by Nicole Fox
I hadn’t paid attention to the man sitting in the booth opposite mine. But as I was watching outside, the people passing by, I was startled when he leaned over my booth and started speaking to me.
“It’s always nice to see a woman these days with a healthy appetite.”
That voice.
I didn’t want to believe it, but when I looked the man in the face—it was Jameson! I initially started to panic, until I realized that he didn’t recognize me.
I laughed a little, playing it off. I didn’t need to be having a conversation with him.
“Yeah, well. It’s been a long day,” I said. I turned my attention back to the window and hoped that would give him the hint to leave me alone. But this was Jameson that I was dealing with, and I knew that he wasn’t a man that paid attention to subtlety—let alone to anything else, either.
“My name’s Jameson, by the way,” he persisted. “Jameson Mathers. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”
I shook my head.
“No, sorry.”
He still didn’t get the hint.
“Ha, that’s all right. Though it’s kind of nice to not be recognized. But.” He leaned over farther, in my space. He had his phone out. “Maybe this will jog your memory.”
He showed me a picture on his phone of him, from one of the interviews that he’d given about me. Anger rose up in me, but then I thought—what if I could use this against him somehow? Jameson loved to talk.
I pulled out my phone discreetly while pretending to be absorbed in his little news article. The phone wasn’t fancy, but it did have a recorder on it.
“Oh, yeah, I know you!” I said, as fake as possible to make it seem like I was star struck. “It’s insane about what happened with the music festival. All those people …”
“Yeah, it was a real tragedy.” I had to resist rolling my eyes as he laid it on real thick for me. “It’s hard to believe that such a thing happened, but it did, so that’s what we have to deal with, you know?”
“I just can’t believe that someone would, you know. Work with a bunch of bikers to set the place on fire,” I said. I leaned close to him. “Is it really true? All of it? There’s gotta be more to it, right?”
He ginned at me, and I knew that I had him hooked.
“Well.” He leaned closer to me. “If you really want to know something. I made most of it up,” he admitted. “At least about Ember. She didn’t set the place on fire, but yanno. She had all that equipment there; she was just as culpable. And then she ended up being seen with that biker.” He laughed. “Funny thing is, she actually tried to put the fires out.”
I gasped. “Why did you lie?”
“Lie? Baby, it wasn’t a lie. It was … Spinning a story. There you go. Spinning a story. A damn good story, if I do say so myself. Listen, look at it this way, they were gonna pin it on someone anyway; might as well put it on some two-bit piece that meant little. Hell, I didn’t even have to really lie when it came to the drugs. It was one of the Sons who dealt the drugs that were at the festival to begin with. Leech? Something like that. It was perfect. It’s not like I was gonna go down for that. Besides. I’m Jameson Mathers. I can do what I want to do.”
I had that all on tape. Every little incriminating lie that Jameson told, laid out there for the world to see. I couldn’t control the grin that was on my face, and I laughed a little.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, giving a laugh of his own, though it was unsure. Like he wasn’t in on the joke.
My hand came up and I slid my wig off, revealing to him who I was.
“I just got that all on tape, you bastard.”
Jameson’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped.
“E-Ember … You—!”
“Me,” I said triumphantly. I slid my phone into my purse and stood up, not intending to stick around now that he knew that he had been caught and by whom he had been caught. “You slick bastard, you thought that you were going to get away with lying about me like that? And the drugs? You dumb asshole, I can’t wait to see you fry.”
I went to head for the door. I felt bad because I wouldn’t be sticking around to eat, but I had the evidence that I needed to get my freedom back, and I wasn’t going to let something like hunger get the better of me. Before I could get to the door, Jameson was on me. He grabbed me back, pressing me to the wall.
“Give me the phone, Ember,” he hissed. “Now. And then we can just let this go and you can go back to your biker boys and get out of my hair. You hear me?”
I sneered at him. “Get your hands off me. I’m not giving you shit, and if you think for a second that I’m going to let you get away with trying to ruin my life, you’re dumber than you look.” I jerked my arm away from him, and shoved him away from me.
“You bitch!”
He grabbed at me again, but we were causing a commotion and this time, we drew some real attention.
A cop’s attention, for that matter.
He walked over while Jameson was still grappling with me, trying to make me concede.
“Sir, I’m going to ask you to get your hands off this woman.”
Perfect!
Before I could say anything, Jameson spoke up.
“Don’t you recognize her, officer? It’s Ember Amor, that woman that was responsible for the music festival fires!” He pointed at me. “I was trying to stop her from getting away again—”
“Bullshit. You were trying to stop me from telling the world the truth about you—”
“Shut the fuck up, you criminal slut—”
“Enough.”
The cop spoke, and stepped between us. He looked like a good man; he didn’t seem like he was going to hurt me. He looked down at me, and I knew in an instant that he recognized me.
“We’ve been looking for you for a long time, Ember,” he said.
I swallowed.
“Officer, I have proof that what he told you guys isn’t true,” I said. “I can prove it. Please, let me prove this to you. You have to understand the situation.”
As I spoke, he took out his walkie talkie.
“Requesting back up at the 57 th diner. I have a suspect in front of me and a rather interesting situation. Over.” He looked at me. “What’s this evidence?”
“Oh, you can’t be seriously thinking of listening to this dumb broad—”
“I asked the lady what the evidence she had was, Sir. I would suggest you calm down unless you want me to clock you for the assault that I just witness.”
That shut Jameson up.
I pulled my phone out of my purse, and played the recording for the officer. His brow raised and he looked between Jameson and me.
“Well. This is an interesting development. I’m going to ask the two of you to come in.”
“What? Are you fucking serious? That wasn’t serious talk. All that was was bragging. I was trying to pick the girl up before I realized who she was—”
The officer leveled a look at Jameson and slid his hand to his gun.
“Do you want to make this worse for yourself, son?”
An hour later, I was down at the precinct, giving a statement. I hadn’t been arrested. They were listening to my story.
For the first time, someone was listening to me.
I spoke to a cop, who asked me to detail everything from the start of my employment with Jameson, to the night of the fire, and everything that I had been up until this point. I didn’t want to leave anything out, but I did gloss over a few things—they didn’t need to know about my sex life, for one thing, and they certainly weren’t going to know that I was carrying a fake ID around with me. I was trying to avoid jail, not go to it in any capacity.
Jameson was somewhere else. He hadn’t been happy, and had lawyered up quick. I wanted the process over and done with as soon as possible, and I didn’t have anything to hide in hiding behind a lawyer—I also wasn’t about to have any of these cops try to swindle me into saying I had done something that I hadn’t. I hoped that it was
the last time that I would see him, and I hoped to hell that he got every bit of that he deserved.
In the end, I was let go, and told to stay in the area for further questioning.
The first person that I called was my mother.
The next person that I called was Boss.
I had gotten his number before Wheeler had dropped me off at my mother’s, just in case.
“Boss.”
“Hey, Ember. Is everything all right?”
“I need … a favor.”
Chapter Twenty Wheeler
I raced all the way back to San Diego. My mind raced right along with me.
Boss had said there was some shit going down. He hadn’t elaborated. Was there something wrong with Ember? Was she hurt? Had someone gotten to her before I could set things right?
Boss had been so vague.
Damn it. I should have asked him for answers.
I pulled up to the San Diego clubhouse with my bike roaring. I barely got off it before Boss was coming out. He looked a little surprised. His hands were up and he stopped me before I could storm into the clubhouse.
“Whoa, whoa. You’re coming in like a bat out of hell.”
“Where is she? Is she okay? Is the baby—?”
“Whoa, Wheeler. Calm the hell down. Come on.”
I followed Boss back to his office. I looked around for any sign of Ember, sure that she was going to be there in some capacity, but she wasn’t. My heart raced. Maybe she was fine and with her mother and I was worrying for nothing.
Ember wasn’t in the office either, and that was disappointing, but I chalked it up to the fact that I was missing her something fierce.
I sat down across from Boss. He finally took his spot.
“They took Jameson in,” he started. “They’re launching an investigation, but they’re not holding Ember.”
My mind reeled.
“What? How?”
“Apparently, Ember managed to get Jameson on tape, confessing to the fact that he lied about her, and that the drugs from the festival did come from the Sons—but a specific Son.”
Realization dawned.
“Leech.”
“Yeah. Apparently not only was he skimming, but he was dealing a little on the side too. So far, it seems they’re coming to the conclusion that the fire was Leech’s doing in retaliation over drug dealing gone bad with Jameson and a few other people Jameson has apparently thrown under the bus.”
So it was over. But that didn’t stop the feeling …
“Okay. So … things are resolving. They’re not even going to implicate the whole chapter of the Sons from Big Sur?”
“At this point? No. Jameson doesn’t have a leg to stand on in trying to finger anyone else in this. He screwed himself when he lied about everything.”
“And Ember?”
He sighed.
“That’s why I called you. While the Big Sur won’t suffer too bad for this … it’ll still suffer. There’s going to be police involvement. They’re going to be asking questions. You’re going to need to be there in order to handle that.”
I still wasn’t following.
“Ember told me about the baby. Everything,” he went on. “And she wanted me to tell you that she’s happy and thankful for what you’ve done for her—now do for yourself what you need to do. When you’re done, when the dust settles? She’ll be waiting for you.”
My mind continued to reel. So … she wasn’t leaving me. Not permanently.
But she wasn’t going to be around. Not while all of this was getting itself situated and leveled out.
I ran my hand through my hair. I wanted to be angry at her for making that choice for me. This was something that we should have done together. Something that should have … happened with the both of us making it happen.
I stood up and paced.
“Why didn’t she call me and tell me this herself?” I demanded. “Why didn’t she let me know?”
“Because she knew like everything else you would try to juggle her and her problems as well as your own when you should be focusing on the chapter and getting it set right—”
“But she’s—”
“Pregnant with your child and willing to stick with you even after everything that’s happened. She’s willing to give you the space and time to do that without any additional issues plaguing you. You understand? You get it?”
Boss leveled a look at me and I had to stop my pacing under the weight of that stare. I … had to think long and hard on it. I knew that Ember was right and so was Boss.
I would have tried to make it work even when the load was too much.
“I should be able to handle it all,” I told him. “I love her. It’s not like I would mind—”
“It’s not about whether or not you would mind, Wheeler,” he told me. “It’s more about whether or not you would actually pay attention to your limits.” He waved me off. “You got yourself a girl that’s willing to put the breaks on things and let you do your thing and wait for you because she cares about you enough to know that you need to get yourself in order before you come back to her. and that’s okay. You need to be stable for that baby that the two of you are about to bring into the world.”
I left the San Diego clubhouse that day feeling … no worse for wear, but wholly out of place.
I missed Ember.
I wanted her.
I needed to get my club back in order so I could have our life together in order, too.
Ten Months Later
I was making trips back and forth between the Big Sur clubhouse and Angela’s house. Ember was staying with her mother, and through her mother I was keeping tabs on Ember without actually being there.
It was hard. I wanted to see her every waking moment of my life, but sometimes a man had to do what he didn’t want to do in order to eventually get the things that he wanted.
That time had come.
I was going to see Ember and our child for the first time in months.
I had kept my distance from Ember out of respect for her wishes. I didn’t want her to think that I didn’t take them seriously, but I also wanted some physical, in-person reassurance from someone that things were going well for Ember. I had had to miss the birth of our child—Satan, unfortunately, had passed away that week, solidifying my place as club president—and with everything from the issues with Jameson, the police up our asses over Leech, and cracking down on the boys to get clean and stay clean and out of trouble, it kept having to be put off.
I knew that Ember understood. That wasn’t the issue. It was that I had been gone so long, with only a few phone calls here and there and meeting with her mother when she was out.
This was going to be a surprise.
I pulled up to the trailer the Amor family lived in. One day, I told myself, I was going to get them into a proper home. Maybe see if they would be willing to move closer and I could put them up somewhere nice. Somewhere Ember’s mother could feel happy in and the baby could visit its grandmother without much of a fuss.
Oh, yeah. I wanted to keep it a surprise—I had no idea the gender of the little tyke. I had made Angela swear not to tell me and had her relay the message to Ember.
I was so ready to find out.
The lights in the trailer were off. it was late—I had had to do a little last-minute bookkeeping that had kept me later than I expected. But Angela had given me a key to the trailer so that I could come and go as I pleased when everything got itself settled. I let myself in, not wanting to make too much noise in the process.
The inside was still.
I knew where the baby’s room was. Angela had given it one of its own and I loved the fact that there was that attention that was given. I crept back and paused at Ember’s room. She was sleeping as I peeked into the room, snuggled into the blankets and the pillows tightly.
I smiled. She still looked every bit of the angel that she was, and I was so goddamn lucky that I had gotten a woman like her. A woman that hadn
’t strayed or questioned even as the time wore on and there was separation.
Across the hall from Ember’s room was the baby’s. I was distracted in gazing in on Ember when I heard cries coming from it.
Oh. That wouldn’t do.
I nudged the door to the nursery open. It was painted in pale yellows and pinks and blues with clouds along the walls. It was small, with only one bookshelf and a rocking chair aside from the crib that took up most of the space, and was the source of the wailing that was coming from it.