Page 92 of The Company

“If you say so,” she says sweetly.

I might not know her all that well, but I know her well enough to understand what that means. “You’ve got another secret you’d like to share?”

“I have lots of secrets.”

“Um,” Harper interjects. “You’re right, James, let’s talk about something else.”

“No,” Sasha says. “Let’s talk about secrets. I’ll tell you one of mine if you tell me one of yours, James.”

“James,” Harper says, turning to me and placing her hand on my thigh. It’s a diversion this time. “I don’t want to hear secrets, OK? Secrets are darkness. Secrets keep the darkness alive. I hate secrets and I don’t want to know them.”

I remove her hand from my thigh and place it back on the table, never losing eye contact with Sasha. “Sorry, baby. This is too good of an opportunity to pass up. You first, Cocky Smurf.”

Sasha smiles broadly and then turns her head and shoots me a sideways glare that makes her look every bit the hunter she claims she is. “OK. My secret is…” She smiles over at Harper now. “I met someone special last summer.”

“Who, a boy?” Harper asks, eagerness in her voice. Apparently this is a secret even Harper can get in on.

Sasha has to bite her lip to stop her smile. “Yes.” She slowly pulls her gaze from Harper and redirects it to me. “Nicholas Tate.”

The entire restaurant goes silent. Or maybe not. Probably not. I think it’s just that I stop hearing everything because the only thing I do hear is an echo of those two words.

“Pardon me?” Harper says. “My brother went to see you?”

Sasha is still looking at me. Her mouth moves and if I was a little bit closer to her, I’d slap my hand over it to stop her secret from spilling out. But I’m not. So it does. “He’s come to see me a bunch of times.”

“You’re lying,” Harper says. “How would he find his way to Wyoming?”

“Does it matter how?” Sasha asks. “I mean, really, that’s not even in the top million most important things to ask about what I just told you.”

“What should we ask then?” I finally come back to reality to deal with what she’s saying.

“Oh no. Not until you tell me your secret, James. Then if you want to keep playing, we can. But now you owe me.”

You owe me. She said the same thing on the plane when she told me Harper was not at home.

“Make it a good one, Tet. Because mine was a bombshell.”

I take a deep breath and look over at Harper. She’s gone white. Her perfectly tanned face is sheet white. “Have you seen him lately?”

Sasha shakes her head, like she’s saying no. But that’s not what she’s saying. “No more questions until I get a secret from James. And don’t lie, James. I’ll know.”

I have so many questions. And I want them all answered. But I have very few secrets, at least none that can be revealed at this table right now. I roll them around in my head and make a decision. “You want to know why Merc isn’t around? The details? Not what I told you earlier.”

She weighs this internally and then gives me a slight nod. “That will do for starters.”

That will do for enders too. Because that’s the only one I have that won’t ruin everything. “The person who killed your father was US Senator Channing.”

She swallows, and then nods. “I knew that.”

“You did not know that. You guessed it, but now you know. Because I just told you. My turn. Who—”

But then the wait staff is here with our food, looking very uncomfortable as they serve us. I wait until the food is all on the table and then we all thank them like the polite people we really aren’t.

“That conversation is over,” Harper says. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Let’s just eat.”

She’s on the verge of tears and I’m instantly sorry. I lean in and whisper, “Just enjoy your dinner. I’m sorry if I’ve ruined it. I just wanted you to have a nice night.”

“It’s not ruined, James. It’s fine. I just… I just want to talk about normal things tonight.” She picks up her fork and cuts into her shark steak. It flakes apart like it’s supposed to and she smiles when it touches her lips. “This is really good fish for being out in the middle of the desert.”

“I caught a shark once,” Sasha tells her.

“Me too!” she says excitedly. “Deep-sea fishing was something we did a lot.”

“I’ve never caught a fish in my life,” I admit.

“What?” Even Sasha joins in on this conversation. I’m sure she’s thrilled about being better at fishing than me. And as is starting to become the norm, we drop the deep dark secrets and talk about nice things to make Harper happy. Growing up on megayachts. Growing up on cattle ranches. Growing up on the beach.

There’s no mention of the Company. It’s a dirty world we live in. It’s dangerous and deadly—we know this.

But we don’t have to talk about it right now.

Those secrets aren’t going anywhere. We’re carrying them around on our backs like a cross.

Or, maybe more fittingly, an albatross.