by J. A. Huss
The trail is still lit up from the stars and the moon. The white snow is the perfect reflection, making it almost bright. But on either side are the woods. And they are very dark.
I turn the machine around and backtrack. I’ve covered up her trail, so that’s no good. I cut the engine and sigh into the night. The wind is chilling and I’m not dressed for this. I just want to go home and forget this stupid girl. This stupid life. This stupid bullshit with these stupid fucking people.
God, how awful to grow up with these people.
The Company is not a corporation. It’s not a business. It’s a secret shadow world government with thousands of people in very high places. Think world leaders, billionaires, mega-charities, religious leaders, manufacturing, healthcare, water treatment—hell, space exploration, these days. Those are the kind of people who work for the Company. It’s like the Mob, only bigger.
Or it was.
James is a former Company assassin who fell in love with the Company princess, Harper. Sasha was the Company mistake. Raised by her father, a former Company assassin trainer, to shoot straight, think clear, and listen carefully, she is the only living member of the Company who knows certain secrets.
The problem is, Sasha doesn’t know she knows these things until something jogs her memory. Like we’re on the road in the Mojave Desert and we stop at a restaurant-slash-seedy hotel. Sasha pops off an offhanded comment like, “Yeah, the guy who lives up in room 17, he’s a Company asset. My dad and I used to come here for—” Whatever. It doesn’t matter who they were, the fact that she spent her childhood rambling around in an RV with her father as he did his Company business puts her squarely into the needs-to-be-eliminated category.
Or—and this is the part that terrifies me—the needs-to-be-activated category. Because that’s what these people do with the girls. They brainwash them. They use them. Just like Garrett used Sydney.
I place my hands on the front of the snow machine and drop my head into them. I’m so tired of thinking about this shit. Why? Why do I have to spend my life chasing these assholes down? Why do I have to care? James and Harper don’t seem to give a shit. Sasha doesn’t give a shit anymore, either. She went to live a new life after we killed all those Company people. And since I convinced her a few years ago that things were OK, she never brings it up. Ever.
But me? No, this is all I’ve thought about since I met the kid eight years ago. I can’t take it anymore. Why? Why do I have to be the guy who gives a shit?
Because, asshole. She’s the little sister you never had. She’s the only family you really got, man. She’s the only one who counts.
I lift my head and sigh again. “Sydney!” I yell. “Where the fuck are you?”
I need her. I hate this so much. But I have to admit it. I need her.
I get off the machine and walk on foot, backtracking the way I came, searching the darkness of the trees on either side. I have no gun, no flashlight, and if the wolves decide to show up, I’m fucked. And so is Sydney.
So I turn around and walk back up to where I stopped the machine earlier. She’s got to be here. It’s a long distance to cover in the fifteen-minute headstart she got on me. But she has to be here.
I spot what’s left of a footprint going off into the woods on the right of the trail, and follow it in and find more. They get clearer the deeper they go. Less wind in here. “Sydney!” I call again. I move on in the direction of the prints and I’m just about to yell again when I see her. She’s sitting down on the ground, her white coat and snow pants a stark contrast to the dark bark of the massive pine tree she’s leaning up against. “What the fuck are you doing? Let’s go. You’re not staying out here. If you want a ride up to your truck, I’ll take you in the morning.”
She sits still, looking down at something in her hands. I squint at them, trying to see what she has. And I have a little moment of panic thinking she has a weapon or some secret Company shit.
But she doesn’t. It’s an acorn. I stuffed it in the pocket of the coat she’s wearing before I left the little cabin, just trying to get rid of her and everything she represents. She’s twirling it in her fingers, staring at it like it’s important. “You know why I keep the acorn, Case?”
I cross the distance between us and grab her by the arm, pulling her to her feet. “Good luck?” I venture, tugging her a little, to get her feet started. She gives in without a fight and walks, so I let her arm go.
“No,” she says. “That’s not why.” And then she laughs. But she’s still walking. I stop for a moment and let her pass me, so I can keep an eye on her from behind. This girl makes me nervous. She’s not entirely sane. And she’s dangerous in ways I’m still not sure of yet.
“Why then?” I ask, more to take my mind off how I will get this girl to give up the information I need.
She doesn’t answer me, just walks.
We get back to the snow machine and she stops and waits for me to get on. I scoot back on the seat and nod my head, indicating she should climb on the front. She’s tiny and I’m huge. I can reach around her and drive no problem. I don’t trust her to sit behind me.
But she doesn’t climb on. She stares at me. “What?” I ask.
“It’s a seed.” She holds up the acorn. “This little thing will grow into a huge tree if all goes well. If it has enough water and sunlight. And good soil.”
“Get the fuck on the snow machine.” I do not have time for existential musings right now.
“But I’ve had this acorn for—” She stops, looking up at something, like she’s thinking. “Ten years?” And then she smiles. It catches me off guard. I’ve been watching this girl for eight of those ten years and not once do I ever think I’ve seen her smile.
I smile with her.
“I picked it up the day Garrett came into my life.” Her smile drops and so does mine. “A seed.” She looks at it. This is when I notice she has no glove on. Her hand is a very pale white.
“Jesus, Sydney. Your hand.” There’s a glove poking out of her pocket, so I grab it and hold it open so she can slip her hand inside. She fists the acorn, never opening up her fingers, but it’s good enough. The hand is definitely on its way towards frostbite and it needs to be warmed up immediately. “I gave you gloves for a reason. You know better than to take them off in this kind of weather.”
She stares down at her newly gloved hand and then looks up at me for a moment. But it’s like she missed everything I just said. The confused look on her face softens and then she looks away, switching gears. “I needed to feel that acorn.”
That’s her explanation for risking amputation?
“It has so much potential. I had so much potential. That’s what Garrett said. And if I would just…” She smiles again. But this time there are tears in her eyes. One rolls down her face, freezing in the cold wind before it can complete its journey. “Just trust him, right? If I just gave into what he was asking, I’d become the oak tree. He was making me the oak tree, Case. But this?” She pokes herself in the chest. “I’m just dead wood, that’s all I am. Dead wood.”
I can’t move. I’m fixated on her. Her sadness runs so deep. Her confession is more of a surrender than an admission.
“Do you know what he did to me?” she asks, slipping her hand out of the glove and dropping it on the ground so she can see the acorn.
I pick up the glove and tug it back over her blanched skin. “I know.”
“All of it?”
“Most of it. I wasn’t there ten years ago, obviously. So I missed that acorn shit. But I watched you after the cabin. For two years. On and off,” I add quickly. “I wasn’t there all the time. Just between jobs.”
She nods and steps forward, lifting her leg to straddle the machine and take a seat in front of me. “It was always you, Case.”
I’m about to start the machine, but I stop myself. “What was?”
“The person in my head who told me to keep going.”
I have nothing to say to that. I talked t
o this girl once before I took her the night before her wedding. At that cabin eight years ago on Christmas Eve. I punched her in her sixteen-year-old face and threatened to kill her. Told her I owned her and I’d be back to finish the job. I’m not proud of this. I don’t get off on hurting girls. But it was a fucked-up job. My whole life changed that night. Sasha’s whole life changed that night. Hell, I can probably count two or three dozen people whose lives changed that night because of Sydney and her fucking boyfriend. And if she thinks that was me being affectionate and encouraging, she’s more insane than I thought.
“I know what they did to Sasha.”
I freeze as her words sink in.
“I know what they did. Because they did it to me too.” And then she twists her body and gives me a glance over her shoulder. Her tears almost break me. They frost her eyelashes and freeze on her cheeks. It’s started to snow in the last few minutes, only I just now notice it because her dark hair is dotted with flakes that sparkle in the moonlight. She looks like sadness. She looks like a sad, winter princess. “It’s not over, Case. And if you help me, I’ll help you.”
“Kindness is a weapon— use it like a knife, or a gun, or a lie.”
– Case
I think about this offer all the way back to the house. I know what they did, because they did it to me too.
Did they? Did they really? I don’t know. I only met Sasha a couple times before that night Garrett and his crew killed her father. But her father was a good man. She loved him. He loved her. Did they really get him to go along with brainwashing his only daughter?
And then there’s the fact that her mother was dead. Didn’t I hear that the mothers were the key to the future of the girls born into the Company? Sasha’s mother was dead, that means she refused the deal that the Company offers each mother when she gives birth to a girl child. Sell her to them—allow the Company to use the girl as they see fit. Or give up her own life for a promise. A promise that the girl will be taken care of and married off to an appropriate partner when she comes of age.
Sasha’s mother gave up her own life for the promise. And Sasha’s father trained her the same way James was trained. He raised her to be as ruthless and cunning as the Company assassins. She might’ve only been thirteen when we took out the Company, but she held up her end of the game. Hell, there were times when she held up my end of the game too. Her father gave her skills. There is no way that Sasha and this Sydney girl are anything alike.
But. There is always a but.
How can I be sure? How do I know there is no trigger for Sasha? James had one. I’m pretty sure, after hearing Harper’s tale of how that shit all went down when she escaped, that she had one too.
But James dissociated right into his own world in the end. A world where he was king and no more orders got through. And Harper? They did it all wrong with Harper. Raised her up on a megayacht. Pampered her. Spoiled her. Loved her. Even her father loved her. And she always had her twin, Nick, at her side.
No. Brainwashing on this scale doesn’t grow out of love. And yet Harper killed a lot of people when she was triggered. A lot of people.
And Sasha is a hundred times more deadly than Harper. Sasha has real skills. Sasha is smart and worldly. Sasha has no fear. Harper was a bundle of fear and anxiety.
But Sasha. She is brave.
And that makes her the perfect sleeper assassin, doesn’t it?
I need to know more about Sydney’s life growing up. If her mother gave up her life for the promise and it didn’t protect her, then how can I be sure it protected Sasha?
The garage light is off when I pull in, but the motion sensor triggers and it flashes on, blinding me for a moment. “Hop off,” I say, when Sydney doesn’t move.
She swings her leg over and I do the same. I give her a push and she starts walking. I close the garage as we leave and we trudge through the blowing snow to the house. The warm air blasts us when we get inside and I start taking off my coat.
Sydney stands there, looking at that acorn. Her glove is gone again. Dropped somewhere outside along the trail, I bet. “You know, it’s pretty stupid to hurt yourself like that.” I nod down to her hand when she looks up.
“Who cares?”
“Go upstairs, to the third floor. I’ll throw some wood on the stove and meet you up there. It’s the warmest room in the house and I do care.” She squints her eyes at me. “I’m not cutting your fingers off and I’m not taking you to a hospital because you can’t drive your truck out of here. So go the fuck upstairs and wait for me.”
She heads towards the stairs. She responds to harshness. She’s probably been conditioned that way. Threats, abuse, humiliation. It gets her moving.
I get moving as well. I stock up all three wood stoves that heat this house and then go into the kitchen and start looking for food. I grab a bag of chips and a soda, ready to head upstairs and see what I can do for her hand, when a thought comes to me.
I might catch more flies with honey.
So I put the bag of chips back and open the fridge to see what I have. Not much. I haven’t had a lot of time to cook the past few weeks. But I have some elk meat thawing. And some potatoes in the cold room that are still good. I stick all that shit in a roasting pan and shove it in the oven.
A hot meal is nice. I could use one. And I’ve been feeding her shit for the past few weeks. It can’t hurt. I make some coffee too, then take a pot and two mugs up the stairs.
She’s sitting on the bed, still looking at that stupid acorn. She still has her winter gear on, and there’s so much sweat running down her face, her hair is all wet.
“Sydney,” I bark. She slowly raises her eyes to meet mine. “Take your fucking—” Honey, Merc. Try honey. I take a deep breath and beg myself to be patient. “Come on,” I say, pulling her to her feet and taking that stupid acorn away. I toss it on the bed and her eyes follow it as it rolls along the white down comforter. “You need to take off your coat and snow pants.”
I unzip her coat and slide it off her. Her shirt is soaked with sweat. She just stands there, so I guide her back until she bumps into the bed and she takes a seat again. I bend down and start unlacing her boots. She kicks them off when they get loose enough.
I wait, but she doesn’t stand. I’m not a patient guy. I mean, I have my moments when it’s necessary, but generally, I don’t like to coddle people. I didn’t coddle Sasha, and she was a good ten years younger than this girl here when we did that big job. I’m really not interested in coddling Sydney.
But honey, Merc.
“Take off your snow pants, Sydney.”
She messes with the button and zipper, then slides them down her legs. Her pants should be dry, but they are soaked with sweat as well. She takes those off too, and then she’s bare from the waist down. She looks up at me and takes off her sweat-soaked shirt. That leaves her naked, since I didn’t give her underwear when I left her clothes at the cabin. I’m regretting that now. She’s a cute girl. And her body…
I take the hand suffering from exposure and it’s still very cold. I touch her cheek with the back of my other hand and it’s warm. She leans into that like she’s starving for a gentle gesture.
It makes me close my eyes for a minute. She’s so needy. It would be easy to just take care of that need.
Instead, I kick off my boots and take my shirt off, then place her hand under my armpit. She tries to pull away but I hold her still and smile. “It’s a nice warm place, Syd. You have to heat up this hand. I’m pretty sure it’s gonna blister no matter what, but it needs to be warmed up.”
“It’s gross,” she says. “I can do it—”
“No,” I tell her back, sitting down on the bed and pulling on her at the same time, so she can’t remove it. “I’ll do it.”
I scoot all the way back on the half-moon-shaped bed, which takes up roughly one half of the circular room, making her crawl along with me. Her tits are nice and firm, and hang down and bounce a little in a very alluring way. I keep
pulling her until she’s sitting next to me, her frozen hand slipping out of place. So I put my arm around her and place her hand under my opposite arm, making her hug me a little. She stiffens when I do this and that makes me laugh a little.
“You afraid of intimacy, Sydney? Tough girl like you?”
“You’re tricking me somehow, I can feel it.” But even as she says this, she rests her head on my chest.
“Probably. If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I don’t give anything away for free. So now that I’m taking care of your mistake out there, let’s talk about that deal. I went above and beyond. I didn’t let you freeze, I came out of my nice warm house to save your ass. So the way I see it, you owe me. Start talking. What do you know about Sasha?”
“You kidnapped me.”
“You came to me,” I correct her.
“I left. I wasn’t coming to meet you.”
I let that go for now. Time and place, Merc, is what I say in my head. Time and place.
“You sprayed me with a hose. You—”
I wait for it. The ultimate accusation. But she doesn’t finish. “I what? Raped you?”
She holds her words in.
“I hope you don’t think that. Because you were the one filled with secrets for that little affair.”
“I wasn’t gonna say that.” She takes a deep breath. “I was gonna say, you disappointed me.”
Usually I’d laugh at that. But I’m using honey. So I don’t. I think about it for a moment instead.
“You were supposed to save me, Case. You were supposed to show up that night, kill Garrett and his buddies, and take me out of there. That was the deal.”
“My end of the deal was over the minute I realized your militia friends knew I was coming.”
“I didn’t tell them. I saw you out there and I lied to Garrett about it. I let you get close. If I had told, you’d be dead. I saved you, Case. I saved you when you were supposed to save me.”
