He says, “Why are you here, Nick?”
“I’m delivering your PSYOPS agent, as requested.”
Adam’s eyes narrow down into tiny slits as he parses my words, trying his best to read between the lines. “Merc?”
My heart flutters a little at his question. “Who else?”
He cocks his head to the side like he’s genuinely perplexed. “Are you lying to me, Nick Tate?”
“I do not lie.”
He barks out a laugh. Same way Sasha did.
And this kinda pisses me off. “Name one time I lied to you.”
“Well…” But he falters.
“I have never lied to you. I have only withheld my truth. And my truth, Adam Boucher, has nothing to do with you.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“It does not.”
“Well, I find that very interesting.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because I was down in a graveyard not more than a month ago and do you know what I was doing there?”
“I wouldn’t even know where to start guessing.”
“I was digging up my brother’s grave.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I stutter. “I… I… I’m sorry to hear the sad news about your brother.”
“Is that a joke?”
“No. I didn’t even realize you had a brother.”
Adam smiles and points at me. “Nor I you.”
I have to chuckle. “Yeah. I guess that’s a little bit weird.”
“Is that all it is?”
“Adam. I feel like you’re leading me around in circles. What are you trying to say that you can’t seem to spit out?”
He studies me for a moment, that small smile growing bigger as the seconds tick off. “You really don’t know, do you?”
I am truly confused and his clutter of words is knocking me off my game. I have no fucking idea what Adam is getting at. This is not good because I’m playing like seventeen games in my head at the moment—all those balls in the air, all those secrets flying around, tryin’ their best to surface—and this bizarre conversation will not be what ruins the tail end of an eight-year plan.
“Well? Are you gonna tell me?”
“What do you do again?”
I decide I’m just gonna give him what he wants. He already knows. I’m sure Nathan has told him everything. “I kill Zero girls. Is that the information you’re fishing for? Because Indie’s not on the list and neither is her daughter.”
“My daughter,” Adam says. And everything about his tone has changed. “She’s my daughter too.”
“I thought—”
“Not biological, you idiot. But that girl is mine. Same way Wendy is yours, I guess.”
“Not the same, but—”
“Anyway,” Adam cuts me off. “No, sir. That was not the information I was fishing for. But it’s a start, at least.”
“Shouldn’t we just concentrate on Donavan?”
“Oh”—Adam looks over his shoulder at the house—“don’t you worry about Donovan. I’m sure McKay and Merc are working the details out as we speak.”
And then something hits me. A sudden realization. A full illumination of what he just did.
He separated us and I didn’t even realize it. Indie took Wendy to debrief her. And McKay took Merc and Sasha to debrief them.
“This is about me,” I say.
“You sound so surprised.”
“What the fuck? Is Donovan even alive?”
“Oh, everything you heard about Donovan is true. And I do appreciate your help in that regard, but that’s not really why you’re here, is it, Nick? Why don’t we cut out the bullshit and get to the point? Why. Are you here?”
Why am I here?
He wants to know why I’m here?
I’m here because eight years ago I found a book in the back of my truck, a book that was filled with desperate hopelessness, and I decided then and there that I would not allow this girl to grow up just so she could die.
I was going to fix her.
I was going to cure her.
I went to Chek first. I told him what I wanted to do. I showed him the book. But Chek wasn’t interested. His line of thinking was… if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
But Wendy was broke. She had been shattered long before Chek saved her. And it was just a matter of time before there were so many cracks, we wouldn’t be able to put her back together again.
Every good little Zero girl needs a handler.
That’s Chek. That’s Adam.
But if you want them to grow up sane, they need more than just a man to keep them in line.
They need a McKay.
They need a Donovan.
I was Wendy’s McKay.
I was Wendy’s Donovan.
And seventeen days after Chek died, on Wendy Gale’s seventeenth birthday, I knew she was at her breaking point. She was not gonna come back from what happened to Chek.
No. If I’m only talking in my head, then I should at least be honest with myself.
Wendy was not gonna come back from the realization that she was the one who killed Chek that day Cabal Island was going down.
She killed him.
She didn’t arrive at the cabin on her seventeenth birthday alone. She was with me.