Being Amber

by Sylvia Ryan

  The thought shot ice-cold fingers of dread down Xander’s spine. Jaci thought she was truly alone. Fear began to penetrate, overtaking everything else. If she was despondent enough, would she attempt to kill herself again?

  He groaned at the thought.

  * * * *

  Jaci slipped off her high-heeled sandals and started walking. Even in the dark, the Amber Zone outside of Circle City was urban ugly. Plain, square buildings that housed manufacturing and processing plants dotted each side of the street. It was picture perfect urban sprawl, depressing and dirty. It was what she thought all of the Amber Zone looked like before she arrived there.

  Tonight was a massacre. Jaci’s heart physically ached. Her feelings for Xander were not only not returned, they would never be returned. He’d already chosen someone else to love, probably way before she’d ever even walked into the Amber Zone. She choked down a sob, refusing to cry. The true reality of the situation was that Xander wasn’t even her friend. She was a work assignment to him. He was under cover, acting out a roll to fulfill his job duties.

  She thought he cared about her.

  She’d been kidding herself, maybe because the lie was so much kinder than the truth. The truth, that she meant nothing to anybody and was completely alone in a strange place, unanchored her soul and set it adrift. She was lost, like a cork bobbing in an endless ocean, trying to find its way to shore. She’d take any shore right now. She needed solid ground, because she felt close to drowning.

  Reality was heartbreakingly brutal, and she no longer had the luxury to pretend that it wasn’t. To survive, she would have to develop some calluses fast. She needed to suck it up and let the wounds make her stronger, let the bitterness curdle the illusion of her phony life in Amber and reveal it for what it was, spoiled beyond saving.

  After about an hour of walking away, both mentally and physically, from the painful, disturbing mess her life had become, Jaci noticed that a neighborhood with townhouses, schools, and strip malls replaced the businesses and manufacturing plants closer to Circle City.

  She stopped walking and let out a deep sigh as her butt met the curb in front of an elementary school. The street was deserted. She was exhausted.

  It was late. Too late for transports. She fixed her gaze on the traffic light in front of the school. It continued its cycle of green, yellow, and red despite the absence of drivers to follow its commands. The air was still and quiet. It was eerie to be alone in the dark so far away from…she snickered. Home? Where was that exactly?

  Now that some of the initial hurt and shock had been walked off, the emotions remaining ate away at her. Anger at herself took root in her tired mind. She was a trusting fool who’d been easily scammed and knocked on her ass as a result. She was disappointed in herself the most. She would have liked to think she was smarter than this farce. That she wasn’t some gullible dumbass that would believe any sweetly told lie.

  God, she didn’t want to go back to the apartment tonight. She wanted to hide away from the world.

  She wished she could go home and cry on her mother’s shoulder. She needed to feel loved. Being in familiar territory, even if only for a day, could shore up this newly found determination to survive and help her face whatever awaited her when she returned to the Amber Zone.

  There was no reason why she couldn’t go into Sapphire tomorrow.

  Jaci looked around the area. She needed a place to lay low until the sun came up and the transports started running again. There was a playground on the side of the school, and in the center, a structure she could spend a couple of hours in before she continued her walk to the Amber-Sapphire border.

  She stood, brushed herself off and walked toward the playground. She barely fit onto the platform in the center of the jungle gym. The small space was hidden from view outside the play structure. She lay down on the cool, damp wood and stared up into the star-filled night.

  Tears welled in her eyes and then overflowed. She’d never been in love before and hadn’t realized how crushing the experience could be. How could the same emotion produce such fantastic highs and heart-wrenching lows? She would never have guessed that a simple rejection from a man she cared about could make her so miserable.

  She sobbed quietly. She was not good enough to be a Sapphire and not good enough to have the man she loved love her back.

  Jaci cried herself to sleep.

  * * * *

  She woke to the sound of a transport’s brakes squealing. Peeking out to look in that direction, she saw a group of adults, with travel cups in their hands, descending the vehicle’s stairs and walking away in different directions from the stop.

  She crawled from the hidey-hole, stood and brushed off her clothes. She was surprisingly unwrinkled, but way overdressed, still wearing the black over the shoulder number she put on for her date with Asher. Jaci slipped on her shoes, raked her fingers through the tangles in her hair, and walked toward the transport stop. Fog weighed heavy in the morning air and cool, wet grass tickled the exposed parts of her feet as she padded to the front of the school. It was too early for the scorching summer sun to have dried the dew and burned away the fog.

  She hadn’t been standing at the stop long before another transport came, unloading a new group of people.

  Jaci stepped into the vehicle. “I’m trying to get to the Sapphire border. Does this transport go near there?”

  “Close enough that you could walk the rest of the way to the border crossing,” the driver said. “Have a seat.” She motioned to the empty one behind her. “I’ll tell you when to get off.”

  It wasn’t long before she found herself at the gate, waiting to get through the border. The National Guardsman at the pedestrian turnstile scanned her code and then waited, staring at the screen of the device until it indicated she could pass.

  “You have twenty-four hours. It’s seven minutes after nine,” he said in a bored tone. He was already shifting his attention to the man standing behind her.

  Jaci was too exhausted and depressed to be nervous when she went through security. Since she woke that morning, she wavered between not caring about anything anymore, and vowing to toughen up. It was easier to not care. The strong desire to lose herself in her depression clamped down and hung on to her. She might as well have the National Guard attack dog’s viselike teeth piercing her skin and taking her down. The damage to her would have been about the same. But still, the small voice inside her whispered that she could make it through anything.

  She needed to move though life without the expectation of it being good. It was never going to be good and the hurt wouldn’t be so devastating if she expected it. Lowered expectations equaled less disappointments, less pain.

  When Jaci finally spotted her childhood home in the Sapphire Zone, she nearly ran to it. Her throat constricted. Overcome, she swallowed down the emotion and held it together as she opened the back door and called for her mother. There was no answer.

  She looked around. The house was as comfortable as an old friend and the only home she’d ever known.

  Her muscles seemed to sag on her bones, releasing the rigid tension they held. She walked out of the kitchen and down the hall. It was probably for the best that her mother went out for a while. She needed a couple of hours sleep. Jaci schlepped her tired body to her bedroom looking forward to the comfort and familiarity of the bed that she slept in growing up.

  She turned the corner into her room and stopped abruptly. The ground beneath her feet melted away. She was in emotional free fall until she landed, crushed by what she saw. Her bedroom was not her bedroom anymore. All of her belongings were gone. The room was now an office complete with a desk arranged to appreciate the view out the window and a comfortable sitting area to read.

  She blinked and looked again, then closed her astonished mouth. Jaci slid down the wall and sat on the floor. The new-carpet smell lingered in her nose. She stared at her old bedroom. There wasn’t a shred, not one tiny indication that she spent her childhood
there.

  Nothing could have done a better job of telling her that she didn’t belong there anymore.

  Was she that easy to disregard, to toss aside? Take advantage of? Lie to? What’s next? She pounded her fist on the floor. What was the next fucked up thing she was going to find out and have to deal with?

  Furious, she realized she was at a crossroads. She could either curl in on herself and give up, or become a survivor.

  The old Jaci would have cried at the sight before her, but she didn’t seem to be that person anymore.

  No. This wouldn’t break her. Jaci became stone, hard and cold.

  The total eradication of her presence from her parents’ home was the last blow she would ever take lying down.

  As she left to return to the Amber Zone, she acknowledged the small treasure of strength born from the trials of the last couple of weeks.

  Chapter 11

  Xander sat with the rest of the team in the conference room at the Amber Zone Police Station. Every person in the room turned to look at Captain Rush expectantly when he walked through the door. “I made an official inquiry at the border guard station. Jaci went through gate two into Sapphire about an hour ago.” The room stilled immediately. “I told them it was an informal check because her roommate didn’t know where she was and she was not wanted by the Amber PD. Hopefully, she’ll stay underneath their radar.

  “Rock, Xander, cover Gate Two until she returns. Pick her up after she crosses back over the border,” Captain Rush ordered. “Bring her back here. Give her the ground rules she needs to follow until this case is closed.”

  Xander breathed a sigh of relief. She was with her parents in the Sapphire Zone. That knowledge freed up some neurons so he could now accommodate his other worries.

  In the police cruiser on their way to the border gate, all the ways he’d fucked up this situation ran through his mind and absolutely no ideas on how to make it right followed.

  Xander and Rock sat in one of only two Amber Zone police cruisers out of sight of Gate Two. While they waited long hours, they verbally reviewed possible suspects, motives and opportunity with each other. Asher had been released and subsequently ruled out as the person they were looking for.

  They sat there for the rest of the day and through the night. At sunrise, the twenty-four-hour time limit for visits fast approached and Xander became increasingly irritated. He tensed and the speculative back and forth conversations with Rock ended. If she stayed past the deadline, the Gov would be looking for her, too. And that wouldn’t end well for Jaci.

  Minutes before the deadline, Xander received a com from Captain Rush. He tapped his ear bud. “Captain?”

  “Jaci reentered Amber through gate one.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Long enough to know she’s long gone from there by now.”

  “Thanks, Cap. We’ll keep you posted. Son of a bitch,” he spat to Rock. “We missed her. She reentered through gate one.”

  “She’s probably back at the apartment. Relax. Let’s go back there. If she’s not there, we’ll wait. I need to get a shower and some sleep anyway.”

  Xander nodded without looking at Rock. “She did this on purpose,” he said, staring blankly through the windshield of the cruiser. “She knew we would be waiting for her. It was a big ‘fuck you.’” Xander fumed, clenching and unclenching his teeth. A steely mask hardened on his face.

  She was in so much trouble.

  When they reached the apartment, they found a whole lot of early morning sun and a dark emptiness profound enough to mute the sunlight coming in. Jaci wasn’t there and it didn’t look like she’d been there.

  Through the afternoon and evening, there was still no sign of her.

  As her absence continued through the next day, Xander moved past annoyed and fuming and proceeded on to raging. He used all his effort to hang on to the rage because the only other applicable emotion was fear. And if he gave in to fear, if he let his mind touch on the reason he felt it, he wouldn’t survive. He paced back and forth in the apartment and gave off his best don’t-fuck-with-me vibe to the people who came and went. Intermittently, he cursed out loud. Mostly, he stewed in his own thoughts and argued with himself about his determination to stick to the life path he’d chosen. But the overwhelming need to possess Jaci still continued to clash violently with those plans.

  At the end of the second day of waiting, Xander was in a dark place. He silently existed, a seething black hole seated in the corner of the apartment. He was tormented and serving his sentence, his punishment for the secrets and lies of omission. He barely contained himself.

  He shook his head and an involuntary growl rumbled from his throat. When he got his hands on her, he was going to inform her what the consequences of any future behavior like this would be. He wanted to spank that ass to bright pink until she promised him she wouldn’t do anything like this again.

  He was responsible for her. She would not run from him or cut him out. It was just not the way things were going to be between them. They were family. He was going to protect her, even after the fallow case was closed. She needed to understand he was a part of her life now. Like a brother.

  A brother my ass. The persistent voice of his guilty conscience would not shut the fuck up. Who the hell was he kidding? He wanted to make her his, kiss her savagely, possess her until she had no defense against him, until she submitted to him with her body and her heart. And there was so much more.

  Xander stopped thinking about the more of it. His cock responded with just the slightest thought of the more.

  His feelings raged out of control. Therefore, he sat, afraid if he did anything at all, he would lose the tenuous grip he maintained on himself. He was a breath away from being dangerous.

  * * * *

  Jaci pushed through the turnstile, reentering the Amber Zone through gate one. It was on the opposite end from where she left. They wouldn’t be expecting her to re-enter there.

  She wasn’t going back to building seventeen. She got off the transport and after she entered Circle City, walked into building twenty-eight. Jaci found an unlocked, vacant apartment on the ninth floor, locked the door behind her and slept until it was dark.

  When she woke, she stayed on the bare mattress, in the deserted apartment and listened to her stomach growl. She knew it was possible to be tracked by scanning her code, so buying food was out. She did not want to be found.

  Jaci left the apartment and wandered the empty building until she found an open door on the first floor. She walked in and was greeted with smiles from a small group of people listening to music and talking.

  “Hi,” she said as she stuck her head into the apartment. The whole group looked up at her. “Uh, I was wondering if you had any food that I could grab. I haven’t eaten anything all day, and I’m too beat to go to the commissary tonight.”

  “Come on in. Don’t be shy.” A man got off the bed and started walking toward her. “I’m Matt. This is my roommate, Noel.” He gestured toward a woman sitting at the dinette. “And the rest of our band of misfits, Shane, Dave and Alison. All three of them waved from the bed.

  Matt placed his hand at the small of Jaci’s back and ushered her into the room. He pulled out the other chair at the dinette. “Here, sit. I’ll make you a sandwich.

  “Oh, that would be great. I’m Jaci, by the way.”

  “Are you squatting here?” Noel asked.

  “Yeah, for a couple of days.”

  “What building are you assigned to?”

  “Seventeen.”

  Noel shook her head. “Hmm, I don’t think I know anybody from that building”

  “Does your roommate know where you are?” asked Matt.

  Jaci glanced over her shoulder into the kitchen. “No.”

  Matt quit making her sandwich and frowned, looking her up and down. “Did he…do something wrong? I can com the police for you.”

  “No, nothing like that. I needed some time alone to adjust. I haven’t b
een in Circle City long and things are so different here.”

  Noel perked up. “Did you come from a different zone?”

  Jaci nodded. “Sapphire.”

  Noel’s eyes widened. “Wow.” She looked as if she was going to interrogate Jaci when Matt rounded the corner and crossed to her, setting a sandwich down on the table.

  “Fallow?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” Jaci didn’t meet his gaze. “Thanks for the sandwich,” she said softly.

  “You’re welcome.” Matt leaned against the bar that separated the kitchen from the rest of the space. His arms were crossed over his chest as he watched her eat.

  “Why are you so dressed up?” Noel asked.

  “I just didn’t want to go home and this is what I was wearing when I made that decision.

  “So you’re all dressed up with no place to go?” Matt’s voice was deep and sexy and his words resonated like a purr.

  Jaci looked down at herself. “Well, I’m here, so technically I had a place to go.”

  “And I’m so glad you’re here,” Matt said as his smoldering gaze explored her.

  “I’ve got some clothes you can borrow.” Noel stood, surveying Jaci quickly. Then, she walked over to a dresser and pulled out jeans and a t-shirt. “I want these back,” she said smiling and shaking a finger at Jaci. “That means you’re going to have to come back and give me the gossip of why you’re squatting.” She looked over her shoulder. “Flip-flops?”

  Jaci nodded and almost smiled, almost. Noel reminded her of Emily. They both flashed that perpetual devilish spark in their eyes. “I’ll get them back to you as soon as I can, promise.” Noel carried the bag of clothes back toward the dinette and Matt stepped forward, taking the bag from her. He proceeded to the kitchen and filled it the rest of the way with crackers, fresh oranges and a few other things.

  “Do you think this will be enough?” he asked, meeting Jaci’s gaze.

  “I think so. Thank you so much. This should keep me going until I figure out…” She shrugged and sighed. “I should get going.”