Page 10 of Wasted Lust

I want to punch him in the face and fall into his arms at the same time. I feel like he is the last piece of the puzzle that is me. The one thing in my past that is unresolved.

I lie down on the couch holding my phone. Maybe he will call? Maybe he’s watching me right now?

I don’t close the windows or the shutters. I’m hoping that he will slip into my house and wake me up with some declaration of his undying love. Apologize for leaving behind the only girl he ever loved. Insist that he did it all for me. To give me a chance, and make my life good, and get me away from the death and destruction that we grew up with as Company kids.

But I don’t even get that in a dream. I wake up the next morning cold, and just as alone as I was the night before.

“Yeah,” I croak into my cell phone.

“You awake?”

Adam. I take the phone away from my ear and check the time. Two AM. “Do I sound awake?”

“Max called me. Said you’re taking too long. Something’s going down a couple days from now and he wants you to put things in motion.”

I sit up in bed. “What? Since when?”

“I dunno. I’m just the messenger.”

I sit there thinking about this for a moment.

“You got any ideas?”

“About?”

“Sasha Cherlin, who else.”

I have a lot of ideas about that girl, I chuckle to myself. But none of them have to do with this job. “Maybe one or two.”

“Then do it. Call me if you need anything.”

I get the hang-up beeps from Adam and fall back into my pillows. Sasha Cherlin. What an enigma. I’ve thought of nothing else but this girl since the moment I laid eyes on her. I’m glad Max is getting restless. I’ve been restless for months. I’m tired of waiting around for something to happen. And I might have a way to get her to move.

I set my alarm and close my eyes so I can picture it in my head. And then I fall back asleep wondering what it would be like to kiss her.

Sasha Aston—AKA Sasha Cherlin

Place of birth—unknown. No official birth certificate for Sasha Cherlin exists. Sasha Aston, however, was born in Denver, CO to parents unknown.

Age—twenty-four

Blonde hair, blue eyes, five-six

Attended and graduated from Regis Jesuit High School, Aurora, Colorado

BS in Geological Engineering from Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado

Current position—PhD student at University of Kansas in anthropology, Lawrence, KS

Job history—none

Criminal history—none

That’s it. After four months of digging, surveillance, and greasing palms with favors and promises to gain access to files I have no clearance for, this is the extent of my information about Sasha Cherlin. No parents, not even her real ones, are listed. But I know she was a Company kid.

I have my sources, and she admitted it in that one encounter we had at DIA when she acknowledged she knew Nicholas Tate. She never went to an elementary or middle school before she moved in with Ford Aston from what I can tell. I’ve checked every school in the west and found nothing.

But I’ve known one other kid with this very same background. The pattern fits—with one exception. Sasha is still alive.