She swallows hard and nods, her eyes never leaving mine. “I’ve been trying not to think about it for months now, James.”

“I know. And you’re doing a really good job.”

Her chin quivers for a moment, but she gets it in check before she loses control.

“And I know you have a secret. And no amount of asking or demanding is gonna make you give it up before it’s time. So I’ll drop it. But I need to know, kid. Are we working for the same guy or not? Because you seem to have a lot of information about me and I seem to have none about you.”

She turns her head away, looking at the blue shower curtain. “I think we are on the same side. Is that good enough?”

The relief I feel at not having to kill this child is almost overpowering. I smack her on the knee and she cries out with a wince. “You can wash up properly when we get to the next safe place.” I dab the antibacterial gel on her wounds. “But this should get you through.”

There’s a gash on her thigh from the bike wreck that needs a bandage, so I fasten one of those on her and then wash my hands.

“James?” she asks quietly as she waits.

“What?” I say as I pack up all the crap and stuff it back into the box.

“If I have to stay with you until this is over, then can you please…”

“Can I please what?” I open the door and wave her forward. The screen door smacks against the house as Harper loads up the Hummer. “If you’ve got something on your mind, spit it out.”

She stares up at me with those blue eyes and she looks eight or ten instead of thirteen. So f**king young. Too f**king young to be doing this shit.

“Can you make sure if I die, then I don’t die for nothing?”

I turn her around and push her towards the kitchen before she sees my reaction. Because nothing… nothing prepares you for words like that coming from a kid’s mouth. “Look, Smurfette,” I say, playing the ass**le role. “You work for me now. So there’s no checking out on my dime. You wanna get yourself killed, then you do it on someone else’s time. You got it?”

She nods and keeps walking in front of me. But I catch her wiping tears as she fishes a pair of sneakers out of her backpack and slips them on. I wait patiently as she meticulously laces them up, and then we leave the house, pulling the door closed behind us. Harper’s in the passenger seat, waiting for us. I open the back door for Sasha, and she climbs in and buckles her seatbelt. “You get everything we need?” I ask Harper as I close the door. I catch a nod from her as I walk around to my side, then get in and start the engine.

“Where are we going now?” Harper asks.

“Merc’s got a place in Palm Springs. He’s not there at the moment, so we’ll hole up there today and decide what the f**k we’re gonna do.” Someone did this to the kid and someone absolutely is setting me up. I need this drive to think about it. I need time to put these pieces together. Because this is all wrong. None of this shit is adding up. We had a plan, this… thing this morning was not in the plan.

I get silence from both girls. So I just flip a bitch in the front yard and head on out, taking the back roads into California, then crossing over Interstate 15 into the Mojave National Preserve.

“Turn off your phones and give them to me.” I wait as the girls shuffle through pockets and then three phones are presented in my waiting hand. I chuck them all out the window, then fish mine out of my pocket and do the same. The girls turn around to watch them disappear as I buzz the window back up.

The dash thermometer says it’s a hundred and fourteen degrees outside, but inside we’re all cold and it’s got nothing to do with the air conditioning.

We’re killers. And isn’t that what they always say about us? Cold-blooded?

Like the lizards scurrying across the sand-covered highway.

We’re all cold out here.

Chapter Sixteen - James

“What did you mean back there?” Harper asks once there’s nothing to look at on this drive but Joshua trees and the occasional flattened snake in the road. “When you said, ‘Someone who should be dead.’”

I glance over my shoulder to see if the Smurf wants in on this conversation, but she’s sprawled out across the central console, sleeping. “Check Sasha’s pulse for me, will you? That opiate antagonist I gave her wears off, and if they dosed her too high, she’ll be all drugged up again.”

Harper leans into the backseat with a loud, annoyed sigh as she grabs the kid’s wrist and a half a minute later she says, “Sixty-eight.”

“OK, she’s pretty good.”

“Well, I’m not, James. I need some answers. Nothing about you makes any sense and I want to know why all this is happening.”

“I could say the same thing about you, Harper.” I give her a sideways glance, then take my attention back to the rough desert terrain. I consider how to fill her in without f**king things up too bad and come up with evasion. “Back when I was just some teenage punk who thought being an assassin would turn me into a better, stronger, faster killer version of Boba Fett, I asked why a lot too. But I learned pretty fast that why was a dangerous question. Why are people after Sasha? Why are you and I together? Why is Sasha with us? I mean, really, besides being Company kids, what do we have in common?”

She’s silent. Maybe thinking, maybe avoiding.

I make it easy for her. “Killing, Harper. That’s what we have in common. Do you know who was at your birthday dinner that day on the boat?”

I glance over and she shakes her head at me.

“You poisoned everyone by lacing the water, some,” I stress, “more than others. But of those thirteen who died, nine of them were section leaders. All ranking officials. Do you know what that means as far as Company organization goes?” She knows. But she’s quiet so I fill it in for her. “Restructuring. Promotions, new ranks, new leaders. Now ask yourself, who benefits the most by restructuring?”

Her silence is starting to piss me off, and I’m tired of babying her. “Your father, Harper. He’s the head guy, he calls the shots, he has enemies, maybe some who think they can run the Company better than he does. He takes them all out in one act. Only he never gets his hands dirty.”

“So he used me to do his killing?” She lets off a snort. “Right.”