She tugged on his hand. “And what are we going to do at your apartment?”
Her suggestive tone strengthened Mason’s resolve and reminded him that this woman was very likely his enemy. “Eat and talk.”
“About safe topics?”
He thought about how to answer that without scaring her away. “Perhaps.”
They got on the elevator and Mason pressed the button for five. It was difficult, trying to remain calm in light of Otley’s interrogation. He wanted to confront her now, yet her touch — merely being in her presence — completely flustered him. So he reminded himself that he did not yet have proof that she was guilty of any wrongdoing. At this point, everything was circumstantial.
Yet the window of doubt for her innocence was microscopic.
“I’ve missed you in the SC,” she said as they got off on the fifth floor. “Zolan is capable, but I have to tell him everything twice. Plus he’s older than me, and I don’t think he likes working under a female.”
“Is he noncompliant?” Mason asked.
“No, it’s just his attitude, I guess. He’s not friendly, like you.”
Friendly. Little did she know he was leading her into his cage. He opened the door to his apartment and held it for her. She walked inside and oohed at the sight of his preparations. It had taken him all afternoon, but he’d turned his living room into a private restaurant. The table was covered in the white tablecloth he’d planned to use as a blanket on the roof. He’d set out the special dishes and filled the vase with the remaining eleven red roses for the table, found orchestra music to play on his Wyndo wall screen, and programmed the picture Wyndos, which usually looked out onto the Safe Lands, to show a thick forest. That likely made him feel more at home than it did her, but she seemed pleased.
“Did you cook too?” she asked.
“I did not. I felt it unwise to risk my own cooking skills on such a special occasion. If you’d like me to cook for you some other time, I’m happy to oblige, though you might consider having something ready to eat in your apartment when you get home, just in case things were to go badly.”
“I can’t imagine they would. Mason, I don’t think it’s possible for you to fail at anything.”
He tried not to let her words gratify him, but his pride absorbed her compliment like a sponge did water. He pulled out her chair and helped her sit.
Her gaze followed him as he walked to his seat. “So what are we eating tonight?”
“First we have an appetizer of roasted red beet hummus. Then a potato leek soup, followed by persimmon caprese salad. Then for our main course, I am serving butternut squash and pear ravioli with rosemary sauce. And then, if you are still hungry, a maple and cranberry crème brulée.”
“That sounds amazing. Where did you get it?”
“Le Nuit.”
She gasped and scooted to the edge of her chair, her electric-blue eyes practically glowing. “How? They only seat ten couples a night. I don’t believe they let you order takeout.”
Mason shrugged off her question. “Whether or not you believe does not alter the facts.” A comment that Mason felt encapsulated most of their differences.
He served the dinner course by course. It was agonizing to wait so long to broach the topic of the ACT meds, but he had put a lot of effort into making this night perfect. He figured, the happier she was, the more apt she might be to answer truthfully.
When the dessert course came and Ciddah was humming delightedly over her crème brulée, Mason attacked.
“Ciddah, I have some questions to ask you, and I would be very thankful if you told me the entire truth.”
“If I can,” she said, taking another bite.
An interesting reply. Could there be some reason she’d lie? He hadn’t considered that someone might be forcing her to act. “I find you to be an intriguing woman. You’re intelligent, beautiful, and kind. Yet there have been moments of contradiction that tell me my initial observations of you were false and you’re only pretending to be kind, or,” he added in light of her comment, “that someone has asked you to do something contrary to your nature.”
She was staring at him now, her spoon limp in her fingers. Mason inhaled deeply to compose himself. “General Otley and his men were here yesterday, in my apartment.”
Her eyes widened. She blinked a few times, as if forcing away tears. “Whatever for?”
Indeed. “Since you said you would speak the truth only if you can, know that Otley’s men took the MiniComm device you left here the morning after Kendall gave birth. I also had someone come here last night and search for more listening devices. He found two Otley’s men must have left. All that to say, this apartment is clean. Only I can hear what you say here.”
Tears welled in Ciddah’s eyes. She took a drink of water, apparently willing to let Mason say what he must. He struggled over which question to ask first and chose to follow the historical time line of the evidence against her. “Who asked you to put the MiniComm in my apartment?” He held his breath as he waited for her answer, praying she would finally be honest.
“Lawten.”
Though the name twisted his stomach, he thought to himself, Good. Perhaps he’d finally discover the whole truth. “What else did Lawten ask you to do in regard to me?”
She closed her eyes, and when they fluttered back open, she was staring at her dessert, unwilling or unable to meet his gaze. “I was supposed to seduce you, to pair up with you and try to get pregnant.”
Mason slumped back in his chair. He had not expected such an answer, though it did confirm why Lawten had let him skip donations for so long. None of it had been real. She’d never been attracted to him. He was only her task assignment.
She set down her spoon. “I’m sorry.” A single tear ran down her cheek.
“I see.” And he did see now. Everything made sense. Lawten had tricked Mason from the start, sent him to Ciddah on purpose. All with the plan of getting what he wanted from Mason. How cruel. Forced donations would have been better than such emotional trickery.
There was nothing left to ask at this point. Even without an apartment filled with MiniComms, he could not trust Ciddah Rourke. She was Lawten’s spy.
Her breath shuddered from those perfectly painted lips that matched her dress. “Mason, I know you’re angry. And you have every right to hate me, but I … I want you to know that when Lawten first asked me to do this, I was excited. You were intriguing and handsome and I so desperately wanted to carry a child for my nation that I — ”
“I don’t want to hear it.” Mason pushed back his chair. “I appreciate your honesty, but perhaps you should leave.”
“Please, let me say this.” She got up from her chair and came around to where he sat. She knelt on the floor at his feet and reached for his hand.
He pulled it away before she could touch him. “Do not think you still have a chance of completing your mission.”
She clenched her hands in her lap. “Mason, you don’t know me. The real me. No one does. At first I was eager to do what Lawten asked of me, proud even, that I might get pregnant by natural means. But the more I got to know you and the more I thought about my donors and their relationship, I realized I wanted that for us. Because I fell in love with you.”
Mason abandoned his chair and put a few steps between them, stopping when he reached the couch. “How stupid do you think I am? Our entire relationship has been built on lies.” There was no point in dragging any of this out further.
Tears dropped from both eyes and ran down her cheeks and into her lap, pat, pat, pat against the silky fabric of her dress. She stood up and used his napkin to quickly dab her face. “You’re the smartest man I’ve ever known.”
He huffed a breath out his nose. “Then I may as well confess that I am 99 percent certain you love Lawten.”
“No!” Another shuddered breath and she sat on his chair. “Okay, I’ll tell you everything. I did love Lawten once. I told you that he was a medic in the SC when I
did my first internship. I was still in boarding school and so naïve, and, believe it or not, five years ago, he was quite handsome. I quickly discovered that I had to share Lawten with many other women. But that was the way of things here. And while I didn’t like it, I coped as best I could.”
“Gee, Ciddah. You’re really making me feel better about all this.” As if he wanted to hear about how many women loved Lawten Renzor.
“I’m not done! Be patient for just a few more minutes and then you can throw me out, okay?” She wrung his napkin in her hands. “All my life I’ve wanted to give the Safe Lands a baby. Like most little girls, I was enthralled by the Safe Lands Queens, whose glamorous lives were broadcasted over the ColorCast. But I was interested in medicine too, so pregnancy enthralled me.
“I told you how I applied for revealing when I turned fourteen, that my donors were lifers. I was their second child of four. And when I told Losira how devastated I was that I had failed to bear a child for the Safe Lands, she said that Fortune had blessed me. And she told me the story of her labors and the horror she experienced when each child was taken. Her testimony was so backward from everything I’d been taught, I didn’t want to believe her. But as I tasked in the SC, and even though I’ve only seen one child born, nearly all of my patients suffer from depression, and none more than those who have given birth.”
Ciddah had never spoken of this. “You’ve always seemed so bent on defending every procedure in the SC no matter how the patients responded.”
“I know. But my task long ago proved that pregnancy is not as glamorous as the ColorCast had made it out to be. There is a dark side to what we do. So when Lawten became the task director general, I broached this topic with him, thinking he would understand since he’d been a medic for so many years. I hoped he might change some things now that he was in a position to do so. Because Lawten has always wanted his own child too. But that’s another story.”
Lawten wanted a child? Mason sat on the arm of his sofa, curious what else she had to say.
“Anyway, Lawten said the procedures were too complicated to change all at once, at least in light of the infertility. That was our first concern, he said. Once our women were conceiving again, we could worry about the emotional side of pregnancy. So I set about researching ways to help. But my rank wasn’t high enough to get the research I needed. And Lawten said he couldn’t help me. That’s when I first knew he was hiding something.”
Which explained her frustrations when Lawten had granted Mason access to the History Center. “That still doesn’t explain why you’ve lied to me.”
“I’m getting there. Skip ahead to your arrival and Lawten’s mission for me, as you put it. I’d met you that afternoon, and though I had my fears, my childhood dream of pregnancy tempted me more, and I accepted the challenge. I secretly hoped you’d fall in love with me and we’d be lifers. But you were always so calmly adamant. And even though I didn’t understand your reasons, your logic matched my research. It made me angry. And scared. Because you were not only speaking to my suspicions and fears, you were tearing apart the fabric of my nation. I hated you for it, yet I knew I was falling in love with you.”
Mason could only stare at her now. He didn’t want to believe a word she said, yet this felt true. This matched up with everything they’d been through.
“When you asked me to come watch Lonn’s liberation, I thought I’d have my chance to win you over. So when Lawten asked for an update, I told him things looked promising. Then he told me to use a MiniComm that night. I’d almost forgotten that your brother had turned rebel and that you were all trying to escape. So I had the MiniComm turned on when you arrived, but I turned it off when we started talking about my donors. I wanted to be honest with you and didn’t want Lawten to hear. And he was furious with me the next time I saw him. But I told him that I loved you and wouldn’t betray you. Then he betrayed me.”
“How?”
“He threatened my donors. Told me he was going to change their prescriptions in the CompuCharts until I got my priorities straight, and if I continued to defy him, he’d liberate them. I thought he was bluffing until my donors started getting sicker. So I promised to try again. But I can’t, Mason. I’d rather see you arrested for theft and forced to donate than be a fly in my web for one more day. I love you too much to destroy you. And I figured if I could steal what I needed to help my donors and save you at the same time …”
Framing him for theft had been her way of saving him? He wanted to believe her. He did. “Every time I begin to think there might be something real between us, I meet an obstacle. Our different principles. The MiniComm. Now I’ve learned that you were assigned to seduce me, then set me up as a thief. How can I believe you? How could I ever trust you?”
She dabbed her eyes with the wrinkled napkin. “You don’t have to spell it out, Mason. I know full well why you can’t trust me. And I don’t blame you.”
A small consolation in all this. “Be that as it may, Ciddah, if how you feel about me is true — if everything you’ve said is true — I can’t walk away. I want to, but I can’t.”
Her forehead wrinkled, brows scrunched together. “Why not? I’d think you’d run away as fast as you could.”
“I don’t deny the temptation.” But he loved Ciddah. The lie detector had raised the subject in his mind, and he couldn’t deny it. There would never have been anyone from Glenrock or Jack’s Peak who was a better fit for Mason than Ciddah. Wasn’t it worth the risk to see this though? “Lawten blackmailed you. If I had been in your situation, I may have done the same to save my parents.”
“Donors,” she said. “Parents are what you had, people who raised you. Mine didn’t. I grew up in the boarding school.”
Was she trying to change the subject or merely rambling? “Fine. Donors.” He walked back to the table, moved her first chair next to his, and sat in front of her, their knees almost touching. “My concern is: Lifer or no, we still view courtship very differently. I see such shallow-ness in this place. But I want the promise of forever. I want someone willing to sacrifice to make forever work even when difficulties arise. I want honesty and trust. But I suspect I’m wasting my time trying to explain, since there is nothing like that here in the Safe Lands.”
“You haven’t looked hard enough, Mason.” Ciddah took hold of his hand and squeezed. “If you’re willing, I’d like to take you to meet my donors.”
CHAPTER
16
Shaylinn sat at the kitchen table. She had before her the Wyndo Zane had given her, a stack of paper, a stack of envelopes, several pens, and a long list of names with notes beside each. Half of the list consisted of names she’d added herself, but Omar had started giving her names and addresses for any letters he got in his messenger box, so she’d added them to her list as well. She investigated each person to try and figure out what he or she might be going through in order to do the best job possible penning each message.
The first name on the list was Dillard Betta. Shaylinn entered his name in her Wyndo and found his profile on the grid. He was twenty-seven, lived in the Midlands, and tasked as a chef. He had two Xs: both for assault. They were bar fights, according to the note on his profile page. How embarrassing that the Safe Lands posted a person’s failures on the grid for all to see.
Shay prayed that God would give her the right words for Dillard, then she wrote the message, doing her best to write an encouraging statement about anger and pride.
Next was a woman. Elani Rood was only nineteen, but she had been Xed for trying to kill herself. She’d spent almost a year in the RC for counseling, but Shaylinn could tell from the things she wrote on her profile that Elani was still depressed. She’d had two miscarriages, and Shaylinn felt that they were the key to her sorrow.
She prayed for healing and closure for Elani. She prayed for purpose too, that Elani might find joy in a task that she was created for. Then Shaylinn wrote Elani’s message, using as many loving and hopeful words as possible.
She wrote messages until Naomi, Eliza, and Chipeta came out and made dinner. Shaylinn’s hand was cramped from holding the pen for so long. There were now thirty-six names on her list, and Shaylinn had written messages to each of them. She ate lunch with everyone, telling them all about the hurting people she’d written to.
“Did you check with Levi about this?” Jordan asked. “It seems like something the elder should approve, that’s all. He should be back soon.”
Levi had gone into the city today with Beshup to search the storm drains underneath the boarding school.
“They can’t trace the messages to me, Jordan,” Shaylinn said.
“I think it’s a lovely gesture,” Aunt Mary said.
“Thanks,” Shaylinn said, smiling.
Jordan took a bite of his sandwich and asked with a full mouth, “How will you deliver them?”
“Omar said he would come and get them.”
Jordan swallowed his bite. “When did you talk to Omar? Was he here last night?”
“Don’t be a grouch, Jordan,” Shaylinn said, and thankfully her brother said no more.
After dinner, Naomi, Shaylinn, and Jemma cleaned the table and spread out the blue denim Jordan had bought. Aunt Mary, Chipeta, and Eliza went out into the living room to watch the TV.
“I think it will make adorable pants,” Naomi said.
“I was thinking overalls,” Shaylinn said.
“That will make it hard to change the diaper,” Jemma said.
Diapers. Shaylinn hadn’t thought about that. She knew little about infants. As the baby of her own family, she had never had any younger siblings to help take care of. Would that make her a bad mother? Surely she could learn, right?
There was a small Wyndo on the microwave’s door, so Jemma turned on the cooking show the ladies were watching in the living room as Shaylinn and Naomi started cutting out the pieces for a pair of pants and a little dress. The cooking channel was the only one Jordan didn’t make a fuss over when they watched. Everything else made him terribly cross about the Safe Lands. Food, however, he liked — no matter who created it.
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