There is no difference between me and Ford.
None. And the sooner this kid figures out we’re all the same, the better off she’ll be.
Chapter Two - James
I light a cigarette in the ALCO parking lot in Burlington, take a drag, and blow it out as I wait for Sasha to change in the bathroom. For a tiny town in the middle of absolutely nowhere, it’s got everything you need. Good thing, because the Smurfette looked a little too much like a crack addict to take on a private jet.
I slide my shades down my face to lessen the morning glare from the sun as she exits the store, all cleaned up. Her hair is back in a ponytail—most of the leaves and shit are gone, but a few stragglers remain. I swat them off her head as she passes and she turns and punches me in the arm.
I laugh and push her off. “Lighten up, Smurf. I’m just trying to make you look presentable.” I take one more drag on the cigarette and toss it, then get in the truck. She takes her time getting in and pulling the seatbelt across her chest. I take a moment to study her. She looks better with her new shorts and t-shirt, but she’s still a complete mess. I turn the ignition and rev the engine. “Well, it will have to do,” I sigh. “You looked like you were living out there in the scrub for months instead of days. You lose your mind or something?” Her head turns towards me slowly and she’s got a… look. Yeah. I’m not sure about that look. “What?”
“Days?” she snarls at me.
“Fine,” I say as I pull forward and make my way to the street, then turn left towards the airport. “I admit, I was a little late. But hey, I was busy with a girl back in Cali. She’s my key, and a job is more important than a package.”
“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.’”