by JA Huss
But this university, and specifically this program, does not want to be used as a stepping stone. And even though I never used those words in our conversation, she’s on to me.
I push through the doors of the museum so I can go upstairs and collect my things.
Collect my things! I’ve been ousted. I don’t even get to prove myself!
I am so glad Mike left for the day once I get upstairs. How humiliating it would be to have to pack up and walk out knowing he just got the dream assignment.
When I get to my desk I realize I have very few things to collect. Some office supplies in my desk drawer. Some notebooks with my lab results. And my dinosaur Chia Pet.
All my samples can stay in the freezers until I come back, Professor Brown said. If I choose to come back. She actually said that.
I slump down into my chair and struggle with this very unexpected ending to a day that was supposed to plant my feet firmly on the ground. I feel… defeated. And small. Insignificant.
But beyond that, I feel… cheated.
And, if I’m being perfectly honest with myself, outed.
I’m a fraud. And she knows it.
I put my head on my desk and close my eyes. How many years have I painted this fake smile on my face, just trying to fit into this world? Ten years, that’s how long. Ten long years of pretending that I am normal. And what good has it done me? I’m on the cusp of success. I have the golden ticket in my sights, and it’s all pulled away in an instant because they know.
I’m not normal.
I’m a liar.
I’m a killer.
And even though she didn’t say any of that, that’s how I took it. Because it’s all true. I’ve been deceiving these people. Pretending that I’m one of them when I’m not. I’m damaged. And no amount of studying, no college education or PhD degree or fake smiles painted on my face, can change that.
I was never Sasha Aston. She doesn’t exist.
I was born, and have always been, Sasha Cherlin. Company kid. Daughter to a traitor. Child assassin.
Chapter Seven - Jax
After Sasha returns to the museum—looking down at the ground her entire way, so she never even notices me—I wait under the eaves of the building for her to come back out. But after a while I get cold and antsy, so I slip inside and take a seat on a bench near the stairs so I can catch her coming down.
Two hours later, I’ve done all the crap I can think of on social media, watched a few YouTube videos, and I’m just about sick of looking for new music to buy when she finally makes an appearance. I stand, smiling, waiting for her to notice me. But she’s got her hands full with a box and her head is still down.
She walks right by, tipping her hip into the door to make it open, and then disappears into the dark evening with a swoosh.
Hmmm.
I follow her out, surprised to find she is already at the stoplight. I jog over to her and reach for the box in her hands. She drops it, whirls around, and delivers a chop to my neck that almost has me choking.
“It’s me,” I say, half laughing, half gasping for air. “Whoa, calm down, killer.”
“Dammit! Don’t sneak up on me.” And then she looks down at her overturned box and lets out a groan. “Now look,” she says, picking up some broken piece of pottery. “The only real thing I had up there is broken.” She takes a deep breath and leans down to pick her things back up, but I beat her to it.
“Sorry about your”—I squint at the pottery—”damaged Chia Pet.”
She laughs a little, but only a little. “I’m not going to dinner with you, OK? That kiss was out of bounds and I’m an in-bounds kind of girl. So you screwed up.” The light has changed so she grabs the box out of my hand and starts walking across the street. I follow her, grabbing her umbrella out of the box, and since she doesn’t have an extra hand to hold it up herself, I push it open and hold it over her head.
“What the hell are you doing? I said go away.”
“Hey, no man would leave a lady to carry a box in the freezing rain. So you can let me carry the box and you can hold the umbrella, or you can carry the box and let me hold the umbrella. Choose, Sasha Cherlin.”
“It’s Aston, OK? And I just want to be left alone. So fuck off.”
I smile, still walking with the umbrella over her head, and then I laugh at her outburst. “OK. We’re making progress, Miss Aston. You are letting me in on your feelings. Which means you’re softening to my wily techniques.”
She rolls her eyes but I catch a slight grin.
I put a hand on her shoulder, asking her to stop. She does. But she looks at the ground. “Please, Agent Jax. Just leave me alone.” And then she looks up and I realize she’s on the verge of tears. “I’ve had enough and I just want to go home.”
“OK.” I nod, my face somber like hers. “OK. But I’m still gonna walk you there. So one more choice today, killer, and then you can put this day to bed. Box? Or umbrella?”
She stares down into her box and doesn’t answer. So I do the only thing I can. I take the box in one arm, the umbrella in another, and slip that arm around her shoulder so it can keep her covered while we walk.
Her body tenses up when we make contact, but she lets out a sigh and accepts my offer to walk her home in the rain, leaning into me a little as we start on our way.
“Bad day?”
She says nothing, so I take the hint. We stay like this all the way to her house a few blocks away. It only takes a few minutes—much too fast for my liking—and then we are climbing the steps to her front porch.
I set the box on a small table off to the side of the door, and then fold the umbrella away as she unlocks her fortress. I even have a moment of hope that she will invite me inside. But instead she opens her door with a shove of her hip and then reaches for the box without looking at me. “Thank you,” she says in a small voice that tells me this is no ordinary bad day. “I appreciate the help.”
I nod as she sets the box down inside and makes to close the door. But I stop her with the folded umbrella. “Hey,” I say. She looks up at me with blurry blue eyes. “I’m happy to listen if you need to talk.”
But all I get is a shake of her head, and then she grabs the umbrella and closes the door before I can say anything else.
I wait there for a second, maybe hoping she’s peeking through the peephole, still thinking about the man on her porch. But I hear the beeping of her alarm and then footsteps as she walks away.
There’s a lot on her mind tonight. But it isn’t me.
So I jog down her steps and walk back to my car. Madrid is in there. We’re a team again, it seems. She knows this can be a career-making case, she’s in for the teamwork.
I open the driver’s side door and slip into the rental car.
“Damn, boy. You’re wet!” She scoots away from my dripping coat and presses herself against the passenger door. “Anything?”
“Nope,” I sigh. “You wanna eat?”
“Eat?” she says, scrunching up her face in a way that makes her upturned nose crinkle. “We are on a deadline. We ain’t eatin’. We’re gonna work.” Her thick Southern accent comes out when she’s annoyed. And it clashes with her fake, trashy persona. She comes off as half streetwalker and half gang member, but over the past few months I’ve gotten to know her a little better. Madrid Marano usually talks like she came straight out of Brooklyn, but she is from Savannah, Georgia. A real Southern belle from a family that has been in the Agency for three generations.
Which is funny if you compare us. I’m actually from Brooklyn, but lost the accent when I took my first assignment down south in Miami.
“She’s having a bad day, Madrid. It’s not a good time to move this forward.”
“We don’t have time for good times,” Madrid says, her voice rising a little. “You’re a man. A somewhat attractive man. If you like blue eyes and blond hair. Which I don’t,” she says, her hand on her chest like she needs to clear this up right now. “I like them dark, unde
rstand. So don’t be all accusing me of inappropriate conduct when I have to turn you down ’cause you’re hot for me.”
I just shake my head. She’s always on this kick about how desirable she is and how I secretly lust after her.
“So get your move on, boy. You need a plan to seduce this girl into helping us. We have no time for pansy-ass, pouting girls and pussyfooting, ’fraidy-cat men who don’t know how to get a job done. Get your game on, Jax.” She opens her door, steps out, and then leans back in, dripping water everywhere. “I’m going back to the apartment to check footage. You wrap this shit up tonight and we’ll reconvene in the AM. Madrid out.”
And then she slams the door and walks away.
Fucking women. I sigh as I start up my car.
Moves. I have moves, but Sasha Cherlin doesn’t look like she takes kindly to moves. Plus she had a bad day. I need to make sure I don’t add to it, or it will set us back further.
“Well,” I huff, pulling away from the curb. “Just take a play out of yesteryear, Jax. Treat her nice and let the chips fall where they may.”
Chapter Eight - Sasha
After I shut the alarm off I press myself against the door, a feeling of defeat trying its best to wash over me, but I square my shoulders and walk off, dropping my bag on a chair as I make my way to the stairs. My feet find the places on the old wooden steps where no boards will creak out of habit and I silently ascend to the upper bedrooms. There are three. I don’t need three, since I am alone, and this makes the place feel empty and cold. A shudder erupts in my body as I walk into the elegantly decorated master bedroom—which I don’t normally sleep in since I’m a paranoid freak—and throw myself face-first on the bed.
Am I stupid?
Yes. I am the dumbest girl alive. I am the biggest fool to ever live. I am naive and gullible in ways I can’t even describe right now. Because I believed that if I worked hard, got good grades, took the path most traveled, every step away from the broken-hearted thirteen-year-old who sat and cried over a broken promise would lead to something else.
Something better. A new life. A new family. A new opportunity.
And where do I find myself now? Not digging up dinosaurs—which is also the foolish dream of a child. Kicked out of the world of the legitimate. Take time off to think about things, that’s what Professor Brown told me. But I can read between the lines just fine, thank you. What she was really saying is, We don’t think this program suits you.
And since digging in the earth to find ancient bones so I could put the puzzle pieces of the past together was the only thing that ever made me feel a part of society at large—well, the words ‘complete devastation’ run through my mind.
Growing up the child of a man who trains shadow government assassins was not a choice I ever got to make. It was my fate. I did not come into this world declaring myself to be a killer. I didn’t teach myself to hold and shoot a gun. To throw knives and shoot arrows. I didn’t drag myself across this country in an RV knowing secrets that certain people might kill for.
My father did that to me.
And while I don’t blame him—he did his best and all that training saved my life over and over again—I fucking hate that this is who I am.
And I have regrets. I have big-time regrets. And I have questions. Like why is this my destiny? Why do I have to live on the outside, forever looking in at all the things I want but can’t have?
This career was obtainable. I felt it. I still feel it. I’m qualified, I’m smart, I’m inquisitive, I’m a hard worker, and I get good grades. I didn’t fuck up anything too big doing my lab work. I made mistakes, like anyone new to the process of discovery. But I had no major missteps.
And a lot of good it did me.
There is something about me. I feel it burning inside me. Something attached to my soul that declares me different.
I don’t want to be different. I want to be same.
I roll over on my back and stare at the ceiling. Ford and Ashleigh did a good job as my parents after my father was killed and my fellow assassins and I fought our way into a tenuous illusion of peace. I traveled and made friends. Obtained a first-class education. Had a few boyfriends even. Nothing serious. And not because of Nick.
I was making progress in the love department. Steady progress. I had dates to dances in high school. One serious boyfriend freshman year of undergrad. Three one-night stands the rest of college.
All that came to an abrupt end in my senior year when I was abducted by a sick man looking for revenge over an old debt that wasn’t even mine. He did not rape me. It could’ve been so much worse than it was. I know that. But it affected me. It shut me down. Not right away. I put on that fake face I had practiced over and over again while I was adjusting to living the life of a normal girl. I went back to school after I was saved by my assassin friend, Merc. I finished up school in Colorado and moved here to this very house.
Merc and I never told Ford and Ashleigh anything about the abduction. Ford is a security freak and it was his idea to take most of the precautions. But once they left to go home—Ford holding me tighter that day than any other time in my life—I called James and everything just spilled out. He flew in specialists to fortify the house. He brought me guns and ammo. He even brought me some Kevlar clothing made special by a friend in Central America.
I insisted I wasn’t scared. The man who wanted to hurt me was dead. And I really wasn’t scared. I was terrified.
That realization was enough to rock my whole world, because I was always the fearless one. I was the one with all the answers. I was the one who would do the job no matter the consequences. And even though this thought I had today walking home with the FBI agent has been in the back of my head since that abduction—right now is the first time I will admit to it.
I am weak. I am small. I am a girl. Worse than a girl. I am a Company girl. And I have pushed all my fucked-up moments away into a place that hides the truth in order to protect this fragile part of me that lingers. The part of me that knows I will never be OK. I will never get over the things I have seen, the acts I have committed, and the violence I am part of.
I am damaged.
Terrified and damaged.
I swallow hard as I turn over on my back and stare up at the ceiling. The only thing holding my illusion together was school. My objective. Get that PhD and slip into a world of isolated academia. A world of digging in the earth searching for clues to the past. A world where only the joy of discovery matters. A world where I was no longer Sasha Cherlin, the child who can kill. I was Sasha Aston, the woman who clung hard to the only innocent thing about her upbringing.
A love of dinosaurs.
My father fostered that love like my life depended on it. He took me to museums and places here in the West where bones were found, tracks were still visible, and all the unanswered questions were about what these ancient creatures ate, how they raised their young, and lived out their days until the final blow that wiped them off the face of the earth.
And maybe he knew? Maybe he knew all those years ago that I needed this innocent hobby to get me past the person I truly was? To blind me to the facts and make me forget that I was born a Company girl.
I will not cry about the end of this life. I will not.
I have ended my life before. I can pick up and move on. I can even find another, more suitable, program to join and continue the illusion that I am normal.
I could.
But I know I won’t.
Because Nick Tate still holds me captive. His broken promise still hurts. The way he pushed me aside that last night I saw him still stings my heart. The scream that came out of my mouth as I was led down the dock to a waiting boat by James and delivered into the hands of Merc.
I watched Nick fade that night. But he never disappeared for me. As much as I tried to say he did, even after Agent Jax told me Nick was looking for me, it’s just not possible to forget the person you were meant to marry and spend the rest of your life wi
th.
And I wonder, and have wondered all this time, if being a Company girl would’ve been so bad if I’d been with Nick.
It’s a frightening thought. Especially after seeing first-hand what they did to the girls who were not raised by my father. The ones not raised and loved by the Admiral, like Harper was. His little princess was spared the brunt of the consequences, just like me.
But the child assassin fate was tempered by the fact that my destiny was Nicholas Tate.
And yet it wasn’t.
It’s so wrong to wish for the life I never had. It’s wrong. Because so many people put their lives on the line to give me this second chance. They made sacrifices for me.
I am filled with shame because if Nick had offered his hand that night when I was thirteen and kept his promise to make me his, I would’ve said yes. I would’ve walked away from all the friends and family who love me so much, and they would be the ones left behind instead of me.
I would take Nick’s hand. I would gladly take his hand and disappear into a life of crime and uncertainty. Death and lies.
Shame on you, Sasha.
Yes. Shame on me for wanting my only chance at true love.
“Yeah,” I say to the ceiling. “I should feel so much shame because my future was stolen from me.” It’s ridiculous and it maddens me that every one of my old friends from the Company days got their happy ending. It infuriates me. It makes my whole body rage with heat that I must suppress my dreams to make things right.
Why? That’s my only lingering question. “Why did you leave me, Nick Tate? Why was everyone allowed to determine what was best for me back then except me? Why am I stuck here, on the edge of fulfillment, while you live the life you chose? Why am I not allowed to make my own choices?”
And most importantly, why are you looking for me again?
I don’t think it’s because I’m in danger. Nick would not contact me, of all people, if that was the case. He’d call James or Merc. They’d leave me out of everything, like they always do. They’d gather their guns and ammo. Call up old favors. Turn back into the dangerous and insane men they used to be.