He is blaming me.
“Fine.” I throw up my hands. “It’s all my fault. I’m a big ol’ dick. And I have now earned the blame for every bad thing that happens to us for the next ten years. I accept that. But I don’t have a choice and once you hear the story, maybe you won’t agree with me, but at least you’ll understand.”
Sasha lets out a long exhale. Then she slips into a seat and points to the other one across the table. “Sit then. Tell me everything. Jax is gonna be pissed. He still works for the FBI, Merc! We’re not supposed to know this kind of shit!”
I sit, lean back into the luxurious leather seat, and put my hands out in a mea culpa gesture. “OK. I get it. I fucked up. But does that mean you don’t want to hear my story or—”
“Of course I want to hear the fucking story!”
We both laugh. “It’s really not my fault, Sasha. You sent me on this job.”
“Job? It wasn’t a job!”
“Fuck yeah, it was. Adam Boucher wants me to unfuck Donovan Couture, Sasha. That’s one hundred percent the description of a fucking job!”
She narrows her eyes at me. “So it’s my fault?”
“Yep.”
She turns her head away and stares at the sunflower field. But I catch a small smile.
“Listen, it’s a can of fucking worms, OK? And you’re the one who gave me Wendy’s name.”
She turns back to me. “Because I didn’t think you were stupid enough to kidnap her.”
“I tracked her for a couple days and decided she’s pretty dangerous.”
“No shit, Sherlock. She’s a seasoned professional Company Zero girl assassin!”
I nod. “Yeah. She’s pretty good too.” I pull aside some of my very thick dark hair and show Sasha the gash on my skull. “She was wearing a spiked bracelet. Fucking thing needed seven stitches. And I had to do that myself. In the mirror. Do you have any idea how hard it is to stitch up the side of your head in a mirror?”
Sasha scoffs. “You’re lucky to be alive. What the hell were you thinking? And she’s his girlfriend?”
Sasha is good, but not good enough to hide the feelings that come out with that question. “I don’t know if she’s his girlfriend. But she’s something to him.”
“Something important. Obviously.” And again, she looks at the sunflower field where Nick and Wendy disappeared. She snaps out of it and looks me in the eyes. “Tell me everything.”
So I tell her. “When I left Fort Collins I stopped by that tattoo shop on my way out of town and talked to that pink-haired girl.”
“Belinda.”
“Yep. Her.”
“Why?”
“Because remember how she just appeared out of nowhere right before that Kansas shit went down?”
Sasha’s face goes dark. Not pale. Thinking about Kansas right now is making her angry, not sad. “No. I don’t really remember that. I was a little busy back then trying to outrun the FBI.”
“Well, she did appear out of nowhere. I didn’t make a big deal, of course, because it wasn’t my business. I’m not really connected to those Vaughn brothers, so what the fuck do I care, right?”
Sasha shrugs. “OK.”
“So I go in to the tattoo shop and she recognizes me. Maybe we don’t hang out or anything, but she’s seen me around at various holiday parties and whatnot. And I ask her about a girl named Wendy. And she says, ‘Creepy Wendy?’ And I say, ‘Maaaaybeee?’ And she says, ‘Last I heard she was working for Tony Dumas’s cousin-brother-in-law, Zach.’”
Sasha smiles. “Cousin-brother-in-law?”
“It actually makes sense.”
She waves a hand. “Yes. I know who Zach is.”
“So I go down to Key West where this Zach guy lives and park in front of his house. And I wasn’t there ten minutes scoping shit out when he appears, walks over to my car, and says, ‘I think I know you.’”
“What did you say?”
“We argued about that a bit.”
Sasha chuckles.
“But turns out, he did know me. At least, of me, OK? And then he says, ‘Nick Tate,’ Sasha. Nick Tate used my name as a threat back when Cabal Island was going down.”
Sasha makes a face. “What the hell is Cabal Island?”
I point at her. “That’s what I said. And he said that while you were doing Kansas, they—like thousands of ‘thems’—were all down in the Caribbean fucking shit up for the Company elites and they call this operation Cabal Island.”
“So Nick was there?”
“He was there.”
“But he was with me—” She stops. Because of course, Nick was not with her.
“That was his brother, Santos.”
“His brother?” Her voice is low now. Almost a whisper. And then she’s silent for a moment and I can almost hear all the wheels inside her head spinning around as she puts this all together. “I knew that wasn’t him.” She looks up at me. “I fucking knew. That wasn’t him. I told Jax that when he took me to that FBI safehouse. I know you never saw it, but he had thousands of pictures, Merc. Of this guy who looked just like Nick if you erased all the crazy drug-lord tattoos and facial scars. I fucking knew that wasn’t him.”
“It wasn’t him.”
“Then what happened?”
“Well, this Zach guy was actually pretty helpful. He said I was a legend, that he’d been dying to meet me—”
“Merc. No one cares about your legendary status. What happened next?”
“He knew Creepy Wendy and after I promised not to hurt her, he told me about her stomping grounds so I could go look for her.”
“So you lied to him.”
“I didn’t hurt her.”
“You kidnapped her.”
“And drugged her. And… got inside her mind. But I was on a new mission now, right?”
“Find Nick Tate.”
“And here we are.”
“Why am I here again?”
“I need your advice. Because OK, I found Nick. That’s cool, I guess. I can get over the betrayal if you can. But”—I point at her—“if you want to stay angry, I’m on your side. I will hate that fucker until the day he dies.”
She waves a hand at me. “Whatever. What do you want to ask me, Merc? I want to go home.”
“This Donovan thing.”
“You’re gonna do it?”
“I think I have to—”
“You don’t have to, Merc. If you’re not comfortable getting involved, then just say no. I will tell Adam that I did my best.”
“It’s not quite that simple anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have since learned, from both Creepy Wendy—”
“Don’t call her that. She’s a grown woman. No grown woman wants to be called Creepy Wendy.”
“Sorry. I have since learned from both Gwendolyn and Nicholas”—she scoffs at me—“that there is... could be… maybe a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“With the girls.”