by Sylvia Ryan
Both Jaci and Xander were caught off guard. Jaci’s stomach contents transformed from butterflies to stone. It hadn’t taken the Gov long to catch up with her. They’d all been naïve to think this ordeal was over. “I’m Jaci Harmon,” she said, sitting up and pulling the sheet up to cover her nudity.
Xander stood frozen separated from her by the bar. She saw the thoughts rolling around in his head. In his expression, she glimpsed the impulses he stuffed, not wanting to make it worse for her. The telltale sign of his anger, the muscle working in his cheek was present, but other than that he didn’t betray his need to crush the piece of shit that leered at her into the clean white floor.
“Palm?” he said approaching her.
She held her hand up so that the soldier could scan her code. He checked to make sure he was detaining the right woman. “Get dressed. You’re wanted for questioning.”
“Could she get some privacy?” Xander asked through barely veiled rage.
The leader looked over his shoulder at Xander and smiled. “No. Animals don’t have modesty.”
Xander attempted to move, but a group of three advanced on him and pushed him back into the far end of the kitchen against the wall. He struggled violently against them, bringing more soldiers into the tiny space.
“Xander, don’t! It’s not worth it. Please!” The scuffling slowly stopped, but more likely because Xander was completely overpowered, not because he’d heeded her request.
With a sigh of resignation and as much grace and pride as she could muster, Jaci got up from the bed in front of the gathered soldiers, dressing in jeans and a t-shirt. She slid her feet into her flip-flops and glanced at Xander as she walked toward the group of soldiers. He was flat against the back wall of the kitchen. His gaze followed her despite the fact that a soldier’s hand smashed his face, and a forearm pressed across Xander’s neck. A different soldier held a gun to his head, touching his temple. Even from across the room she saw the vein in Xander’s neck pulsing with the rapid beat of his heart.
“Let me go,” he barked at the three men restraining him.
When she turned her back to a soldier so that he could cuff her, she lifted her gaze to meet Xander’s. “Love you,” she mouthed, as a loop was slipped over her head and tightened around her neck, before she was roughly turned and led into the corridor by the pole attached to it.
“Jaci!”
She heard Xander call her. Then, she heard the fading sounds of a scuffle. She looked at her feet as she walked down the hallway. She was a spectacle, an example for all those who cared to look.
Chapter 18
When the half-dozen Guardsmen finally cleared out of the apartment, leaving Xander alone, he sprung into action. He tapped the com in his ear to contact Rock. Instead, he found a com waiting from Rock.
“Play.”
“Xan, sorry I missed you. The Gov showed up to transfer me to Emerald. So, I guess this is it. Take care of Journey for me. She’s going to be scared. Jaci will probably have to help you at first.” He cleared his throat. “When she gets back. So, yeah…later, brother.
Xander tried to reply but got a message reporting that the com he was trying to reach was disconnected.
“Fuck!” Xander picked up the pan of fried potatoes he’d been making for their breakfast and threw it across the room, leaving a greasy mess over the wall and floor.
Then he commed his captain.
“Rush here.”
“Cap, the National Guard took Jaci.” There was silence on the other end. “Cap?”
“I’ll get someone to get the team together and I’ll send a cruiser to pick you up in…half hour?”
“Yeah, okay. Oh, Cap?”
“What?”
“Rock’s gone to Emerald.”
“Yeah, I know. Half hour. Be ready.”
Xander sat on the edge of the bed. His mood was black. He felt desperate and lethal. The room was consumed by utter silence with only the sound of his own blood rushing through his veins, filling his ears. He’d never known of a person being returned to the Amber Zone after the National Guard picked them up. His blood boiled with the need to find and save her. Every second that passed was a second too long to be away from her.
He didn’t know what a team meeting would do to help Jaci, but at least he would be able to find out where she was taken. He was going to get to her, and he was going to kill anyone that stood in his way.
The decision made, Xander stood focused and determined. He wiped up the mess on the floor and then slowly, deliberately dressed in uniform. He checked and holstered his gun.
He was calm. Like a man who’d decided to commit suicide and knew the pain would be over in a moment or two. He would save Jaci or die trying. Either way, his anguish would be over soon.
He sat stoic in the passenger seat of the cruiser that picked him up and did the same as he waited in the briefing room of Amber Police Headquarters. It had been less than twenty-four hours since the team met to wrap up the case. It hadn’t occurred to him at the time that Rock would be transferred before they saw each other again. Already, it seemed like a lifetime ago.
When Captain Rush, Brady and two other Amber officers entered the room and headed straight for Xander, he had no idea what was going down until they were done. The two officers overpowered him and cuffed his right hand to the stainless steel cuff bar attached to the wall.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he shouted.
Captain Rush thanked the two officers and dismissed them. Then the cap and Brady sat at the table. Jordan entered a few seconds later.
“I’m saving your life.” Captain Rush said as he sat back in his chair. “You are still under my command and you will follow my orders. I know you well enough by now to know you’re planning on going rogue.” The Captain leaned forward in his chair and leveled a glare at Xander. “You’d be dead before you even found her. We do this my way.” He leaned back in his chair.
Xander seethed. “Let me the fuck go!”
Captain Rush ignored him. “Okay, I’ve made some calls and finally made contact with General Morgan the acting commander of the New Atlanta peacekeeping force. He was already aware of Jaci’s detainment. She’s currently being interrogated. He said that she may be charged with Caroline’s murder, pending any disclosures she may make during the interrogation. I advised him that we were aware of the Gov’s involvement in the termination of Amber fallows and the attempted murder of Jaci. I reminded him that the Gov’s actions were a violation of the Amber Accord and that he risked an Amber uprising if should this information to get out to the public.
“The general wanted to see what proof I had of their Accord violations. Brady is putting together audio and will e-mail it for the general’s inspection. That’s where we are now.”
Xander took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, eyes closed. A slight wash of relief and gratitude flashed over him. They weren’t going to lay down and pretend none of this happened. They were actually going to try to do something to help her, to get her back. “Do you know where they have her?”
“She’s being held on the peacekeeper’s compound in the Emerald Zone. I don’t know exactly where.”
Over the next few hours, they waited for Brady to gather all the evidence and then they waited to hear back from the general together. Eventually, after Xander surrendered his gun and promised not to do anything stupid, Jordan released him from the cuff bar.
A nagging impulse to go to Jaci, to save her, persisted, but he knew the captain was right. He’d never even make it to the Emerald Zone, let alone onto the peacekeeper’s compound.
It was almost a complete day before they heard back from the general’s office. He would discipline the people responsible for the Accord violations. Jaci would be released to Amber upon completion of her interrogation.
It was a long wait, and Xander had more than enough time for his mind to reason and rage. Finally he’d come to a surprisingly easy decision. Never again would he or someone he lo
ved be a helpless victim to the Gov. He left police headquarters without a word to anybody.
An hour later, Xander walked toward the rear of the wellness center’s garden, closing in on the wall that separated the Amber Zone from the ungoverned Onyx Zone. The pillowcase he carried was laden with canned food from the commissary.
A while back, he’d learned of the black market that enterprising Ambers developed between their Zone and people in Onyx. Reportedly, they threw bundles of goods, with notes included inside, back and forth over the walls, creating a cooperative food for goods that could only be found in Onyx trade.
When he arrived at the twelve-foot cement block wall topped with loops of razor wire, he called to anybody who may have been on the other side. He got no response. Turning to put about ten feet of distance between himself and the wall, he held the pillowcase with two hands and spun in circle after circle, giving the bag more and more momentum, before he released it. The bag skimmed the gnarl of wire at the top. He heard the thunk of the bundle hitting the ground on the other side. He waited for a minute, and then he heard a reply to his enclosed note.
“Tomorrow at sunset.”
Xander smiled. He’d made a connection and if it turned out to be a reliable connection, life as he currently knew it would change drastically. Not only for Jaci and him, but maybe for all of Amber.
* * * *
Jaci had been in the dark, literally, for what seemed like days. Her stomach growled its displeasure at being empty for so long. It was a low, angry complaint. But being hungry was the least of her worries. She’d die of dehydration long before her hunger became unbearable. The inside of her throat was parched and had been void of any saliva for at least a day. When she opened her eyes, her lids felt like sandpaper scraping over her eyeballs.
The shade of the blackness she stared into changed only slightly with her eyes open. She had to be underground. It was the only way to achieve the dank air and complete darkness that surrounded her. She no longer knew if it was day or night as she lay on the cold, hard cement, shivering and wishing for more of the blissful escape sleep provided.
She thought about a lot of things in the complete absence of any sensory input. But, mostly it was Xander that lingered in her mind. She knew by now he would be out his mind with worry. She prayed he would realize quickly that she wasn’t coming back so he could start the healing process and move on.
Jaci knew she was going to die, if not directly at the hands of the Gov, then from dehydration. She had another day, maybe two, and she would be dead. Thank God.
She was so happy to end it with the love that she and Xander shared. For a moment, she’d seen what it could have been like with him. She replayed their last day together in her head over and over. It was amazing. She smiled. It would have been so good with him. It would have been a new chapter in her life. It would have been her fairy tale.
That last night had been too good to be true. Some part of her knew it all along, because she’d easily accepted the fact that the life she wanted with him would never happen. It hadn’t taken much to remove all expectations of happiness, and totally break her of her will to live. Jaci told herself she wasn’t giving up, she was being realistic. If she expected to ever go back to Amber again, she was kidding herself. If the time since she’d been designated Amber taught her anything it was that she had no control over her life anymore, and her existence was meaningless to most everybody.
Her throat tightened as she tried to hold back an avalanche of grief. She prayed that Xander didn’t feel as much pain and sorrow as she felt. She shouldn’t have mouthed I love you to him before she was taken away. It was selfish, and if she were thinking at all, she would have realized it would be harder for him to get over her after that. She shook her head and berated herself for so many things she’d done and not done, said and left unsaid. In the end, though, she guessed it was better that they’d just started their relationship. They hadn’t, technically, even made love yet. She didn’t want to be a source of pain for him. This way, given time, she’d be easily forgotten.
Jaci jumped, startled by a light flicked on somewhere away from where she was being kept. The dim illumination carried to her, faintly cutting through the thick blackness. Footsteps approached. Her heart sped up. She’d waited to be questioned when she first got there, but nobody ever came. So, she assumed that they were going to leave her down there until she died. She was almost there.
“Get up.” A soldier ordered as he came up to her cell.
Jaci staggered to her feet, using her hands to walk up the cement block wall for support.
“Put your wrists together through the bars.”
She was cuffed and then walked down a long corridor toward the light source. The soldier shoved her into the center of a room. He grabbed the few links of chain between her handcuffs and dropped them onto a metal hook dangling over her head. Jaci was strung up on a hook like an animal carcass. She was forced to stand on wobbly legs or bear the entire weight of her body dangling from her wrists. The soldier stood back and leered at her, raking his gaze over her body. His terrible smile flooded her with feelings of dread. She looked down at the floor to escape it.
The light switched off again and the soldier’s footsteps faded away. With a snicker, Jaci recognized the irony of wishing for the cold, dark place she’d been kept in before.
She stood for as long as she could before her legs gave out. The excruciating pain of being hung by her wrists made her cry out. The air seemed dead around her. The air–or the room–she wasn’t sure, seemed to gobble up every sound she made. Somewhere in the far reaches of her mind, it occurred to her that she may be hallucinating. Before long, she gave up her screaming, and eventually, she passed out.
Jaci woke to the sound of the door opening. She found her feet again and supported her own weight. It was a lame show of strength, but it was the best she could do.
The uniformed man who entered pinned her down with a piercing, blue-eyed, savage glare. She would have considered him handsome if it weren’t for the air of evil that followed him in.
“Good morning, Jaci. I’m General Morgan.”
She didn’t reply. She only followed his movements with her gaze.
“You’ve caused me a fuckload of trouble over the last two days.”
“By not dying when you wanted me to?” she rasped through her arid throat.
Out of nowhere, he slapped her face with a powerful swing. She hadn’t seen it coming and the impact swiveled her head around.
“Shut your nasty, stinking mouth, Amber bitch.” He slapped her again. “Don’t mistake my manners for weakness.” His tone was lethal.
“You’re lucky that I let a piece of shit like you in the same room as me, let alone spend two days of my life on this stupid bullshit.” He paced the inside the room for a minute, before he continued in a calmer tone. “I have a few questions.” He sounded more dangerous now than when he’d slapped her. She held her breath.
He took her chin and lifted it, trying to meet her eyes. “Who else knows about Caroline?”
Jaci refused to look at him while twisting her head away from his grip. She kept her gaze focused on the open door behind him. She pressed her lips together, remaining silent.
“You don’t want to talk to me?”
“No,” she croaked.
“Your choice,” he said as he turned the light off and left her dangling in the dark.
She smiled. That was the most fun she’d had in days. The thrill of the defiance wore off about ten seconds later.
She had been there so long. The days without food or water began to have its desired effect. Jaci’s weakness grew. The muscles in her legs trembled under the weight of her body. Even though the air was damp and cool, a fine film of perspiration coated her skin. It cooled her to the point she was shivering. After several hours, her teeth chattered and the cold was bone-deep. She wouldn’t be able to stand for much longer before she would have to dangle again.
When he
r legs finally failed, she hung from her wrists with the cold metal digging into her so deeply it felt as if it was slicing her hands off.
She knew she was dead already. She tried to mentally prepare herself for what was coming because she sure as hell wasn’t going to say anything that would hurt anybody she knew in Amber, no matter what they did to her.
It seemed like days before the general returned. His vicious blue gaze took her in. A finger of dread aroused her to full consciousness. He walked up to her and grabbed a fistful of her hair.
“You are going to talk to me, or I will go back to your apartment and take your roommate into custody. I heard that neither one of you were clothed when you were picked up.” He chuckled as he crowded Jaci’s face with his own. “Is he your special friend?” Jaci noticed the Emerald band around the man’s wrist as he released the grip on her hair.
“No,” she croaked.
“Good.” He indicated to another soldier standing outside the cell. “Take her down.”
She was unhooked and shoved into a chair. The relief of pressure on her wrists didn’t feel as good as she thought it would. In fact, the renewed blood flow to that area seemed to increase the amount of pain she felt. A few seconds later, she was in agony.“Aaah,” she cried, rocking back and forth, cradling her wrists in her lap.
General Morgan pulled out the chair on the other side of the table and sat, crossing his legs and staring at her, apparently waiting for her to stop crying out. It took several minutes before she quieted herself.
“Who knows what Caroline was doing?”
“Nobody.” Her voice was nearly gone. Her throat was on fire.
He rose from his chair, stepped forward and slapped Jaci’s face with so much force that she fell out of the chair. He picked her up by her cuffs and sat her back in it.
“Who else knows?”