Watermark (The Emerald Series Book 3)

by James, Kimberly

  “Are you proud of yourself?” I asked, incredulously.

  “You’re angry,” he said, his smile deepening, creasing his cheeks, and it shot straight through to my heart, making it do crazy things in my chest.

  I felt the flush on my cheeks. He seemed well enough to handle my anger at this point. “And you think it’s funny?”

  He turned so he was facing me and put one hand on the barrier. Silk fanned between his fingers, giving way to solid wrists and thick forearms, bulging with veins over the muscles under his skin. His skin grew less snake-like every day.

  “I love you,” he said as clear as the day we’d spoken our vows on the beach. As if that made everything all right. As if that would be enough of an apology for nearly killing my friend and drowning me. For leaving me for almost two years. It shouldn’t have been enough, but it was. I couldn’t hold on to my anger in the wake of his profession. And damn if his eyes didn’t twinkle. I found him irresistible no matter that he was a beast.

  He leaned closer, eyebrows arched over the dark green pools of his eyes, waiting for me to say the words back.

  “Say it,” he demanded, and when I still didn’t, he bunched his large hand and pounded once on the glass.

  “You’re such a baby,” I said, an absolutely ridiculous thought. I turned my gaze back to him, my heart hitching at the smile on his lips. That smile had always gotten him anything he wanted from me, and I supposed now was no different. I bit the insides of my cheeks to keep from laughing for the sheer joy of having the old Jamie back.

  “Say it.” His voice was softer now, almost begging. For all he was so imposing and seemingly invincible, he possessed a neediness that spoke to me, as if he still doubted whether I could accept him.

  I leaned my forehead against the glass, a capitulation on my part. “Oh Jamie, I love you too.”

  And with the admission I felt a little of the girl I'd become slip away. I felt my choices slip away.

  22

  Jamie had been locked up in the Facility for a week, and if it hadn’t been clear two days ago, it was clear now. The strategy was working. Physically he was more or less back to his old self, including an extra thirty pounds of muscle and the barely tamed mass of hair. His shoulders were wider, his chest thicker, and I imagined touching him would be like fondling rock.

  It was also clear he wanted out. He paced back and forth, his gait stealthy and fluid like that of a tiger or a lion. Only he appeared more powerful than any lion I’d seen, more predatory.

  He also looked hungry.

  He was still shirtless, and it was apparent he'd never completely shed all traces of the Deep. Small swatches of his skin still held the blue-green dye of the water, as if it had marked him, patched him over, and branded him so he would never forget where he belonged. There was a mark on the left side of his chest, covering his broad pectoral, and another one over his right hip bone. His back boasted more, a handful from the top of his shoulders to the waistband of his fatigues, the skin lined and raised like healed scars. Everywhere else his skin was a smooth nut brown and completely hairless.

  We hadn't said much over the last few days, not with words anyway. I’d tried to ask him again what had happened, but he'd acted like he hadn't understood me when I knew he had.

  I’d learned you can say a lot with your eyes, especially when each one doing the looking knows the other so well. And we’d spent a lot of time with our hands pressed to the glass as though our combined heat could melt it.

  Jamie’s continued and growing vexation showed clearly today. My dad was being maddeningly quiet about what exactly they planned on doing with him. They couldn’t hold him forever. Unless that’s exactly what they planned to do.

  I knew my dad had been paying Jamie visits on his own, but today he’d chosen to come with me, and they stood staring at one another through the acrylic barrier. It dripped with moisture. I was beginning to hate this cage. I knew Jamie did.

  “I want out of here, Marshall.” Jamie had repeated these same words for the last two days to no apparent avail.

  “It’s not that easy, Jamie.” I knew my dad had been arguing with whoever was calling the shots here. Pleading Jamie’s case, making yet more guarantees of his restored humanness.

  “Yeah, it is. Unlock this thing.” Jamie looked overhead, searching the ceiling and the walls.

  “Unfortunately, some people like you right where you are so they can keep an eye on you. It’s only been a few days.”

  “It’s been a week, Dad,” I said in Jamie’s defense, in my own. I was as tired of this holding pattern as Jamie was.

  My dad held up his hands, wrists together as if saying, “My hands are tied.” And then one of those looks passed between them, similar to the looks Jamie and I shared, where something important was being communicated. Jamie snorted.

  “I don’t need an eye on me anymore. And is a damn decent meal too much to ask? I need real food and a shit load of it. Not this frozen crap they’ve been giving me. How hard is it to come up with some fresh fish around here? Shrimp? Crab? I’d settle for a McFish sandwich.”

  “I’ll get Noah to bring you something from Pirates when he comes,” my dad offered, going for his phone.

  “I’ll go get it,” I interjected. This place was suffocating today. The air filled with unleashed tension, a growing urgency for Jamie to escape the confined space. He was climbing the walls.

  “No.” Jamie looked at me as a series of expressions scrolled over his face, starting with anger, falling into panic, and ending with a gooey-eyed vulnerability. “Please, stay.”

  He was two different people. One half of him demanding and bold and the other half that remained unsure and needy.

  “Noah, your brother is making unruly demands that involve food,” my dad said into his phone. “Yeah, now.” He raised a questioning brow at Jamie. “You have a preference?”

  “That sampler basket. Three of them. And some Gatorade.”

  “You hear that?” He smirked when Noah responded then asked, “Any particular color?”

  Jamie’s eyes flew to mine as if he were unsure of the answer or maybe he didn’t understand the question. He remembered that his favorite meal was the sampler platter from Pirates, but he couldn’t seem to remember the names of colors.

  “Yellow,” he said.

  I smiled. My top was yellow.

  My dad relayed the information then ended the call. “Half-hour. Can you wait that long?”

  “Finally.” Jamie pushed away from the barrier. “Now how about a shower? A real shower. Fresh water. I can smell myself.”

  “That might take a while to arrange,” my dad said as if it hadn't occurred to him Jamie might want a shower.

  Jamie stalked around the confines of his prison. His dark ponytail snaked down his back, following the long indention of his spine. On either side, the muscles of his back flexed in a display of raw power as he moved. He belonged in a video game. Everything about him was animated and exaggerated.

  I cleared my throat from the sudden knot and looked over at my dad. He was watching Jamie with an odd expression on his face. Before I could ask what he was thinking, he shook his head as if forcing himself out of some faraway mental place.

  "I'll come back later,” he said, then with one last look at Jamie he was gone, leaving us alone.

  As alone as we could be with all the cameras watching. And for some reason being alone with Jamie today felt different. He was better. His mind was clear, and he obviously didn’t belong here anymore. He was whole again, mind and body, and he was wholly a man.

  Even when I’d been sixteen, I’d never thought of Jamie as just a boy I liked or just a guy I had a crush on. He’d always been a man, and I’d always responded to him like a woman responded to a man, as though he had some kind of magnetic power over me. I’d been hopelessly drawn to him from the first time I’d lain eyes on him.

  As I was now, as though I were the one trapped and not him.

  He stalked ove
r to the barrier, his strides long. He put his hands against the acrylic and the muscles of his arms and chest constricted as he applied a bit of pressure as though he were testing its strength.

  “I want out of here,” he said, but what I really thought he was saying was, “I want you.”

  “I want you out.” I stepped closer, still so frustratingly separated.

  “I think you should leave now.” His voice had a raw-edged quality. My head cocked, eyes narrowing slightly, wondering if I’d heard him correctly. He’d never asked me to leave before. Three minutes ago he’d been begging me to stay. I shook my head. I didn’t want to leave without him. Not this time.

  He looked over my shoulder at the camera as if weighing the wisdom of continuing. He leaned down so his face was on a level with mine. I peered straight into his eyes, rapt by the intensity of his stare under the slash of blue bisecting his face as if he wore a mask. He pitched his voice low.

  “I can smell it. I can smell your want in your sweat.” He took a deep shuddering breath and applied a little more pressure to the barrier. He was contemplating breaking it. I saw the struggle play out in his eyes. Why didn’t he do it? Something held him back. Something important enough that he was willing to stay caged when it was so obvious now he didn’t have to, that he didn’t want to. When it was so evident I didn’t want him to.

  “Erin.” He averted his eyes downward and swallowed. “Are you afraid of me?”

  “No,” I said, though I wasn’t sure that was the truth.

  “Maybe you should be.”

  “You would never hurt me,” I declared with conviction.

  “Do I look the same to you?”

  My brow raised, unsure where he was going with this particular question and even more unsure how I should answer. The simple answer was yes, but it was more complicated than that.

  “Mostly.”

  “Mostly I am. But in the Deep, I was an animal. I lived like one.”

  I put my finger to the glass in a mimic of covering his lips. Whoever was behind those cameras, whoever listened, didn’t need to hear him confess to being an animal. They would for sure never let him go.

  My eyes traced an invisible path from my fingertip to his mouth. I wanted to kiss that mouth and feel that mouth on my skin. “Jamie,” I begged, unable to stop myself.

  “I’m not as civilized as I look. Not anymore.”

  I wanted to laugh because civilized was never a word I would have used to describe Jamie, certainly not now. In some ways, he looked more beastly than he had the day at the fort. Or the first time I'd walked in here and found him trapped in a cage. His appeasing attitude had faded along with most of the marks the Deep had put on him. But what remained in those patches of skin were remnants of the beast he was. With his hair long he looked exotic and virile, so male.

  At sixteen, I sensed from the beginning he was too much male for me. And while I had grown up and circumstances had made me more of a woman than the girl I had been, circumstances had transformed Jamie as well. As I stared at him through the barrier, the steam of his breath on the glass, the planes of muscle of his chest and arms, I felt like that girl again under the weight of his warning—a warning that both scared and thrilled me. Mostly it thrilled me. My body thrummed with it and apparently Jamie, in his new state, could sense it.

  It wasn't until that very moment the reality of what Jamie being back, Jamie being alive, meant for me. He was my husband. We were married. He would expect things. As crazy as it sounded, considering our history, I wasn't sure I was ready. For commitment. For sex. Those were things the girl I had become over the last two years might not want.

  Jamie pushed away from the glass with one violent motion and turned his back on me, pacing the concrete floor. Watching him, I felt the pull of him in the depths of my soul and it hurt in a way I’d never experienced, in ways I didn’t understand. I loved him. I knew I did. But…

  When he came back to stand in front of me his hands splayed on the glass, arms spread wide, his posture slightly hunched so he could peer directly into my face.

  “I want you so badly.” His eyes focused on mine, piercing as his arms trembled. He could break out of here. It was taking every bit of his self-control not to. “I can’t do that. It’s not something they need to see. Do you understand?”

  I nodded and whispered, “I understand.” Though I wasn’t sure I did.

  “I need you to leave and I don’t think you should come back.”

  “Not come back? But Jamie…”

  “You won't need to,” he said, his eyes steady on mine.

  My throat went dry. I nodded mutely as I backpedaled toward the door, his eyes tracking my every step. I grappled for the handle without looking.

  “Hurry,” I whispered as the door opened behind me. I spun on my heels and ran into Noah coming in, the aroma of seafood wafting from the stack of Styrofoam containers he clutched in his hands.

  “Sorry,” I muttered then ran out the door but not before hearing Jamie demand, “Get me the hell out of here, Noah.”

  23

  Her name was Bertha—the tropical storm that had sprouted up overnight. Last time I'd checked, she was sitting about two hundred miles southwest of Gulf Shores, Alabama. We didn't keep the TV on much unless my dad wanted to watch a football or basketball game, and though the volume was muted, the local news channel was on. They were running wall-to-wall coverage tracking Bertha. The big story being how this particular storm seemed to have popped up out of nowhere. And just our luck, Bertha was heading northeast at a decent clip. She could very well be upgraded to a Category I hurricane before making landfall somewhere between Fort Walton Beach and Panama City.

  Mandatory evacuations had been ordered for everyone south of highway ninety-eight. We sat on the north side, and with sustained winds expected to be seventy-five miles an hour with gusts to one hundred, my dad and I decided to ride this one out. We were far enough inland the storm surge wasn’t a threat, and it was predicted to be minimal at best. Bertha was turning into a nuisance more than anything. Normally, I would have been gearing up for a hurricane party, stocking up on junk food and candles and enjoying being out of school.

  I was a long way from normal, and my dad was acting weirdly anxious, like he used to when his men were out on a mission. Something was up. I could see it on his face and in the tense set of his shoulders, something he didn’t want to tell me. And I’d received a cryptic message from Noah earlier in the day telling me to expect a visitor later.

  Get me the hell out of here, Noah.

  I'd heard Jamie's command plain as day yesterday when I'd run out of the Facility. Did that mean they had an actual plan for getting him out if it came to that?

  I leaped from the couch and filed down the hall where my dad had been camped out in his study for most of the morning. The door was cracked and I pushed it the rest of the way open.

  “What's going on?” I asked from the doorway.

  My dad sat behind his desk, the blinds on the windows drawn against the ever increasing wind. He looked up from his computer monitor, one eyebrow cocked.

  "Nothing," he said, an uncharacteristically distracted look on his face. The fingers of his left hand drummed on his leg. My dad never fidgeted.

  "I'm worried about Jamie," I said. "Is he safe at the Facility? Technically he should have been evacuated."

  "I'm betting Jamie can take care of himself," he said, sparing me a glance, the computer screen illuminating his face.

  "What aren't you telling me?" I asked and leaned my shoulder against the door frame.

  "I'm telling you nothing because I don't know anything." He exhaled slowly and added, "Plausible deniability."

  "So something is going on?" I pushed from the door and walked fully into the study.

  He kept resolutely quiet, neither confirming or denying anything, his silence the only confirmation I needed of my suspicions that Bertha was not purely an act of nature.

  "Okay, fair enough. But how?"
The answer came with my next thought. I knew Caris had certain abilities, as did her dad, Athen Kelley. I supposed what raged outside could be a product of those abilities.

  I sat down heavily in the chair across from him and surveyed the weather through the blinds on the window. The tops of the trees swirled in the wind. Rain had started to fall and dribbled down the glass. "Can they do that?"

  My gaze shifted from the window to my dad's overly bright eyes, the excitement shooting out of them like sparks. He merely shrugged. My mind was having a hard time wrapping around the idea of my best friend, or her father, conjuring a storm of this magnitude, and that my dad would seemingly go along with it. If this got out of control the results could be disastrous. Hurricanes, even small ones, were no joke.

  "I'm not sure I understand, though. Why does he need a storm?" I wasn't averse to the idea of Jamie breaking out of what was nothing more than a prison. I wanted him out. But why not just bust out? He was capable. He'd insinuated that enough times. He'd also felt the need to keep the extent of his supernatural strength a closely guarded secret.

  The lights flickered under a sudden gust of wind. My dad tilted his head, eyes cutting upward.

  "The power?" I speculated as I thought about all the cameras trained on Jamie, the constant surveillance.

  That's not something they need to see.

  "He'll have a window of time where the cameras will be down before the generators kick on. They're nowhere near state of the art and are poorly maintained. There's a chance they don't come on at all. I suspect he'll only need seconds," my dad said, and that sounded all well and good, but it still didn't explain the need for a storm.

  "A circumstance just as easily accomplished by cutting a few wires or hacking into the system. What could be worth the risk of a storm getting out of control?"

  He leaned back in his chair, his mouth tilting in a grin. "Next time I'm in need of an investigator I'll be sure to call you," he said. "Call it insurance. A subtle but viable show of force since Jamie let the cat out of the bag, so to speak."