Читать книгу Being Sapphire - Sylvia Ryan - Страница 7

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Triumph exploded out of Jordan Ford as she gazed at the fireball rolling up into the black sky of night. The Amber Zone Sterilization Center burned out of control and she stood mesmerized by the orange maelstrom of roaring flames while her heart hammered out a frantic beat in response to what she’d just done.

She felt compelled to stop and look, to revel in the satisfaction of the moment. The inferno’s heat bathed her face. She didn’t think she would ever experience a prouder moment than this one.

Her throat tightened as she mentally ran down the names of women victimized by forced sterilizations performed in that building. This was their retribution and her narrow escape. In less than twelve hours, Jordan was due to report for her next ten-year-birth-control implant. Now, there was nowhere to report.

“Come on, Jordan.” Xander’s voice emanated from the darkness behind her.

She turned to glance at him for just a moment before returning to the mind-blowing sight holding her captive.

“Go on, I just want to watch for a few more seconds.”

“Now. Let’s go!”

It was an order from her superior officer, plain and simple, yet she couldn’t turn away.

“I’m right behind you. Go.”

She waved a hand at him and registered his retreating footfalls while she took in several more seconds of the conflagration.

This was a pivotal event for the country. It was the Boston Tea Party of the twenty-first century. She wondered whether history would remember it as such. Or would their act of rebellion be a forgotten glitch in the heavy-handed reign of the current Gov? She shrugged. Only time would tell.

Reluctantly, Jordan finally turned away and ran into the darkness. The night was like tar, black and sticky from the unseasonably hot and humid September air. They’d picked this moonless night on purpose. But now, away from the fire, it was impossibly dark, and she was forced to slow her gait until her eyes adjusted.

The escape plan for their first act of sabotage was perfect. The Amber Zone police cruiser waited less than a mile away and instead of driving away from the scene of the crime, she and Xander would approach the disturbance together in the police cruiser, as if responding to the emergency.

After taking the time for her eyes to adjust, she moved in the shadows toward the rendezvous point, her black police uniform giving her excellent stealth in the deserted commercial district of the Amber Zone.

When a hand shot out of the darkness and tugged her into an alley between two massive buildings, Jordan gasped, startled by the unexpected new direction her body took. She hadn’t seen who grabbed her, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t Xander. The man’s arms encircled her, holding her tightly and pinning her arms at her sides. She attempted to twist away from the hard male figure behind her, but he didn’t give her an inch of leeway. He remained still and silent while his calm, slow breathing rustled her hair and warmed her scalp where his lips rested so very close to her ear.

She shifted slightly and gripped the butt of the gun holstered at her hip. The shadow behind her lowered his arm, grabbed her wrist and then restrained it against her abdomen. A sexy chuckle vibrated against her back and floated over her, raising the hairs on the back of her neck.

“Shh.” The sound was the slightest whisper through lips that skimmed the shell of her ear. “They’re coming.”

Just as the stranger finished his sentence, Jordan detected the Guardsmen up ahead, by the subtle uneven rhythm of boots stomping the pavement. She stood in the slip of real estate, uncertain of her next move.

Her breathing heaved out of control, an unfortunate side effect of the run to escape combined with the panic of being caught. She was breathing too loudly. No matter how much she tried to regulate it she continued to bellow great, uncontrollable swells of air. One of the flock of National Guardsmen jogging by would hear her, turn his head and spot her there. The same thoughts must have run through the mind of the man at her back because the arms that caged her tightened and he held his breath, releasing it only after they’d passed.

A moment after the stomping of their boots had completely faded in the distance, the man lowered his grasp from her wrist to her hand and tugged her out from between the buildings. He navigated away from the gathering emergency responders but away from her rendezvous location with Xander as well. They rounded a corner and the border gate to the Sapphire Zone lay straight ahead, lighting up the entire area.

In the increasing light, she gaped at the man dragging her behind him, and dread dropped like a boulder in the pit of her stomach. He wore a green camouflage uniform and carried an automatic rifle by a strap over his shoulder. He was Guard.

Stricken, she attempted twist away from him, pulling hard against his grip.

He paused to look back at her. “Jordan. Stop.”

When she got the split-second look at his face, recognition was instantaneous. Patrick O’Connor.

The National Guardsman who currently dragged her behind him was at the border guard station that night, the night Emily was killed. The night that started everything. She had spent a couple of hours passing the time with him while she waited for Jaci to cross back over into the Amber Zone. He’d liked her. It wasn’t hard to tell. He hadn’t been able to hide it very well. Months had passed since then, and he still remembered her name. The first time she’d heard him say it with his slightly off cadence syllables and the slight roll of his R made her name sound lyrical coming from his lips. She raised her eyebrows in surprise because she remembered his name as well.

“Come on!”

He pulled her again. And again, she resisted.

“There’s no place to hide out here. They’ve already established a perimeter and are flooding the area with Guard for a grid search.” He leaned in close until they were almost nose to nose. “I can hide you.”

He smiled at her. The gleaming white of his teeth cut through the darkness and her reservations.

In a leap of faith Jordan quit resisting his pull and nodded. She followed him willingly then, as he led her into the small, brilliantly illuminated building that held the turnstiles used as the checkpoint for people traveling between the Amber and Sapphire Zones.

“Hands and knees,” he spat, pushing her to the floor as he positioned himself in front of her. “There’s a camera sweeping our way in a second. Shit,” he cursed under his breath.

His tone of desperation had heightened to that of a man who was dangerously close to coming face-to-face with his own demise. Jordan looked around and saw them, too, a group of four Guardsmen getting out of their vehicle on the Sapphire side of the border. Patrick’s body blocked their view of her as he moved around the checkpoint desk and pulled out the chair. “In you go,” he mumbled.

She scooted into the small square of leg space under the desk and Patrick sat, rolling into her and pressing her tightly between his legs and the front panel. She knelt carefully, making sure no part of her body stuck out the six-inch opening at the floor and trying to hear the men enter the building over of the thundering of her heart.

“Stay quiet. If they catch you, we’re both dead.”

He was scared, too. Scared of the Guard, a group he was part of. Moments later the hard raps of boots hitting the tile floor sounded inside the building and got louder until they stopped directly beside her. The men were literally less than a foot away, just on the other side of the desk.

“We’ve been instructed to move in and help secure the area around the fire.” She heard the familiar beeping sound of the code scanner, reading the numbers tattooed on the Guardsmen. Every Amber’s palm held a numerical code that kept track of all their movements and their credits as well. She wasn’t surprised that the Guard had codes in their palms too. The Gov would want to keep tight control over their personnel, tracking the where, when and with whom of each soldier.

Without further discussion, the group proceeded through the turnstiles and exited into the Amber Zone. She shifted, waiting for Patrick to roll backward and let her out. He didn’t. His shins pressed tightly against her side, unmoving.

“Take it easy. We’re not clear yet,” he mumbled.

Jordan groaned softly and rearranged herself into a more comfortable position, throwing an arm over Patrick’s thighs to steady herself and rested her head on his thigh. Seconds later, more soldiers streamed through the building and for the next half an hour or so, there were only snippets of time when they were in the room alone.

“You can make yourself useful under there, beautiful,” he said, during a short span of silence in the building. The smile on his face clearly audible in the words he spoke, bringing a smile to her face too. It was a balm to her fear. Jordan responded by pinching the sensitive skin behind Patrick’s knee. “Ow. Jesus, woman.”

“Where’s your partner?”

“He’s sleeping in the break room, like he does every night.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I’m a sucker for a damsel in distress–”

His words stopped abruptly as another stream of soldiers and members of the New Atlanta Fire Department crisscrossed between the Sapphire and Amber Zones.

The next time they were alone, she asked again, “Why?”

“What else is a red-blooded American man supposed to do when a gorgeous shadow is coming at him at breakneck speed.”

“Do you take anything seriously?”

“Oh, Jo…”

For a moment she thought they were going to be joined by more Guard traipsing through the building. Instead, he moved a hand under the desk and ran his palm over her forearm, then gave it a brief squeeze. His Sapphire wrist tattoo looked almost black in the dim space.

“I don’t think we can get more serious than this.” His voice was sober, and she agreed with his statement. So far this had been the most satisfying and most dangerous night of her life. “Very soon we’re going to have to take our chances getting you out of here. My shift will be ending soon and my partner is due up from his good night’s sleep anytime now.”

Another group passed through the building. The foot traffic appeared to have turned the tide, with most of the soldiers and firemen crossing back into the Sapphire Zone.

Jordan’s legs ached from being forced into the unnatural position for so long. “I’ve got to go. I’m dying under here.”

“Come see me again, tomorrow,” he whispered. “I can help your cause. I usually step out to get some air after my partner goes beddy-bye, normally around twelve thirty. Look for me then? In the alley?”

Apprehension churned her insides. Trusting this man was risky at best, and deadly if the trust was betrayed. But he already knew who she was, and if he had any brains at all, what she’d done that evening. Yet he still reached out to her, wanting to help. There was no way this man was ignorant of the fact he was risking his life by seeing her again.

“Why would you be interested in helping the resistance?”

“We don’t have the time to get into that now,” he said with a hard, cold tone of voice that told her, despite his uniform, he was not a fan of the Gov.

Or, he was a spy.

“It’s dangerous.”

He snorted. “So is setting a Gov building on fire.”

Jordan stayed silent. She wasn’t going to openly admit to that. Surely he didn’t think she was that stupid. “I’ll talk to my people. If they okay it, I’ll be back tomorrow.”

He sighed. It was a sound of both resignation and confession. “I’d like to see you again either way.” His hand slid softly over the arm she had slung across his lap. It only took a split second to decipher his nonverbal cues, and her sharp intake of breath accompanied the true meaning of his words.

She didn’t know what to say. She was thrown. The whole purpose of the Repopulation Laws was to keep people like him away from people like her. A little flirting was one thing, but what he proposed was forbidden, and they’d both be swiftly and brutally punished if they were caught.

“Since the first time we met, I’ve hoped to see you again, and I’m going to keep hoping after you leave tonight.” Before she could develop a train of thought as answer to his statement, he spoke again. “Think on it. I’m here every night, Monday through Friday.”

He cleared his throat. “Okay, this is what we’re going to do. I’ll slide away from the desk. When I tell you to go, you’ll have a window of about seven seconds to get out the door and back into the Amber Zone.” He squeezed her forearm again. “I’ll be looking for you tomorrow night.”

Suddenly, he rolled back a bit, leaving Jordan crammed into a slightly larger little box. She shifted to her hands and knees and groaned as her usually limber form creaked complaints at being compressed into a human brick for so long. She lifted her chin and looked up at Patrick O’Connor. Their gazes met for a split second. The color of his eyes drew her into their indigo depths. They sparkled with mischief as he grinned down at her. “You look especially beautiful down there on your hands and knees.”

Yes, and he looked absolutely delicious towering over her.

He chuckled, as if he were reading her mind.

“My ma says I’m incorrigible.” He said the words as if he was proud of them while his deep blue eyes flashed with more than mischief. Shadows of erotic acts and silent promises leapt at her from the mesmerizing, heart racing gaze. “It’s just a part of my charm. You’ll get used to it.”

He scooted back away from the desk a little farther. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.” She hitched a breath, bracing herself for the sprint she’d execute at his signal.

His attention shifted to one side of the border and then to the other. He rolled away from the desk a few inches more. Seconds passed.

“Go.”

Jordan bolted from the shelter of the desk and ran out the glass door of the brightly lit building into Amber, into the night.

She’d gotten about fifty feet from the building when a crowd of Guardsmen turned a corner and spotted her. Still in her police uniform, she composed herself and smiled at the group. “Hey, you guys need any more help over there?”

She called the question across the twenty or so feet that separated them, hoping she didn’t look as caught as she felt. Her blood whooshed loudly in her ears while she viciously fought the impulse to look away from the Guard’s direct eye contact. Straightening her spine and locking her teeth together, she steeled herself and looked the man directly in the eye.

“No. Everything is under control now. Get on back to where you belong.” The order was riddled with the superior attitude and disgust that those from a different zone parroted when in the presence of an Amber. Jordan gave the man a quick salute and turned, heading back on foot toward Amber Zone Police Headquarters.

The farther she walked away from the border guard station, the more relaxed she became. Her solitary steps echoed outward into the gathering fog of early morning, punctuating the rapid-fire thoughts shooting through her mind. They’d done it. The resistance was a reality, now. And already, there was someone from a different zone reaching out as an ally. If she could trust him.

Jordan thought back to the night she met Patrick, waiting for Jaci to cross back into the Amber Zone after Caroline had tried to kill her. She’d spent over an hour talking and flirting with him and his sleazy partner on the night shift. She’d flirted with the men because she wanted to keep them off-kilter, not questioning why she was there or why her friend was crossing back into Amber at such a late hour. It had worked, but she’d never looked back after they made their escape from the border guard station.

That wasn’t really the truth. She’d thought about Patrick a couple of times since then. He was attractive, and she’d picked up on his attraction to her.

But there was something about him even more memorable. She didn’t sense any disapproval or superiority usual during contact with people of other zones. He’d been fun, cracking jokes and tossing out sexual innuendos, which of course, was taboo because of their difference in designations. A flood of confidence swelled within her. After only a couple hours of contact months ago, Patrick remembered her name, both first and last.

She found it hard to believe, because she wasn’t a bat-her-eyelashes-and-wrap-men-around-her-little-finger type of woman. She’d never even tried that wholly female ploy before that night, and when she thought back, she was still shocked it worked. Maybe the years since she turned twenty-one and moved into Circle City allowed her to pick up some of the basics, but she was still way behind the learning curve in the feminine wiles department compared to the rest of the women in Amber.

Her upbringing in the Amber Zone had been different from other girls. She didn’t grow up doing the things they did. She never found comfort and acceptance through the touch of someone else. Never had pretty clothes, or spent hours figuring out the best way to do her hair, and never had a friend or had sex until after she turned twenty-one and moved to Circle City.

She was definitely different and keenly aware of her shortcomings. She wasn’t feminine. She kept her hair supershort, didn’t wear makeup and only recently put herself out there enough to make a friend, her very first girlfriend.

Overall, she’d characterize herself as tough, and tough wasn’t generally what men looked for in a woman. But, being tough was what led her to tonight. It almost made every other miserable moment of her life worth it. She shook her head bringing herself out of the reoccurring negative train of thought. No. Not tonight. Tonight was everything good and lucky and right.

The sun rose ahead of her, painting the smattering of clouds pink and orange. The colorful spread only spurred the ridiculous grin she couldn’t seem to erase from her face. When she turned the corner onto the final leg of her trek, she spotted Captain Rush sitting on the entry steps to Police Headquarters.

He was waiting for her. When he caught sight of her approach, she pumped her fist in the air and flashed him her best hell-yes expression. He released a long breath and his shoulders slumped, slowly releasing the tension they held. He’d been worried about her.

As she approached, she noticed he was definitely starting to show his age now that he’d lost most of his hair. He looked more like a bald eagle with every passing day. But he was still sharp and smart and everything to her. God she loved that old fart.

Rush stood when she finally reached him and they wordlessly walked alongside each other into the building. In his office, he rounded his desk and Jordan closed the door behind her before sitting across from him.

His chair squealed a complaint as he leaned back and crossed his arms. “What happened?”

Jordan reported the entire evening from the time Xander left her, to her close call after she fled the border guard station. “I assume Xander got here okay?”

“Yeah, but he wanted to go back and look for you instead of following the plan. I had to order him not to go.”

“I’m sorry, Cap. I couldn’t stop myself from just…taking it all in.”

That feeling, that irrational joy, resumed its excited flutter in her belly, tickling like brushes of butterfly wings on her interior organs. She squashed it down the best she could but still couldn’t hold back the smile curving her lips. “It won’t happen again.”

“Go home. Get some sleep. We’ll debrief before the meeting tonight.”

Jordan nodded and stood. “Cap?”

His eyes softened at her soft inquiry. “Yes, Sergeant?”

“We did it.”

He shook his head. “No. You did it.”