Being Amber (22 page)

He served himself spaghetti and salad and then waited, realizing something was wrong with her. He studied her during the silence between them. She was in her fifties, and wore the small telltale signs of her age well. But then, what boy didn’t think his mother was pretty? But she was also nervous, fidgeting a lot and not looking directly at him.

“What’s wrong?” he prompted again in a softer tone, touching her forearm.

She looked at him. Her brown eyes were serious. “Well, now that I have you here, I don’t know where to start. I’m feeling kind of…hesitant. I guess I might as well jump in.” She paused. “Gwen told me you have feelings for Jaci, and she told me why you’re not acting on them.”

Xander was silent. He felt his expression turn stony, unreadable as his mother gauged his response. “Mom, I–”

His mom raised her hand. “No, let me get this out.” She took a deep breath and went on with a quavering voice. “I’m so sorry, Xander. I thought I did a good job of shielding you from our pain when your father was sick.” Tears welled in her eyes.

“It’s okay, Mom. We don’t have to talk about this.”

“Yes, we do. This is important to me.” She set down her fork and pushed her plate away. “I’m sorry that your point of view of Dad’s illness and our marriage was so negative.” Her eyes, swimming in tears, locked on his. “Mostly because it wasn’t. At least not all of it.

“Xander, I loved your father more than anything. The years we spent together were the absolute best in my life, even when he was sick. We spent so much time together toward the end,” she said wistfully. “We grew about as close to each other as two people can get.”

She wasn’t looking at him now. Her eyes focused on a long gone past. “Some of the best times of our marriage were when he was sick. We laid together in bed and enjoyed a lifetime’s worth of intimacy. And we appreciated every second of it. We reminisced about all the wonderful times we shared. We talked about our dreams for you. Your father…” she choked back a sob and swallowed hard, “would have been so proud of the man you’ve become. I’m proud of the man you’ve become.”

She looked directly at him and locked her stern gaze with his. “But it’s an insult to him, to us, to our parenting, and our marriage that you somehow took from your childhood that your dad was a burden to me, or that our marriage wasn’t good because he got sick. That you couldn’t fall in love, couldn’t get married because you’ll get sick.

A sour squeeze attacked his stomach, when he saw his mother’s anguish. The realization that he was hurting her stabbed at his conscience as he tried to reason out a solution that would make her feel better.

She grabbed his wrist, capturing his full attention again. She met his gaze with determination. “You can still have a wonderful marriage, the love affair of a lifetime, even if it ends sooner than you’d like.” She covered her face with her hands until Xander closed in on her and knelt next to her chair wrapping his arms around her and comforting her while she sobbed quietly in to his shirt. Finally, wiping her eyes, she looked up at him. Their faces were inches apart. “I have failed you so badly if you’ve changed your life, avoided love because of your father and I. Don’t you see that love was the only thing we had in our life that actually made it worth living? That, and you.” She sighed and sat back in her chair. Her tears remained a constant stream rolling down her face. She looked down at the uneaten food as if she wasn’t sure how it had gotten there. Xander covered her hand with his. She looked at him and continued.

“I miss him so much. But I wouldn’t have changed it for anything. The only thing that keeps me going some days is the thought of you building your life, finding a love like what we had. It was rare and wonderful. I want you to know what it feels like.

“Please, please don’t make me carry the responsibility, the guilt that you’re alone because of your father and me. I don’t think I could shoulder it for the rest of my days.”

Xander looked down at his own uneaten plate of food and pushed it away.

“Mom, it’s the right thing to do.”

“No it isn’t,” she shouted. “I am so sorry that you inherited the same genetic markers as your dad. But I am more sorry that you came away from your childhood thinking you would be a burden to the woman who loves you. Your father was never a burden to me.” His mother thumped the solid wood table with the side of her fist. “Never. Can’t you see that love is the only thing in Amber that we have that’s ours, purely ours, untainted by the Gov. Don’t let them have that much control over how you live your life.

“Maybe the love of your lifetime is Jaci, or maybe it’s someone else. But you have to find her, Xander. Find her and don’t ever let her go. Promise me. Promise me, please.”

Xander looked away from her and digested what she’d said. Her perspective was radically different from his, and he’d never considered the affect his decision would have on his mother. God, this was hurting her, too.

She squeezed his arm. “Promise me, please.”

He stood and took his mother into his arms. “I promise, Mom. I promise.” He pulled her to him, and held her while she wept in his arms.

Chapter 15

After a full day’s work, Jaci spent an eternity in the bathtub, soaking away her delicious aches. When she finally surfaced from her liquid heaven, she was wrinkled and relaxed.

Half-dressed, she ducked out of the bathroom to answer the knock the door. She expected to find Caroline and was surprised to see Emily instead.

“Hey,” Jaci said as she backed up to let Emily in.

“Hey, girl. You’ve been making yourself scarce these days.” She gave Jaci a hug. “Okay, give me the scoop. I know you haven’t been home, but Rock is cheap when it comes to giving info, so spill.” Emily flashed a beautifully wicked expression of anticipation. The look revealed that Rock already shut Emily down and she was being defiant by not dropping the subject all together. Little did Emily know that Rock probably heard everything she’d said because of the bug in the room.

“Come on into the bathroom. I have to finish getting ready. I have plans with Caroline tonight.”

Emily made an ick face at the sound of Caroline’s name and followed her into the bathroom. She sat on the toilet and watched Jaci finish getting ready.

“So, tell me,” she whined.

Jaci followed Xander’s directions and didn’t mention the murderer who allegedly stalked her and boiled the situation down to the here and now. “I had to get away for a while. Clear my head.” Jaci paused. “I think I’m in love with Xander.”

“Oh I knew it. I knew it,” Emily squealed. A smile exploded over her face.

Jaci interrupted Emily before she said anything more. “He’s made it clear he’s not interested in a romantic relationship. Said he’d rather be my friend and take care of me until I don’t need him anymore.”

“Jaci, he loves you, too” Emily responded with pure confidence.

Jaci turned to look at Emily and shook her head. “He didn’t come right out and say it, but told me he didn’t, in a nice way, but he let me know I’m firmly in friend status.”

“He may say that he doesn’t love you, but that’s a load of crap. I saw him while you were gone. He was miserable, desperate almost.” She paused, scrunched her forehead and bit her bottom lip. “I’ve known him a long time and have seen him around a lot of women. They seem to always float around the periphery of his awareness, like they are barely there for him. But with you, it’s different. His gaze follows you. He’s totally aware of you, every movement, every subtlety. He’s never been like that with anybody else. And I’ve never seen him with a girlfriend. I haven’t even seen him have a conversation with another woman, except for Diana. And, she was taken–unavailable.

“Oh, he’s totally fallen for you. Trust me. The question is, why is he fighting it?”

Jaci would have taken this new insight to heart if she hadn’t known that it was his job to watch her. As it was, nothing Emily said changed anything.

There was another knock at the door. “Will you get that while I finish in here?” Jaci asked, “It’s probably Caroline.” She wagged her finger at Emily. “Be nice.”

“Sure,” Emily said with her mischievous eyes twinkling as she left to get the door. “It’s Caroline,” she called a few moments later.

“Okay.” Jaci heard the two women talking for a moment. Then, silence. She smiled at herself in the mirror. Those two had nothing to say to one another.

She stepped out of the bathroom and gasped when she found Emily lying on the floor with a syringe protruding from her neck. Caroline reentered the room from the kitchen with a knife in her hand.

“Oh my God! What are you doing?”

Caroline turned. “Have a seat, Jaci.” She motioned toward the bed.

Stunned, Jaci didn’t move. She stood looking back and forth between Emily’s unconscious body and Caroline. Her wheels turned until everything clicked into place.

“Have a seat,” she barked. Her eyes were wide and Jaci detected the adrenaline pumping through her.

Jaci sat on the edge of the bed. Her pulse throbbed at the base of her throat as she watched Caroline lean over Emily’s body and retrieve the syringe. “This was meant for you,” she said, holding it up before putting it in the front pocket of her jeans.

Then, without a moment’s hesitation, Caroline plunged the knife she carried into Emily’s chest.

Jaci screamed and jumped up from the bed to create some distance between her and Caroline. “It’s you,” she accused. “You’re killing the fallows.”

Caroline pulled a switchblade from the same pocket she’d put the syringe into and laughed. “No, Jaci. This is an obvious case of another fallow going crazy, but this time, killing someone else before killing herself. Now, come on. I’ve got a surprise for you.” Caroline moved toward Jaci stepping over Emily’s body and the broadening blood pool on the floor. “This is how it’s going to work. We’re going to leave the apartment and go for a ride.”

Caroline’s fingers gripped Jaci’s wrist like the talons of a falcon sinking into its prey. She dragged Jaci out of the apartment into the hallway, turning the opposite direction from the elevator. They were going toward the stairs and there was nobody standing between them and that door. Jaci tried to wrench her wrist from the woman’s crushing grip and yell for help toward the group of people standing at the other end of the hall. Caroline jerked Jaci, digging her fingers painfully into the flesh of her wrist and pulled her through the stairwell doorway.

There were so many doors open, so many people at the other end of the hall. Somebody must have heard her, noticed that she was being dragged away. But, there were no sounds of people following as they descended the cool, echoing stairwell.

They went through the emergency exit at the bottom of the stairs and Caroline pushed Jaci into the back of a waiting car. The door slammed shut behind her. Immediately, Jaci searched for a way out. There wasn’t one. The car was a police car on the inside complete with metal screen dividing the front seat from the back.

Caroline got into the passenger seat in the front. “Drive,” she said to the man behind the wheel.

“Caroline,” Jaci said. “We have to go back. We have to help Emily. If we go back now, everything else can be worked out.”

“I don’t want to help Emily and everything is working out fine. Emily being in the way tonight was an added bonus for me. She was getting to be a problem. She had a vague sense about me that would have grown and become a pain in my ass. I’m glad you killed her.” Caroline laughed.

Jaci was silent, thinking. How had she gotten a hold of this car? There were no privately owned cars in Amber. “Whose car is this?”

“You haven’t figured it out yet, Jaci? Really? Your IQ scores were so high. It must be true what they say, book smarts don’t mean anything if you don’t have common sense. It’s the Gov’s car, sweetie,” she said in a sickly sweet tone, obviously mocking the pet name that Xander used more and more often. “And so as not to hurt that pretty brain of yours, yes, it’s the Gov that wants you dead. Not me.”

“Why? I haven’t said or done anything wrong.”

“Don’t take it personally. They’re cleaning up future liability risks. You know, information leaks. That’s my best guess, anyways. But I have to admit, when they recruited me for this job, I didn’t ask why. I did what I was told so I wouldn’t end up like you.”

The car approached the Sapphire border crossing. But, instead of stopping for proper clearance to enter the Sapphire Zone, the car was waved through.

Jaci’s jaw dropped.

“Where are you taking me?”

“To your parent’s house. It’s the perfect place to end this, no rush, no worries about Xander or anybody else showing up.