by JA Huss
They’d take care of things and I’d probably never know about it.
So why is Nick looking for me?
I’ve tried to put it out of my mind since Agent Jax corralled me into that interrogation room at the airport last summer. I came home and went back to my studies. Went through the motions of work and pretended that this was the life I chose for myself.
But it was all a lie.
Nick. Nick. Nick. The name reverberates in my head every moment of every day. Hidden. Secret. But still there, no matter how many times I try to deny it.
“You’re mad, Sasha.”
I am mad. In every sense of the word. I’m furious and insane.
“Call home.”
My words startle me for a moment. Enough that I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone and dial the number.
“Aston residence,” Five says on the second ring.
“It’s me, Five.” I can almost feel him smile. “Is Mom there?”
“Sasha,” he breathes in that all-knowing way, unnatural for a ten-year-old. “Did you know that we are leaving for New Zealand tomorrow?”
“What? Since when? I thought you were all going to look at colleges?”
“Since Ford—”
“You mean Dad.” Ford hates it when Five calls him by his name.
“Whatever. He got a call to shoot a new pilot show.”
“Oh, well, that’s great, I guess.”
“Great? Great? No, it’s not great. Sparrow Flynn’s birthday is tomorrow and Princess Shrike tells me they are having a party. I was not invited to this party, Sasha. And now my plans to crash it are ruined.”
“Why the hell would you want to go to an eight-year-old girl’s birthday party?”
“The Princess will be dressed up like a biker, Sasha. It’s a biker theme and I have purchased her a leather jacket for the occasion. I wanted to be there to see the joy on her face when…”
I tune him out as I think about what the fuck is going on at home. Princess Shrike’s father—her real name is Rory, only Five calls her Princess—is world-famous custom bike builder Spencer Shrike. So this only makes sense in that context. And I don’t even bother asking how he got his hands on a leather jacket fit for a nine-year-old. This is Five we’re talking about. “I got nothing for that, Five. Can you get Mom?”
“How would you like to hear my proposal for my newest invention? I’m seeking early investors for my new technology app. I project that if a prototype can be developed in the next twelve months, we can go public in two years.”
“Five,” I say patiently. He’s had a dozen of these ventures over the past few years. “You’re ten years old. I’m not investing in your gaming apps.”
“It’s not a game this time, Sasha. It’s an app that will change death as we know it.”
“Morbid,” I reply. “Get Mom.”
“Morbidity has nothing to do with it. People will pay for years to have what I’m developing right now. A subscription that will last until infinity.”
“Five, I need to talk to Mom now.” I sigh into the phone and he stops his protest.
“You’re upset,” he says in that unaffected way he has. A tone he’s perfected to make people believe he’s never emotional, only objective. My little brother is a freak of a genius, just like Ford. He speaks six languages and he’s well on his way to a seventh—Icelandic, of all things—and could probably have passed my orals today without a glance at the topic beforehand. They’ve been trying to get him into summer college programs for two years, but he’s afflicted with the most overpowering of emotions, and has been since he was four.
Love.
I almost snort into the phone thinking about it.
He loves Princess Rory Shrike. The name alone makes me smile, makes me happy that I called home to talk to my mom about this new development in my long career of developments.
“I can tell you are crinkling your nose at this very moment.”
“I’m gonna hang up and call Dad and tell him you’re looking for investors again if you don’t call for Mom right now.”
“Fine.” he huffs. “Mom!” he screams. “Your eldest is on the phone with disappointing news.”
Neither him, nor Kate, my little sister, are my real siblings, obviously. But Kate was one and Five was newborn when I came to live with Ford and Ashleigh. So it was just easier to become one of the kids. Of course, they know who I really am. We are not a family of liars. But I like calling Ash Mom and Ford Dad. Even if the kids aren’t around.
The phone makes some muffled noises and then Ashleigh is there, a little out of breath.
“Hey,” she says. “How did the orals go?”
I can hear excitement in her voice and all the questions I had a few moments ago are replaced with regret. She’s smart too. Not a genius like Ford, but she’s got her master’s degree in psychology and has a private practice that specializes in treating children with autism-related disorders. She’s always encouraged me to follow my dream of digging up old bones and she’s been my biggest cheerleader from the moment I walked into their house and she became the mother of a teenager at the young age of twenty-four.
I can’t bear to tell her the truth, so even though we are not a family of liars, I lie. “Awesome,” I say through my fake smile. “I passed easily.”
“And the internship?” She’s still breathless, like she’s got all her fingers and toes crossed that I get the one that went to Mike. The one I’ve been talking about for months. “Did you get the one you wanted?”
I can’t lie that much. Maybe I can still go back to the program. Give it a few weeks of soul-searching and figure out where I went wrong in my lack of enthusiasm for anthropology. I could still get back in. But that internship is gone. “No,” I say with genuine disappointment. “I didn’t. Mike did. Mine is still up in the air, but I’m OK with it. He really deserved it.”
“Aww, I’m sorry, Sasha. But you’ll get something great, I just know it.” Her brightness comes back when I agree, and then we talk for several more minutes about Ford’s new show and their Christmas plans. I tell another little lie and say I’m going home with friends.
She accepts that easily. I used to have friends. She has no clue I’ve gotten so antisocial since I moved here. Of course, that’s because she has no idea about the abduction that spurred my melancholy in the first place.
I hang up with a false laugh and promises to come home and see them in the spring when things settle down.
I throw my phone on the bed feeling dirty for lying, as well as ashamed for being ungrateful for the full life I have. The sadness threatens to overtake me, so I get up and go run the water for a bath.
The tears are coming. Today was just too much, and I only allow myself to cry in the tub. I have done this for years. I lock myself away from the world, dip my whole body under the water, and let the tears flow undetected. It feeds my illusion that not a single tear has touched my face since I walked out of that hotel room for the last time. The hotel room where Nick left me but promised to come back. The hotel room where James explained the facts of life.
Not sex.
Loss.
Loss is a fact of life. And he pounded that home good and hard.
But I remember when the dream was fresh. The day Nick walked into my life and promised me the world. Promised me a future filled with his smiling face. Promised me a life with him by my side.
I take off my clothes and step into the tub, waiting for the hot water to pour out of the tap in a waterfall that drowns out the reality outside my house.
My tears are falling for his broken promises the moment I slip under.
Chapter Nine - Jax
There are no lights on in the house even though it’s not even eight PM. But there are never lights on in her house. At least from the outside. She has security shutters that keep the world at bay. I climb the steps a little more nervous than I should be for the circumstances.
I’m not usually a second-guesser. I rewrite
the rules all the time. I make demands and expect them to be met. I ask, people give. But being turned down by Sasha Cherlin has affected me in a way that’s new.
For one, she refuses to engage. Most of the time when a woman puts up a wall, I can force her to engage with flirting. It gets the banter going, loosens things up a little, breaks down a few bricks in the wall. So far, Sasha has not done that.
This tells me two things—she is a deliberate person. Not one who reacts out of emotion, but one who calculates and plots her actions. And the reason she has not fucked up and made contact with anyone is because she’s on a course I haven’t yet recognized.
What is that course she’s on? Where is she headed? What was she doing that day I confronted her at the airport?
It occurs to me that I would’ve found out if I had not approached her. But how was I to know Nick wasn’t making contact with her? Everything pointed to it. It felt so… imminent.
I stop in front of her door and hesitate, shifting the bags in my hand to free up a finger to push the doorbell. There’s something else that’s been nagging me since I walked her home earlier as well. Why choose this path of academia? It’s always seemed like a copout to me. A way to prolong an entrance into the real world. A reason to push life away.
What is she hiding from?
She has plenty of reasons to hide from her past. Growing up the way she did would make anyone want to prolong an entrance into society. But I don’t think that’s it. I don’t think it’s Nick, either. I have an idea of what they were to each other, but why join this small world of ambitious nerds, a world she so clearly does not belong in, only to push it all away and cloister herself in this tower of her own making?
It doesn’t add up.
I sigh as I push the doorbell. I can’t hear it, so I’m not even sure it works. But after a few seconds I hear a whirring noise of some well-hidden camera trying to focus. “Sasha?” I ask out loud, knowing full well she is watching me. “Open the door.”
“I’m not interested in your date, Agent Jax. In fact, I’m very busy tonight. You have five seconds to remove yourself from my porch before I call the police.”
I bow my head so she can’t see me smirk, and then look up. “I am the police, Miss Aston.”
“No,” she says calmly from the safety of her intercom. “You’re some kind of rogue agent. I’m not sure. I really haven’t thought about you much over the past few months. But if I wanted to figure you out, if I were interested enough, I would have you all figured out. And you are here under someone’s orders, but I’ll bet they are not legitimate. In fact, you’ve been here far too long. So I’m betting that you had to make contact today for some specific reason. Perhaps you’ve been called back. Perhaps your rogue superior has had enough. Or perhaps there is another lead that you must follow. Either way, I have a feeling that if I just hold out a little bit longer you will disappear as quickly as you came.”
Jesus Christ. She’s a fucking mind-reader too. I straighten my tie to buy me a moment to gather myself, and then say, “Astute observation, Miss Aston. But you’re wrong. I have carte blanche in this case. All the time in the world, in fact.”
“Whatever—”
“But listen,” I say, lowering my voice. I imagine her leaning in to the speaker on the other side of her fortress to hear me better. “We had a date. It’s eight o’clock and I’m here to make good on my promise this morning.”
“Not interested, Agent—”
“You can’t possibly know that, Miss Cherlin, until you hear my offer. So please open the door and let me explain your options face to face.”
“This conversation is over. Goodnight, Agent.”
I drape the one bag over a nearby porch chair, set the other bag down on a small table next to it, and then remove the photograph from my breast pocket and hold it up. Her cameras are not visible, so I pan it across the front entrance. “We made contact with Nick Tate, Miss Cherlin. We don’t have him in custody and we don’t know where he is. But we know he’s about to make contact with you. We think he’s going to kill a lot of people, Sasha. And we need your insight to stop that.”
Silence.
And then the whirring of the camera lens. I hold the image still. It’s a much better photo than the ones I showed her months ago.
“I know you two have a history. If you open the door and talk to me face to face right now, I’ll let you have this photograph.”
Silence.
And then the unmistakable sound of disengaging locks on the other side of the door. Her face appears in a small crack. “You have ten seconds.”
I tuck the photograph back into my breast pocket and her eyes track that movement.
She wants that photograph pretty bad.
I pick up the bag draped across the chair and the other one on the table and hold them up in the air for her to examine. “You have two choices if you want the photograph, Miss Cherlin.” I shake the garment bag. “Put this dress on and go out to dinner with me.” I shake the paper bag, wet with grease stains. “Or we dine in tonight.”
She looks me in the eye. “My third choice, Agent Jax, is to tell you to fuck off.”
Ah! Finally, I have her engaged. “Alu gobi,” I deadpan back at her, still holding up the bag from the restaurant. “Or the dress.”
She crinkles her nose when I say the name of the dish I brought. She hates Indian food. Our spy invited her out a few months ago and this was one of the only tidbits of information we got from that conversation.
“The dress is beautiful. When was the last time you went out on a date? Years ago?” I smile, tucking down a chuckle. “It’s sad, really. A woman like you all buttoned up in here like a spinster.”
Sasha opens the door a few more inches. She’s in a robe, her hair is wet, and now that some light from the street lamps can get past her walls, I realize her eyes are red.
“You’ve been crying.”
“I don’t cry,” she says defensively. “I’m tired. I had a very bad day, and I’m not hungry or feeling up to going out.” I wait for her to close the door in my face. But she looks at my breast pocket again.
She really wants that photograph.
I set the bag of food back down on the table and push the dress towards her. “Let’s go out, Sasha. I promise not to ask you a single question about this case. All I want is an opportunity to unwind.”
“With me?” She sneers, far from convinced. “Surely there are slutty co-eds you can pass the time with.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to simply pass the time with you, Sasha. I said unwind. I think we’re a lot alike.”
“I think we are complete opposites.”
“We could laugh.”
“We’d probably fight.”
“I could buy you a drink and a nice dinner.”
“I can buy my own drinks and dinner.”
“I’d like to hold your hand and take a walk afterward. Do you like to look at the stars?”
She hesitates. I know she does. There is a small observatory on the roof of her house. It took me weeks to figure out what that little dome-shaped structure was up there. I thought it was hiding an air conditioner. Like a camouflaged utility room. But one night a while back, the dome slid open and I took pictures and sent them to a friend to see if he had any ideas what she might be doing.
A small observatory, he replied. To house a telescope.
Anyone who builds that on the roof of their house has a love for stars.
“No,” she lies. “I’m sorry, you can keep your photo—”
But she stops mid-sentence when I reach inside my pocket and pull it back out. “How about a show of good faith then,” I say, holding it out to her. “You take it now. And the dress.” I shake the garment bag again. “And I’ll come back and pick you up in thirty minutes when you’re ready.”
She stares at the photograph as I hold it up.
“I have years and years of pictures of him, Sasha.” Her eyes dart up to mine. “An entire history,
actually. We’ve had people on him for more than a decade.” I see the disbelief in her eyes. More than a decade is longer than he’s been missing, so I play the last card I can right now, and give her the truth. “I knew him, Sasha. I knew him growing up. We were almost friends once.”
“You’re lying.” But it’s a whisper. And her words are the lie, not mine. She knows this.
“I’m not,” I tell her. “I have pictures of us together to prove it. But I want this night.” I gently grasp her hand and push the photograph towards it. “Take it inside. Come out with me tonight and forget about him. Let your mind open up to me. Leave everything behind for a few hours and I’ll show you what life in the real world can be like. You’re hiding, Sasha. You’ve locked yourself away in this prison of your own making, and it’s killing you. I can see it in your eyes. You live in the past when the present is all around you. Let me take it away for one night and I promise, I will fill in all those blank years for you in the morning. And when that’s over, I’ll ask you again if you’d like to help me. If you say no, I’ll pack up and leave.”
She takes the photograph and I give her the time she needs to look it over. I let her yearn for him. I let her imagine all the answers to all her questions. I let her soak it up and wish for more.
And then she nods. “OK. One night out with you and in the morning I want answers. But I’m telling you right now, Jax”—hearing her say my name without the formal Agent in front makes me smile immediately—”I’m not interested in you.” She nods down at the picture. “I’m not interested in him that way either. I just—” She stops and lets out a long sigh. It’s filled with emotion. Sadness and loneliness and maybe even regret. “I just need to know more.”
“I understand.” And I do. I need to know more as well. I have followed the lives of Company kids since I was a kid myself. I’m obsessed with them. With her, specifically. Everything I’ve done for the past four months is proof of how bad I have it. “But Sasha,” I say with an edge to my voice, forcing her to focus her attention on me, “leave that photograph at home when you step outside.”
