Jenna closed her eyes, silently trying to figure out what she could say that might salvage this situation. There was no question of betraying Jimmy by encouraging Zane in any way, but she didn’t want to get fired either, so telling Zane the truth was out. She would have to focus on the addiction. She sighed and opened her eyes again. “I really don’t know if you’ve changed, Zane. I haven’t seen you all this time, and by comm you can tell me anything you want. You hid your use of nanospeed for months even when I saw you almost every day. I don’t think trust can be rebuilt in this situation, when we’re so far apart.”
Zane’s shoulders slumped. “Why can’t you just let go of your pride?” His voice broke. “I have. Give me another chance. I’ll do anything.” Jenna’s heart wrenched. She was being so selfish. So cruel. But if she told him the truth, would it be any better? He would be just as devastated.
“Zane, right now I am your project manager, your liaison from the architect. I’m here on a professional basis only. And I will be your friend forever. But that’s all I ever can be. I can’t offer you more. If you really care about me, if you truly love me like you say, you’ll let me go,” she said, her voice calm but firm.
He looked at her for a moment, then dropped his eyes to the floor. “As you wish, Jenna,” he relented, his tone unreadable.
The moment dragged out uncomfortably long. Jenna wasn’t sure if there was more to say or if she should just leave. But if she did leave, where should she go? She wasn’t sure where the project leads were supposed to stay. She had planned to be at the site for another two days. Surely Zane hadn’t planned on her staying with him here? He was still staring at the floor, as motionless as one of those old-fashioned statues carved from marble.
Just when she was about to sneak out and wander around until she found another of the project leads, Zane lifted his head. He seemed to make an extreme effort to pull himself together, though his attempt at a smile looked more painful than polite. “Come, Jenna, I’ll show you to your room. If you’re tired you can rest. There’s a mess hall, and dinner will be served in about an hour.”
Jenna swallowed her sigh of relief and meekly followed him back out the door. He showed her to a nearby bunkroom that contained four sets of bunks. “This one is for you,” he explained, pointing at a bunk made up with sheets and iron-gray blankets but completely devoid of any of the personal touches that dotted the other bunks—a colorful pillow, digital picture frames stuck to the walls, shoes lined up neatly underneath, or a book reader left lying on the top of a rich maroon comforter. “I’m sorry it’s not very private. But all of our construction workers had to agree to these crowded living conditions while the resort is built, and I don’t have anywhere else for you to stay.”
Jenna nodded at his explanation. She saw that her travel bag had already been deposited at the foot of the bunk. “It’s just fine,” she accepted brightly. “Better than I expected, actually.”
“I’ll send Efren, my site manager, to take you to the mess hall for dinner. Good evening, Jenna,” he added, his words coming out in a rush before he turned and left as quickly as possible. She watched him go with mixed feelings. She knew she had hurt him, and she regretted that, but this painful awkwardness was infinitely preferable to the awkwardness of trying to avoid Zane’s “making up” advances.
After dinner in a very crowded and noisy cafeteria-style mess hall, she met with the other team leads and the site manager, Efren, about the progress of various areas of the resort. She was excited to learn that the majority of the actual resort was finished. All major construction had been completed several months ago, and only minor electrical work still remained. The majority of the interior work left was decorating and furnishing, as well as the installation of many of the different indoor attractions that QE West would offer. The outdoor portion (fortunately not under her supervision) was having a few more difficulties. The water park outside was behind schedule, and they hadn’t even started on the general landscaping yet. Though the climate in Marah was generally very mild, there had been a late season tropical storm, and the storm water had eroded deep ravines through parts of the site. The entire drainage plan for the site had had to be reworked, and now they felt that the resort was ready to weather even unusually heavy storms without all their hard work washing away.
When their meeting was over, Jenna returned to her bunk, eager to try and get ahold of Jimmy. She had missed him desperately all day. Even though they often went all day without seeing each other, they still spent almost every night together, and the prospect of spending several nights away from him made her long for him more than ever.
He answered right away. “Hey, Mrs. Forrest!”
“Hey there! I was just thinking of you and couldn’t stand to wait any longer. Are you feeling better?”
“Yep, feeling much more human again. I was just on my way up to visit Jax, but that can wait,” Jimmy answered.
Jenna checked the time on her flipcom. Even with the time change, this wasn’t the normal visiting time for Jax. “What’s going on with Jax? Didn’t you visit him earlier?” she asked.
“Yeah, I did, but he was eagerly distracted with some breakthrough, and he didn’t even acknowledge my presence. I figured I’d check on him later, see how he’s doing,” Jimmy explained. Jenna wondered if it was a breakthrough on the gate. That would make Mr. Quintan happy for sure. If they could just get the real gate finished and working, then all kinds of things would fall into place for the resort. At last Jenna would be able to escape.
They chatted a little bit about their day; Jimmy recounted his success in finding a real Terran feed to stream, while Jenna summarized the problem with the site drainage. Finally, Jimmy brought up what Jenna knew he was most worried about.
“And how is Zane?” he asked, his tone forcibly cheerful.
“Zane is . . . somewhat disappointed at the moment,” Jenna responded carefully. There was a pause as Jimmy probably tried to decipher her meaning.
“Disappointed because you weren’t happier to see him?” he clarified, his tone carefully restrained. “Or disappointed because he feels betrayed?” She could hear the worry in his voice, no matter how valiantly he tried to conceal it.
“I didn’t tell him about us,” Jenna rushed to explain. “He was just . . . I don’t know, overly optimistic that my feelings had changed over the last few months.”
Jimmy processed that silently. “You mean he tried to kiss you,” Jimmy said flatly.
“No!” Jenna exclaimed, horrified. “No, it wasn’t that bad.”
Again, several moments of silence passed. This time Jenna had no idea what Jimmy could possibly be thinking.
“Does he seem sober?” Jimmy asked, with a complete switch in direction. “Does it seem like he’s recovered completely from the bout with nanospeed?” Jenna considered for a moment. Did Zane seem like, well, Zane? How much of the differences between the man she’d first met and the man she’d toured the site with yesterday were because she’d grown to know him better—or because he was more comfortable showing his faults to her? She tried to remember if there had been any moments when he’d been aggressive or even just better coordinated.
“I think so,” she said finally. “He wasn’t at all like he was at that last race. I had to pretty directly tell him that he needed to let me go, but he didn’t make a scene about it. He just left me alone the rest of the evening. He didn’t come to our meeting tonight, but maybe he just had other things to take care of. Or maybe he felt awkward around me, given what I’d said earlier.”
The door to the bunkroom opened, and a couple of women trudged in wearing construction jumpsuits and dusty hats. Jenna made eye contact and smiled, then turned to finish up her conversation with Jimmy.
“Hey, I’ve got to go,” she said. “I miss you.”
“Miss you too. Hurry home. I love you, tigress.”
“Love you too, Jimmy,�
� she said fondly before switching off the comm. She turned back to her temporary roommates.
“Hi, I guess I’m sharing your room for tonight,” she greeted cheerfully. The woman nearest her smiled broadly.
“You must be Jenna Donnell,” she acknowledged, her voice enthusiastic.
Jenna was taken aback. “Yes, I am,” she confirmed. “Have I met you before?”
“No, sorry, I’ve just seen you on the society feeds, that’s all. You’re the one Zane Quintan wanted to marry.” Jenna stifled a groan. She was rooming with a woman who had seen the disastrous video footage of the night Zane had lost it at the track. She wondered how many of Zane’s contractors out here had seen it—and if it caused him any trouble.
“I’m Remi, Remi Alves. It’s exciting to see a famous face!” Jenna forced a smile in return. The other woman was content to merely give her name—Lois—before she trudged back out of the bunkroom with a bag, presumably to head to the showers.
“Are you going to be here long?” Remi asked as she took off her hat and dropped a tool belt on her bunk.
“Just a couple of days,” Jenna answered. “We needed a firsthand site report—I work for the architect team that designed the resort.”
Remi sat on her bunk, directly across from Jenna. “I’m a plumber, working on the water park. We’re going pretty nonstop to catch up. I’ve got a short break here for dinner, and then I’m back on the job for another four hours tonight.”
“After dark?” Jenna asked, intrigued. She didn’t often deal firsthand with the practical implementation of all the things she designed.
“Yeah, we’ve got floodlights. It’s got to get done somehow. We’ve got a drop-dead date.” She yawned. “This makes up for those months of site work when we had barely anything to do. I wanted to go back to Omphalos, but we didn’t know when we would start work again, so mostly it was standing around here waiting for word. That’s when I started following the society feeds, out of sheer boredom.” Jenna cringed. She didn’t consider herself high society. To know that she had shown up on the feeds regularly once she’d started dating Zane had been one of the most uncomfortable parts of the whole ordeal. She’d dealt with it by pretending the society feeds didn’t exist. Usually, she got away with that.
Not tonight. Through her whole break, Remi had questions about Zane and what it was like to date him. “We don’t see him very often,” she shared confidingly. “I know he’s overseeing some of the trickier installations going on inside the resort. Ahna and Emma, two of our other roommates, are engineers working inside, and they interact with him a lot, I think. They don’t talk about it much; they’re very quiet women.”
The gate, Jenna thought. Zane is supervising the gate construction on this side.
“What about James Forrest? The son of the other Quintan-Forrest owners? Did you start dating him too?” Remi asked excitedly.
“Who, Jimmy?” Jenna said absentmindedly. She was still pondering the gate and wasn’t focused on Remi’s words.
“Is that what he goes by?” Remi’s tone was thoughtful now. “Hmmm,” she murmured pensively. They were interrupted by an alarm from Remi’s flipcom. “Oh, my break’s over,” she lamented. “Well, I’m off. I’ll probably see you later, though.”
“Have a safe evening!” Jenna said pleasantly in return, though her thoughts were still running on after the gate. Remi collected her tool belt and headed back through the door, leaving Jenna alone with a reckless notion stuck in her head. She was wildly curious now. Gates of course had to be constructed as pairs. She knew one half of the gate was under construction at the QE, but Jimmy had told her it was under lock and key, with even stronger security than was provided for Jax. But here, far away from the city, she wondered if it would be possible to get a glimpse of the other half.
It wasn’t likely. With so many contractors and work crews of every kind around here, she could only imagine that the access to the gate was kept strictly under control as well. But it couldn’t hurt to try to see it. She knew where it was supposed to be located because of her updated file of floor plans.
Uncharacteristically, she impulsively grabbed a pocket torch and headed outside. She was a team lead. If she got caught, she could just explain that she was looking around the project, getting a feel for how the whole resort was coming together.
The path from the temporary housing to the resort complex was wide and flat, and there was enough moonlight that she didn’t have to turn on her torch yet. She could see a huge section with big floodlights illuminating the grounds where the water park was, but the building itself was dark and quiet. She let herself in through the same service entrance door that Zane had shown her through earlier and stole quietly down the hallways. Her torch bobbed on the floor in front of her as she walked, showing a hallway that had occasional crates or scraps of finishing materials lined up against the side. She had to slow down a bit so she didn’t trip over anything. Calling up a mental image of the plans, she threaded her way among several service doors until she came to one that should lead her into the room housing the gate. It was unlocked, but she found herself stymied right away. Inside was a security door with a thumbprint screen and retina scanner. She could tell it was already active by the faint blue glow coming from the thumbpad.
So much for security being lighter at Marah!
She swept her torch around the small room and found a ladder that reached up to a hole in the ceiling. She stared at it for a moment, debating whether she really wanted to go to that length to try and see this top secret gate.
This is for you, Andie, she thought, throwing caution to the wind as she put her torch between her teeth and began to scale the rungs. It was exactly the kind of thing her sister would have done without even thinking twice. Jenna wanted to grin as she thought of it, but that would have meant dropping the torch.
Her hands ached before she was halfway up. By the time she reached the top, her sudden enthusiasm for adventure had evaporated. The ladder spanned several stories, ending at a crawlspace that was above where the ceiling of the gate room would be. She took her torch out of her mouth and shone it down the crawlspace. She could see grates on the side. It must be access to the special ventilation system that the gate room required. From the crawlspace she could hear the echoing murmur of distant voices. Probably engineers still working on the gate down below. There would likely be a way to at least look down into the room, though she wouldn’t be able to see much. However, she’d have to crawl in with no light on, or she would risk her light shining through a grate or opening to the room below. It would be impossible to pass off crawling along the ceiling as just doing her professional duties.
She shifted anxiously and tugged at a loose strand of her hair. Finally, she shrugged. She’d gotten this far. If she didn’t go on, she would always wonder. Luckily, she was neither afraid of the dark nor claustrophobic. Taking a deep breath and wondering if she was going to regret it, she knelt down and quietly slid into the crawlspace.
It was slow going on her hands and knees, trying to move as quietly as possible. There was nothing to see, either. The grates she passed were dark; she couldn’t tell if they led into ventilation shafts or if they were open to the room below in some way and just completely dark. She could still hear the voices, and they were growing louder though still indistinct, so she kept moving in that direction. Eventually, she reached a small trapdoor at the end of the crawlspace, but it wouldn’t budge, no matter how hard she tugged (quietly) at the handle. It was probably locked from the other side. She slid down onto her stomach for a moment, completely discouraged. What a waste of time this had been! But then someone swore loudly through the vent right next to her. Jenna jumped, thumping her head on the ceiling.
“Stupid piece of Kratian junk!” roared a familiar voice. A string of rather colorful swear words followed. Jenna gasped quietly. It was Zane in a temper like she had never heard.
“We did everything as detailed,” another voice defended, a whiny-sounding male voice. “It’s not our fault!”
“Well, someone did something wrong.” Zane’s voice was still heated. “The box is still sitting there! I saw the power release, and all the monitors show that the transfer should have happened, but it didn’t!”
“With all due respect, Mr. Zane it’s possible that the problem was on the other end,” said a calm, clipped female voice. “All our instruments might read fine, but if there are issues on the Omphalos end, it still won’t work.”
There was silence for a minute. Jenna listened intently, her heart beating furiously. It was obvious they were trying to test the gate, and it wasn’t working.
“Someone comm the Edge head engineer and find out what in the black hole of creation happened,” Zane growled, his voice still loud enough to make her head ache inside the crawlspace. They must be right under her. A one-sided technical conversation then passed between a new female voice, high and reedy, and presumably the engineer over the gate at the QE in Omphalos. Jenna didn’t understand much, but she did gather that the Omphalos end didn’t have any explanation for the gate’s failure to work either.
Zane obviously understood that much too. “Have them track down Jimmy, drag his lazy crack out of bed if you have to, and tell him that we need a solution from Jaxon right now,” he barked. “I’m tired of excuses. Everyone keeps telling me the man is a genius; well, it’s time for him to prove it. We’ve danced to his tune for five years, and I’m done. Either he finds a way to make the gate functional this week, or I’m throwing him to the wolves, and good riddance!”
The horror slowly crept down Jenna’s spine. She knew that Zane was talk-ing about Jimmy and his brother, that much was obvious. But was Zane seriously threatening to toss Jax out into the street if he didn’t find a way to make the gate work? Surely Mr. Quintan wouldn’t let that happen? Or Jimmy and Jax’s father? Zane didn’t have authority to go against either of them.
The Quintan Edge (Roran Curse Book 2) Page 18
