by JA Huss
Nick is about to pop back up.
I searched her apartment almost every day back in Huntington. The Admiral might’ve said I was on leave, but once I found her, I knew that was not the case. I was there for Harper. Keep an eye on her—or fuck her. Same thing.
I allow myself a small smile as I think about that.
Her father will flip when he finds out. And there’s no way that will stay secret for long, but he’s the one who came to me twelve years ago and made that promise. I’m simply taking what’s already mine.
Back in the OC I searched her apartment thoroughly. There are no secret panels in the walls, or loose floorboards, or special compartments in the box spring. I checked. There are no special knickknacks that look like useless crap, but have a screw-top lid hidden into the design so you can hide stuff in plain sight.
Nothing.
I checked that little mechanical room she used to stash her money and key too. That wall did have a loose brick, so it was easy to find. But there was only one.
“Let’s stop here!” Sasha says, leaning between the front seats to point out the window. “Look!” She laughs and suddenly I can imagine the little kid in her again. She flip-flops between killer assassin and hormonal teenager, but right now I can see her the way her father might’ve. A little girl who just wants to be a kid. “Dinosaurs!” she says.
Sure enough, we are in Cabazon. Home of two massive roadside dinosaurs.
I pat Harper on her leg. “Want to go see the dinosaurs, Harper?”
“I do!” Sasha says excitedly from the back. “Look, they have a restaurant there too. We can stop and eat and then go look at them. Can we look at them, James?”
“Harper?” I ask again. She turns towards me with a smile, but something is definitely off with her too. “You in for food and a tourist trap?”
“Sure, I’m starving and that looks fun.”
I try and ignore all the warnings going off in my head and just pay attention to the moment as I get off the freeway and head over to the giant T-Rex. I park in front of a restaurant with the sign Eat in front. I switch the engine off. The lack of air-conditioning affects us immediately. If you don’t have a constant stream of cool air blowing on you, the desert heat moves in. All three of us open our doors to get out at the same time. You can’t fight the sun. Even three hardened killers know this.
Sasha takes a long look at the gigantic dinosaurs and then notices me watching her and blushes in embarrassment. “I was obsessed with dinosaurs when I was a kid.”
“You’re still a kid, Smurf,” I tell her as I open the door of the restaurant for them. Inside it’s cool again.
“Did you ever see Jurassic Park, James?”
I laugh. “I think everyone’s seen Jurassic Park, Sasha.”
“I haven’t,” Harper says.
“See!” Sasha exclaims. She’s very excited about the dinosaurs and this makes me smile. “Harper grew up on a boat, she probably never even had TV. I grew up with TV, and we went to the movies, but not a lot. I saw Jurassic Park on TV once when I was like six and that’s when I decided I’d like to be a paleontologist. Did you know that Thermopolis, Wyoming has real dinosaur tracks and bones in the same place, James? That’s not very common. You almost never see them both in the same place.”
I shake my head as I hold up three fingers for the waitress. She smiles at Sasha, who has directed her impromptu dinosaur lesson towards Harper now, and winks at me. “They are fun at that age, aren’t they?”
“Who?” I ask, following behind her as she leads us to a table.
She sets the menu down and smiles again. “Daughters. I have three.” And then Harper and Sasha arrive and sit together in the booth. The waitress walks off before I can correct her and for a moment I just stand there.
Daughters?
I slide into the booth across from the girls, but I’m sorta stunned. “I’m only twenty-eight,” I say. But she’s long gone, already chatting with another group of people on the other side of the restaurant.
“Twenty-eight is old, James.” Sasha quips. “You’re definitely old enough to be my father.”
“I’m not your father, Sasha. And it would be a very big mistake to think of me that way.” I feel the silence more than hear it, because neither of the girls were actually talking. But things go still.
When I look up Sasha is glaring at me. “Don’t worry,” she says through her clenched teeth. “I’d never want you for a father anyway. You’re an asshole.”
People in the next table look over at her swearing. “Sorry,” I mouth to them and they look away quickly. “Sasha, watch your mouth. Especially in public. You are thirteen years old. Act like it.”
“I was acting like it,” she says on the other side of her menu. “And you are definitely an asshole.”
“OK,” Harper says. “What’s everyone gonna get? I’m thinking one of everything.”
Sasha puts down her menu and looks at the dinosaurs through the window. “I’m not hungry.”
I let out a long grumble before I can stop myself. “I’ll order for you if you don’t choose. And you’re gonna eat it whether you want to or not.”
“Whatever,” she says back.
I take my case to Harper. “She needs to eat. We have no clue what will happen after we get back to the Beach. I need her to be ready.”
“Ready for what?” Harper looks around cautiously. “Do you think we’re in trouble?”
“Not yet, Harp. Calm down. I just feel like something’s coming, you know? And I’ve learned to listen to my gut intuition. If things feel off, then they probably are.”
“Things feel off with me too,” Harper finally admits. “I can’t put my finger on it, but it feels bad.”
“That feeling is James betraying you, Harper. And If I were you, I’d definitely listen to that one.”
My hand comes up, ready to smack the shit out of her, but Harper reaches for it before I can do something I regret. “James, stop. She’s trying to make you react.”
I take a deep breath. “It’s working, and believe me, she does not want to be on the receiving end of my reactions.”
“I’m right here, you know.”
“Sasha,” Harper says sternly. “Shut your mouth and choose some food. You’re making this more difficult than it needs to be.”
Sasha glares at Harper now. “I don’t get you. He’s here for you, ya know. And you’re practically handing yourself over.”
I put my hands on the table this time, ready to get up and drag her outside so we can have this out for real, but the waitress comes. “You all ready to order?”
I relax back in my seat and point to Harper.
“I’ll have the…” She looks down at her menu again. “Dino Supreme.” And when she looks back up she’s got that glowing smile on her face that makes people love her. Makes me love her, that’s for sure. “Scrambled, please.”
The waitress looks over at Sasha and waits. I expect something atrocious to come out of her filthy mouth, but she says in her best sweet-little-girl voice, “Dino Egg Pancake Plate and orange juice.”
“Oh, I want OJ too,” Harper says.
“Does that come with hash browns?” Sasha asks.
“No, those are extra, sweetie.”
“James,” she says, looking over at me. “Can I get hash browns too?”
I almost glare at her because she’s baiting me again, but if she wants to playact, I can go along. “Whatever you want, Princess Smurf.”
I order the T-Rex T-bone with a side of eggs and by the time the waitress leaves, I’m calm.
But this fucking kid. What the hell was that?
I watch her look out the window at the dinosaurs again, and then Harper takes my hands in hers, leans across the table, and kisses me on the cheek. “We’re OK, James.”
“I know,” I say back with a smile. For now, at least. But this trip will be over before we know it and then… I’m not sure what happens.
After that Harper keeps
the conversation going. She asks Sasha all kinds of dinosaur questions and gets a well-articulated answer for each and every one of them. Sasha reports on shit I’ve never heard of before and it’s clear this is her passion. Not guns. Not hunters. Not revenge. Although I’m pretty sure she harbors a deep resentment for the Company and would get some revenge, if offered.
I’m counting on that, in fact.
But right now, she’s Sasha the dino nerd.
The food comes and the girls go quiet as they eat. Sasha finishes everything on her plate and she’s done long before we are so she excuses herself to use the bathroom. Harper slides out and then back in after Sasha takes off.
“So,” Harper starts. “What do you think all that was about?”
I should’ve expected that, but somehow I figured she’d moved past it. “Look,” I say with a little bit more exasperation than is necessary. “She’s a very troubled kid, OK? Her father was blown up last Christmas Eve on a job Merc was doing. Then she went to live with her grandparents and they were blown up too.”
“That’s what she was talking about when she said she killed four people?”
“Yeah, her father, from my understanding anyway”—Tread carefully here, Tet, my inner voice cautions. This is new info from the Admiral last night—“was a former assassin trainer and he left that position and became an arms supplier out of Cheyenne. And Sasha seems to be his only living legacy.”
“So she’s a trained hunter?” Harper looks away as she puts these things together. “Like me? Only she can shoot and I can’t.”
I smile at that. “I like the fact that you can’t shoot. Or drive,” I add. “It’s sorta sweet.”
She almost chokes on her orange juice. “Why sweet?”
“I dunno. Because you’re so deadly on your own terms, right? The hand-to-hand stuff. You kick some serious ass like that. And you can sail a megayacht, but you can’t drive a car.”
“Well, I can’t sail that thing alone. It’s crazy big. You have to have a crew. So it’s not that impressive when all you do is bark orders.”
“But if someone asked you to captain their megayacht and take them to… wherever, you could do it. Couldn’t you?”
She shrugs. “I suppose. If the crew was competent.”
“And what if the sailboat was smaller? Could you sail that?”
“Oh yeah,” she says with an excitement in her eyes that’s been missing since I met her. “If it can be manned by one or two people, I’m all over that. Sometimes Nick and I would sail alongside the main ship in a sloop.”
“And no one was on the boat with you?”
“No, it was only a two-person boat. Very small.”
“See, Harp. That shit is sexy as all fucking hell. I’d get us all killed, if I had to be in charge.”
“Well, we had a whole ship full of people who’d jump in to save us if we needed it. It was not unsafe in the least.” She slides out of her booth and comes to sit next to me. “I miss the ocean.”
“We’ll be back there tonight. Maybe we can walk out to the pier and watch the sunset?”
She grabs my upper arm and rests her head against my chest. “I’d love that.”
“Then it’s a date.” I’m suddenly glad we’ve missed all those other sunsets. That way this one tonight can be the one.
“Where’s Sasha? She’s been gone a while.”
“Shit,” I say as I push Harper to slide out of the booth. I fish through my wallet, throw forty bucks down on the table, and then take Harper’s hand.
“Wait,” she says pulling me back towards the window. “Is that her over there?”
I squint as I look out the window and sure enough, there’s Smurfette, walking over to the huge-ass dinosaur.
“You should go talk to her, James. She’s just having a hard time.”
“Harper, I have no patience for that girl. I feel bad for her, but I’ve done everything I can to be nice, and she’s just a brat. You go talk to her. I’m gonna take a piss. But we do not have time for her whacked-out bullshit. She needs to pull herself together or she’s gonna get us all killed.”
“OK, I’ll go see what’s up. But I don’t think she’s doing this on purpose. She’s just mixed up and confused.”
“About what?” I whisper in her ear, my anger surfacing as we walk towards the front of the restaurant. “There’s only one fucking thing she needs to understand. None of us are in a very good position right now. There’s a global organization that wants you back and wants her dead. If she’s half as smart as I think she is, she’ll fucking take a clue from you and do as she’s told.”
Chapter Forty-Three - Harper
Do as she’s told?
Can he be any more of a caveman? I sigh as I watch his ass walking to the back of the restaurant. It’s a nice ass. Then I notice several women checking him out right along with me and an unfamiliar feeling creeps up.
Jealousy.
One woman notices me watching and quickly averts her gaze, so I just turn around and walk outside. The dinosaur is on the other side of a large parking lot and just this trek has my shoulders burning from the morning sun. It’s so hot here. I’ve spent most of my life in the tropics, so I’m used to hot. But the heat out here in the desert is suffocating. It zaps the life from you. And there’s no water to ease your discomfort. Our biggest yacht, not the sailing one, actually has a pool. But even if there was no pool, the spray of the sea kept you cool most of the time. I’m only halfway across the parking lot when another emotion hits me.
Homesickness.
I have to admit, I miss the ship. I miss that life. I was not abused or treated badly. I miss the ocean and the salty wind. I miss the crew too.
I am almost upon the big gray beast when I spot Sasha sitting underneath. At least it’s shady. I walk under, bypass an empty stone picnic table, and cop a seat on the brontosaurus toe next to the one she’s occupying. “What’re you doing?”
“Thinking,” she says as she rolls her flip flop over some stones on the concrete.
“Oh.” This is going great. “I think James is ready to leave. He wanted me to come get you.”
She’s silent for a few seconds and I’m racking my brain trying to think of something else to get her feet started when she finally pipes up. “Did you ever miss living in a house? With parents and school and stuff?”
“Ummm…”
“We lived in an RV until I was almost ten. I kinda liked it.”
“Oh.” I consider this for a second. “Well, that’s sorta like living on a ship, isn’t it? You move from place to place and see lots of stuff.” I catch movement out of the corner of my eye and turn, automatically looking for danger. But it’s just James. Leaning up against the dinosaur leg, smoking a cigarette. He shrugs at me and I turn back to Sasha. She’s not paying any attention to James. “The best thing about living on the ship was the whales.” Sasha looks up at me, her eyes bright with curiosity. “The humpback whales migrate in certain places every year, so we’d have to be in that part of the world to catch them moving in groups like that. But we saw them enough for it to leave an impression, ya know? Like—it became a part of my life. It was something special when I woke up in the morning and discovered a whale outside.”
Sasha laughs as she pictures it. “Did you ever swim with them?”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. “No. No, I’m not brave like that. You could never pay me enough money to swim next to a whale. I like to snorkel, but mostly in shallow waters.” I take a deep breath. “I’d probably have a panic attack if a whale ever came up to me in the ocean.” I sigh heavily. “I have those attacks a lot. It makes me need the pills.”
She stares at me for a second and then shakes her head slowly. “That’s not true. You haven’t panicked since I’ve met you.”
“Which is only two days,” I say back, chuckling under my breath.
“It feels like forever since that night you pulled a gun on us.” And then she looks over to James, who is still calmly smoking
his cigarette, leaning up against the dinosaur’s front leg. Just waiting us out. Sometimes he is very patient.
“I know,” I say, picking the subject of panic again. “I’ve been pretty good. But you know why?”
She shakes her head and resumes rolling her flip flop over the stones.
“I think because James is here to help me. And you remember that first night when you said he was being mean to you all day, and for me to not take his anger personally? Well, I’ve thought about what you said since then and I think you’re right.”
She stares hard at me and I can see the tears building. “He’s all I’ve got,” she says as a tear slips down her face. “He’s all I’ve got so I have no choice but to forgive him when he’s mean.”
“Well, that’s sorta true. You always have a choice whether or not you want to forgive people. And he’s not really all you’ve got, because I’m here too. But what I think you meant was—we’re together now. Whatever it is we’re doing, we’re doing it together. So even though all three of us are used to doing it alone, we’re not alone now.”
She starts crying for real, sniffling in rapid succession as she tries to make it stop.
I think a distraction is in order, so I come up with a question for her. “Tell me what you liked about living in an RV. Did you see cool things?”
She nods her head as she wipes her wet cheeks. “We—” A new sob escapes despite all her best efforts and she takes a moment to pull it together. “We were dinosaur hunters.”
James is suddenly in front of me. He takes a seat on the dinosaur toe next to Sasha and flicks his cigarette away. “I killed a dinosaur once,” he says as he blows the last of the smoke out of his nose. Sasha laughs and wipes her eyes. “I swear,” James continues. “You know, that’s my job. I’m a killer for hire. So one time, I’m on this tropical island somewhere off the coast of South America. And they have this theme park there where they grow baby dinosaurs using genetic cloning. And they have all these electrified fences and shit, but some asshole was stealing the DNA to sell on the black market and knocked out the power so all the dinosaurs got out and they needed me to come in and save everyone.”
