“That surprises you? I mean the man was gonna give you away to me when you were six years old—”

“James,” she snarls. “That’s highly unlikely.”

“I agree, it was unlikely he was serious, but he made the offer just the same. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t it enough to use you in that way enough to make you believe he could use you in other ways? Did you hear the offer?” I ask her. “Do you want me to repeat it word for word so you can decide what his intentions were?”

“That’s not what I meant. I mean, he might’ve said that to you, but he didn’t really mean it. You said yourself, it was a test. He would never give me to you.”

“Why, because you’re so out of my league, you can’t imagine your father deeming me worthy?”

“I’m not answering that. It’s stupid. You already said you knew that the offer was not real, so why this resistance to admit what you already know?”

“Because you’re missing the point, Harper. The point is that he’s capable, regardless of his intentions.”

“He has nothing to do with my actions on the ship that night. It was—”

She stops short and this is the moment I’ve been waiting for. “It was who, Harper? You and Nick?”

She shakes her head at me. “How would my father know?”

“How would he know, Harper? Come on, who gave you that plan? Who told you to use Visine?”

“It’s just something we had on board.” She shrugs. “Visine and ocean swimming go together.”

“It was a good plan.” I let out a sarcastic chuckle. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was a fantastic plan. But don’t you think it’s a little convenient that a bunch of old cronies got offed by a poison that points right to Assassin Number Six?”

“I didn’t know anything about that Tet stuff, James.”

“No.” I look at her. Stare at her. “No, you didn’t. But Nick did because he was one of us. And if he wanted your father dead, well, then your father absolutely would be dead. And since thirteen Company cronies are dead and your father is not, he was obviously in on the plan. So what’s his endgame? What’s your endgame?”

I look over at her as she squares her shoulders and tilts her chin up, then looks back to the road. “Freedom, James. All I want is my freedom.”

“And you need your father alive for that? The person who was gonna enslave you in the first place?”

Harper huffs out a breath and starts shaking her head. “You sure do ask a lot of why questions. I mean, for someone who was taught to shut his face and do what he’s told. And that answer is God’s honest truth. So now it’s my turn. Why was that guy back there someone who should be dead?”

I give Harper a quick glance, then deflect the question for a few more seconds as I swerve to miss a tortoise crossing the highway. Her bare feet are propped up on the dash and she’s leaning back against the door so she can get a straight view of me. “One of my recent jobs, that’s all.”

“So what did he do? To deserve an assassination by you?”

“I have no clue, it was just an order.”

“But you failed. So…”

“I thought he was dead,” I growl at her. “I didn’t fail. Something else happened.”

“Oh.” She sighs, and then mutters, “OK,” at me, tiring of my evasive answers quickly, and for that I’m grateful. I’m not in the mood to talk about what I’ve been doing the past two years.

“So how come you haven’t killed Merc?” Sasha, that little faker, asks from the back.

“Why would I kill Merc?”

“You killed all the rest. So how come not Merc?”

I scowl at her in the rear view.

“You killed all the other what?” Harper asks now.

Fuck.

“Assassins.” Sasha again. “He’s supposed to be the only one left besides Merc. So I’m just curious, why Merc? Because he’s not a nice guy. He’s not a good guy. He’s not a Company guy either. He’s nasty and mean and since I knew all those other assassins you took out, even if it was just casually, I just don’t get it.”

I say nothing. Because this is yet another puzzle piece that requires some thinking. How the f**k does this kid know so much about my business? And who the f**k is setting me up? And if Sasha and I are actually working for the same person, that’s one thing. But I’m not getting the impression that’s the case. In fact, all my previous loyalties are coming into question at the moment. Who do I trust? Whose plan is this?

“There’s more, you know,” Sasha continues in the wake of my silence.

“More what?” I laugh out the words in an attempt to feign amusement.

“More assassins. More than you know of. Lots more.”

I am not amused. “I don’t want to talk about it, OK? Just a couple more hours and we’ll be in Palm Springs. Until then, shut the f**k up.”

“James,” Harper says in a calm voice. “It’s better if we all know what’s going on.”

“The Smurf back there is the only one who knows what’s going on, why not ask her.”

“He’s crazy,” Sasha says as Harper turns back to her. “They’re all crazy. You had to have seen them growing up, right? Even if it was just briefly, you had to have seen them. It’s not easy to miss the fact that you have to be psychotic to do a job like this.”

“Sasha, I’m not gonna say it again. Shut the f**k up. I’m not the crazy one here, OK?” I look over at Harper and she’s got that look in her eyes again. That same look she had back in Huntington when she was trying to figure out if she was my target. And she has no f**king right. No f**king right. “I’m not the one who just jumped off the roof of a moving vehicle to tackle a dirt bike. I’m not the one who just snapped a man’s neck like it was nothing. I’m not the one who’s been living in the middle of nowhere for three months. You two”—I point to Harper and then jerk my thumb in the direction of the back seat—“you f**king girls are the crazy ones.”

“Hmmm,” is all Harper says.

Sasha keeps her mouth shut for once.

And that’s how they leave it. With me being a dick.