Page 100 of Creeping Beautiful

But I don’t want to call her my sister. That’s the point. She’s not my sister. I don’t think of her as my sister. Or my kid.

She is Indie. She is my girl.

People can take that any way they want. It’s just the truth.

She’s mine. In every sense of the word. And she will be with me, in one way or the other, forever.

But she comes with a price. And that price has been high. Most of her fuck-ups came early in the training and the Company was still around back then. Everything got handled. One phone call and whatever mistake Indie made was erased. And everyone who got in the way of that erasure was taken out too.

But after the Company fell things got decidedly more complicated.

I guess it was fine for some, but not for us. I know people wanted the Company gone. Hell, I wanted them gone too and I played my part in their demise. But life is a lot more complicated without them than it ever was when they were in control of shit.

The whole world changed afterward. I’m talking… governments changed. New world leaders were suddenly elected. People who had no idea the Company even existed saw this and it made them uneasy. They didn’t know why they were uneasy, but it was the fall of the Company that caused these things.

Several stock markets crashed. Not in the US, but lots of other places. I mean, turn on the news any night of the week and it’s nothing but chaos. The whole planet is filled with crisis after crisis. And even in countries that have traditionally been stable, things are going off the rails quickly. Those that were traditionally unstable just got worse.

And I get it. People want to feel in control. They don’t want some secret cabal running shit behind their backs. But sometimes the devil you know is better than the one you don’t.

Just thinking this shit makes me feel like one of the bad guys. And I swore up and down, the whole time I was growing up, that I would not be one of the bad guys. But am I any better now, without the Company, than I was before?

I’m not talking about money or prosperity. I have too much of both to be worried about that. I’m talking about that high road I thought I was on. That moral compass I thought I was holding.

But I am doing exactly the same thing I was before the Company fell. Only now I’m exposed. There is no one covering for me.

Sane people would say, “Well, just stop doing that shit, Adam. Stop taking those jobs. Stop killing people. Stop all of it.”

But I own a Company killer. What am I gonna do with her? What will happen to Indie if there are no more jobs? Let me spell it out for you. In a way, she’s like a heroin addict. She needs it. She needs that life. So if I stop the jobs, if I force her to conform to societal norms, how long before she crashes and burns? And who will she take down with her?

If it was just me, I could probably live with that.

Hell, I could probably even live with her taking down Donovan.

But not McKay.

So these are my choices:

Protect her and give her jobs to do that keep her in check.

Or kill her.

That’s it. Those are my options.

There is no other way this plays out. It’s either work with who she is and mitigate it, or put her out of her misery and move on.

Because Indie Anna Accorsi is… insane.

So I’m in the middle of mitigating when I see Nathan St. James exit the diner in Pearl Springs and walk across the street to the parking lot where his black Ford truck is parked.

I’m in the back seat of said truck. Waiting for him.

I’ve been watching Nate for several weeks now. I had a hunch about this kid. He’s not a bad guy. Not like me.

But he’s not a good one either.

Definitely not good enough for my Indie.

It’s not late. But it’s midwinter and it’s dark as fuck out tonight. So Nathan gets in his truck and doesn’t see the shadow sitting directly behind him. Not until he goes to turn left off First Street and checks his mirror.