by Sylvia Ryan
Jaci shook her head. “Nobody.”
The man slapped her again. “Who else knows?”
“Nobody, dammit! I didn’t tell anyone.” Jaci tried to yell, but the words sounded more like pathetic squawking than defiant refusal.
“Who else knows?”
Jaci didn’t answer the question. She closed her eyes and braced herself for the next strike. It didn’t come.
“How did you get back through to the Amber Zone?”
“I walked.”
“Did you go back through a gate?”
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
“Gate One.”
“Did one of the border guards let you go through without scanning you?”
“No, I snuck through.”
“I doubt that,” he said, scrutinizing her face closely. Then he rose, stepped out of the cell for a moment, and exchanged words with the soldier stationed there.
“I had my sergeant go get you some water. It looks like you’re thirsty.” He leaned against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. He stared at her. Silent.
Jaci knew this wasn’t over by a long shot. He was planning his next move. The soldier returned with a paper cup of water and a syringe. He handed both to the general.
“Here, my dear, have some water.” He placed the paper cup on the table in front of her and tipped it over, spilling it. His lips twisted into a smirk when she looked up at him. He was fucking with her, and she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of watching her lap up water off the table. Then, after a long stare down, his eyes narrowed.
“We can do this easy, or hard.” He looked at her as he removed the plastic cover over the needle of the syringe he held. Jaci didn’t fight. It was futile. She knew he would be successful one way or the other. He injected the liquid directly into the vein of her arm. It burned for a moment, and then Jaci melted. She was an instant marshmallow. Every part of her drooped. She was in a state of almost sleep.
She closed her eyes and only seconds later she was knocked out of her chair again with another strike to her face. She wasn’t alert enough to soften the fall with her hands, and her head cracked on the hard cement. She was yanked up and back into the chair almost immediately.
Jaci slumped. The trickle of blood from the fresh gash on her head dripped into her lap. A thread of drool hung from her mouth.
He slapped her face again. “The police were watching you?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew it?”
“Yes, after a while.”
“What happened in your apartment that day?”
“Hmmm?”
He grabbed Jaci’s hair and brought her face close to his. “What happened in the apartment?”
“Caroline stabbed Emily.” Jaci’s words slurred, but she couldn’t seem to correct the problem.
“Why?”
“’Cause Caroline was a bitch.” Jaci sneered.
“And you killed Caroline?”
She didn’t answer him.
Jaci was yanked up from the chair and her back slammed up against the wall. General Morgan clutched her face in his hand and squeezed. His fingers clenched, gouging the yielding flesh of her cheeks. “I’m getting tired of the fucking games, Miss Harmon.” His body was pressed up against hers. “Tell me.”
His cock was hard between them. He was getting off on this. Jaci’s expression must have reflected that revelation.
He chuckled. “That’s right, you know what’s next.” He grabbed the front of Jaci’s shirt and with a savage heave, ripped it, partially exposing her breasts. Then, he threw her to the floor.
She landed hard, her forearms and elbows taking the brunt of the fall. He stood over her. “You killed Caroline?”
“She was trying to kill me,” Jaci croaked.
“I know that, you stupid bitch. It’s unbelievable. You Ambers get more simpleminded every time I have the displeasure of having to speak to you.” He squatted down next to her and ran his hand inside her shirt to cup her breast. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re only good for one thing.”
Jaci sucked in a breath, and attempted to back away from him. But he grabbed her with his other hand, holding her in place. He released a deep, frightening chuckle.
“How did you get through the border back to Amber?” he growled, as he ran a thumb over her nipple.
“I snuck through.”
He wasn’t appeased by her answer because he pinched and twisted her nipple brutally hard. Jaci screamed from the pain. He didn’t let up. He kept pinching and twisting until Jaci wailed and sobbed for him to stop. “I snuck through. I snuck through,” she yelled over and over.
Finally, he eased the viselike grip.
The general stood. “I think we’re through for now. But this isn’t over, not by a long shot.”
Jaci curled into herself, tucking her legs up to her chest as he turned to leave.
“Oh, and Miss Harmon,” he turned back to look down at her. “Don’t flatter yourself. You stink like an animal. I would never stick my dick into a filthy, diseased Amber like you.” He spat on her, the warm wet fluid landing on her cheek and then he walked out.
The soldier stationed outside the room extinguished the light and closed the door before leaving her alone and in the dark again.
Chapter 18
Xander was practically out of his mind. It had been over three days since the message from the general. He started to wonder if they were going to give her back. Then, he finally got the news that Jaci had been released to Amber Border Gate Two.
She was a heap on the dirty floor of the border guard station when Xander walked through the door.
He immediately spoke into his com. “We need a VN at the apartment when we get there.”
“Visiting Nurse. Roger that,” was his response from Jordan.
Xander rolled Jaci onto her back. Her face was bruised and swollen. She was unconscious. He checked her pulse.
Her hair was bloody and matted against a gash on her scalp. Her t-shirt was ripped, her breasts exposed.
“Motherfuckers,” he roared. His anger was uncontainable. He looked up and eyed the two Border Guardsmen that watched. They were smug and didn’t bother to hide the amusement that washed over their faces.
“Looks like they used interesting interrogation techniques,” one of them said, laughing.
The only thing that kept Xander from snapping the asshole’s neck was Jaci’s need for medical attention. But he still looked at the Guardsman good and hard, memorizing the man’s face. Xander would see him again.
He picked Jaci up from the floor and carried her outside to the cruiser where Brady waited. He laid her gently on the back seat and quickly got into the passenger side of the car before it sped off toward building seventeen. He peered over the seat and looked at her. Bruises mottled the dirty, blood covered skin on her face. The skin that wasn’t bruised was ashen. He wasn’t sure which bothered him more.
Jordan and the visiting nurse were waiting at the apartment when Xander carried Jaci in. After a cursory examination, the VN inserted an IV to hydrate her and then closed the gash on her head. She left saying there was nothing else she could do, and gave directions to call when Jaci regained consciousness.
It was a waiting game. Again.
Somebody commed his mother and Gwen. They arrived while the VN examined Jaci. He didn’t talk to them. He couldn’t, not without losing it, but they stuck close to him and did what they do best, love and support him.
Not long after, Xander kicked everybody out of the apartment with quiet thank-yous and promises to call. As he closed the door behind the last of them, he turned toward the bed. He was near a total loss of control. He took the minutes he needed to clamp down on his emotions and focus on his responsibility.
He walked around the bed and surveyed the battered form of the woman he loved. She still looked near death, despite the assurances from the VN that she would be okay.
She was a mess.
After filling a bowl with warm water and grabbing a washrag, he began cleaning her. With a tentative hand, he tenderly wiped her face with the warm water, washing away the blood under her nose and the grime from her cheeks. His hands trembled with unreleased rage that he forced himself to push away as he continued his task. But that emotion was quickly replaced by another. His throat tightened, the muscles squeezed away his ability to swallow. He cut her shirt off so as not to disturb the IV in her arm. Earlier, he saw the ripped shirt, but his mind, at the time, rejected the direction of that train of thought. But now, he let himself go there. If they’d raped her…
Tears rolled silently down his face while he methodically cleaned her arms and torso. Her wrists were marred by deep bruises and worn away skin from being cuffed too tightly and for too long. When he cleaned the dried blood on the inside of her arm and found the needle mark underneath, the sudden surge of rage that he felt made him want to kill. They drugged her.
This had not been ‘questioning’, this had been plain, old school torture. His hands were shaking as he finished her arms and upper body. He dumped the dirty water in the kitchen sink and refilled the bowl before returning to her.
He braced himself for what he might find when he took off her pants, but he found that the bottom half of her body was in much better condition than the top. As he cleaned her, relief dulled his anger. They’d not let her go to the bathroom. Her pants were stiff with dried urine. But otherwise, she seemed untouched everywhere below the waist.
He dumped the dirty water and pulled off his own clothes. Gingerly, he lay down next to her and pulled her to him. He curled the full length of his body around her to give her the comfort and healing of his touch. He covered as much of her skin as possible with his and held her without moving underneath the soft blanket of their bed.
For hours, he relished the feeling of his skin on hers as well the even in-and-out of her breaths. What a dumbass he’d been trying to keep her at arms length. It took almost losing her to truly understand the huge part of his heart she owned, and to realize how much of his life was her now.
She was his. He would not leave her vulnerable again.
It was then, in those quiet hours of holding her in his arms, that Xander was finally able to think past getting Jaci back and start considering the larger implications of the events that had taken place. The Gov would expect that Amber authorities had been mollified by Jaci’s return.
He wasn’t. This time was different from every other injustice the Gov had done to Amber. This time they had concrete proof of the Gov’s outright murder of Ambers.
They were growing dangerously brazen after more than two decades of the population’s utter submission to their authority.
The Gov’s absolute authority needed to happen during the dire circumstances immediately following the pandemic. They needed control and cooperation to do the things necessary to create order, provide for basic needs, and protect the survivors flocking to the city.
But their society wasn’t struggling like it had been twenty-five years ago. The genetic qualities that were near extinction back then, were thriving now.
Many of these restrictions, these measures to safeguard humanity, were no longer necessary. If the Gov went unchecked by its citizens much longer, the United States would no longer be a democracy. The country wouldn’t grow as it did the first time when settlers in covered wagons set out to populate the land beyond the borders of their cities. It would be a military dictatorship that never loosened its control over the population.
The more he thought about it, the more he was willing to bet that the Gov controlled the lives of all its citizens, from Ambers to Diamonds, in more ways than anybody realized. The fury faded and determination gathered within him. Changes needed to be made. Now was the time to start.
He looked down at his woman, caressed the hair away from her cheek. Xander was overcome by the intense love he felt for her. He understood why Amber women gave up control, gave up authority to the men around them. Without that small submission, every man in Amber would be impudent with no control on any aspect of their lives. It was a true gift and it was time that the men took that gift and did something with it, did something to truly protect their females, themselves, and their country.
* * * *
Disorientation crowded Jaci’s brain as she came awake. Her last memory was being left on the cement floor in the opaque blackness of her cell. But now, there was no pain from the cuffs, no cold seeping into her bones from the floor. She was still drugged or her body was shutting down. It would be over soon.
She knew she was still in the dark because there was no suggestion of light on the other side of her eyelids. She tried to open her eyes. They wouldn’t cooperate. Her lids were heavy and felt suctioned to her eyeballs.
A flood of memories surrounding the interrogation rushed to her mind. She had been as strong as she could, never giving up Jordan’s actions at the border gate. She was proud of herself.
She smiled. “Ow.” She lifted an arm to her face. Smiling was out.
She felt the slightest of touches on the skin of her arm. “Jaci?” A whisper.
Her doped brain heard Xander’s voice. She was hallucinating. And then a rushed thought pushed its way forward in her brain.
“Oh God!”
He knew. General Morgan knew about the relationship between Xander and her. Jaci began to panic. He wasn’t safe. A spontaneous, keening sob escaped from her soul. It filled her ears. She’d put him in danger. She’d accepted her own death, but only as long as he was going to be okay.
“Jaci,” she heard again.
Anguish careened through her, culminating in a crescendo of uncontrolled sobs. She covered her ears with her hands and tried to drown out his voice with her wails. It hurt too much to hear him.
A hand grabbed her arm. She screamed, panic stricken. There was someone in there with her. She scrambled away and then screamed again at the sharp pain in the crook of her arm and enormous crash behind her.
“Jaci!”
A light flicked on. She saw it behind her eyelids. She tried again to drag her lids up. Her right lid complied.
Xander’s face filled her field of vision. “What…” She whipped her head from side to side taking in a quick glance of her surroundings.
She was confused.
Xander pulled her to his lap and cradled her against his chest, rocking her like a mother rocks her newborn baby. “You’re home, Jaci. You’re home. You’re home,” he whispered into her hair over and over again. The warm drifts of air from his words raised goose bumps on her arms. The safety of his embrace anchored her body as her brain labored to make sense of what was happening.
It took an eternity for her mind to take in and process where she was and what had happened. Eventually her sobs quieted and the steady sound of Xander’s beating heart under her ear calmed her thoughts but she still shook uncontrollably. She took a deep breath and tried to relax her rigid, shuddering muscles but it was no use. She had no control of them.
Xander flicked off the bedside light. “Come on, let’s lay back down.” He scooted her off his lap and laid her down next to him. He enveloped them both with the blanket and as the warmth and safety of being next to him surrounded her, she slowly settled. They faced each other with their heads on the pillows and their legs entangled. Xander’s hand rested in the dip of her waist.
“What happened?” she finally asked.
“Captain Rush negotiated your release.”
She was silent while she rolled the information over in her mind. “They didn’t want the information to get out about their involvement in what Caroline was doing.”
“Exactly.”
“They’re not going to put me out of the city?”
“No.”
“Captain Rush agreed to drop the matter if they gave me back?”
“Essentially.”
“But that’s not right. People should know what they’re doing.”
“I ag
ree.”
They lay in silence then, looking at each other in the barely there light of the room. His eyes roamed her face. “My face, is it bad?”
He lifted a hand to her cheek and caressed it softly. “You’re beautiful.”
“I think that’s because we’re in the dark.”
He smiled at her attempt at a joke and then his expression turned as hard as stone. “Tell me what they did to you,” he said in a strangled voice.
Jaci shook her head. “No.” She loved him too much to give him a blow by blow. She couldn’t do that to him. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She knew he’d respect that answer and not press her for details. At least, not now.
He pulled her into him, and she curled into his chest. “Make love to me Xander.”
He chuckled. The sound under her ear comforted her. “I don’t want our first time together to be like this, sweetie. We’ll have our whole lives to make love to each other.”
“Please,” she whispered.
“You’re hurt, Jaci,” he said in a deep rasp.
“I need your touch to heal me. Please, Xander.”
He released a long shuddering breath. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“As long as you love me, there’s nothing you could do that would hurt me.” She turned her head to look up at him and placed her hand behind his neck pulling him toward her for a kiss.
He stopped the forward motion of his head before their lips met. He looked into her eyes. “I do love you, Jaci.”
Not waiting for a reply, he leaned in for a firm, full kiss. The contact of his lips made Jaci’s stomach twirl. Joy lightened her heart. She wanted to do everything with him. Be everything for him.
His tongue possessed her mouth while he rolled her over onto her back.
His hand cupped her breast and the thrill and triumph she’d been experiencing faltered, and then stalled. His hand on her breast momentarily called to mind the general’s hand on that same breast. She knew a pained expression crossed her face with the memory. Whether Xander saw it or sensed it, she didn’t know, but he stopped short. He closed his eyes as if to compose himself. When he opened them, safety and love shone in them. He leaned his head in and rubbed his cheek lightly the sore breast. “It’s me now,” he said in a soothing voice. “Just me.”
