Donovan was there when I got home, but he debriefed me quick. He didn’t record it. And he didn’t ask me about why Adam had to come save me from that man who wanted to slit my throat in San Francisco. He just listened as I gave my report and said, “Mm-hm. Mm-hm. Mm-hm.” And then he, Adam, and McKay locked themselves up inside Adam’s office and I went out to play. Even though it was barely dawn.
Nate didn’t care what time I came to his house. I would climb this big old cypress tree and get up on his roof, and then shimmy my way through his little attic window and wake him up.
His grandfather was sick, sick by this time. So I probably could’ve walked through the front door and gone up the steps like a normal person and no one would’ve said boo about it. But nothing about Nate and me was normal so I didn’t bother pretending that it was.
Thirteen was a banner year for me and Nate. We weren’t at the kissing stage. Yet. But we were making our way there. Slowly but surely, we were growing up and getting ready to do grown-up things.
Our favorite thing to do that summer I was thirteen was to take his little fishing boat up the river and go into the little town to eat ice cream and laugh. We even had a couple friends there. And I told stories about us. Because of course, they didn’t know who we were. Nate’s school was on the other side of the river, and I didn’t go to regular school. So we could tell these kids anything we wanted.
I did all the talking because Nate is only good for telling stories about facts. And these kids would roll their eyes at him when he started rambling on about the birds of the swamp or the moss on the trees.
But I liked that about those kids. Especially the girls my age. I liked that they saw Nate as some backwater nobody with a weird fascination with nature. Because that meant he would stay mine and he would never look at those girls who lived in that town the way he looked at me.
This was the summer we started to hold hands. And every time he reached for me and his fingers laced with mine, I would get a chill through my whole body. The good kind of chill. Not the kind I would get on a job that was going wrong.
And I was doing jobs nearly every week that summer. The Company was up to lots of things that year and they called Adam and me out all the time to clean things up. That was how Donovan and I decided to describe killing. Clean-up jobs.
I got a lot better at things that summer too. I didn’t mess up as much. And sometimes—most times, actually—Adam didn’t need to save me anymore. He just sent me off to do my thing and waited for me to come back.
But there was this one time in Miami the next year, when I ran into a problem called Nicholas Tate.
Both Adam and Donovan knew Nicholas Tate. They had known him for years, I guess. Because they were all Untouchable Company kids and apparently that was a small group of people.
I was teamed up with another girl like me. Her name was Wendy and I liked her a whole lot. I had never met another me. I had been told that Sasha was another me, but she was old and I didn’t work with her.
This girl was the same age as me. She had blonde hair and blue eyes just like me. And an attitude that never ended. I was fourteen at this point and the jobs I was doing were getting more and more serious. So meeting a girl who was my age, and like me, and to be able to work with her… that was special.
Wendy was wild. She reminded me of myself when I first came to Old Home and ran away to live in the woods. And her and I together… wow. We were a pretty good team. She knew what she was doing, and by this time, so did I. So we did quite a few jobs together that year. She was always with a man called Chek. And her job with him was mostly to watch his back when he met up with another man called Johnny. And Adam and me were also sent to watch this Johnny person too. But we were not to clean him up. We were just supposed to make sure that this meeting between Chek and Johnny went off without complications. And they did. And I learned, over time, that they were both part of another branch of the Company called the Way. Because there had been that incident in Santa Barbara eight years ago that had rearranged the Company into other, smaller, sub organizations to stay under the radar.
I had a run-in with that Johnny the next summer and this is when I first saw Nicholas Tate in the flesh. Until then he was just this… figure. This… bad person I was not to go near. But that summer I was sent in to steal a biological sample from this island down in the Caribbean. It was a pretty important job and McKay spent weeks going over the details of what I needed to do because this was in a lab and required me to wear a special suit and use special equipment to handle the sample. It was very important that I used the suit and equipment properly and contained the sample because it was dangerous. And if that sample somehow got inside me, I would die a nasty death.
McKay was very worried about this job and tried to talk Adam out of it. But Adam would not relent. One night, just before we left Old Home, I heard him tell McKay that this was the endgame. And if I didn’t go in and grab this sample, everything we had done would be pointless.
Of course, the job went a little awry. It was probably above my pay grade if I’m being honest. But I did my best. I ran into that Johnny guy just as I was stealing my sample and getting ready to dart out of the facility. They took me prisoner and then I had to tell them a few truths to get out of it or I knew that Adam and McKay would show up—maybe even Wendy too. And then things would get real messy.
But back to Nicholas Tate. Adam and I were in a parking garage where he put the car. We were driving to some town up north where the jet was waiting, and then, just as we reached the car Adam got a phone call. He looked at the screen, then at me. And told me to, ‘Stay right here, Indie. I’ll be back in a minute.”
So I stayed. And that’s when I saw a man on the other end of the parking garage level. And I was thinking. Who is this man? How do I know his name? Because that was the first time I had ever seen Nick Tate and his name was immediately in my head. Like one minute it wasn’t there. And then it was.
Nick Tate.
I looked over my shoulder, trying to see if Adam saw him too, but he was just disappearing into a stairwell. For privacy, maybe. And when I looked back, Nick was walking towards me.
I wasn’t sure if I should run, or scream, or get ready to fight him. But it didn’t matter. He stopped about half way and just looked at me.
Then… then I couldn’t move. And my head was spinning.
And then I blinked my eyes and he was gone.
Just… poof. Gone.
And before I could make sense of that—before I could ask myself if I had just made him up or if he just decided to walk away—Adam was back. Telling me to, “Get in the car, Indie. We’ve got to go.”
I had a hard time making sense of that afternoon. The whole way up to the airfield where Adam and I were catching a plane I wanted to ask Adam about Nick. Tell him what I thought I saw.
But there was another voice inside my head during that ride. One that told me to, Hush. Be still and quiet. Say nothing.
So that’s what I did.
I said nothing.
After that job was over Donovan said he was proud of me. I think that was the first time he ever said that. He told me, “You made an executive decision, Indie. And it was the right thing to do.” Because I had not only talked Johnny into letting me go without giving up any information about Adam, McKay, or Donovan, I had brought the sample back too.