by JA Huss
“Sasha, please. Listen.” Jax gets out of the bed on his side, ready to come towards me, but my instincts kick in. My eyes find the door, and before I can even make a conscious decision, I’m through it—running down a hallway. It leads to a small living room and my socked feet slide on the polished hardwood floors.
Front door. Check.
I’m unlocking the chain and pulling it open before Jax even makes it to the living room behind me.
“Sasha!” he yells.
But I’m already out into the cold night air. Three’s a steady drizzle coming down and even though I’m in full-on get-the-fuck-out-of-here mode, all I can think of is why the fuck is it still raining in December?
“Sasha! You’re getting wet. Come back inside.”
I stop about a hundred feet from the house and look around. “Where the hell am I?”
“Just come inside and I’ll tell you.”
“No.” I whirl around. “No. You drugged me again!”
Jax laughs, just like he did the last time I accused him. “Where do you come up with that shit? I didn’t drug you. You were obviously exhausted. You fell asleep in the car, remember? After we left Madeline’s estate?”
I do remember that. “Why am I here when I should be home?”
“I can explain, OK? Just give me a chance. You’re gonna freeze out here. Come inside.”
I look down at my clothes. I’m wearing men’s black boxer briefs and a man-sized black t-shirt. “Where the fuck did these clothes come from?”
“You were sound asleep when we got here, Sasha. I swear. I woke you up as best I could and I told you to change.”
I stare at him dubiously.
“I swear to God, Sasha. I did not drug you. You’re just disoriented. And if you calm down and come back inside, I’m sure you’ll remember.”
I look around and take it all in. There’s a half-moon. Just enough light to see that there are no lights anywhere surrounding this house. I force myself to take deep, deep breaths to calm my racing heart. “Where are we?”
“Nebraska.”
Farmland. That’s all I see. Flat, fallow farmland. And a few dark splotches in the distance that might be trees. “Why the fuck am I still in Nebraska?”
“Will you come inside?” He’s wearing the same thing as me, I realize. And we were sleeping in the same bed. And I had sex with him in the car last night.
Jesus Christ. What the hell am I doing here?
“Sasha,” Jax says, reaching behind the door to grab something. My heart kicks it up another notch as I picture him grabbing a gun. But he comes back into view sliding an umbrella open. “Come on,” he says, taking a few slow steps outside towards me. “You’re getting wet. Let’s go inside and talk about this.”
“Take me home, Jax. Right now.” I eye him as he carefully makes his way out towards me. “I want to go home.”
“I will, Sasha.” He’s only a few paces away when he stops walking. “I will. But I told you I’d show you everything I had on Nick. And this is where I have it.”
I shake my head. “No, it’s a trick. You’re tricking me.”
He takes those final few steps and places the umbrella over my head. The cool prickles of rain stop misting my bare skin and I realize just how cold it is. “You’re all wet now. Come on, let’s go inside and I’ll show you why you’re here. This is my safe house. It’s FBI-sanctioned. It’s only a secret to outsiders. I swear,” he says, crossing his heart with his free hand. “They know you’re here with me. I called it in last night. I’ll show you inside.”
“You turned me in?”
“Sasha,” he says, blowing out some air like he’s getting frustrated. “I already explained to you. Months ago. We don’t want to arrest you, we only want your help. They’re not gonna come take you away. No one is going to hurt you here. That’s why we call it a safe house. This is where I keep all my reconnaissance on Nick. And if you come inside, it will take one flip of a light switch to prove that everything I just said is true.”
I stand still as I consider this.
“Come on,” he insists, taking my arm and pulling me back towards the house. “It’s wet and cold out here. Let’s go back inside and I’ll explain everything.”
I allow him to lead me back to the house. What choice do I have? I’m half-naked and in the middle of buttfuck nowhere.
When we get to the door I hesitate for a moment, but he doesn’t ask me again. Just tugs me back inside and closes the door behind us.
“Just…” He hesitates, making me look up at his face. I can’t see much since there are no lights on, but I can tell his reluctance is due to what’s coming.
“Just tell me, Jax.”
And then his fingertips find a light switch on the wall and the room illuminates.
Everywhere I look, there is nothing but Nick.
Chapter Twenty-Three - Sasha
“What the fuck is this?”
It’s a stupid question. I know what this is. A full-fledged case study on Nick Tate. The wall in front of me is filled with pictures of him. It starts on one end, the corner nearest the front of the house, and fills the entire wall. There are even a few pictures and notes pasted over the corner on the far end of the room.
He ages in the images on the wall. They start out with Nick as a young teen, before I met him. Then Nick the same age as I remember him from when we were working together, the golden-haired, brown-eyed surfer boy. And then, at less than a quarter of the way across the montage, he begins to morph in appearance. Head shaved almost bald. A scar across his cheek. One tattoo. Spanish lettering arched across the front of his chest with the words Mara Perro in old English calligraphy.
Then slightly longer hair. More tattoos. Skulls and crossbones. Dogs snarling, their teeth dripping with saliva. Chains encircle his neck and arms. His wrists have thick links inked on them, like he’s a prisoner.
My eyes move on, taking in the next set of pictures. His hair is long now, past his shoulders. And it’s the same bright yellow I remember from when we were kids. The tattoos are more religious. There’s a picture on his back, a man with his head illuminated like an icon. The word Santino rides the space between his shoulders. This one in a pretty script writing. There are flowers and children sitting at his feet.
The two sides of his body couldn’t be more different.
I walk over to that image and touch his back. Tracing a line down his spine.
“That’s him.”
I figured.
My eyes leave that image and move on to the next set of pictures. I take it all in as he ages before my eyes. More or less hair. More scars. More tattoos. And when I get to the end, he is nothing but ink. Every question I had about him is laid out on this wall. A decade’s worth of answers.
“When I said I had more information, I meant it.” Jax is frowning. “You said you wanted to know, right?”
I nod.
“Well, then let me walk you through it.”
I hug myself as my body begins to tremble.
“I met Nick Tate when I was fifteen. He was fifteen too. I guess, from what you said earlier, that was the same year you met him?”
“Probably.”
Jax clears his throat. “I knew him as a teen in the Brooklyn neighborhood I was living in as a foster kid. My foster brother and I came out of juvie together, escaped social services, and both ended up getting adopted by Max. We were friends with Nick for a couple months. He appeared out of nowhere. But I was young and didn’t have any idea what lurked beyond my small world. I had no idea powerful people might use children to do the dirtiest work imaginable.”
I shake my head. “No, he was with Harper back then. She told me. They’re twins and she said they were inseparable. He was never away from her for long because she had panic attacks and she needed him. It was a big deal when she left the Company and went out on her own. And that wasn’t until she was eighteen.”
“I have no idea what he did when I wasn’t with him, Sasha. If
he was with his family, it was sporadic. Because I’m telling you, he was a regular fixture in my neighborhood for months. He’d appear for days, then disappear for a week or more. He was almost never in school even though he was registered. So maybe he was going home.”
“How could he just go home? They lived on a superyacht on the ocean, Jax.”
“I don’t care, Sasha,” he says back, sneering my name. “I’m fucking telling you something. So stop trying to make excuses for him and listen.”
I force myself to shut my mouth. Mostly because I’d rather look at the pictures on the wall than argue. Nick. Finally I get to see what became of him.
“My brother Jacob and I had another little brother too. Michael. We were all fostered with Max Barlow. Jacob and I found Michael in the youth center one day. This was before we knew Nick. Before we even knew Max Barlow existed. And we were a team, ya know? Jake and me and Michael. Michael was just a little kid, but he was tough, man. Like super fucking tough. Jake and I latched on to him because of it. We were orphans, street kids. Nothing to look forward to, nothing to dream about. Life sucked.
“Max came into the picture not long after the three of us teamed up. He wanted to adopt Michael, and Michael said he didn’t go anywhere without his big brothers. So that’s how Jake and I got the luckiest break a foster kid can get. A permanent home.”
“What happened to your brothers?” I’m stuck in his story now. Picturing his life as a kid.
“Jake is…” He hesitates. “He’s…”
“What?”
“Never mind Jake. It’s Michael I want to tell you about. Because a little while after we all settled into our new lives, Nick appeared. Nick Tate. He didn’t even use a fake name. And I have to wonder now why he did that.”
“We have no birth certificates. Harper never had one either. She didn’t really exist, she said. I already had fake papers but we had to get fake papers for her. An ID, a passport. Everything.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Jax says. “But I’ve come up with my own theory over the years. And I think he used his real name because he wanted us to know who he was.”
“Why?”
“Pride? To boast?”
“Boast about what?”
“Assassinating Michael in his own bed.”
My stomach turns as I process those words. “What?”
“He came into our house as a friend. He cased us for weeks. Got to know us. Played with Michael. Sucked up to Max. We had him over for dinner. And then one night, he came inside, shot my little brother assassination-style, and disappeared.”
“No.” I say it forcefully. “Did you see him?”
“No, but it was him.”
“How you do know? Because Nick Tate is not that—”
“Kind of guy?” Jax laughs. “You have no idea who Nick Tate is, Sasha. None. But I’m gonna spell it out for you right now. Because we’ve had someone on the inside of Mara Perro for decades. Ever since that gang’s inception, there has been a rat watching every move. That’s what Max Barlow does. He’s the king of infiltration. He’s got men in every Westernized gang in the US, Mexico, Canada, South America, Central America, Russia, Moldova… you name it, if it’s not Islamic, Max Barlow runs the rats. The only organization we haven’t been able to infiltrate is—”
“The Company.” I say it like a dead person. My world was dark, but this room sheds a new light on everything. I’m not sure I like the light.
“That’s right.”
“You need a rat in the Company?”
“No, Sasha. We don’t want to waste time infiltrating them. Why? Why bother doing that when we have you?”
I hear the words, but I ignore them and concentrate on Nick’s scars. What happened to him? Did he get them fighting? Was he tortured? Did they make him do these things?
Or was he in on it from the beginning? Did he lie to me?
Jax takes my hand and places something in it. I look down at the gold badge encased in leather. There’s a beaded chain and plastic credit-card type ID attached.
“For you,” Jax says.
I look at the badge for a moment. Then the ID. It’s got my picture on it. My full name—Aston, not Cherlin—and some fancy, authentic-looking symbols. “What the hell?”
“You don’t have to accept it, Sasha. Yet. But think about it. You could make a difference.”
I look up at him. My whole body is freezing now, and I start to tremble. “You want me to get Nick for you, don’t you? To get revenge because you think he killed your little brother.”
“I know he did.”
“You don’t know, Jax. Unless he tells you, you don’t know. And what the fuck happened to innocent until proven guilty?”
“Whatever happened to a man’s home is his castle? Didn’t my brother have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Nick Tate took it away. Nick Tate has killed hundreds of people—”
“So did James, Jax. So when I’m done with Nick, do you want me to go after James? Is Harper on your hit list as well? Merc? Did you really bring me here to try to talk me into selling out the people who almost died for me?”
“As far as I know, they are all retired.”
“And you have no personal grudge against them, right?”
“True,” he admits. “But they got out of the business, Sasha. You got out. Nick didn’t.”
“We’re all ex-Company, Jax.”
“No,” he seethes. “You’re not. Because Nick never left them, Sasha. He’s still in.”
“He’s part of a Honduran gang, not the Company.”
“They are the Company. Nick knew that going in. They are the Company, Sasha. You think you got them all?”
“I never said that. We knew we only got some of them. But that guy, that Matias guy who took Nick—”
“They didn’t take him, Sasha. He left with them. It was a setup.”
“By whom?”
“By Nick.”
“Where the fuck do you get your information?”
“From Nick.” And then Jax walks over to a desk and pulls out a stack of letters. “Nick sent me these every year on the anniversary of Michael’s death. He justified it, Sasha. He said he’d do it again if he had to. He admitted it, he took credit for it, and he believed in it.”
“Why would he want to kill a little boy?”
“Why would people want to kill you, Sasha? Or should I say, twelve-year-old you?” He waits for it to sink in.
I turn away. “What the fuck?”
“Michael was someone’s Zero, Sasha.”
“What?” I whirl back around. “What did you just call him?”
“The Zero. The new breed of Company assassin. Nick was one, too.”
I turn back to the wall and stare up at the golden boy of my childhood.
“So were you.”
But my head is shaking out a no. “My father never put me in the program. My father—”
“Taught you how to kill as a child.”
“No.”
“Yes. I brought you out here to show you the truth. You wanted me to give you all the information I had about Nick. And here it is.” Jax walks up to the wall and starts pointing at the pictures. “Age fourteen—this is him. Just a kid in a low-income classroom. Some inner-city school where politicians go to make up feelgood moments. The next day that government official was poisoned. Didn’t I once hear that the Company assassins had to use poison for personal jobs? What kind of personal job could a fourteen-year-old boy have, Sasha?”
No.
“Age fifteen. This picture was taken in my own fucking house. That’s Nick sitting between me and Jake. That’s Michael on the far left. He was shot in the head as he slept less than two weeks later.”
No.
But he goes on and on and on. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Jax pulls out an envelope with pictures of me and Nick together at the antiques mall in Cheyenne where my father ran his business. The same place I dreamed about the life Nick and I would have
together. Where I sat reading Little House books, lamenting over my stupid braces and hoping against all hope that things would turn out OK. That Nick Tate might save me.
No.
“After he left you crying in that boat, he went down to Honduras for his final phase of training. Before Nick Tate came to town there were between two and three homicides per day in San Pedro Sula. After, it averaged four.”
“So that’s all Nick? Please.” I laugh. “You cannot be serious.”
“He brags about it, Sasha. We’ve got video. I told you we have informants. We have plenty of video. And I’ve got it all queued up for you on that laptop right there.” He points to a computer.
I swallow hard.
“I’m not lying. I swear to God, everything I just told you is true.”
Chapter Twenty-Four - Jax
She processes the information I just dumped. Her face is tight, her emotions controlled. No tears from this girl. None.
“I have you too.”
She turns to look at me and I pan to the wall behind me. There are far fewer images of Sasha. Long stretches of white space reflect the trouble I had finding her. “I wasn’t sure you were real. I mean, we heard rumors of a little girl, a Zero, as they call them, leading the way during that year the Company went defunct. But they were just rumors. No one really thought you were real.”
“I’m real,” she says in a whisper.
“I know, Sasha.” I take her trembling body in my arms. “I know you’re real. And I’m sorry I have to be the one to show you this stuff. But he’s back, OK? He’s back for you. And no way in hell is he gonna get what he wants again. No way.”
“He would never hurt me.”
“You have no idea how bad he can hurt you.”
She sighs in my embrace but she doesn’t pull away. It’s something. More than I could’ve hoped, probably. I mean, I just shattered her reality. And how many times has this happened before tonight? How many times has she had to suck it up and accept the truth about who and what she is?
