I don’t know what I thought I’d find at the safe house, but four dead people in the front yard didn’t even make the top one hundred.
I take in the scene like the professional I used to be. Three unmarked government cars haphazardly parked in the driveway, all with engines running. The front door to the house wide open. And complete silence within.
“Sasha,” Harrison says, tugging on my coat. “Let’s call James.”
“No,” I whisper, crouching in the cover of some trees near the road. “No. James finished his job a long time ago. Now it’s time for me to finish mine.”
I don’t even have a gun, so this is one hundred percent nuts. But so many people could have killed me already so many times. This can’t be about killing me. They need me alive.
So I straighten myself out and walk down the driveway. My feet are crunching in the frozen gravel and the wind is blowing my hair in front of my eyes, making me more nervous than I already am because no amount of wiping it away will make it behave.
It’s dark inside, but I can see bodies before I even make it to the threshold. “Jesus Christ. What happened?”
“The Company happened, Sasha.” Nick’s voice from within.
I step forward into the house and a hand reaches out and makes a futile attempt to grab my pant leg.
“Help,” Madrid says, one hand holding the hole in her stomach and blood gurgling out of her mouth. Her fist isn’t strong enough to stop me, so I just walk past and it slips away. There’s no help for her. I know what a gunshot wound to the stomach means.
“Are you surprised it’s gonna end this way, Sasha?” Nick is sitting in a chair on the opposite wall. He’s bleeding too, and there’s a 9mm revolver at his feet and a cell phone in his hand.
“What are you doing?” I ask. “Just what the fuck are you doing?” I look around me, counting up the bodies. Three people dead in here, including Madrid, and four outside.
“Just sending someone a text, Smurf.”
Seven FBI agents dead and he’s texting? “They’re gonna kill you, Nick. They’re never gonna let you walk away from this. So just what the fuck?”
Nick stands, wincing in pain from the wound in his thigh. He’s got a belt cinched tightly, just below his hip, in a makeshift tourniquet. And his head is bleeding pretty good too.
“You need help,” I say, not sure if I mean he’s gone batshit crazy now for sure, or if he needs medical attention. Both, I guess.
“He missed so much, Sasha. But I didn’t.”
“What the hell are you talking about? What the fuck are you doing? You’re ruining everything! They’re gonna kill you now, you asshole! They are never gonna let you get away with this!”
He laughs, but it turns into a cough. “Oh, but I will, Sasha.” He laughs again, even though I can tell it hurts him. “I always get away. Everyone knows that. But you’re here now. And you’re the only person who can save me.” His laugh turns into a hitch, and then a sob escapes as a tear slides down his cheek.
I step forward, not knowing what to think about this Nick. I’ve never seen him cry. Ever. Not even when he told me to go live my life without him and I was blubbering like a baby, begging him to love me.
“Don’t cry, Nick, please.” I can’t take it. I really can’t. Nick is a rock. Nick is the man who moves mountains. I walk forward quickly and pull him into a hug. “We’re gonna be OK. I’ll save you, Nick. I swear. I’ll save you. Just please don’t give up.”
He sniffs and wipes his face with the back of his bloody hand, leaving a streak of red across his cheek. “I didn’t miss anything, Sasha. I swear.” And then he points to the wall that holds all the pictures Jax has of me. I look off to the side and Nick reaches for my hand as it sinks in.
The white spaces are gone. Every inch of that wall is filled up with me, starting with the day I sat out on Ford Aston’s front stoop on Christmas Eve holding a kitten in my lap. The one-year anniversary of my dad’s death. The first day of my new life.
“I saw everything, Sasha Aston. Everything. I never left you, I watched you from Honduras.” He leans over and kisses me on the head. “I had dozens of people watching you. I was always there, even when I wasn’t. They sent me updates every week. No matter where you were, no matter what you were doing. I did it with you.”
There are hundreds of pictures of me. My beach vacations in New Zealand with Ford and Ash and the babies. My first year in a real school, dressed up in a Catholic girl uniform. Me and Five’s face-eating dog, Jimmy, who latched on to me like I was his best friend, when really he was all I had back then in the way of friends. My private high school in Denver, when we moved to my new grandma’s house next to City Park so all five of us could stay together and keep me safe at the same time. Running the steps with Ford at Coor’s Field. Me pushing Five and Kate in a stroller in Japan that summer Ashleigh went back to school to finish her master’s and I played mommy. My first date. Ford catching that boy trying to kiss me on the porch when he brought me home. College at The School of Mines. The day I met my first serious boyfriend at a baseball game, and the day after we broke up when I made myself go home and cry to Ashleigh.
I look over at Nick and he’s smiling. “It wasn’t a bad life, right?”
I shake my head and feel the tears fall. “It was good, Nick.” I have to hold in a sob before I can finish. “It was better than good. Just like you said it would be. You saved me. Just tell me what to do and I’ll save you back, OK? I’ll save you back. I’ll do whatever you say. I’ll find a way to give you as good a life as you gave me.”
“My life is over, Sasha.” He holds me by the shoulders as he turns me around to face the wall that holds the pictures of him. There were already hundreds of images on that wall before. But now there are hundreds more. “Those are the pictures Jax didn’t put up.” He leans his head on mine as I take them in.
Bodies.
Dozens and dozens of pictures of dead bodies. Piles of them. Blood, everywhere.
And Nick. In every bloody photo there is Nick holding a gun. Small handguns. Rifles. Shotguns. AKs.
“I’m already dead, Sasha.” He puts something cold in my hand and I hold it up to see what it is. The FBI badge that Jax made for me. It dangles on the beaded chain. Nick takes it from my hand and slips the chain over my head like a necklace. “But not dead enough.”
He looks me in the eyes as I stare at him, shaking my head.
“Save me, Sasha Cherlin.” And then he pulls out a FN Five-SeveN from the waistband of his jeans and places the weapon in my hand. “Save me, Sasha. I’m begging you.”
“No.” I start to cry. “No.”
He places my finger on the trigger of the gun and lifts it up to his forehead. I try to pull back, but he wraps my hand in both of his and holds it in place.
The womp-womp sound of helicopters thunders over the house and we both look up at the ceiling, like we can see through it. Like we can see the future that is unfolding before us.
“Shoot me, Sasha. I’m begging you. If you love me—if you ever loved me—kill me now. Before they come and take me away and make me continue living this hell my parents sentenced me to twenty-eight years ago.”
“I won’t do it,” I sob. “I can’t do it, Nick. Don’t make me do this.”
“Shhhh,” he says, taking a deep breath and stopping his own crying. “Just listen,” he whispers. “Just listen to me. They take the girls, Sasha. They take the girls and turn them into monsters. And I did my best, kid. I did. But they train them as fast as I can kill them. Right now, I’m winning. I have killed so many fucked-up Zeros, I lost count. But right now, Sasha, this moment in time, I’m winning. I got so many kids. I got twice as many parents. I have literally killed thousands of people, even if it wasn’t by my own hand. I’m winning. They’re all dead.”
He stops holding my hands on the gun and holds my face instead. “They’re all dead except for us. But if we don’t change the game in a big way, they’ll just keep doing it. I’m the leader, Sasha. I am the Company. And if you end me, that’s something they won’t ignore. If you end me, it sends a message that you’ll end them too. Whoever is left will get that message loud and clear. We won, Sasha. We won. And will always win because you, and James, and Merc, and Harper, and Sydney… and Jax. You six will do whatever it takes to make it stop.”
I stare at him, not even knowing what to say to all that.
“Kate. Think of your little sister. They’ll come take her, Sasha. Some nobody will get big ideas and they’ll come steal her away in the night and ruin her future, just like they ruined ours.”
The helicopters are louder now, and then a wind blows in through the front door as they try to land nearby.
“They’ll be here in a minute or less, Sash. And if you let them take me, they’ll lock me up. But one day, because of what I do and who I am, I’ll get out.” He squeezes my face to make this point. “I’ll. Get. Out. And then I’ll come for Kate myself. Because that’s my job. I am the Company. That’s who I am, Sasha Cherlin.” He holds up my badge, dangling from my neck, and puts it right in front of my face. “And this is who you are. So do your job, Sasha Aston. Do your job or I will come back one day and get her.”
Men are shouting out in the yard now, and I hear boots storming for the door.
“I’ll torture her, Sasha. The way Garrett tortured you two years ago. I’ll find her, take her, drug her, rape—”
I squeeze the trigger just as the light flooding through the front door is masked with men in Kevlar vests and riot gear.
“Drop your weapon!” they shout. “Drop your weapon and put your face on the ground!”
I drop the gun and fall to my knees. Shocked. Too shocked to react as reality sinks in.
The men push me to the floor face-first, handcuff me, and flip me over on my back.
That’s when they see my badge sitting on my stomach, hanging off that chain that Nick put around my neck. One guy lifts his visor up on his helmet and reaches for it.
“Sasha Aston,” I say. “FBI.”