“What the—” That’s Harrison. He doesn’t finish his sentence.
Nick glances at Harrison, kinda looks him up and down, then focuses on me. “Merc.” He opens the door wide and steps aside.
I move forward, but Harrison has my arm. “Wait. Am I seeing—”
“Yes,” I say, cutting him off. “You’re seeing this right. Nick Tate, meet Harrison. I’m sure you’ve seen him around.”
Nick extends his hand, like Harrison might actually shake it.
Harrison does not shake it. He says, “What the actual—”
But I cut him off again. “Inside, Harrison. That discussion will happen behind a closed door.”
Harrison looks over his shoulder and lets out a breath. Then he looks me in the eyes and gets it. Part of it, anyway. Not all of it. But enough.
We go in, Nick closes the door, and then he turns to me. “Nice to see you again, Merc. I wish it were under better circumstances. Where’s Wendy?”
“If things go well, you and Wendy will be reunited in about an hour and a half.”
He glances at a clock on the bedside table then scrubs his hands down his face. “What do you want?”
“What do I want?” I look at Harrison and almost laugh. Harrison isn’t looking at me. He’s staring at the ghost in front of us.
“What the fuck is this?” Harrison asks, finally getting to finish a sentence. “You’re dead. I saw your dead fucking body in that FBI safehouse.”
“That was his twin,” I explain. “So he says.”
“Your twin? Your fucking—” Harrison turns to me. “What is going on?”
But when I answer him, I’m looking at Nick. “That’s what we’re here to find out. I want the whole story, Nick. From that moment we left you on the beach to this one right here—”
Nick scoffs. “That’s like a whole novel of shit.”
But I put a hand up. “Make it a short story. You’ve got twenty minutes. Then we’re back in the air. Wendy won’t keep forever.”
Nick’s face goes hard. “What the fuck does that mean?” He looks the same and utterly different all at once. He’s still got that golden-boy persona, but it’s not the first thing you see anymore. It’s hidden now. His hair is a little too long and it’s not surfer blond the way it was when he was a teenager.
His brown eyes seem a little darker than before, but that’s probably just the shadows in the dimly lit room. Because the way I remember them, they were golden too. He’s tan, well-muscled, and tall. Nearly as tall as I am, which is a change. The last time I saw him, he was eighteen and not nearly this big. He’s wearing a black t-shirt, a pair of black tactical pants, boots, also black, and a watch. Not the smart kind because it’s got hands.
His whole I’m-a-mercenary look aside, he comes off pretty normal.
I wasn’t in Kansas when Sasha shot his twin. I didn’t see any of that. I was only brought in after it was all over and that was just to pick up my girls. So for me, there is no disconnect with the way he looks. But Harrison is having problems.
“You’re not him,” Harrison says.
Nick smiles indulgently. “I’m Nick. Trust me. That guy you saw in Kansas was my twin.”
Harrison squints his eyes, trying to decide if he’s telling the truth.
“He’s telling the truth,” I say. Then I look back at Nick. It is Nick. There is no doubt. I mean, I didn’t really have any doubts about his identity coming here—there were all those clues—but it’s good to know definitively that this is the same kid I knew all those years ago. “We don’t have much time—”
“Why? Why don’t we have much time?” Nick is agitated. “Where the fuck is Wendy?”
“The sooner you start talking, the sooner you’ll be reunited with her.”
Nick turns his back to me.
It’s a mistake. Not that I have any plans to attack him, I don’t. But he should know better.
He turns back around quickly, like he’s reading my mind and this thought just occurred to him as well. “Where do you want me to start? And don’t say the beginning. This is not a twenty-minute story. It’s thirty-eight years, Merc. The beginning starts with the day I was born. The Company isn’t an organization, it’s a plan. And what I’ll tell you is just my role in the plan. The whole thing? That’s a thousand years old, at least.”
Harrison huffs and Nick turns on him. Fast. His reflexes are no joke. He’s not a kid anymore, but he’s a lot younger than both me and Harrison.
“You think that’s fuckin’ funny?” Nick snarls. And finally, the man I was expecting shows up. “I don’t really know who you are—” Nick puts up a hand when Harrison begins to fill him in. “Oh, I know what you do for them.” He nods his chin at me, indicating I’m part of ‘them’. “You’re the pilot. You’ve been around a long time. I get that, Harrison. But you don’t know shit about how this world works.” Nick’s gaze rotates over to me now. “And neither do you. You saw a lot, Merc. Hell, you did a lot. Much more than any other outsider in the history of the Company, that’s for sure. But you don’t know why you were doing it. You have no clue.”