by JA Huss
Anyone over the age of six can spot him for what he is. I stop walking so ten years of manners and settling can fall away and the girl I am underneath can take over. “Who’s asking?”
“I’m Special Agent Jax, Miss Aston. And I have a few questions for you. Please come with me.”
“Am I under arrest for something?” Holy fuck. He leads me through a set of double doors, and then another door, and then another door, until I’m three layers deep inside the fucking Denver International Airport. We finally come to a small office, where he waves me in and says, “Please, take a seat.”
I take my seat as my mind races with all the possible reasons the FBI could be interested in me.
Just be cooperative, Sasha, Ford tells me in my head. We’ve covered my tracks well since he adopted me ten years ago. But we’ve always planned for the day when people discover my history is a lie.
“Am I under arrest?” I ask again, trying not to take deep breaths. Trying not to sit on my hands and fidget in my seat. Trying not to wonder if this is the end of the line for me.
“No, ma’am,” he says. “I just need to ask you some questions, if that’s OK.”
“What if it’s not OK? What if I want to call my dad?”
He sits down at the table opposite me and opens up a folder. His hands are large and his fingers are long and slender. I concentrate on those two characteristics as he shuffles some papers around. Who uses papers anymore? You’d think they’d have this shit on a tablet. It’s a ploy. To unsettle me. Make me think they’ve got dirt on me. Make me fuck up and talk. Make me—
Hush, I tell the killer locked away deep inside me. Be cool, Sasha.
“You are Sasha Aston, correct?” He waits as I process things. Not smiling, not frowning—impassive. Typical.
I can be impassive as well. I learned from the best. “You know I am. I just got off that plane. So I was checked in.”
“You came from…”
“Peru.” I fill in the blank for him.
“What was your business in Peru, might I ask?”
“I was at an archeological dig. They found bones.”
“Bones?” He cocks an eyebrow at me.
“Dinosaur bones. I’m a paleontologist. Well, a grad student. It was a summer internship. Why?”
He looks at me for a moment. I have been questioned by enough dangerous men to recognize the pause as reevaluation. I tend to have that effect on people. “Impressive. And your father is Rutherford Aston IV?”
“Yes.” I swallow hard. Jesus Christ, we are totally busted for something. “I need to know what’s going on. You’re scaring me. Did something happen to my dad?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Stop calling me ma’am. I’m twenty-four and you look like you’re about thirty.”
He eyes me down the bridge of his nose. “Thirty? I don’t look thirty. I’m twenty-seven.”
“What?” I have to shake my head at that. “What do you want, Special Agent Jax? If I’m not under arrest, then I’m leaving.”
He flips the page in the folder just as I begin to stand up, and produces a photograph that steals all my breath away.
“Do you know this man, Miss Aston? Can you identify him for us?”
I shake my head as I study Nick’s face. His perfect face. The blond hair, the brown eyes. The steely gaze. I can picture him smiling at me in that hotel room in Rock Springs back when I was only thirteen years old.
Thirteen and already a killer several times over. Thirteen and I had lost everything. There was absolutely nothing left of me that day. Thirteen and wanting to die so bad because this boy here left me. Live your life, he told me. Grow up, move on. You will love again.
I never had a choice, did I? Because just a few days later I was on a boat heading out to sea and he was standing on a beach. Didn’t even wave goodbye.
“Never seen him before,” I say, lying right to Special Agent Jax’s face. “Why?”
“Take another look, Miss Aston. How about this one?”
This time, Nick is shirtless. His whole body is covered in tattoos. His chest, his arms, his neck. And when I look closely, even his hands have tattoos on them. It pains me—emotionally and physically—not to reach out for that photo.
I shake my head again. “No, sir. Sorry.”
“Hmmm,” Jax says. “Well, that’s interesting, Miss Aston. Or should I call you Miss Cherlin?”
I stare him in the eyes and do not flinch. I don’t deny or confirm. From this point on, I do not talk. I say nothing until I’m given a phone and then I call my dad and tell him I need Ronin. Ronin, the liar. Ronin, the one who talks for all the Team members if we get in trouble. Ronin. That’s the only name on my mind right now.
“They call him Santino down in Central America. But here in the US, they call him Holy Boy. He’s white with blond hair—but somehow, he’s the second highest-ranking member of the Mara Perro, Gang of the Dogs.”
“Very interesting. But what’s this have to do with me?” Shit, I just broke the no-talking rule.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out, Miss Cherlin. If that’s who you are, it makes a lot more sense.”
“How so?”
“I think you know how so.” He grins at me and flashes a dimple. His eyes are blue and his hair is light. Not quite blond, but not quite brown, either. He’s handsome. That’s probably why they sent him to me. Thinking I’m easily distracted by a pretty face.
“I don’t have time for this. I don’t know that man—”
“He knows you, Miss Aston. He knows you very well. Because he’s sent more than two dozen people here to find you while you’ve been digging down in Peru this summer.”
“What?” My heart thumps.
“Did you two have some unfinished business? Before you took on this new identity?”
I can’t breathe.
“Or some prearranged agreement to meet up in the future?”
I shake my head no as I close my eyes to picture the prearranged meeting that never happened. “We didn’t.”
“But you do know him?”
I just gave myself away. I lean on the desk with my palms down and bow my head to try to think clearly. Agent Jax places his hand on mine.
“Miss Aston, I’m not here to arrest you or pry into your past. I understand your fear right now, I do. Better than most. But if you know him, and if he’s looking for you, you should understand… he’s probably planning on kidnapping you.”
“What?” I pull my hands away from the desk to take my mind off the fact that Agent Jax is touching me.
“We’ve intercepted several of these men he’s sent to look for you. Three of them confessed to this plot. Now I don’t expect you to tell me much. Just yes or no. Is this man, the one they call Santino, Nicholas Tate?”
I nod. “That’s him. I’d recognize him anywhere. But I haven’t seen him in ten years. I don’t know anything about this stuff. I was in Peru, not Central America—”
“You‘re not under suspicion, Miss Aston.”
“Then why did you ask me here?”
“We don’t want to arrest you, Sasha. We want to recruit you.”
My childhood flashes through my head. Stalking, hunting, shooting, killing. Being blown up, being tracked, being hated and wanted dead. The anger I had, the love I lost, the life that was ripped away.
Ford Aston did his best with me. It was better than anyone else on this planet could’ve done, that’s for sure. I respect him. I love him. I love my brother, Five, my sister, Kate, and my mom, Ashleigh. I had dogs, and cats, and a nice house, and trips around the world. I had my own room. I was sent to private school where I made friends and got good grades.
James, Harper, Merc and I made a lot of money off that final job we pulled. Nick never got his cut. Nick never got the chance because he took off with a Central American drug lord in order to save the rest of us.
And no, none of it was perfect. We ran into troubles here and there over who I am. Who we all ar
e. But it got handled. I graduated college and I’m on the verge of completing my oral examinations and being fully invested in my career in anthropology as a PhD candidate.
I. Am. A success.
“I moved on,” I tell Agent Jax. But I know it’s a lie. And he knows it’s a lie. Because even though I’m the toughest girl you will ever meet—I am the killer of killers, for fuck’s sake—just one picture of just one man can take me back to the moment I realized… I lost.
I lost everything.
And no amount of money—not new mothers and fathers, not new friends and schools, or college degrees, or even the simple satisfaction that comes from my grad school research—can make up for it. None of that can fix the fact that I lost.
My father is dead. Mother dead. Grandparents dead. Home gone. And Nick—the one thing I held onto after the Company took my childhood away and turned me into a murderer—left me behind. Left me all alone. Because only a Company kid can understand what I am. We don’t walk the edge, we live on the other side of it.
Harper has James. Merc wasn’t a Company kid, but he was a Company assassin. And Sydney has him to keep the crazy at bay. So good for them. I’m glad they have each other.
But I’ve been alone on the other side of things for ten years because my partner left me. And yeah, I’m tired of it. I want my past back. And just a glimmer of the future I was promised and denied, just one more conversation with Nick, would be worth it for me.
But if this agent thinks I will sell my soul to the government to see Nick Tate again, he’s wrong. I’m not a snitch. So if he wants to play a game of cat-and-mouse with me, fine. I’m in.
“I’d like to leave now.” I fold my arms over my chest and zone him out. I don’t even hear him as he uses the next thirty minutes trying to persuade me.
He threatens me with a forty-eight-hour hold, felonies that list into the dozens, and a visit to my grad school mentor at University of Kansas.
That last part is the only thing that gives me pause. My mentor is cool. I chose her for a reason when I decided to take KU’s grad school offer. She thinks the world of me and I’d hate for her to find out I’m such a lowlife piece of shit.
But it can’t be helped. I am stone, that’s how firm I am in this. There is no way in hell I will work with the corrupt FBI to take down the only person I ever called a partner.
If Nick Tate is looking for me, then I can make myself available without any help from this asshole.
Chapter Two - Sasha
“Sasha,” Agent Jax says calmly. He’s switching tactics. “Please.”
I shake my head and laugh.
“I don’t know your whole story—”
“You don’t know shit.” My calm is fading just as his is building. I stare up at him, the rage finally getting to me. “You don’t know shit. And whatever it is you think you do know is not even a fraction of what’s happening.”
“I know about the Company, Sasha.”
“Do you want a medal?” Snide and sarcastic Sasha is threatening to come out right now, and I’ve spent all ten of the years between then and now trying to rein her in. This Jax guy is bad news. Bad in every way.
I don’t want that girl to come back. I don’t want to feel these feelings. I don’t want that anger and hate to build inside me to the point of overflowing. So I take a deep breath. I don’t care about the things I’ve gained since Nick left. I love my family and I enjoy my work, but the only gift I got out of all that loss is this girl I became. I am strong, and rational, and normal.
I exhale that breath and say, “I can’t help you. I don’t know that man anymore and I have no intention of seeing him again. And that’s the end of it.” I tip my chin up and set my jaw, making sure he knows this is final. “Arrest me. I will bail myself out. Follow me, bug my apartment, threaten me with twenty-four-hour surveillance. I don’t care. I have nothing to hide. I’m not going to get dragged into some government sting operation just to satisfy your curiosity or give you some upper hand in whatever political war you think you’re fighting.”
He sighs, looking at me from across the table. I see a lot of things in his gaze. Frustration, mostly. “I’m going to do all that, you know. Aside from the arrest.”
“It’s your game, Agent. Not mine. Do whatever you have to do. If you’re not going to arrest me, then I’d like to leave now so I can pick up my luggage before someone at baggage claim steals it.”
“Do you have a ride home?”
“I don’t need a ride.”
“You have a taxi taking you to Fort Collins?” He smiles when I look at him.
“I don’t live in Fort Collins,” I sneer back.
“Taking a bus to Kansas, then? I know you have no connecting flight back to school. And I know you don’t have an apartment.”
I just smile.
“You do have one.” He frowns. “So it’s not in your name? Or your father’s name? And you haven’t been there in a very long time. Because I know a lot more about you than you think.”
“If you follow me, then I guess you’ll find out where I’m going, won’t you?”
He shrugs with defeat. “You’re free to go. But I’ll walk you to baggage to make sure your luggage wasn’t stolen.”
Whatever. I get up and walk to the door. It’s locked from the inside, I know that much, so I stop and wait for him to press in the code that releases the lock. He waves me forward and we head down the corridor the way we came.
Agent Jax clears his throat when we finally get back out to the concourse, and then we get on the moving sidewalk. He stands behind me as I walk, making the gates fly by, and he is quiet all the way to the train.
We are alone there, which is strange, but I don’t doubt they have security manipulating every step of our journey out to baggage, so I just wait.
When the train finally appears—and it takes several minutes, so I know for sure they are manipulating my exit—it’s empty. I step in thinking about how many travelers they had to piss off to make sure we had this time alone.
When we get to the main terminal, I exit the train and take the escalator up to the bustling airport. I walk across the mall-like building, looking up at the atrium ceiling briefly as I find my way to baggage. I stop for a moment when I get there. I don’t know what carousel my flight came out of, and none of the electronic boards have the number on them anymore.
Asshole had to make this difficult for me.
“Miss Aston,” Agent Jax says, tapping me on my shoulder. “Your luggage.”
He points to a porter standing with, yes, my luggage. There are stickers plastered on the hard plastic explaining TSA has rifled through them due to a ‘random inspection’.
“I hope you found what you were looking for,” I say, snapping up the handle of my roll-away and slipping the oversized backpack over my shoulder. My purse makes that three bags I have to maneuver as I make my way over to the rental cars.
And what do you know. Every counter is closed. Every one of them has a sign that says, Out of cars.
I turn to look back at Jax. He frowns, like this is unfortunate. But we both know he did this.
No matter. I walk down the long corridor until I find the doors that will take me out to the taxi waiting area of the garage.
Empty.
I’m not the only one dismayed, either. There are crowds of people looking around for taxis. And I know, the longer I stay here pretending I am not going to be riding home with Agent Jax, the longer they will wait for a taxi.
I turn to him. “Why are you doing this?”
“I’m sure your father can come pick you up.” He offers me his phone. “Give him a try.”
I stare at the phone.
“He doesn’t know you came home early, does he?”
“What?” Asshole. “So you were pretending ignorance about where I was all summer? You knew I was in Peru. You knew I had no car here. You knew my dad wasn’t picking me up.”
“I know school doesn’t start for two more
weeks, Sasha Cherlin.” He smiles when he says my old name. “I know you’ve got plans. But what those plans are, I’m still not sure. Which is why you’re being followed. I think you lied to me about Nick. I think you’re a very good little actress and that Nick Tate contacted you while you were in Peru. I also know he’s not in Honduras. Not in Central America at all, in fact.”
My heart skips a little. He’s here.
“And I think you have a secret meeting with him right now.”
I turn and consider my options. I do not have a secret meeting with Nick. I really haven’t talked to him. He’s not why I came back to Denver. But I can’t go where I was going to go either. I can’t call my dad. He thinks I’m in Peru for another eight days. And as far as he knows, I’m not flying into Denver at all. I was supposed to fly right back to Kansas.
So now what?
“Where are you going, Sasha?”
I laugh and turn back to him. “You mean, where am I not going, now that you’re here?” God, I hate this guy. He just fucked up something important to me.
“Where are you going?” His tone is harsher now. “If you tell me, maybe I can help you get there.”
I calculate how many plans just got ruined over this asshole’s quest to find Nick and it pisses me off so bad, I just start walking. There is nowhere to walk to, but I walk anyway. I cross the empty street on the fifth level of the parking garage and start weaving through cars. I drag that stupid suitcase up and over curbs, trying to make Agent Jax give me some space so he can’t see my disappointment, but he’s on my heels the entire time. And when I finally make my way to the very edge of the garage and there is nowhere else to go I stop and lean on the concrete wall, my head in my hands.
“Sasha,” Jax says, putting a hand on my shoulder. I turn and swat it off in a single move. My eyes are blazing with the killer I used to be and not the normal person I’d like to believe I am. “What are you doing?” He’s confused now, but the look on my face must tell him my mood has changed. “You were meeting him, weren’t you?”
I shake my head. “I’m not lying about Nick. And to be perfectly honest, I’d like to see him again. But I’m not home early for him. Or anything that requires your attention. And I just want to go.”