by JA Huss
She shoots me an annoyed glare. “Why would you assume I’d want the buffalo? Because I’m from Wyoming?”
“You were in Wyoming, James?” Harp asks.
“No, I found Kamikaze Smurf camping out in the middle of Colorado.”
“Alone?”
Sasha lowers her head and pretends to be busy with the menu. “It’s a long story,” she mumbles.
“Harper,” I say to distract her away from the long story. “What are you getting?”
“Hmmm, the grilled mako shark with pineapple rice, I think. How about you?” She smiles sweetly at me as the bright sun hits her at an angle and illuminates her bronzed shoulders.
I lean in and grab her thigh, then fist my hand in her hair. “Fuckable. You are simply. Fuckable.”
“Hello?” Sasha says. “I’m right here.”
And then the waiter appears and I rattle off my order. “Chilean seabass for me and the mako shark for this lovely lady.” The waiter nods and murmurs something about good choice. I’m making him nervous but I don’t care. “Sasha, what’s it gonna be?”
“The buffalo burger.” I hold in my snicker, but she hears it anyway and shoots me a glare. “What? It’s the only thing on here I recognize.”
I turn back to the waiter. “The buffalo burger for lovely lady number two.” He nods and retreats.
“Pffft, like you really think I’m a lovely lady,” Sasha says.
“I think you’re a little shit who has no idea how good she’s got it right now. Better?” I shoot back.
“James,” Harper admonishes me with a kick under the table. “Be nice.”
“This is me being nice.” Her hand on my thigh captures my attention and all thoughts of Sasha disappear. “Harp”—she giggles—“don’t start something you can’t finish. They have a men’s room here too.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“Oh, I don’t need a dare to fuck you in a public restroom, darling.” She tries to withdraw her hand but I capture it before she can, and then I slide it tight up over the top of my thick hard-on. “You do this to me, you pay the price.” I place her hand on the table and lean in to her ear. “If you do it again, I’ll take you right here on the table. Don’t test me.”
“Oh my God,” Sasha says. “La-la-la. I can’t hear you.” She closes her eyes, covers her ears, and shakes her head. “La-la-la…”
“So, Sasha. What’s your job in the Company?” Harper asks, changing the subject and managing to make me more uncomfortable than I just made the Smurf.
“Nah,” I say, waving a hand at Sasha. “We’re not talking shop tonight. This is down time.”
“I disagree, James,” Harper says. “I saved her life this morning and I hardly know anything about her. We’re living in the same house and we’re traveling together. So I want—”
“No,” I interrupt. “Not—”
“Hunter,” Sasha says, ignoring me and cutting me off at the same time.
“You’re a girl. You’re not a hunter,” Harper says with a laugh.
“I am a hunter. My dad raised me to be a hunter and he was in charge of training all the hunters before this current group. So I’m even legitimate.”
Fuck.
“You’re not the first Six, James,” Sasha sneers at me.
“Conversation. Over. Let’s move on to something else.”
She redirects her attention to Harper. “I’ve been trained to hunt. I’ve been around the hunters my whole life. Not you,” she says to me. “They kept you away. But some of those guys you killed this past year? They were my friends.”
“Friends? Please. How many times could they have been passing through Wyoming? Or picking up guns from a western gun show? A handful at the most.”
“If you say so,” she says sweetly.
I might not know her all that well, but I know her well enough to understand what that means. “You’ve got another secret you’d like to share?”
“I have lots of secrets.”
“Um,” Harper interjects. “You’re right, James, let’s talk about something else.”
“No,” Sasha says. “Let’s talk about secrets. I’ll tell you one of mine if you tell me one of yours, James.”
“James,” Harper says, turning to me and placing her hand on my thigh. It’s a diversion this time. “I don’t want to hear secrets, OK? Secrets are darkness. Secrets keep the darkness alive. I hate secrets and I don’t want to know them.”
I remove her hand from my thigh and place it back on the table, never losing eye contact with Sasha. “Sorry, baby. This is too good of an opportunity to pass up. You first, Cocky Smurf.”
Sasha smiles broadly and then turns her head and shoots me a sideways glare that makes her look every bit the hunter she claims she is. “OK. My secret is…” She smiles over at Harper now. “I met someone special last summer.”
“Who, a boy?” Harper asks, eagerness in her voice. Apparently this is a secret even Harper can get in on.
Sasha has to bite her lip to stop her smile. “Yes.” She slowly pulls her gaze from Harper and redirects it to me. “Nicholas Tate.”
The entire restaurant goes silent. Or maybe not. Probably not. I think it’s just that I stop hearing everything because the only thing I do hear is an echo of those two words.
“Pardon me?” Harper says. “My brother went to see you?”
Sasha is still looking at me. Her mouth moves and if I was a little bit closer to her, I’d slap my hand over it to stop her secret from spilling out. But I’m not. So it does. “He’s come to see me a bunch of times.”
“You’re lying,” Harper says. “How would he find his way to Wyoming?”
“Does it matter how?” Sasha asks. “I mean, really, that’s not even in the top million most important things to ask about what I just told you.”
“What should we ask then?” I finally come back to reality to deal with what she’s saying.
“Oh no. Not until you tell me your secret, James. Then if you want to keep playing, we can. But now you owe me.”
You owe me. She said the same thing on the plane when she told me Harper was not at home.
“Make it a good one, Tet. Because mine was a bombshell.”
I take a deep breath and look over at Harper. She’s gone white. Her perfectly tanned face is sheet white. “Have you seen him lately?”
Sasha shakes her head, like she’s saying no. But that’s not what she’s saying. “No more questions until I get a secret from James. And don’t lie, James. I’ll know.”
I have so many questions. And I want them all answered. But I have very few secrets, at least none that can be revealed at this table right now. I roll them around in my head and make a decision. “You want to know why Merc isn’t around? The details? Not what I told you earlier.”
She weighs this internally and then gives me a slight nod. “That will do for starters.”
That will do for enders too. Because that’s the only one I have that won’t ruin everything. “The person who killed your father was US Senator Channing.”
She swallows, and then nods. “I knew that.”
“You did not know that. You guessed it, but now you know. Because I just told you. My turn. Who—”
But then the wait staff is here with our food, looking very uncomfortable as they serve us. I wait until the food is all on the table and then we all thank them like the polite people we really aren’t.
“That conversation is over,” Harper says. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Let’s just eat.”
She’s on the verge of tears and I’m instantly sorry. I lean in and whisper, “Just enjoy your dinner. I’m sorry if I’ve ruined it. I just wanted you to have a nice night.”
“It’s not ruined, James. It’s fine. I just… I just want to talk about normal things tonight.” She picks up her fork and cuts into her shark steak. It flakes apart like it’s supposed to and she smiles when it touches her lips. “This is really good fish for being out in the middle
of the desert.”
“I caught a shark once,” Sasha tells her.
“Me too!” she says excitedly. “Deep-sea fishing was something we did a lot.”
“I’ve never caught a fish in my life,” I admit.
“What?” Even Sasha joins in on this conversation. I’m sure she’s thrilled about being better at fishing than me. And as is starting to become the norm, we drop the deep dark secrets and talk about nice things to make Harper happy. Growing up on megayachts. Growing up on cattle ranches. Growing up on the beach.
There’s no mention of the Company. It’s a dirty world we live in. It’s dangerous and deadly—we know this.
But we don’t have to talk about it right now.
Those secrets aren’t going anywhere. We’re carrying them around on our backs like a cross.
Or, maybe more fittingly, an albatross.
Chapter Thirty-Eight - James
The sun is just starting to drop on the horizon, already washing the sky in a haze of red and orange. In about fifteen more minutes, it’s gonna be perfect. I don’t want to miss it, so I kiss Harper on the head and push back my chair. “Be right back, gotta take a piss.”
I make my way through the tables to the short hallway where the restrooms are located and push the door open. The attendant nods to me and then goes back to his feigned towel-folding. I whip my dick out at the urinal and do my business. I don’t talk to the attendants. I’m not a snob, I just want to finish my piss and get the fuck out of the bathroom.
The door whooshes open, so I look over and see the attendant make a quick escape. He must read minds. I give myself a shake, zip up, and then turn to wash my hands.
“Hello, James.”
It’s been a long time, but there’s no mistaking who the man is entering the facilities. Tall, dark, and yes—he fits the bill in all the cliché ways. The once-brown hair is graying a little at the temples, but not much. And maybe it’s a trick of time, since I was so young when we first met, but he looks the same to me now as he did that day on the beach when he offered me his daughter in exchange for my freedom.
The funny thing is, I never wanted my freedom back then. I wanted to be Six in the worst way. He should’ve asked Tony. Tony would’ve jumped on the chance to kill his way out of the Company.
But he didn’t ask Tony. He asked me.
I never wanted to kill my way out of the Company.
I wanted to kill my way in.
Careful what you wish for. You just might get it, Tet says in my head. “Your boys are getting sloppy, Admiral. She spotted one as soon as we got here.”
“How is she?” the Admiral says back, ignoring my statement. We may not have had a lot of face-to-face meetings over the years, but we’ve talked hundreds of times by phone. I know him better than most and ignoring my dig on his security is typical. He likes to control the conversation at all times and he hates to hear about less than perfect performance. But he does hear it. And I know for a fact he will speak to that guard later. There is zero tolerance for fuckups in our line of work. “She’s well, I hope? I realize you’ve only been in contact for a very short period of time, but I expect her to be well.”
I’m suddenly imagining Harper bent over a couch with my finger in her ass. He will kill me if he finds that shit out. No doubt, promise or not. I turn the water on and begin washing my hands. “She’s doing real good, actually. She’s happy. She wanted seafood tonight, so this place worked out perfect.”
“And you’re on track? With the mission?”
What mission? Jesus fucking Christ, how many mission do I have going right now? “Yes, sir,” I say calmly. “One hundred percent on track.”
“And the files? Has she… mentioned them? A hiding spot? Something?”
“No, sir,” I reply as I turn the water off and reach for a towel. “But I haven’t brought it up yet. I had to leave for a little bit, so we just reconnected.”
“Yes,” he smiles. “Are you enjoying my gift?”
I smile back. What fucking gift? But of course I don’t say that. Because I have missing hours… Or days, Tet adds inside my head. It might be days. “Yes, sir. Much appreciated.”
“She’s wild, isn’t she?”
“Wild…” Who? Harper?
“Her father was an important man at one time, but his loyalty was questioned. Never proved, obviously, or he’d have been dead a long time ago. So I expected the girl to have a similar nature.”
Sasha. He sent me Sasha as a gift. To do what? “Yes, sir, she’s a little shit. But fairly easy to manipulate. Do you have something specific you’d like me to use her for?”
“Her father was wild as well,” the Admiral says, ignoring my words once again. “So the apple and the tree, right?”
We share a small chuckle. Ha ha, yes, the apple and the tree. I have no fucking idea what he’s talking about.
“And my son?”
I shake my head. This I can answer and it’s even the truth. “No, sir, nothing on his location.”
“Well, I have to say I’m a bit surprised by that. You haven’t done much, Tet.”
The Company name stings a little, I have to admit. I’ve always been James to him. Or Six, but only once that first day. It’s always been James. “My time’s not up, so I’m not worried.”
“If the child has not given up his location yet, then she’s of no use to you. Have you questioned her about it?”
I feel like I’m coming in on the middle of a meeting, that’s how confusing this shit is. Did I miss a message somewhere? What the fuck was I supposed to do with Sasha? “We were just talking about it at the table, actually. So she’s close.”
“Good. Get that location tonight and I want her eliminated before dropoff.”
“Yes, sir,” I say automatically. “Drop off is still on schedule.”
“Don’t cut it too close, understand?” His dark eyes bore into me. “I have a deadline too.”
“Sir, I understand. We’ll be on our way tomorrow.”
“Excellent.” He smiles at me and I force one back. “I’ll see you soon. Please bring me good news.”
“Yes, sir,” I say, but he’s already turned his back, walking out the door.
I wait a few seconds, then follow and make my way to the bar. “Pack of Reds, please. And a lighter.” The bartender walks off and returns a few minutes later with my smokes. I am not a big smoker these days. In fact, I officially quit three years ago. But ever since Tony, I’ve been using them to think things through.
And right now, I need to do a hell of a lot of thinking to understand what just happened.
You know what happened, Tet says in my head. “Elimination order,” I whisper to myself. The bartender is only a few feet away and he catches my words, shoots me a terrified look, and quickly walks off.
There’s no smoking indoors in California, so the only thing on my mind right now is getting the fuck out of this place so I can get a nicotine fix. I slip my pack into my pocket and walk calmly back to our table.
Harper and Sasha are laughing about something. They clue me in and I laugh too, but I have no idea what was said. The Admiral’s words are echoing through my mind. I want her eliminated before dropoff.
The girls stand and I throw some cash down on the table for a tip. My meals here are complimentary, there is no check. But the girls won’t know that, so when Harper starts questioning me about what took so long, I tell her I paid already.
She buys it, laces her hand in mine, and she continues her conversation with Sasha as we start walking out. The windows are on the left and I look out over the valley, towards the looming mountains.
A feeling of doom washes over me. A leftover reaction to the Admiral’s order, maybe.
Or maybe it’s from the approaching darkness.
Because that sunset I wanted to see so badly is long gone.
Chapter Thirty-Nine - Harper
James is quiet the whole drive home, and this bugs me. So much about him bugs me. It’s like one
second he’s everything I need right now, then that gets turned off and he’s back to being the job. Plus, I admit, I’m falling pretty hard for him. All it takes is a look and I’m wet between my legs, secretly begging him to touch me. And after he said all those things to me last night about trust—if I tell you to walk through fire, it’s because I know you are fireproof, and the ten days’ promise—it’s like he knows just what I need. Like he’s got the inside scoop on how to make me feel desirable. And safe. He knows how to push all the right buttons. He takes the anxiety away. Hell, the past few days have been so easy for me in terms of keeping the anxiety in check.
But why them? Why am I here with these two? It’s just weird. There has to be something the Admiral wants from James to give me to him. The only other explanation is that the Admiral is setting James up.
But for what? And why? The Admiral made that offer twelve years ago, so how can all this be related?
Shit, I have no idea.
James turns into the long driveway that leads us back to the house, and I notice Sasha is quiet in the back. I turn around in my seat and she’s sprawled out across that table thing that separates the buckets. “You didn’t make her put her seatbelt on?”
“No?” James answers absently as he parks the Hummer. “Well, hardly matters now. We made it home and she’s still alive.”
Maybe this is a stupid example, but earlier he’s demanding she buckle up and sit straight, like her safety is second nature. But now he’s… distracted. Sasha is off his radar.
James gets out and then opens Sasha’s back door. I watch from the front seat as he nudges her. “Wake up, Smurf, we’re home.”
Home. Hmmm. This is not home, but again, he’s using a term to evoke feelings. Is it for himself? For me? For Sasha? Or is it genuine and it’s for all of us? I just can’t tell.