“How do you know?”
“I just do. She’s not at home. She lives in her truck.”
“What?”
“Not like homeless people live in their cars, or anything like that. She doesn’t sleep in it. But she lives out of it. Like I do. Sometimes.”
“Well, that’s fucking weird. She can stay here if she needs a place. I could talk McKay into refurbishing the attic. It’s not a bad room. It’s a little hot in the summer, and we’d need to clean it out, but I think she would like it.”
“Indie. Fuck. Focus, OK? She’s not gonna stay with you. She could stay with me too. She has a home, for fuck’s sake. She likes the road.”
“Hmm. Well. I don’t know what to say about that.”
These fucking girls give me a headache. “So my question is, Indie, how the fuck are you gonna find her?”
“Get me Merc and I’ll go look for Wendy.”
“Get you Merc? I can’t get Merc, Indie. I’m dead, remember? He and I were tight. He thinks I’m dead.”
“Nick, I have a newsflash for you, OK? No one thinks you’re dead. I mean, maybe last year people were still like, ‘Yeah, Nick Tate. He’s so dead.’ But now…” I can almost see her wincing in my mind. “Nah. No one believes it anymore. And if this Merc guy is everything they say he is, he never bought into it either.”
I let out a long, frustrated breath. “I can’t, Indie.”
“Because you can’t look him in the eye?”
This girl. They say she’s crazy, and she is, but she’s not fucking stupid, that’s for sure. She sees right through me. “Yeah. That’s right. I can’t face them. I’m not ready for it.”
“Hmm. Well, I’m sure Wendy is fine then. But I gotta go now. I’m talking with a couple of other people who know Merc.”
“Liar.” I scoff. “If you had someone else, you wouldn’t be bothering with me.”
There is a pause here. I force myself to be silent with her. There is a technique to gaining the upper hand in a negotiation and it has a lot to do with what you don’t say.
This silence goes on for thirty-seven seconds. I’m just about to hang up when she says, “Did you ever think that the reason Wendy isn’t picking up is because she’s not able to?”
“Of course. That’s the whole fucking reason I’m calling Nathan.”
“All right. In the spirit of goodwill and owed favors, I’m gonna tell you where she is.”
“So you do know?”
“I have a pretty good idea. I mean, when I come up with a plot it typically works.”
“What did you just say?”
“Ooops. Oh, well. I guess it’s out now, isn’t it?”
“What’s out?”
“Come on. How you got your reputation, I’ll never understand. You’re kinda clueless, Nick. Do I have to spell it out for you?”
“If that will end this conversation sooner rather than later, please do.”
She scoffs. And this is a scoff of contempt. She’s disappointed in me. She thinks I’m stupid. Past my prime, probably. She might even feel sorry for me. “OK. Listen closely. Adam called Sasha asking for Merc’s help. And unless Sasha lied and never contacted Merc, which I don’t think happened, this means that Sasha told Merc that we were looking for him. So Merc is on a little mission right now trying to figure out who the fuck we are.”
“So? What’s that got to do with Wendy?”
“You ever heard of that association game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Well, turns out, inside the Company, our guys play one called Six Degrees of Adam Boucher. Everyone knows about Sasha Cherlin. She’s the little maniac who planned the Santa Barbara massacre. She was the little gun-runner’s daughter. The unsanctioned Zero girl. She knew everyone, right? So when you play this Six Degrees game, the quickest way to win is to find your way back to Sasha Cherlin. But here’s the problem with that. Sasha retired a long time ago now. She’s not current. And so many people are dead, sometimes you can’t get to Sasha. But you know who you can get to? That’s right. Your girl Wendy is the new Sasha. Her little part-time liaison job means she’s a link to everyone. So if Adam reactivated Merc via Sasha, and Wendy is the most obvious sticky strand of web leading back to Adam, then… he’s got her, Nick. Wendy is with Merc. That’s why she’s not picking up your calls. So whether you want to see him or not isn’t the point anymore. You need to see him. Because from what I know about the guy, he’s only good at two things. Killing and mindfucking. Either way, if he’s got Wendy, she’s not having much fun right now. But why am I telling you this? You already know how he is. Better than me, right? Since he’s your old buddy.”
“This is a threat. You’re playing this card, hoping—”
“I’m not playing, Nick. I told you where she is and now you owe me. This is a real debt and you will pay it. You will bring Merc to us. Even if he doesn’t agree, you bring him here to Old Home and let us take care of the rest.”
My heart skips a beat, then thumps hard inside my chest as I waste two seconds wondering how long Indie might’ve been planning this move.
Wondering if I missed something.
Wondering if I’m being played.
“Nothing to say to that?” Indie asks.
My breathing slows and so does my heart rate. The building panic recedes and I pull myself totally together.
No. I’m not being played. Indie isn’t acting. She’s just being herself.
Everything is fine.
“OK.”
“You agree?”
“I’ll find Merc for you. But here’s the catch. If he does have Wendy, and she’s hurt, I will blow up this entire fucking world to make you pay for that, Indie. And I will do that by making sure Donovan dies.”
She lets out a breath. Perhaps alarmed by my threat, perhaps not. “Call me back at this number when you’re on your way. And Nick? Don’t take too long. Because I have many more ways to hurt you than you do me.”
I don’t care who you are, or how old you are, or how kicked-back you are—when someone you love shuns you for years at a time over something you can’t really change, it hurts. And that time, as it passes, it feels like forever. It’s an eternity of self-doubt and constant wondering… is this really how it ends?
That’s how it starts. And if you’re not totally in control of your world, this is the kind of shit that tears you up from the inside out.
I might not be totally sane, and for damn sure I’m nothing even close to normal, but I know how to lock out the doubt. I know how to plow ahead with blinders on.
This is kind of my thing.
So when Wendy walked out on me three Christmases ago, I plowed ahead. I put on those blinders. But I also showed up. I showed up for her birthday that year. She turned twenty-two. But Wendy wasn’t there. Never showed up at all, and I stayed for a couple of weeks just to make sure.
At the time I was thinking, Did she come? See my truck? Turn around and go the other way?
But no. Because unless she was sneaking up on me through the woods or something weird like that, I would’ve heard her tires on the gravel driveway. Also, she didn’t pick up the mail that first year. I know this because I broke into that fucking box of hers and there were birthday cards.