Chapter Fifty-Seven - James
I watch the Smurf watch me through the smallest crack of an eye during our plane ride.
She’s making me nervous. She’s not asleep, but she thinks I am. She’s watching me, but she has no idea I’m watching her.
Jesus fucking Christ. I have no idea what I’m doing. I know things they don’t think I know. But I’m not even sure what to do with some of that information.
And I have no idea what Sasha is doing. I know she’s operating on someone’s orders. I’m just not sure who’s orders they are. The Admiral? She definitely was. But now? Not sure. Nick? Don’t know about that either.
Merc? Now that’s the real mystery. The one that matters most right now because he’s the first person we’re gonna see.
And Nick. I haven’t seen him in a long time, but Merc has. He knows a lot about me. Maybe more than he should. Definitely more than he should.
And so this is the test. Who works for who is a question I’ve had no solid answer to for a very long time. But pretty soon all the players will be present and I can sort it out.
But pretty soon is not now, so I need to just let it go. I’m moving forward on trust alone. I have to trust her. It’s my only option.
I think about Harper instead and that makes my chest hurt in a way that’s new to me. When I saw her lying on the floor in her old apartment—fuck. I stopped breathing. It had to have been no more than two, three seconds. But it felt like eternity. Slow mo, right? They say that in emergencies, time changes. And I believe it. I’ve felt that a lot over the years. When reality is so in your face. When death is right there—all you gotta do is reach out and he’ll pull you across that thin veil and make it all end, once and for all.
I’ve been there so many times. But the first time is the one you never forget.
Honduras. Twelve years ago. James Fenici, barely Six, not yet Tet. Already fucked up.
Even now when I close my eyes, I hear the spray of bullets. My hands were shaking so bad I couldn’t even load my fucking rifle. And when I finally shot my first gang member down in the fucked up place they call San Pedro Sula, I missed. The first bullet skimmed past his temple, just enough to ruin his eye, and give me a nice visual burned into my memory. Still, to this day.
I never even got a chance to fire a second shot and finish the job, because I was caught and the guy who was forever called Mistake Number One in my head lived.
But I’m sure he looked in the mirror every day and wished he hadn’t. I’m sure he looked in the mirror every day and told himself he lived for one thing only. To make James Fenici pay.
I was in custody long enough to be tortured by him personally after he recovered. They burned me. They choked me. Hell, they hanged me once. Not enough to break my neck, obviously, just enough that I had to stand on my tiptoes for hours… days, sometimes.
They say the reason I’m so dangerous now is because I never gave up then. And I guess that’s true. I don’t. I figure fuck this goddamned world. It’s got nothing I can’t take. All I gotta do is become Tet when the time starts to slow down and he steps right in. He’s got no problem blowing heads off and Tet does not miss.
If you’re gonna kill someone, you finish the job or die trying.
Because it’s no gusta hanging around to get caught or having to go back and try it again. Take it from me. I know. I got caught and I went back to finish the job of taking over the city they call Murder Capital of the World. It was like combining the worst moment of my life with a weird sensation of coming home.
I think that’s when Tet really started to take an interest in my jobs. I don’t consider Southern California home anymore, not since I left there when I was sixteen. But thinking of Honduras as home back then? That was a new level of fucked up, even for me.
It took me years to understand that I was different. When One came to rescue me from the Honduran gangs, I had an inkling. His third name is Shroom because his calling-card poison is amatoxin. Poison mushrooms. We get assigned a poison to use when we need to kill people for personal reasons. Mine’s the toxin found in the blue ring octopus. Classic James Bond kinda shit.
Tet the toxin is a blockbuster movie way to die, for sure.
But Tet the dude? He’s definitely more of a Goldfinger kinda character.
I don’t know whose idea it was to give us three names, but I took that shit seriously because when your job requires you to interact with some of the biggest scumbags on Earth, you gotta keep it in perspective.
Tet.
I can feel him inside me. He tips his hat in greeting. He’s relaxed right now. His version of winding down at the beach. But that’s because I’m with the kid and I think Harper is safe for now.
Fucking Harper. I miss her more than I’d like to admit because there’s just no telling how all this shit will play out. I have no idea who is on my side inside the Company or who is actively working against me. They might be using her to get to me. They might be using me to get to her. Hell, anything is possible at this point. I don’t know if a single person can say they understand their loyalties these days.
It’s a sketchy world at the best of times, but the Company has seen the last of the best of times. Ever since Harper and Nick took off with that file, everyone’s been on edge.
What’s on the file? Only one person knows that for sure. The person who made it.
And he’s dead.
I don’t know a lot about it, but I do know they can’t access it. Before Nick took it, they had every expert on the planet trying to get past the firewall.
That’s one reason they brought in Merc. And fuck—what good luck for them that the guy was a professional mercenary. He was working private security when I was sent to Europe to recruit him. He was not interested and it was dropped. But we got to be friends over the years. He’d call me. I’d help. I’d call him. He’d help. Debts, man. Debts make the world go round.
And then one day… a call came in to his home phone while he was busy and I was minding the shop. And I listened to that message.
And who do you think that call was from?
Ford fucking Aston.
Turns out Merc has a similar quid pro quo arrangement with Aston, and this call was a cash-in for a debt Merc owed him.
It was a small identity theft request. But that wasn’t the interesting part. The interesting part was when Ford said, I’d do it myself, but I need to keep my distance.
Which told me two things. Ford was not above fucking with people’s lives. And he had skills in his own right. Both of which might come in handy for me.
Tet took over from there. Merc came back from that job, it was a total fuckup, and as soon as he walked in the door, the message was playing.
I’m not sure if he knew about Tet before he came home that night, but he sure the fuck knew of him by the time we were done.
Tet blackmailed him. Either he does the job I need him for, or I call Ford back and get him involved.
And for some reason, Merc is loyal to that asshole in a suit. He caved. I gave him a number, Seven, and a calling card. If your name is already Merc, it only makes sense to become mercury.
As far as I know, Merc kills whoever he wants, whenever he wants, and he has never actually bothered to poison someone with mercury.
Which is why the Company started thinking up ways to get rid of him once his usefulness wore off. He’s not exactly a team player.
Hence the ‘accident’ up in Wyoming last Christmas.
The Admiral was not happy about that fuckup. I know that for a fact because I was sent to eliminate the assassin who botched the job when both Merc and Sasha showed up alive the next day.
Of course, this is all hindsight shit. I didn’t know what the fuck was happening last year. All I knew was I was being sent to kill people who were supposed to be on our side.
No one knows who to trust these days.
We’re all guilty. We’re all killers, even if we’re not all numbered assassins. We’re all wary of each other.
Because that file has been floating around for more than a year now. And from what they say, that file has enough dirt on it to cut the entire Company off at the knees.
I don’t get this file. I have no idea what’s on it. I think just your basic who’s who kind of info. Which means I’m in there. My family’s in there. We’re all in there, I guess. But who gives a fuck? Really, if some investigative reporter gets a hold of it and flashes that info for everyone to see, who would believe it? It’s like a very bad Dan Brown conspiracy book. This shit is so twisted, and the people involved so high up, and the accusations about what we’re doing so outlandish no one would even believe it. People just ignore shit that’s too big. You tell them small things—like we busted a terror cell in Colorado but the guy’s in custody, or there was a helicopter crash in Afghanistan and ten Navy SEALs died—and they’re OK with that. People can process that shit.
But when you get a guy who climbs the White House fence so he can get on TV and try and tell people what we’re doing by naming names… nope. That’s crazy talk. People don’t process the big shit well at all.
A plane ‘disappears’ over the Indian Ocean and everyone goes, huh? Wonder what happened.
A plane goes missing. Hundreds of people. Missing.
No one bats an eye.
So who gives a fuck about this file? That’s what I don’t understand. It’s big shit. It’s a list of global criminals masquerading as lawmakers and politicians. But there’s so many people on it—so many government agencies, charities, movie stars, and moms and pops—it’s gotta be bullshit. I mean, come on. How could this shadow world exist right under everyone’s nose?
So I can give a fuck about this file.
But that was before One killed Harper to get it back. Now that file is all I think about. And my sister. He mentioned my sister. He said she was in on the plan. And holy motherfuck. I can totally see that. I can totally fucking see that. It’s like all these little bits and pieces of my life and memory are all coming back to me.
But that file. It’s all wrong how it went down.
Nick steals the file, gives it to Harper, tells her to poison a ship full of Company elite, and then sends her away. But he only gives her the outward appearance of escaping. He only gives her just enough cover to make her think she’s getting away.
I’m debriefed, along with the rest of the remaining assassins—but told not to approach. No one is to approach her because she’s dangerous.
Yeah, Harper has some moves, but Harper is not dangerous. She’s like a little kitten with those little kitten claws. She can hurt you, but she’s a kitten.
So everyone gives her a wide berth. Meanwhile Tony’s number comes up and he’s next on my list. At the same time, Ford calls in a favor to Merc, who calls in a favor to me, requesting that my crazy brother also be eliminated.
So yeah, I did it.
Well—I take a deep breath and crack an eye to see if Sasha noticed, but she’s deep in thought too—I didn’t do it. Tet did it. Tet did it and then Tet didn’t move to the back of the bus, so to speak. Tet decided to take the front seat, in fact. And that made me fail the psych evaluation.
Which got me sent to the beach to unwind.
And then One appeared with a video of my sister, Nicola. And she had black eyes and she asked me to help her. And One told me to get that file because I had a debt to pay.
I sigh again.
They played me. They knew Harper was a weakness. I’d stayed clear of her except on her birthdays. Still, certain people knew I went to see her every Six Day. They knew she interacted with me the day we turned Six. They figured—correctly, I might add—that I could tame her.
But I love her. I want her. I know she’s not my promise. I understand this and it killed me to lie to her while we were together. But I want her now. She’s mine.
And no one is going to take her away.
No one.