Chapter Forty-Four - James
We walk back to the Hummer in silence and my mind, opened up from sharing these details with the girls, is buzzing like it’s got something to say. Memories flicker in and out, and I press my fingertips to my temples.
“You OK?” Harper asks me as she entwines her arm in mine. “You don’t look good.”
“Fine,” I say. But I’m not sure I’m fine. I’m not convinced any of us are fine.
Sasha glances over her shoulder at the dinosaur one last time before she opens the back door on the driver’s side and hops up into the truck.
“Put your belt on, kid.”
She does as she’s told without comment. Her earlier sadness, despite her bravado back under the reptile, has turned to hopelessness.
I prefer her sad if the alternative is hopeless.
So I smack her leg, trying to change her mood. But she just shakes her head. “This is worse.”
“What’s worse?” my dry throat croaks out.
“Knowing,” she says, her eyes still avoiding mine. “At least I had something to believe in before.” She directs her gaze up to mine as Harper gets in the front and closes her door.
“You can believe in me, kid. I told you, I’m working on it. I’m gonna keep you safe.” I look over at Harper as she silently watches us. “I’m gonna keep both of you safe.”
Sasha turns her whole body away from me and I close her door and open mine, get in, and just as I’m pulling my door closed I hear her whisper an answer.
“I don’t believe you.”
I let out a long breath and start the truck, the air-conditioning blasting away her words as the warm air shoots out. I don’t answer, just get back on the freeway and head towards LA, waiting for the chill to take over.
Actions always speak louder than words and all I’ve given her so far are words.
When the Admiral called me to the twins’ sixth birthday party I knew why I was there. To be given a number. An assassin had just been killed off. How? That’s an excellent question. One I never cared much about until recently. But it doesn’t matter now. It’s too late to make a difference. The twelve years between then and now have wiped that advantage away. Besides, if I had known then what I know now… I’d definitely be dead.
I was never lied to. At least by my parents. They were upfront from the time I was small. You are a Company child, James. You will always be a Company child. But being honest and being forthcoming are two very different things.
I should know, I use that to my advantage all the time. I try to be honest when I can, but I’m almost never forthcoming. And there is a big difference.
For instance, telling me that I am owned by the Company is honest. But leaving out the fact that my children will be traded for favors like secrets and my wife will be killed if she objects is far from being forthcoming. And call me what you will—sell-out, naive, shill—whatever. I admit I’ve been all those things at one point or another. But that’s only because people who said they were being honest were very far from forthcoming.
At sixteen, looking at my promise playing on the beach, yeah. That was all very much OK with me. I refused her, so I know I have some honor. But I wanted her, even if I refused to admit it. I wanted her enough to listen to the Admiral’s plan for me. I wanted her enough to kill on command for more than a decade. I wanted her enough to follow every order sent to me, without fail. I wanted her enough to kill my associates and my own brother.
Even after my little sister was taken that first year I was working professionally, I wanted to be what the Admiral thought I was. His personal assassin. Because I wanted Harper. I might not’ve admitted it back then, but I wanted to please him, I wanted to show him I was worthy.
And fuck it, I still want what’s mine. I do. I’ve lived my life the past dozen years based on the fact that there’s a reward for me when it’s all said and done.
My mind flickers again and I suck in some air as the stabbing pain shoots across my forehead.
But that was before I got the message.
It’s funny how one text can change your life. How a few simple words can tip all your plans upside down, redirect your life’s work, and make you do things you never thought yourself capable of.
I’m capable of anything, though. I know that now. I’ve killed enough people in cold blood to understand what it means to be capable of something.
People who assume I will blink when things get too hot typically end up dead.
I never blink.
I never stumble. I never fall. I never pull punches.
When I’m in, I’m all in.
And even though everything I’ve done since that day on the beach when Harper and I turned Six was building towards a future, I know now I can never follow through with it.
The message that changed my life was about a girl.
And this almost makes me laugh. Because now that I’m here looking back, every major turning point in my life has been about a girl.
This girl was one I had forgotten about and yet she was always there, in the back of my mind. Nagging at me. A girl the very same age as Harper. A girl I loved long before I even knew Harper existed.
It came in the first day I was at the beach taking the edge off. Just before I recognized Harp as the missing twin, as if I was being reminded where my loyalties lie. The text said… Meet me.
That’s it.
I get these messages all the time. I get phones dropped off at various places for me all the time. The one in the green house in Sandy Valley was not for Harper, it was for me. The one in Merc’s house was not for Sasha, it was for me. And the one I found sitting on the railing of an apartment balcony last March—the day I went to see if it would suit me as a rental as I endured my mandatory take-the-edge-off punishment at the beach—also for me.
Meet me is a code we assassins use when we need help. It means find the nearest gas station, go there, and wait.
So that’s what I did. I waited, expecting to see one of two men show up. The only two left who know how to find me. The dead man who walked through the doors of the Stop-N-Go on Beach Boulevard was so off my radar it took me almost a whole minute of open-mouth staring to come to terms with what I was witnessing.
He was beach-bumming, like me. His jeans were old and torn. His t-shirt a little too big, sporting a faded image of a mushroom on it. Vans on his feet. He was holding his hands up, like he was surrendering, but he was not surrendering. He just didn’t want me to shoot him straight away. He needed a minute.
He got it, because I was stunned.
“You look good,” he said.
“You look better than you should,” I replied.
He nodded and shook a hand in the air so I’d notice it. “I have something for you here.” He was holding a phone. “A message.”
Whatever message he had, it was not one I wanted to hear, but I said, “What message?” involuntarily.
“Take a look.” He held out the phone and I reached for it, thinking he’d use that as an opportunity to attack. But he didn’t. He handed me the phone and I took it, never taking my eyes off him. “Press play, Tet.”
I looked down at the phone and squinted at the girl on the still shot of the YouTube video. The still shot was a close-up of her face, her eyes wide with fright.
Green.
Her eyes were as green as mine. Her hair was as dark as mine. Her features reminded me of pictures of my mother when she was young. But there were bruises on her face. Not recent ones, which made them all the more ugly.
“Nicola?” It was a question in my head. A desperate, desperate question as I hoped against hope that what I was seeing was real. I pressed the play icon on the screen and her voice carried though the noise in the busy gas station. “James,” she said to the camera, her eyes filled with fear. “Help me. Please,” she begged that day on video. “Please, help me.”
How do you deny your sister when she returns from the dead and asks you to save her?
You don’t. You say, Whatever it takes.
Because blood runs thick.
That fucking blood sticks to your hands no matter how much time you spend in the desert.
That fucking blood makes you do things. Things that you never thought you’d do. Things like kill your brother to save your niece. Things like give up your future to save your sister.
I’ve been looking for someone to save my whole life.
Since the day I shook death’s hand and walked away from a dirty promise.
Since the day I decided I am damned and I’ll take them all to hell with me.
Since the day I realized blood might run thick, but revenge runs deep.
I did make a choice that day. But that was just hours before I met Harper. How could I have known?
I remember now. I remember what was hiding behind that black curtain of denial. I remember those missing hours I forced myself to forget to avoid the consequences.
I remember the dirty deal I made with death.
And death is coming back to collect.