He was fifteen too. I guess, from what you said earlier, that was the same year you met him?”
“Probably.”
Jax clears his throat. “I knew him as a teen in the Brooklyn neighborhood I was living in as a foster kid. My foster brother and I came out of juvie together, escaped social services, and both ended up getting adopted by Max. We were friends with Nick for a couple months. He appeared out of nowhere. But I was young and didn’t have any idea what lurked beyond my small world. I had no idea powerful people might use children to do the dirtiest work imaginable.”
I shake my head. “No, he was with Harper back then. She told me. They’re twins and she said they were inseparable. He was never away from her for long because she had panic attacks and she needed him. It was a big deal when she left the Company and went out on her own. And that wasn’t until she was eighteen.”
“I have no idea what he did when I wasn’t with him, Sasha. If he was with his family, it was sporadic. Because I’m telling you, he was a regular fixture in my neighborhood for months. He’d appear for days, then disappear for a week or more. He was almost never in school even though he was registered. So maybe he was going home.”
“How could he just go home? They lived on a superyacht on the ocean, Jax.”
“I don’t care, Sasha,” he says back, sneering my name. “I’m fucking telling you something. So stop trying to make excuses for him and listen.”
I force myself to shut my mouth. Mostly because I’d rather look at the pictures on the wall than argue. Nick. Finally I get to see what became of him.
“My brother Jacob and I had another little brother too. Michael. We were all fostered with Max Barlow. Jacob and I found Michael in the youth center one day. This was before we knew Nick. Before we even knew Max Barlow existed. And we were a team, ya know? Jake and me and Michael. Michael was just a little kid, but he was tough, man. Like super fucking tough. Jake and I latched on to him because of it. We were orphans, street kids. Nothing to look forward to, nothing to dream about. Life sucked.
“Max came into the picture not long after the three of us teamed up. He wanted to adopt Michael, and Michael said he didn’t go anywhere without his big brothers. So that’s how Jake and I got the luckiest break a foster kid can get. A permanent home.”
“What happened to your brothers?” I’m stuck in his story now. Picturing his life as a kid.
“Jake is…” He hesitates. “He’s…”
“What?”
“Never mind Jake. It’s Michael I want to tell you about. Because a little while after we all settled into our new lives, Nick appeared. Nick Tate. He didn’t even use a fake name. And I have to wonder now why he did that.”
“We have no birth certificates. Harper never had one either. She didn’t really exist, she said. I already had fake papers but we had to get fake papers for her. An ID, a passport. Everything.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Jax says. “But I’ve come up with my own theory over the years. And I think he used his real name because he wanted us to know who he was.”
“Why?”
“Pride? To boast?”
“Boast about what?”
“Assassinating Michael in his own bed.”
My stomach turns as I process those words. “What?”
“He came into our house as a friend. He cased us for weeks. Got to know us. Played with Michael. Sucked up to Max. We had him over for dinner. And then one night, he came inside, shot my little brother assassination-style, and disappeared.”
“No.” I say it forcefully. “Did you see him?”
“No, but it was him.”
“How you do know? Because Nick Tate is not that—”
“Kind of guy?” Jax laughs. “You have no idea who Nick Tate is, Sasha. None. But I’m gonna spell it out for you right now. Because we’ve had someone on the inside of Mara Perro for decades. Ever since that gang’s inception, there has been a rat watching every move. That’s what Max Barlow does. He’s the king of infiltration. He’s got men in every Westernized gang in the US, Mexico, Canada, South America, Central America, Russia, Moldova… you name it, if it’s not Islamic, Max Barlow runs the rats. The only organization we haven’t been able to infiltrate is—”
“The Company.” I say it like a dead person. My world was dark, but this room sheds a new light on everything. I’m not sure I like the light.
“That’s right.”
“You need a rat in the Company?”
“No, Sasha. We don’t want to waste time infiltrating them. Why? Why bother doing that when we have you?”
I hear the words, but I ignore them and concentrate on Nick’s scars. What happened to him? Did he get them fighting? Was he tortured? Did they make him do these things?
Or was he in on it from the beginning? Did he lie to me?
Jax takes my hand and places something in it. I look down at the gold badge encased in leather. There’s a beaded chain and plastic credit-card type ID attached.
“For you,” Jax says.
I look at the badge for a moment. Then the ID. It’s got my picture on it. My full name—Aston, not Cherlin—and some fancy, authentic-looking symbols. “What the hell?”
“You don’t have to accept it, Sasha. Yet. But think about it. You could make a difference.”
I look up at him. My whole body is freezing now, and I start to tremble. “You want me to get Nick for you, don’t you? To get revenge because you think he killed your little brother.”
“I know he did.”
“You don’t know, Jax. Unless he tells you, you don’t know. And what the fuck happened to innocent until proven guilty?”
“Whatever happened to a man’s home is his castle? Didn’t my brother have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Nick Tate took it away. Nick Tate has killed hundreds of people—”
“So did James, Jax. So when I’m done with Nick, do you want me to go after James? Is Harper on your hit list as well? Merc? Did you really bring me here to try to talk me into selling out the people who almost died for me?”
“As far as I know, they are all retired.”
“And you have no personal grudge against them, right?”
“True,” he admits. “But they got out of the business, Sasha. You got out. Nick didn’t.”
“We’re all ex-Company, Jax.”
“No,” he seethes. “You’re not. Because Nick never left them, Sasha. He’s still in.”
“He’s part of a Honduran gang, not the Company.”
“They are the Company. Nick knew that going in. They are the Company, Sasha. You think you got them all?”
“I never said that. We knew we only got some of them. But that guy, that Matias guy who took Nick—”
“They didn’t take him, Sasha. He left with them. It was a setup.”
“By whom?”
“By Nick.”
“Where the fuck do you get your information?”
“From Nick.” And then Jax walks over to a desk and pulls out a stack of letters. “Nick sent me these every year on the anniversary of Michael’s death. He justified it, Sasha. He said he’d do it again if he had to. He admitted it, he took credit for it, and he believed in it.”
“Why would he want to kill a little boy?”
“Why would people want to kill you, Sasha? Or should I say, twelve-year-old you?” He waits for it to sink in.
I turn away. “What the fuck?”
“Michael was someone’s Zero, Sasha.”
“What?” I whirl back around. “What did you just call him?”
“The Zero. The new breed of Company assassin. Nick was one, too.”
I turn back to the wall and stare up at the golden boy of my childhood.
“So were you.”
But my head is shaking out a no. “My father never put me in the program. My father—”
“Taught you how to kill as a child.”
“No.”
“Yes. I brought you out here to show you the truth. You wanted me to give you all the information I had about Nick. And here it is.” Jax walks up to the wall and starts pointing at the pictures. “Age fourteen—this is him. Just a kid in a low-income classroom. Some inner-city school where politicians go to make up feelgood moments. The next day that government official was poisoned. Didn’t I once hear that the Company assassins had to use poison for personal jobs? What kind of personal job could a fourteen-year-old boy have, Sasha?”
No.
“Age fifteen. This picture was taken in my own fucking house. That’s Nick sitting between me and Jake. That’s Michael on the far left. He was shot in the head as he slept less than two weeks later.”
No.
But he goes on and on and on. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Jax pulls out an envelope with pictures of me and Nick together at the antiques mall in Cheyenne where my father ran his business. The same place I dreamed about the life Nick and I would have together. Where I sat reading Little House books, lamenting over my stupid braces and hoping against all hope that things would turn out OK. That Nick Tate might save me.
No.
“After he left you crying in that boat, he went down to Honduras for his final phase of training. Before Nick Tate came to town there were between two and three homicides per day in San Pedro Sula. After, it averaged four.”
“So that’s all Nick? Please.” I laugh. “You cannot be serious.”
“He brags about it, Sasha. We’ve got video. I told you we have informants. We have plenty of video. And I’ve got it all queued up for you on that laptop right there.” He points to a computer.
I swallow hard.
“I’m not lying. I swear to God, everything I just told you is true.”