“Trust me.” Sasha chuckles. “Don’t I know it. I’ll call him back and tell him you declined.”
“Wait,” I say, just as she’s about to get up and go over to Jax. “Don’t say anything yet. Give me a week or two to do some digging on this Adam guy.”
Sasha squints her eyes at me. “Why?”
“Because I didn’t know about him until now. And maybe my answer is still no, but maybe I also want to meet this Adam Boucher.”
She sighs again. This time, she sounds tired. “It’s probably a bad idea, Merc. I’m sorry I brought it up. I don’t want you getting lost down those rabbit holes again. It’s a never-ending tunnel and there’s almost no satisfaction at the end.”
I ignore this warning. Heard it all before. Instead, I say, “What did you say the girl’s name was?”
“What girl?”
“The Zero? Adam’s girl?”
“Indie?”
“Full name, Sasha.”
“Indie Anna Accorsi.”
“OK. And you mentioned a daughter?”
“Yeah. Indie had a kid when she was a teenager or something.”
“With Adam?”
“No.” Sasha shakes her head. “With Nathan St. James.”
“And who the fuck is this dude?”
“Company. But he got out real early.”
“He’s a Zero?”
Sasha shrugs. “I don’t know if you could call him that or not. He wasn’t mind-fucked that way. He grew up with some old Company man who stole him out of the hunt.”
“The what?” I ask. “And how the fuck do you know all this shit?”
She smiles at me as she points to her head. “It’s all up here, Merc. Never really goes away, does it?”
I assume she’s referring to her life with her father, the Company arms dealer. She met everyone growing up. But she’s been out of that business for almost twenty years now. “Right,” I say. “But who do you talk to? To get all this up-to-date shit?”
“Well.” She glances over at Jax and Sydney to make sure they’re still immersed in conversation. They are, so she looks back at me. “I have a little spy network in place.”
I laugh. Loud. Loud enough to make Sydney and Jax look over at us. They both smile back, assuming Sash and I are having a good time. I lower my voice and growl, “Since when?”
“Since… oh… right before grad school, I guess. I smuggle girls every now and then.”
“You what?”
She nods. “Company girls. Of course, there aren’t very many of them left. So it’s been a couple years since I had to get one out.”
“Wait.” I put up a hand. “Back the fuck up, Sash. You’re still in?”
“In? No.” She chuckles. “Trust me, we’re all out. One hundred percent out.”
“Who is this we?”
“A few other girls who found me after I went to live with Ford when I was a kid.”
“Sasha. Are you telling me you’ve been in contact with Company girls this whole time?”
“Merc. Don’t be naïve. They’re never gonna stop needing me for something. I figured, if I have to keep talking to these people, I might as well do something good with it.” She smiles. Big. “When these girls found me, I wasn’t really into it. I did it for them, mostly. They were the ones who needed the project and I was the one who had the money to see it through. Funny enough, Jax was on to me when we first met. I came home early from Peru because we had a girl in a safehouse who needed a new identity. But he was there at the Denver International Airport and he took me right into one of the interrogation rooms. Then he followed me for months. And I kinda got sidetracked with everything that happened next and forgot about the girl. That whole operation just continued without me. Must’ve seen the headlines and realized the FBI was all over my ass. So it took those contacts about two years to get back in touch because they weren’t sure I was legit anymore. Jax, ya know?” She wiggles her ring finger to show off her wedding band. “But they needed me. And I needed them, to be honest. So. I help out when I can.”
“I can’t believe you never told me this.”
“I take care of myself, Merc. You should know that by now. I’m glad I have you, and Ford, and Jax, and James. I appreciate it, I do. But I’m not the kind of woman who lets the men take care of things. I have kids now. I have a family. I love my husband and I know he’s capable and smart, but I’m in charge of my life, not him. I’m responsible for my past. And there is no way in hell I’m going to spend the rest of my days pretending it’s all good. Because I’ve seen that dirty underbelly. I know it intimately. I know everything that’s going on in the Company and that’s never going to change as long as I’m alive.”
Ah. I get it now. This whole thing about Adam’s secret and why she doesn’t want it. She thinks Nick might be alive too. She’s heard rumors already, same way I have. And she has decided he’s better off dead.
“Gimme a name,” I say.
“Of who?”
“One of these women you work with. Gimme a name.”
“Why?”
“Because I need a place to start, Sasha.”
“Don’t—”
“No,” I cut her off. “You do not get to tell me ‘don’t’ when you just admitted to secretly smuggling Company girls for the past two decades. Give me a fucking name.”
My tone has changed and her expression hardens with it. So I expect a little fight. But she takes a deep breath, composes herself with grace, and then says, “Tell me what you’re gonna do.”
“You know what I’m gonna do.”
She weighs her options. If she wanted to say no, she could. I mean, realistically, what could I do? Nothing. But after almost a full minute of serious consideration, she must decide she wants me to look into things, because she gives up a name and I commit it to memory.
“I’ve heard some other rumors,” Sasha says.
“Yeah? Like what?”
“How much do you know about eternal life?”
I scoff. “Well, I know it’s a fantasy. Does that count?”
“Sure. It counts. It might not be right, but it counts.”
“What do you mean ‘might not be right?’”
Sasha’s eyes dart back over to Jax and Sydney. They’re still talking, and laughing, and smiling near the grill. “Well, it counts because belief is a powerful thing. And it works both ways. If you think eternal life is possible—”
“You’ll what? Live forever?”
“No. But necessity is the mother of invention, right? If you believe, you look hard, Merc. You try everything for the very simple reason that you think it’s possible. If you don’t believe, well…” She shrugs. “I haven’t made up my mind about non-believers yet. Because on the one hand, if you don’t believe, it never affects you. But on the other hand, if you don’t believe—if you don’t, at the very least, go searching for it—then there isn’t a chance in hell that you’re ever gonna find anything, right?”