“Package?” she growls this time.

“Kid, I’m just repeating what Merc said when he told me to pick you up, OK? That’s not what I’d call you. Pest maybe. Shitty archer, pain in the ass—take your pick. But if I had known he was talking about a kid, I’d have made an effort.” I cross through the intersection and head south. The airport is small and so is the jet, just a five-seater, but it will get us to where we need to go with one planned stop near Vegas for cheap fuel. It’s only a couple miles south of town and it looks more like a cornfield than an airstrip. But I’ve flown out of here lots of times, so I know it’s legit. My pilot is a local guy I use when I’m avoiding. He keeps his mouth shut and takes my cash. And that’s all you can ask for.

I park the truck in the small lot and open the door. Sasha makes no move to get out and I shake my head and sigh. “Look, none of your problems are my fault, OK? I’m your knight, kid. Me. So get your little ass out of the truck and do what I say.”

That look again. It’s just a flash but it has me worried. She’s got something to say but she’s holding it in. I let her keep her silence for now because Harrison is coming out of the small building and pointing to the jet off to the left. We meet up halfway to the plane and shoot the shit while Sasha looks off in the distance. His jet is nice, not big, but nice. He uses it to shuttle people from Denver over to some famous golf course up north a little ways.

We all climb the steps and then he closes things up and starts his pre-flight stuff. Sasha settles in the bucket seat across from me and stares out the window again. A few minutes later we take off and then I get up to grab some drinks from the cooler. I hand her an OJ and she takes it, shakes it, twists open the cap and swigs it down like she’s starving.

“Hungry?” I ask her.

“What do you think?” she sneers.

I shrug and drink my own OJ for a few seconds. “You had a pile of pheasant feathers on the ground. So I assumed you were eating well.”

She shakes her head and huffs out some air through her nose.

“What?” I feel like I’m missing something. “What’s got you so disgusted?”

She shoots me a deadly look and I raise my eyebrows at her, a warning she either misses or could care less about. “So Merc called you, huh?”

I squint at her. “Yeah.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yeah.”

“OK,” she says as she turns her head away.

“Why?” She knows something. I’m sure of it now.

“How’d he sound?” She looks back at me. “Merc?”

Yeah, she’s trying to trap me. “It was a text.”

“So how’d you know it was him?”

“Because we got a system, kid. That’s how.”

“You sure about that system?”

I smile at her and nod. “School me, midget.”

“Funny,” she says. But she’s the one who’s smiling now and it’s making me nervous. “Your cute nicknames for me. It almost makes me feel like you care.”

“Don’t jump the gun there. I’m just the delivery man.”

“Well, I find that hard to believe, since you don’t even know who sent you to pick me up.”

“It was Merc,” I say through clenched teeth.

“Sure, if you say so. But the last time I talked to Merc was in March. He’s my emergency contact, you know. You’re no one special. So I called him to tell him my grandparents were dead and since Ford put him in charge of me because he got my dad killed on Christmas Eve, it was his job to help me out. And you wanna know what he said to me?” Her eyes are tearing up so my answer to that question is no. Not really. But she doesn’t wait for an answer. “He said, ‘Suck it up, crybaby. I’m busy. If you can’t manage on your own, there’s a school for Company orphans up in Montana. I’ll let them know you’re coming.’”

She stares at me. Hard. And I get a sick feeling in my stomach. “Who sent me?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

We unbuckle our seatbelts at the same time and she’s standing in the aisle before I’m done. She’s a quick little f**ker. I get up slowly and take a step towards her. It’s a stalk, complete with narrowed eyes, like she’s my prey and I’m about to take care of business.

She holds her ground. “You wanna know how long I was really out there, Six? Or do you want to keep walking through life pretending you’re a good guy and all the evil you represent is normal?”

I stop a few feet away and clench my jaw. I hate this f**king kid right now and I don’t think I gave her my number, but she sure the f**k knows who I am. “Whatever happened to you, that has nothing to do with me.”

“No?” She swallows down her fear. And I know that’s fear. I specialize in fear. And everything about her body—from her face, to her tense muscles, to her stance—all of it says fear. “And yet here you are. With me. In a plane. Going to the wrong place. Working for the wrong man. You’ve been set up. This is a big joke and everyone but you is laughing.”

I grab her by the throat and push her to the floor.

“Hey!” Harrison calls. “Not here, Tet. No kids get hurt on my ride.”

I let her go, walk back to my seat, and pick up my orange juice. “How long then?” She’ll answer this question. She wants me to ask. It’s a long time, I realize now. That’s why she’s so wild. It was a long time and she’s dying for someone to know how long she’s been out there living like a savage.

Sasha picks herself up from the floor and takes her seat across from me again. “Three months.”

I make no move. I make no sound. I do not acknowledge her in any way. She wants accolades for surviving. And I’m not gonna hand them out for a few months of camping.

She holds my stare and then looks away. I wonder if Harper is wild like this? I’ve been able to control Harper, but she’s mine. I’m using sex to rein her in and make her submit.

This one is not mine. Plus she’s way too young. She doesn’t think I’ll beat her. Kill her, maybe. But beat her, no. Kids who come from loving families are dumb like that. She’s got no fear of my fists because from what I know of her father, she was well-loved before they killed him. I’m not interested in changing that. So I won’t be hitting her. And now I can’t kill her. Because Merc was not the sender of that text. She’s not lying about that. She knows who sent me and she’s not gonna tell me if she’s dead.