Come Back

by J. A. Huss

“Yeah, fine. Just hungry.” She looks away again.

  “OK.” I scan the horizon and see some civilization coming up. “We’ll get off at the next exit.”

  I know why she’s quiet. I told her I was going back to the OC to get some files. That has to be it. She has them stashed somewhere and she must’ve felt pretty confident about the hiding place, otherwise she would’ve taken them with her. But I checked her backpack. There is no flash drive or papers or any other means of containing information that I can see. And her unease this morning is proof enough. Those files are stashed and we are headed right for them.

  When she escaped, as she calls it, she hopped a plane to Hawaii, changed her name and credentials, and then hopped another plane to LA. From there she was tracked to the UCLA library. And that’s as far as they got. Meaning the Company forensic surveillance team. Because for some odd reason there was a power surge at the library that day. About three minutes before Harper entered the building, to be precise. And even though the general power kicked right back on, the security systems went down. All cameras were affected.

  Accident?

  Hardly.

  Everything about that day was coordinated by Nick. All the surveillance footage show a confident and purposeful Harper making her way through two international airports, changing identities, accessing a cab in LA, a city she had never been to before. Then navigating her way around UCLA campus like she’s been a student there for years. In fact, she had a UCLA ID, she was wearing it around her neck just before she entered the library. There was no footage of her coming out.

  After that she was back on the record. New cab procured, ride out to Huntington Beach, dropped off at the Main Street Pier. Paid with cash. She got out, walked north one block, turned up Fifth, and from what we can tell by the street cams in that area, she went straight to the apartment. There’s a gap in the footage at that point. Obviously she took the apartment, she technically still lives there for another few weeks. But I didn’t find her right away. And I was not given orders. I learned all this way after the fact. My original explanation about why I was watching her was true. I’m obsessed. I want her. She’s mine.

  My information comes to me in different ways. Like the Sasha thing. The Admiral says he sent me to get her.

  OK. I had not expected that, to be honest. The receptionist thing Merc and I share is not a secret. I’ve had the same arrangement with lots of different operatives over the years. So it does not surprise me that the Admiral figured it out… it’s just… Why would he care about this one little girl? That part makes no sense.

  I check for Sasha in the rear view and find her watching me. I smile at her. “We’re gonna stop soon. There’s a restaurant up here, I’m sure of it.”

  I look back over to Harper, but she’s got her cheek pressed up against the window, her back angled towards me.

  She’s avoiding something.

  Maybe it’s the files. Maybe it’s me. But either way, this day is starting to feel… off.

  And when I get that off feeling things are building up to something. Something big. I’ve been in this business long enough to understand intuition is your best friend. Right now my intuition is screaming at me to be careful because this is the endgame. Or at the very least, the beginning of the end. The Admiral got in touch last night. And that can only mean one thing.

  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 in 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 thirt
een 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 Twenty-Nine - 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.”