Page 66 of The Company

Chapter Twenty-Eight - Harper

“Let go of me,” I cry. My heart hurts. Oh, my God, does my heart hurt. Please, please, please tell me I did not just kill my brother! Please God! I slam my bare foot into James’ chest and he stumbles backwards just enough for me to slip away, scramble to my feet and run over to the body. “Nick, Nick, Nick…” I just keep saying his name as I try to pry the helmet off his head. James is on me again, pulling me away, wrapping his arms around me as he talks calmly in my ear.

“Calm down,” he says. “Calm down and I’ll let you go and we’ll check it out together, OK?”

“No, no, no!” I wail. “No!”

“Harper,” James says as he pins me down to the ground, straddles my hips, and then wraps his lower legs around mine so I can’t get him off me easily. He’s learning. “I need you to calm down.” He leans all of his weight on my chest now, and he’s very heavy. Heavy enough to make me stop talking because there’s not enough breath in my lungs.

“Enough,” I beg. “I can’t breathe!”

He eases up slightly, not enough to let me breathe comfortably, but it takes the crushing pressure off. “Now listen to me. You will calm the fuck down or I swear to God, Harper, I’ll tie you up until you do as you’re told. You are out of control.” He leans into me again to make his point, and I whine in response. “Do you understand?”

“I need to know right now, James. I need to know.”

“I’m gonna check, not you.” He eases up again, to test my response I think, but I give up. What’s the point of fighting over checking a dead body? “You OK?”

I nod. And then he’s off me. I sit up and watch. The sun is starting to come up now, so there’s enough light to see a few details. The color of the bike. Orange. The hair sticking out from the helmet in little tufts. Blond. I have to put a hand over my mouth to stop the wail when I realize that.

James grasps the helmet and twists. But the neck is broken, so it jiggles back and forth in a sickening way that makes me lean right over and puke. “I can’t watch, I can’t watch.”

“Don’t watch, Harp,” James says as I cough and gag. And then all I hear is, “Oh, fuck.”

I roll over and press my face in the sandy ground and cry. “It’s him, isn’t it? It’s him!”

And them James is next to me, his calming hands rubbing my back. “It’s not him, Harper. It’s not him.”

I roll back to look James in the face and sit up to see for myself. “It’s not him!”

James pulls me into his chest and kisses me on the head. “It’s not him, but I know that guy.”

“Who?” Tears of relief are running down my face and I have to wipe my face.

“Someone who should be dead.”

“What?” I ask, still a bit slow from trying to process everything. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” James hesitates, like this isn’t something he wants to talk about. “I mean—”

“He means,” Sasha says behind us, “he killed them all. Or so he thought.”

We both turn around to find Sasha sitting up in the back seat. Her face is all bloody, her arms and legs covered in thorn scratches from the kidnapper riding through a wall of ocotillos.

“It was a setup, James,” she elaborates in a voice so devoid of emotion chills climb up my spine and prickle the skin at the nape of my neck. “I told you it was a setup.” And with those words she cracks and my chills evaporate. Her lips tremble and then she’s crying.

James gets up, pulls me to my feet with him, and then he walks over to the girl. “Hey, it’s the drugs, OK? You’re coming off some drugs. Just try and relax.”

“No, it’s not the drugs. It’s…” She trails off as she wipes her nose.

What a fucked, fucked, fucked-up way to start a day.

“It’s what, Sasha?” James prods in that cool assassin voice. “It’s what? If you’ve got something to say, now is a really good fucking time to say it.”

She drags the back of her hand across her face one more time. “I don’t know much, but”—she points to her kidnapper—“I just want you to know I’m not a part of that. I don’t know what I’m a part of, but it’s not that.” She looks over at me now. “I’m not a part of that, James.”

“Do you know why he’d take you, Sasha?” James asks.

She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter who I was working for yesterday, because today”—she looks at me again—“I work for no one. I’m not anyone’s pawn, or killer, or Smurf.” She snarls that last word out as she looks over at James. “I’m just a kid. I’m tired. I want to go home. I want Ford.”