She stood up confidently and stepped out from behind her desk and over to the office door. When she opened it, she caught the eye of her receptionist as she raised her voice for her to hear, “Dr. Gascon was just leaving, please be sure to validate his parking.”
Seeing he had no other choice than to leave or make a scene, Dr. Gascon reluctantly conceded the win to his former protégé. He slowly rose from the chair, scanning her desk for patient’s names on her desk files as he did so before he turned and faced Jasmine. As he came up beside her, he spoke in a tone only she could hear, “I’m certain we’ll be seeing one another again soon. I look forward to it. Good day.”
Jasmine made no reply other than raising one eyebrow slightly. Once he stepped across the threshold, she calmly shut the door and leaned her body against the inside. Her hands began shaking as the adrenaline finally began to show its symptoms. She had been able to fight her flight instinct and stand her ground.
Returning her attention to work again was going to be impossible, so she did not even attempt it. Pushing herself away from the door, she moved over to the chair Dr. Gascon had occupied. She knelt in front of it, turning it over to see the underside. Just as she suspected, she discovered a small electronic listening device.
Plucking it off of the underside of the chair, Jasmine examined it carefully. She knew Dr. Gascon had used the visit as a means to both intimidate her as well as to plant this device. Now she had to decide what she was going to do with it. If she destroyed it, then she would have to be on her guard everywhere, not knowing where the next one would be placed. If she let it remain, she would have to guard her every word within the private sanctum of her office.
This newest stunt proved Dr. Gascon was capable of anything. She had to play her cards right, or she would discover how far Dr. Gascon wanted to take this new game. Jasmine decided she would play along for now.
After placing the bug in her desk drawer, grabbing her coat, purse, and Neal’s patient file, she left her office. She stopped at the receptionist desk and announced she would be heading home for the evening. Once her too-loud announcement was made, she leaned closer to the receptionist and whispered, “Dr. Gascon bugged my office. Make sure you mind your words until I can figure out what I should do with it. I need to see if I can catch him at his own game. Until then, we need to be on guard.”
The receptionist’s eyes grew wider with each sentence. She had never been involved in anything as scary or as exciting as this. “Should I be scared?” she asked in a whisper.
“I’ll let you know if it gets to that stage.” Jasmine patted her shoulder and smiled as reassuringly as she could muster. She was feeling pretty vulnerable, but she could not let her staff know, or they would make mistakes. “I’m going to make some phone calls to see what our options are. I know I don’t have to tell you this, but we need to keep this situation between the two of us.”
“Absolutely,” she whispered slightly louder than before. She was afraid to say much of anything, not knowing how much could be overheard. Looking back to the doctor’s office, she shuddered slightly.
Seeing her look, Jasmine said, “I put it in my desk drawer. I think if you keep my office door shut, we’ll be okay. As I said before, just be mindful of your volume. Okay? I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to leave work early today, say four o’clock?”
“Thank you,” she replied in a rush of gratitude.
“Goodnight,” Jasmine called over her shoulder as she saw the elevator door opening. She quickened her pace to enter the car which only had a couple of other people inside. As the door closed, she dug in her purse for her cell phone.
She opened the phone and tapped out a memorized sequence of numbers and held it to her ear. With a sigh of exasperation, she heard the answering machine pick up the call. Luckily, the other passengers exited the elevator just as it was time for her to speak. “Hey, this is Jasmine. Dr. Gascon just bugged my office after a surprise visit. Please let me know if you have any contacts to assist or any ideas for moving forward. Thanks. Talk to you soon.” She hung up and whispered one more word to herself, “Hopefully.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
JENA AND JUILA thanked their grandfather for bringing them home early. They had planned on staying with their grandparents for the duration of the winter break, but they had gotten homesick and ended up coming home just over halfway through the break. With their bags sitting on the floor of the telepod, they both used the elemy to move them upstairs to their rooms so they would not have to lug them through the house.
They stepped off of the telepod and waved goodbye until the telepod blinked out of existence in the garage. Not even a breeze stirred from its departure, the only evidence of a disturbance was the slight static feeling in the air. The girls turned around and went into the house.
“Mom, we’re home!” Juila called out as they entered the kitchen. She looked over to her left and noticed the remote to their mother’s telepod was not in its usual hanging spot. “Do you think Mom went to Tuala? Her telepod remote is gone.”
“I don’t know. She never said she had any plans on going, but you never know what might have come up.”
The girls split up to search the house. Jena took the upstairs while Juila remained on the main floor. They kept in constant contact with one another through their mental link. With every room searched, they reunited in the living room. “We should check the patil to see if any messages came in. There might be a clue there,” Jena suggested.
“Good idea!”
They trooped into the office and uncovered the patil. Juila sat at the desk chair and turned on the computer. She tapped the message icon and saw the message from Rasa to their father asking for Val to come and visit Gevena. “I guess she could have taken Val to Manzanit,” Juila offered, still not convinced. She checked several other places on the patil and did not discover any other clues.
“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. I think I’m going to head upstairs and take a bath,” Juila announced as she shut off the patil and stored it back in its hidden compartment in the wall. She pushed away from the desk, and they left the room together.
Jena was slightly disappointed to be alone at home. The reason they had come home early was so they could spend time with the parents they had only known existed for the past five months. Thinking about how short of a time it had been seemed almost unreal since so much had happened since arriving on Earth. They had been enrolled in school, had their sixteenth birthdays, gone to homecoming, been on dates, received samaras of their own, and they each had experienced life-threatening adventures which ended in two other people getting samaras as well.
Thinking about dating made her wonder what Luke had been up to since winter break had begun. They had ended their relationship on a weird note when Willian had unexpectedly shown up at their school. Not only had Luke been hurt to find out Jena was in a committed relationship, but he had also been punched by Willian when he discovered them kissing in the hall. She would totally understand if Luke told her he was never going to be interested in her again. After everything, she certainly would not blame him.
She watched her sister head upstairs, and she shielded her thoughts to keep them private. It was nice having a sister who was close, but sometimes she needed to be alone in her own head. Jena walked over to the phone and picked up the receiver. She contemplated whether or not she should call Luke when she saw the message light blinking on the answering machine.
Without hesitation, she pressed the play button and listened to Jasmine’s urgent message for her parents. She was unsure of who the woman might be, but the tone of her voice made it seem as though there might be a problem on the horizon. Jena transcribed the message on the pad of paper on the desk just in case something happened to the original message. When one of her parents got home, she would be sure to let them know about it.
Realizing she had been stalling in making her own phone call, her fingers hesitated as they poised over the number pad. What if
Luke told her to drop dead? How would she be able to face him in school the next week? What if he were waiting for her phone call and she never called him? This last question decided her action, and she rapidly dialed his number from memory.
She put the phone up to her ear with her thumb resting on the end button just in case he became angry with her call. Jena listened as the third ring sounded in her ear. Her heart thumped loudly in her chest, and she began pacing across the kitchen.
“Hello?” a male voice answered.
“Luke? This is Jena.”
“Oh, hi, Jena. I thought you were going to be at your grandparents’ house until school started back. Are you home?”
“Yes, we decided to come home early to surprise our parents. I guess the surprise was really on us since nobody’s home.”
“I could come over and keep you company if you’d like?”
“I…I’d like it a lot,” Jena stammered stupidly. She could feel her face getting warm as she blushed at his offer. This was more than she had hoped for with her phone call.
“Are you okay?”
“I just didn’t know if you still wanted to talk to me after…you know.”
“It’s okay, Jena. Sofia told me everything.”
“She what?” Jena’s mind raced with ideas of what Sofia would have told him. She knew everything about their family not being from Earth. Luke was the only person in their group of friends who did not know, until now, she thought angrily. Sofia had no right to tell him anything about their family. Sofia should know it would put them all in danger if people found out they were aliens.
“You sound angry. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she covered. “When do you think you’ll be here?”
“I can be there in ten minutes if you want. Otherwise, let me know what time you want me to be there.”
“Ten minutes will be fine.”
“Okay. See you in a few!” Luke hung up the phone.
Jena’s thumb pressed on the end button and then she immediately dialed Sofia’s number. She was going to give the girl a piece of her mind and then she thought she might give her a mind swipe to keep her from blabbing to anybody else about their family secrets. Too angry to hold the phone, she pushed the speaker button and slammed the receiver down on the island. She stood with both hands on the countertop and listened to it ring.
Sofia answered in a cheerful tone.
“How dare you tell Luke about us?!” Jena accused by way of a greeting.
“Jena? Is that you?”
“Were you expecting someone else? Are you going to answer my question?”
“Jena, why are you so angry? What do you think I did?”
“Luke told me you told him everything! How could you tell him? Do you realize we’re probably going to have to leave Earth because of what he now knows? You’ve ruined everything for my whole family because you just had to tell someone our secret!”
“Jena, I think you have the wrong idea. All I told Luke was he was probably going to have a chance at getting back together with you after…” Sofia stopped talking immediately. She had no idea if Jena knew what had happened between Willian and Valentina. It certainly was not her place to be the one to tell her.
“Oh, don’t stop there, Sofia! What else do you want to share with me? After all, this is my life you’re so blithely discussing with other people.”
“I’m sorry, Jena. I think you should probably be talking with Willian instead of me.”
“Willian? What does he have to do with this? He and I are through so I don’t know why I’d have to talk to him.”
“You and Willian broke up? Really? That’s great…I mean…are you okay with it Jena?”
“Yes. It was my idea. Besides I can’t compete with what he and Val have together. Out with it, Sofia! What else did you tell Luke?”
“You know about Val and Willian kissing? How did you find out?”
“About them kissing?” Jena was getting more confused by the minute. She had no idea how Sofia would have known about the kiss she had witnessed in Roanoke. “I saw them kissing myself which was when I told him we were through.”
“Oh, it must have been a different kiss then. The one I was talking about was in Val’s bedroom when Jon punched him in the gut for making out with her.”
Jena smirked at the idea and knew exactly how Jon must have felt. Her reaction had been a little more volatile, deadly really, but she had been stopped before she had been able to unleash her anger. She felt slightly mollified knowing Jon had avenged her honor with Willian. “I didn’t know about that part.” She was starting to get the idea there was something else going on, and she relented by asking, “Why don’t you tell me what you told Luke? You’ll have to hurry because he’s going to be here in a couple of minutes.”
“Luke’s coming over to see you? When did you get home?”
“Start talking Sofia!”
“Okay, fine! I told him about what happened with Val, Willian, and Jon. I also suggested he might want to be there for you when you got home because you were probably going to be single soon. He was really angry at Willian for betraying you. He even offered to help Jon beat him up for cheating on you. It was really romantic!”
“Is that it?”
“Yes. Why? Oh, you thought I’d told him about your family secret? Jena! I would never tell a soul about where you all come from. I promised you and Juila your secret was safe with me, and you doubted me?”
“Well, what was I supposed to think when Luke told me you told him everything? Of course, I’d think you told him everything.”
“No, never! I’d never betray your trust!”
“I’m sorry, Sofia. I should have known you wouldn’t. It’s just my life has turned upside down, and I don’t know what to expect with anything anymore.”
“I’m sorry, Jena. I wish I could be there with you right now.” She paused for only a heartbeat before she asked, “Tell me how you ended it with Willian? You said you saw him kissing Val. Where were they? How did you find out? I want details!”
“Oh, I gotta go, Luke just pulled up to the front. I’ll call you later. Bye!” Jena promptly hung up before Sofia could ask any more questions. She put the phone back on the charger as she raced to get to the door before he knocked. At some point, Juila would be done with her bath and come down to discover Luke was here, but she hoped she would have some private time before being interrupted.
Breathless from her sprint, she pulled the door open in a rush just as Luke was raising his hand to knock. She grinned foolishly at him and stepped to the side to give him room to enter. “Thank you for coming over.”
“I’m glad to see you’re so eager for me to be here,” he teased.
“Oh, that…I didn’t want Juila to know you were here. She’s upstairs.” She tipped her head up toward the staircase to indicate her direction. Again, she felt stupid since it was obvious where the upstairs was, and he could figure it out without her gesture. “Let’s go out back so we can talk.”
“Okay,” Luke agreed and barely managed to keep himself from smiling at how silly Jena was acting. He assumed it was her way of dealing with her difficult situation with her former boyfriend. At least he hoped Willian was out of the picture, Jena had not come out and said they were over yet. Now it was his turn to be nervous about what Jena might have to tell him.
The temperature had cooled to the mid-seventies, and there was a light breeze as they sat in the patio chairs next to the pool. Both of them waited for the other to begin talking and the silence drew out until they were uncomfortable.
“I thought you weren’t coming home until school started again…”
“I’m glad you wanted to come over…” they both talked at once and then burst out laughing. “You first,” Jena offered.
“It was nothing. I just remembered you said you wanted to surprise your parents by coming home early.” He sighed as he tried to figure out how to ask what he really wanted to know about. Deciding to just g
et it over with he blurted, “I hope you’re not angry about Sofia talking with me. But I have to ask, are you going to get back together with Willian?”
“No. We are definitely through.”
“What a bastard! Just give me the word, and I’ll break his lying, cheating face for you!”
“No, Luke, I don’t want that either. I’m glad Willian has found someone who makes him happy. He was never happy when we were together. I guess he was one of the reason’s we came here to live with our parents.”
“What? I’m confused. Haven’t you always lived with your parents?”
Wishing she could take back what she had said, Jena frantically tried to come up with an answer to his question. Going back to the lie they originally used when enrolling in school, she said, “No. We were in boarding school in South Africa. Willian was getting jealous and mean with me all of the time, and I needed to get some distance between us. I never believed he would follow me here.” Even as she finished talking, she hated herself for having to lie to Luke. He deserved the truth, but his safety depended on him remaining ignorant of their true heritage.
“You must be furious with Val, too.”
“No, I’m not angry with either of them. Luke, I promise you I am genuinely happy for both of them. I want you to promise you won’t say or do anything to hurt either of their feelings because of what happened between Willian and me. It won’t do any good, and it will cause other problems in our group. I want us all to be friends again. Please promise me, Luke.”
“I don’t understand how you can be so casual about it, but if you’re sure you’re okay, then I’ll leave it alone. But if you ever change your mind, let me know!” He laughed after he said it, but his eyes held hers in a serious expression so she would know he meant every word he said.
“It won’t be necessary, but thank you anyway.” She looked away from Luke’s intense stare and wondered what she should do since the hard conversation was over.
“So you want me to be friends with Willian?”
Ascension Vision- The Levels of Ascension Box Set Page 72