Page 148 of The Company

“So all those assassinate-the-assassin jobs I did over the past two years?”

He shrugs. “Setups, I guess. I really have no idea, Tet. They wanted them to appear dead, but not be dead. You tell me. You know these Company people. I don’t. I have no clue how they think other than they want to get rid of me and I’m not gonna go easy.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Regime change, my friend,” Merc says. “Someone else wants to take over. Think about it. Harper poisons all those higher-ups when she makes her escape. You pick off your brother—for real,” he adds. “Then you find Harper and trail her like a good dog. One barges in and steals her file in the last second. Why?”

“They don’t trust me.”

Merc laughs. “Would you trust you?”

“Whatever.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t trust you for shit.” His smile says otherwise. “But I don’t think that’s the reason. I don’t think they know about this file we have.” He looks over to Sasha. “What do you think?”

She looks stunned that he wants her opinion. And why not ask her? She seems to be the one with all the answers, whether she wants to have them or not. Her expression becomes sad. Her eyes droop. “They know. They killed my dad for it.”

“So why two files?” I look at Merc for this.

“From what I can tell, there’s some kind of hack going on in the code. They need both files to access the money. And this makes sense. Because Ford and I tried like motherfuckers to steal money out of those accounts. I mean, shit. You dangle numbers in front of a hacker and that’s just what we do. But fuck if we could figure it out.”

“Nick would know.”

Merc and I both look at Sasha at the same time.

“Nick will know what to do with it.”

“Sasha,” I say softly. “Look, you can’t trust that guy. OK? You can’t trust him. He put Harper in danger. He put you in danger. He’s gotta be working for the Admiral.”