Away From the Dark (The Light #2)

by Aleatha Romig

  Although I was suddenly worried about facing him, the man who had worked so hard to make me believe I was his wife, my body and mind were conflicted. Truth be told: I had missed him.

  CHAPTER 5

  Jacob

  I’d called our apartment telephone as I passed the final gate to enter the community. It was nearly five o’clock, and I hoped that Sara would be home from work. On this trip I’d been gone for three nights. I didn’t like leaving her for hours, much less days.

  This trip had been spent solely at the Eastern Light. While Father Gabriel did whatever he did in his mansion, Micah and I stayed down past the pool and tennis court in the small outbuildings.

  When I’d first started this assignment, I’d considered investigating the big house, until I saw the cameras. Every move Micah and I made on the property, or at least inside the outbuildings, was watched. Late at night I’d sit on the steps and watch the big house. In the darkness I was hidden, but the large mansion was visible, its windows often lit, the house looking like a Christmas tree. Even from the distance of the outbuildings, I could see the multitudes of people celebrating with our leader.

  Although my job was to infiltrate The Light, my training told me that I could accomplish my goal only by following Father Gabriel’s rules. He specifically forbade my or Micah’s presence closer to the mansion. I wouldn’t have gotten where I was today if I’d broken that simple an order.

  Whenever I was at the Eastern Light, I rarely left the grounds. If I did, it was to attend temple. Usually Elijah, an Assemblyman from the Eastern Light, drove us. This past Wednesday, Brother Uriel, the senior commissioner at the Eastern Light, had been with him. During our drive to and from the estate, I’d had the distinct impression I was being interviewed. If I was right, hopefully, my duties would be increasing and so would my knowledge of The Light.

  I believed that I was very close to learning more about the pharmaceutical distribution. Each new piece of information was another step closer to getting away from this assignment and resuming my real life.

  While that thought of leaving The Light used to motivate me, now it also saddened and worried me. As I walked up the stairs toward our apartment, the most recent piece of my life that demonstrated my obedience and commitment to The Light—my wife—was the one piece I couldn’t imagine living without.

  I took a deep breath and pushed thoughts of the dark and life beyond The Light away. Reaching for the doorknob, I inserted my key, waited for the sound of the lock, and opened the door.

  Standing precisely where she’d been told to stand was the most beautiful woman in the world. Though her head was bowed, with her hair pulled back to a short ponytail, I could see her raised cheeks. I reached for her chin and brought her light-blue eyes to mine.

  “Mrs. Adams, I’ve missed you.”

  Her head tilted and her eyes closed as she brushed her cheek against the palm of my hand.

  “I’ve missed you.”

  The stress of the assignment, the tension of the flight, everything disappeared into the melody of Sara’s voice. As soon as I entered the apartment, the aroma of something cooking brought to life a different hunger from the one brought on by the sight and touch of my beautiful wife. I pulled her close and kissed her soft lips.

  Almost immediately I reached for her shoulders and stepped back. With her at arm’s length, my dark eyes narrowed as I searched her face. It had been only a second, but something seemed off—different.

  “Sara?” I evened my tone. “Is there something you need to tell me?”

  Her eyes widened and then dropped.

  “I’ve missed you,” she said. “I don’t like you being gone for three nights.”

  There was more. I sensed it. Taking her hand, I led her to the couch. “Tell me. Do you want me to ask again?”

  Her breasts heaved with deep breaths as her shoulders straightened. “Two days ago, at the lab, I found an error. It wasn’t my place to find it. I wasn’t looking for it, but once I noticed it, I did more research . . .”

  I didn’t interrupt as her confession came one word on top of the other. While she spoke I prayed to Father Gabriel that whatever she’d done didn’t warrant correction. If it did, I would do it. However, after my being away from her, the last thing on my mind was punishment.

  “. . . Brother Benjamin said he was glad I found it. He said we wouldn’t need to mention it again, but I knew you needed to know.”

  “Was Brother Raphael involved?”

  She shook her head. “Not with me. I don’t know if Brother Benjamin spoke to him. It was never mentioned again, but Dinah saw me looking into it. She had to help me catch up with my work. Well, she didn’t have to—she offered.”

  “Was this before or after you told Brother Benjamin?”

  “Before.”

  I reached for her hands, neatly folded on her lap, and felt the slight tremble. “Sara, look up at me.” Obediently she lifted her eyes. “Tell me again what Brother Benjamin said.”

  “He said it would never be mentioned again.”

  I lifted her hands to my lips. With each kiss of her knuckles, the tension melted from her grasp, and I looked back up to her trusting gaze. “It was right of you to tell me. We won’t mention it again.”

  The tips of her lips moved upward.

  “Thank you, Jacob.”

  “Now, what do you have cooking? It smells wonderful.”

  As if I’d taken the weight of the world from her shoulders, she bounced up from the couch and headed toward the kitchen, the menu she’d prepared spewing forth from her lips. I listened to not only her words but also the sound of her voice.

  Over the past nine months I’d fallen for my wife. Part of it was undoubtedly the training and manipulation of The Light. But that wasn’t all. I had an overwhelming desire to protect her from the darkness that lurked within The Light.

  Father Gabriel’s word taught each husband to bear the weight of his family. It was my place. Yet there were times when I wondered what it would be like to be in a more equal relationship, one where I could share my burdens as she’d just done.

  It wasn’t that Sara didn’t do everything she could to help me. She did. It was that I couldn’t talk to her. I couldn’t talk to anyone. That had never bothered me before. Now, each time she confessed a misdeed and gave it to me, I longed for the relief she obviously felt.

  According to Father Gabriel’s teachings, men received that sense of relief through confessing to the Assembly or the Commission. My case was different. Confessing my anxiety over the termination of my FBI mission could not happen. It was up to me.

  CHAPTER 6

  Sara

  My heart beat frantically as I rambled on about our dinner, something about wanting Jacob to have a home-cooked meal. I wasn’t sure of what I was even saying. I was more aware of what I wasn’t saying, what I wasn’t admitting. Somehow in this messed-up scenario, this pretend, ridiculous, outrageous life I’d been sentenced to live, the man listening to my ramblings knew me. He knew my thoughts without my so much as saying a word. Only seconds after he arrived, he’d known there was something, something I hadn’t said.

  That new realization shook me to my core.

  Jacob knew me, in many ways perhaps better than I knew myself.

  Yet he didn’t know the real me. He knew the me he’d created.

  It was such an odd thought. As I continued to talk about food, the lab, and anything else I could think of, I wouldn’t allow my mind to dwell upon the ramifications of his intimate knowledge.

  I fought the urge to confess my memories. As bizarre as that sounded, it was a real battle. The investigator and independent woman I’d once been knew that telling Jacob or anyone in The Light was dangerous, perhaps even a death sentence. Memories of bodies in the Wayne County morgue worked to keep my confession at bay. Yet the conditioning I’d experienced for the last nine months kept the words I remember the dark on the tip of my tongue.

  As Jacob reached for my hand and b
lessed our meal, the carefully prepared food lost its appeal. A sheen of perspiration dotted my brow as I worried I wouldn’t be able to stop the words.

  What if I admitted to memories in my sleep?

  What if he asked and I couldn’t help myself?

  My internal battle raged throughout dinner and as I cleaned the kitchen. I spent more time than usual assuring cleanliness, purposely avoiding what I knew was coming. Jacob had been gone for three nights. The way his warm hand encased mine even after he blessed the food and his soft lips met mine when he entered the apartment alerted me to his future intentions.

  I tugged my lower lip between my teeth, contemplating our immediate future. If I confessed my newfound knowledge, or recovered knowledge, as an Assemblyman, Jacob would be bound to take my confession to the Commission.

  Would he condemn my memories as lies? Would he punish me for entertaining such thoughts? Each question added fuel to my concerns.

  I wanted to believe he’d listen and help. My heart wanted that. Yet my inquisitive mind feared the worst. At best he too was a pawn and wouldn’t believe me. At worst he was intimately involved in the lies, and my knowledge would be a threat.

  If I were to survive and find a way out of the Northern Light, I needed to continue to maintain the farce that I was Sara Adams, the content Stepford wife of Assemblyman Jacob Adams.

  Wringing the excess soapy water from the dishcloth, I decided to take another swipe at the countertop. Just as I was about to turn back toward the counter, the signature leather-and-musk cloud announcing my husband’s presence penetrated the scent of my dish soap. I’d been too caught up in my thoughts to hear his approach. I closed my eyes as his strong arms surrounded my waist and his lips neared my neck.

  “I’ve missed you.”

  His deep voice tugged at my heart, while the warmth of his embrace tore at the flimsy walls I’d constructed in an effort to keep him away. My head fell back against his chest as my pulse raced. I’d always had the option to tell him no, yet I never had.

  If I did now, would he suspect something was different?

  Butterfly kisses skimmed my skin as the scruff of Jacob’s tightly trimmed beard heightened my senses.

  My head told me the truths. We weren’t really married. He was part of the lie.

  The words that hours ago had been loud and convincing grew dim as Jacob’s hands began to roam.

  The dishcloth dropped back into the soapy water as I ran my hands over his forearms. Jacob not only knew me, he knew my body. With the perfect combination of baritone words and ministrations, my insides began to respond.

  Agreeing to him, to this, was what I needed to do to survive.

  It was the mantra my consciousness tried to recite.

  Convince him nothing is different. Don’t hesitate. He will know. I heard the words though they weren’t audible.

  It was interesting the deals one made with oneself in an effort to excuse what could be perceived as unacceptable behavior. After all, I was about to sleep with a man who wasn’t really my husband, a man who’d lied to me, punished me, and yet my body was willing—more than willing. As I slowly spun toward him, my arms encircling his firm torso, I pushed my new revelations out of my mind and concentrated on the man who wanted me.

  As he led me down the hall, I didn’t think about the deception or the lies. I thought about the excuse I’d given others for my unusual behavior—I’d missed Jacob.

  Later in the night, while the heavy curtains kept the ever-shining summer sun from our room, Jacob pulled me against his chest and sighed. His breath moved across my hair as his heart beat against my back.

  “Did anything else happen while I was gone?”

  In the afterglow of our lovemaking, I battled against my training. In his arms I longed for the openness we’d shared and the relief that came from complete honesty. And then, just as quickly, I reminded myself that it wasn’t real openness or honesty—not on his part. If it had been, he wouldn’t have lied to me.

  “I’m not sure why you keep asking,” I replied.

  His chin moved over my hair as he shook his head at my slyly worded question. I couldn’t help but smile as I turned toward him.

  “That wasn’t a question,” I confirmed.

  He kissed my forehead. “No, Mrs. Adams, it wasn’t. But I could infer—”

  “You could,” I said with a hint of laughter, trying to steer him away from his initial question. His use of my surname sounded so familiar, the falseness of it barely registered.

  “If I did, after I took matters into my own hands”—he playfully cupped my behind—“I might say that you seemed different somehow when I first got home. When did the incident at the lab occur?”

  I took a deep breath as I lowered my chin against my chest. “Monday.”

  “Hmm.”

  Though I wondered what that meant, I knew not to ask.

  “I see,” he said.

  I shook my head as I closed my eyes. Maybe if I stayed awake I’d know what he meant. Yet if I stayed awake, I risked saying more than I wanted. Even though I hadn’t been completely honest, in his arms my lids grew heavy and Jacob’s breathing evened. In no time at all we both drifted to sleep.

  As a week passed, each day was more difficult than the one before. Each day memories came mixed with emotion. I’d be working at the lab or doing a mundane task such as sorting our laundry, and something from the dark would infiltrate my thoughts. Some memories were benign: my apartment or Dylan’s house. That was always the way they began, the prelude to more, my fish (his name was Fred), or Dylan’s backyard and the way he grilled steaks or salmon in the warm Detroit air. Some were so intense; they were more than images, also sounds and smells. The authenticity of them made each one difficult to dismiss.

  Even in the summer, the outside air at the Northern Light held a chill. I found myself longing for the oppressive Michigan humidity I used to detest.

  Somehow I learned to shut off the old me when I was with Jacob. I’m not sure how I did it, but I did. I concentrated on him, on us. Whenever the old me tried to break through, I became hyperalert, fearing a change in Jacob’s expression, afraid he could see my internal battle raging. Maybe it was simply paranoia, or perhaps it was real. Either way, I worried constantly that I’d give myself away.

  My other battles came around female followers. As time passed I deduced that those women who recalled the dark, like Elizabeth, had come to The Light of their own volition, while others, like Dinah and Mary—Mindy—had come as I had, forced to accept a life they couldn’t question.

  As we all pressed our fingers into the prayer sponge and I contemplated our lack of fingerprints, the women in the morgue fueled my desire to leave The Light. The world needed to know what was happening.

  I was an investigative journalist. Fate had somehow given that job to me. I had the responsibility not only to expose this travesty but also to rescue my sisters and the children of The Light.

  While I used to look forward to my visits to the day care, now entering the doors and seeing the small trusting faces broke my heart. The babies and children hadn’t chosen this life. They were prisoners behind the campus’s walls as much as we all were. I couldn’t decide about the men. I wanted to ask whether they’d all come freely, or whether any of them were here as the result of an “accident.” Of course I couldn’t.

  As days passed, the old me found ways to glean information.

  I spoke less and listened more. As Jacob spoke to other men, I bowed my head and took in as much as I could. While I sat quietly at the coffee shop, retrieved our groceries, or did laundry, I listened. Since we’d all been trained to leave the dark in the past, I learned little about that, but I did pick up other things.

  At one point Raquel mentioned medications. When I first woke, I had been given many of them. I didn’t want to ask in front of Elizabeth, but the simple comment that I might not have noticed before now had me wondering. Did The Light possess medication that made us more adaptable�
��more accepting? Obviously they had something that had taken away my memories while allowing new memories form. Since the only medication I had taken regularly after leaving the hospital had been birth control, I concluded that in those pills was where I’d been receiving the memory suppressant. It wasn’t until I stopped taking the birth control and after the medication had time to leave my system that my memories came back. If The Light could do that, then I assumed that anything was possible.

  Since the return of my memories, I was constantly on edge. Though I’d been pretty diligent, speaking about my birth control was one of the glaring mistakes I’d made. Thankfully it had occurred with Raquel. I told myself that I could chalk it up to the building stress or perhaps a sense of friendship, but whatever the cause, once the words were out of my mouth, I feared the worst and prayed for the best.

  I hadn’t meant to say anything.

  With each such instance, my fear and paranoia grew.

  I had a plan.

  I would leave the Northern Light with Jacob.

  Over a month ago I’d mentioned that I wanted to travel with him. That was what I’d wanted, then—to spend more time with him. Now I wanted to get away. He’d never told me that he’d petitioned the Commission; however, one day at the lab, Brother Benjamin let it slip.

  My plan was to leave with Jacob. I didn’t care where he took me. I didn’t care whether it was to Fairbanks for supplies—he did that often—or to another campus. I’d already deduced that the Eastern Light was Highland Heights. No matter whether it was the Western or Eastern Light, wherever we went had to be less remote than the circumpolar North.

  Once Jacob flew me to another destination, my plan was simple: I’d find a phone and call for help.

  As days and nights passed, I contemplated whom I would call. I considered my parents, Bernard, and Dylan. No matter how I looked at it, Dylan was the best possible alternative.

  I recalled an Internet thread I’d found while researching The Light. It was about a woman who claimed to have been taken by a cult.