“Hey,” Adam says as I walk up to the jet at the Fort Collins airport. He looks just as ragged as I feel. His suit coat is missing, his white dress shirt is untucked and hanging down like he just threw it on, and his eyes are wild. “Dude, what the fuck was that?”
“What the fuck was what?” I’m still caught in the web of Sasha Cherlin. Distracted and unsettled. Something is wrong.
“That video, dude. I don’t understand.”
“Yeah, it’s fucked up,” I say, taking the steps to the jet two at a time. The inside of the cabin is empty, so I make my way to one of the chairs and sit. My head hurts. “Where’s Essie? I need a drink.”
“She’s not here,” Adam says.
“Why not?” Jesus Christ. All I want is a drink.
“I sent all the girls back to their hotels.”
I look up at Adam and actually see him. He’s one of us. One of the four Taxmen—we come to collect. Me, Jake, Max, and Adam. Adam came a year after Michael’s death, a foster kid like Jake and me, but way smarter. Sasha has Ford, I have Adam. “You want to tell me why?”
He shakes his head. “Not really, dude. Because I have no idea what it means.”
“What what means? It’s Nick, taking a picture of Sasha using her webcam. All I want to know is where it came from. Maybe he’s still there and we can head him off?”
“That’s the problem, Jax. It didn’t come from Nick. It came from Max.”
“What?”
“Nick’s not taking a picture of Sasha. He’s taking a picture of Max. This video came from Max.”
“Why the fuck would Max send that to Sasha’s email?”
Adam just shrugs. We stare at each other for several seconds before I can even think of something to say. “Why do you think he sent it, Adam?”
“Dude, do you realize what you’re asking me?”
“Do you think Nick is setting him up? Sending that to Max’s email and then forwarding it on to Sasha? To make it look like it was from Max?”
“Well…” Adam laughs. “OK. I get the fact that her father is some genius hacker or some shit. But how the fuck would she figure that out, Jax? Why would Nick do that if there’s no way it would mean anything to Sasha? All she’d think was that it came from Nick. And all he says is, Got you. But when I looked close at the end of that video, it’s been cut. There was more, but someone cut it off.”
My mind is racing with possibilities. “What if Max was just trying to scare her? You know, make her afraid of Nick? Make that motherfucker even creepier than he is?”
Adam huffs out a breath. “Hey, if that’s what you believe, I’m OK with it.”
“Dammit, Adam, that’s not what I’m asking you.”
“No, you’re asking me to ignore the obvious. Max did this, OK? I know that’s true. If Nick did this, then why cut off the end of the video? So the question you need to be asking is what did Max hope to gain? And scaring Sasha? Sure, OK. But why?”
I roll the only logical possibility around in my head, trying it on for size. “I don’t like it. I don’t like a lot of this. Nick is telling Sasha one thing and I’m telling her something else. So I guess the first question is who’s calling the shots for Nick?”
“Nick calls the shots for Nick, Jax. We all know that now. He never worked for Matias. He’s fucking blue-blood Company, man. There is no one above that dude. No one.”
“Right,” I say. “And who calls the shots for me?”
Adam gives me a shrug using his hands. “Max. He’s lying, Jax. You know he is. None of this shit makes sense. Did you ever ask yourself why Max wanted kids?”
I get where he’s going, but if these suspicions are true, then what the fuck have I been working towards all these years?
“And did you ever ask yourself why Nick Tate was so hell-bent on killing people? Why make killing Company kids your life’s mission? It’s so fucking sick, right? It’s insane. And that guy is a lot of things, but insane is not one of them. And furthermore, why not kill us too? He’s never even tried to kill us.”
I look Adam in the face and let that sink in. “Because we’re not Company.”
“We’re just employees. We do what we’re told. We work for the FBI, and yet we don’t. We’re hidden away, compartmentalized. No one can touch us. Madeline says she’s there to help get these Company kids out, and yet every one of them ended up dead or missing. Where the fuck are those kids, Jax? Where the fuck are the kids she saved? And don’t say we’re right here, because we don’t count. We’re nobodies.”
“So you’re convinced Max is Company? And Madeline?”
“Look, I was just as happy as you to ignore all these warning signs. But not anymore. Not after that video. Max sent that video to Sasha to make her think Nick was hunting her.”
“But Nick came to her house last night and then left. Why didn’t he kill her if he was hunting her?”
“Because he’s not hunting her, Jax. He’s hunting Max. He already got Matias and Madeline last night. Now Max is the only one left. And Max wants Sasha for something. That’s why he sent you to get her. He wants her with him. And Madeline wanted her too. But they both wanted her alive. Why?”
“Why?” I ask myself out loud.
“You have a gift,” Adam says, pointing to a box on the chair opposite me. “I don’t know who it’s from. It was sitting there when I came on board this morning.”
I stare at him for a few seconds and then he walks off to the cockpit. “We’ll be there in an hour, so you better come to some kind of conclusion, Jax. Because I can’t do my job if I don’t trust the people around me. And we all know what happens to people who don’t do their jobs.”
I look at the box on the ground and open it up, thinking of all the brothers I’ve lost over the years. I think of Jake, the brother I almost lost the other night, the only one left aside from Adam. What was the point of all that shit in Denver with Jake? Max sent him there, but why?
I’m not sure.
I’m not sure about anything right now.
The white card on top of the white dress shirt says, Put it on. You can thank me later.