Chapter Forty-Three - Harper
Do as she’s told?
Can he be any more of a caveman? I sigh as I watch his ass walking to the back of the restaurant. It’s a nice ass. Then I notice several women checking him out right along with me and an unfamiliar feeling creeps up.
Jealousy.
One woman notices me watching and quickly averts her gaze, so I just turn around and walk outside. The dinosaur is on the other side of a large parking lot and just this trek has my shoulders burning from the morning sun. It’s so hot here. I’ve spent most of my life in the tropics, so I’m used to hot. But the heat out here in the desert is suffocating. It zaps the life from you. And there’s no water to ease your discomfort. Our biggest yacht, not the sailing one, actually has a pool. But even if there was no pool, the spray of the sea kept you cool most of the time. I’m only halfway across the parking lot when another emotion hits me.
Homesickness.
I have to admit, I miss the ship. I miss that life. I was not abused or treated badly. I miss the ocean and the salty wind. I miss the crew too.
I am almost upon the big gray beast when I spot Sasha sitting underneath. At least it’s shady. I walk under, bypass an empty stone picnic table, and cop a seat on the brontosaurus toe next to the one she’s occupying. “What’re you doing?”
“Thinking,” she says as she rolls her flip flop over some stones on the concrete.
“Oh.” This is going great. “I think James is ready to leave. He wanted me to come get you.”
She’s silent for a few seconds and I’m racking my brain trying to think of something else to get her feet started when she finally pipes up. “Did you ever miss living in a house? With parents and school and stuff?”
“Ummm…”
“We lived in an RV until I was almost ten. I kinda liked it.”
“Oh.” I consider this for a second. “Well, that’s sorta like living on a ship, isn’t it? You move from place to place and see lots of stuff.” I catch movement out of the corner of my eye and turn, automatically looking for danger. But it’s just James. Leaning up against the dinosaur leg, smoking a cigarette. He shrugs at me and I turn back to Sasha. She’s not paying any attention to James. “The best thing about living on the ship was the whales.” Sasha looks up at me, her eyes bright with curiosity. “The humpback whales migrate in certain places every year, so we’d have to be in that part of the world to catch them moving in groups like that. But we saw them enough for it to leave an impression, ya know? Like—it became a part of my life. It was something special when I woke up in the morning and discovered a whale outside.”
Sasha laughs as she pictures it. “Did you ever swim with them?”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. “No. No, I’m not brave like that. You could never pay me enough money to swim next to a whale. I like to snorkel, but mostly in shallow waters.” I take a deep breath. “I’d probably have a panic attack if a whale ever came up to me in the ocean.” I sigh heavily. “I have those attacks a lot. It makes me need the pills.”
She stares at me for a second and then shakes her head slowly. “That’s not true. You haven’t panicked since I’ve met you.”
“Which is only two days,” I say back, chuckling under my breath.
“It feels like forever since that night you pulled a gun on us.” And then she looks over to James, who is still calmly smoking his cigarette, leaning up against the dinosaur’s front leg. Just waiting us out. Sometimes he is very patient.
“I know,” I say, picking the subject of panic again. “I’ve been pretty good. But you know why?”
She shakes her head and resumes rolling her flip flop over the stones.
“I think because James is here to help me. And you remember that first night when you said he was being mean to you all day, and for me to not take his anger personally? Well, I’ve thought about what you said since then and I think you’re right.”
She stares hard at me and I can see the tears building. “He’s all I’ve got,” she says as a tear slips down her face. “He’s all I’ve got so I have no choice but to forgive him when he’s mean.”
“Well, that’s sorta true. You always have a choice whether or not you want to forgive people. And he’s not really all you’ve got, because I’m here too. But what I think you meant was—we’re together now. Whatever it is we’re doing, we’re doing it together. So even though all three of us are used to doing it alone, we’re not alone now.”
She starts crying for real, sniffling in rapid succession as she tries to make it stop.
I think a distraction is in order, so I come up with a question for her. “Tell me what you liked about living in an RV. Did you see cool things?”
She nods her head as she wipes her wet cheeks. “We—” A new sob escapes despite all her best efforts and she takes a moment to pull it together. “We were dinosaur hunters.”
James is suddenly in front of me. He takes a seat on the dinosaur toe next to Sasha and flicks his cigarette away. “I killed a dinosaur once,” he says as he blows the last of the smoke out of his nose. Sasha laughs and wipes her eyes. “I swear,” James continues. “You know, that’s my job. I’m a killer for hire. So one time, I’m on this tropical island somewhere off the coast of South America. And they have this theme park there where they grow baby dinosaurs using genetic cloning. And they have all these electrified fences and shit, but some asshole was stealing the DNA to sell on the black market and knocked out the power so all the dinosaurs got out and they needed me to come in and save everyone.”
“James!” Sasha says, laughing. “You never went there. That’s the movie. Don’t believe him, Harper. He’s making all that up.”
“Sure I did. Who do you think gave that writer the whole idea for that book? It was me. I’m the original dinosaur hunter. Animal Planet wanted to give me a show—”
“James!” she squeals again. “You’re lying.”
“—because I found a stash of living dinosaur eggs—”
Sasha punches him on the arm and then he winces and rubs it, like she hurt him. “I’m not joking, James. We were dinosaur hunters, only we looked for bones and stuff. We used to spend the summers in Utah looking for fossils.”
“Did you know this past year was the first year I actually had a winter?” I pipe in, since we are sharing.
“What?” Sasha says through her laugh.
“Yeah, whenever winter rolled around we just crossed the equator and sailed towards summer. I’ve never seen snow.”
“Oh my God,” Sasha says. “What do you do on Christmas if there’s no snow? I can’t even imagine a Christmas without snow.”
“We never really celebrated Christmas. We never had a tree or anything. We just had dinners. And people would say it’s Christmas, Merry Christmas or whatever… but it never really meant anything to me other than we had lots of guests on board.”
“Wow,” she says, looking at me with pity. “I think I like my life better than yours.”
I shrug. “It’s not all that different. I still have a father, but I ran away from him. So really, I’m all alone too.”
Her somber mood is back and I feel bad for being responsible.
“Well,” James says. “Both of my parents are still alive but I hate their fucking guts.” He lets out a long, controlled breath of air and then flicks his lighter and starts puffing on another cigarette. “How do you sell your kids?” He blows out a stream of smoke through his nose and shakes his head. “Who the fuck sells their kids?”
“It’s not like they have a choice, James,” I say, trying to defuse the anger that is bubbling up inside him. “They did the same thing our parents did. They were born into this fucked-up Company too.”
But James is shaking his head before the last of my words are out. “That’s not true.” He stares at me. I can’t see his eyes because he’s got those damn sunglasses on, but I can feel his stare like it’s the desert heat. “You wanna know how I know that’s not true? You wanna know how I know your fathers”—his fingers make a v-shape and he points to both Sasha and I—“put up a fight and mine didn’t?”
I’m not sure I want to know, but Sasha says, “How?” before I can stop this conversation.
“Because your mothers are dead.” He blows out more smoke and then slides his glasses up onto his head so we can see his eyes. “And mine’s not.”
The entire world goes still for several moments as I take in his words and the only thing that snaps me back is Sasha’s small hand lacing her fingers with mine. “What’s that mean, James?” she asks.
He gets up off the dinosaur toe and walks away. And when he’s walked the length of the dinosaur’s underbelly, he turns and walks back. He stops right in front of us and looks down as we look up. “It means your mothers are dead because they killed them. That’s just what tends to happen when you have girls. Boys? They just get trained, right? Trained to do what? Jobs, I guess. Most of them aren’t killing people for a living, are they? No, only a few of us get that privilege. But the girls are just handed over.” James stops talking and his stare focuses on me with laser precision. “You know this, Harper. You were given away.”
“To you, James. I was given—”
But he’s shaking his head.
“You were the one who said it was never gonna happen, right? Why would your father give his prized possession to me? A killer. My family is wealthy, but only because the Company sets them up that way. I’m nothing. I’m nobody. You knew it right away. You feel it inside. I’m nothing but a filthy killer. Your father made that promise, but he never expected to have to live up to it. He never expected me to make it this far.”
My heart is beating so fast I might pass out. My head begins to spin and I know I’m gonna have a panic attack. I want him to stop talking so bad, but Sasha—“But why would they kill them?” she asks.
All I want to do is cover my ears, but James is already talking.
“When you have a girl, they take the mothers away because they put up a fight.” And then he stares down at me. “Not even the Admiral is immune to this, I guess.”
I’m shaking my head. “My mother died in childbirth.”
“Yeah,” he says in response. “How’d your mother die, Smurf?”
Sasha squeezes my hand and whispers, “Childbirth.”
“That means they refused to give you girls up. They come when the babies are born and make deals with the fathers. This is how they keep it going. The Company is dependent on the next generation. They need us to continue their dirty work, or else things would just degenerate until they fell apart. They need that birth promise. And most of the time, the parents give in. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they really have no choice. None. The kids belong to the Company no matter what. And most parents give in and sign them over. But every once in a while”—he points to us with his v-shape again—“every once in a while they fight back. And then the Company kills the mother to make an example of them.”
“Kills them…” Sasha says in a voice so weak I turn to look at her to make sure she’s OK. Her face is ashen and her grip on my hand is tighter than ever. “They killed her.” It’s a statement, not a question.
When I look at James he’s nodding. “They kill them if they put up any kind of fight. So while my mother was busy signing over my sister, your mothers gave their lives for you. And your father, Sasha, from what I can tell, almost made it out.”
“They killed him too?” she squeaks out. “The Company?”
“James, stop,” I say. “Just stop. She doesn’t need to hear this.”
“She does, Harper. She really needs to hear this.” He looks back at Sasha and even though his words are harsh, his voice is soft. “They killed him, Smurf. But hey.” He bends down and tips her lowered chin up with a fingertip. “I told you, Merc is busy doing something important, right?”
“He’s killing that senator?”
“I’m not sure he’s doing that right now, but believe me, he’s gonna get them back.” And then James looks at me. “And while he takes care of that end in his way, the three of us will take care of this end in our way. But I need your trust, girls. I need your trust. I can’t do any of this unless you trust me because I can’t do any of this alone.”
I swallow hard and look him in the eye. “Why should we trust you? You’ve done their dirty work for them your whole life.”
James doesn’t even blink. Like he’s used to the insult. He’s been called a killer so much, that label has no meaning to him anymore. “Because they took my baby sister. My mother sold out my baby sister and they took her away. And someone needs to pay for this shit, Harper. Someone needs to stand the fuck up and say enough. And maybe we’re not much. One man, one woman, and one kid. But I’m tired of waiting for that someone to come along and make things right. We might as well put a bullet in our own heads right the fuck now because we are already dead.” He stops to make sure this is sinking in. Both Sasha and I are shaking now, so yes, his shock tactic is working.
“We’re already dead except for you, Lionfish. Sasha and I have hits on our heads. There’s no way we’re gonna be allowed to live. But even if we did make it, even if I did make it out and I was allowed to keep what was already mine”—he takes the hand Sasha is not holding and gives me a comforting squeeze—“what kind of future will we have if our daughter is sold? What kind of future will I have if they make an example of you? Because there’s no fucking way on this earth that I would let them take my child, girl or boy. That’s never gonna happen. What kind of life is that? What kind of man lets this happen? What kind of coward lets his own family be sold off or killed?”
“That’s not any kind of life I want, James,” Sasha says. All her tears are gone now. Her expression is the opposite of the one she was wearing a few minutes ago. That sad and lost child has disappeared.
And I suddenly feel like I’m looking in the mirror. Because the expression on her face is the same as mine.
Cold killer.
The desert wind is whipping my hair around and the temperature outside the shade of the gigantic dinosaur is at least one hundred ten. But my skin shivers from the cold within.
Like the reptile sheltering us, our blood runs cold.
We’re all cold here.