Page 71 of Creeping Beautiful

“Here? Where?”

“It’s a metaphor, Adam. All the players are back, but Sasha is the star of this show. You’re gonna sit this one out.”

“I don’t know anything about this. I helped her out ten years ago and I haven’t seen her since.”

“I know. This is her moment. We don’t need you.”

“So why are you here fucking up my good thing?”

He laughed, just a little, on the other end of the phone. “Good thing? You have one of those psycho assassins living in your fucking mansion, Adam. Did you know she was hiding that girl I caught this morning?”

I didn’t. But I didn’t want to admit that, either. Indie was decidedly off script. And when your little psycho assassin went off script and Nick Tate showed up from the dead to fill you in on it, things were a little more serious than simply… off script.

They were off the rails.

“So you got what you came for? We’re good?”

“Half of what I came for.”

My stomach roiled when I realized what that meant. He came for Indie too. Just didn’t get her yet. “She’s mine, Nick.”

“No.” He paused. And I imagined him shaking his head. “No. She’s not yours. She is the Company’s. And before you tell me how much you paid for her, I already know. I know everything, Adam. She is not yours. She is mine. I run that program. She came from my training center.”

“And so… what? What the fuck are you doing? Taking them all back?”

“You could say that.” There was a long silence on the line after that.

“Why are you calling me?” I finally said.

“I’m texting you an address. You have two hours and fifteen minutes to get there. Then I just… move on without you.”

And the call dropped.

Two hours and seven minutes later I’m parking the truck on the side of the road. There are three people on the Gator Boardwalk in Daphne, Alabama. None of them are Nick Tate. Just a man, a woman pushing a stroller, and a small child.

I head that direction and find my way to the part of the boardwalk that goes under the northbound lanes of AL-42 traffic and there he is. It’s windy and cool today. High fifties, maybe. Heavily overcast and a little bit of drizzle in the air. He’s wearing a black hoodie with the hood over his head, but I know it’s him.

He side-eyes me as I approach and I stop for a moment, taken aback.

“Nick?” I whisper it. And the traffic above us on the bridge is so loud, I can barely hear it myself, so I know he doesn’t hear it. That’s probably why we’re meeting under this bridge. Just in case anyone is listening. Or if I came wired, I guess.

Nick turns to face me full on and I find myself holding my breath. There is a nasty, thick scar down the side of one cheek and his neck is ringed with tattoos.

Chains.

“Nice to see you again, Adam.”

I can’t talk. I don’t know how to reconcile this guy in front of me with the golden surfer kid I last saw ten years ago. They are not the same person. Not even close. And for a moment I just stare at him, unable to believe my own eyes.

“What… what happened to you, Nick?”

He lifts his head up a little in a sort of nod, then says, “Come down here so we can talk.”

I hesitate. Because I’m suddenly unsure if I even want to get that close to him. The whole drive over here to Alabama I was pretty confident that I could handle Nick Tate. But all that confidence is withering fast as I process just how little I know him these days. A lot has happened in the ten years since he was taken down to Central America.

But I’m here. There is no way out but forward. So I close the distance between us in fifteen steps. He leans his forearms on the top rail of the fence that overlooks the water and I do the same. There are no gators down there that I can see. But Nick is silent and studies the water anyway.

I wait as long as I can, but I’m anxious and I need to make sense of whatever the fuck it is he’s doing. For all I know he’s put some kind of team together and he got me down here, two hours away from Indie, so he could send them in and take her out.