“He saved me the other night after the Sterilization Center fire. He kept me from getting caught. He likes me, I think.” She sat up. “I got a note. You can help me decipher it.”
“No problem, Patrick’s encrypting is my specialty.”
She handed him the paper and watched him squint in the low light, reading the small script.
“Okay, translated from cryptic to English, it says, Don’t eliminate him because you’re an Amber and he’s a Sapphire. He thinks the resistance movement will be successful, and the two of you will be successful. That’s what this…” He pointed. “I think everything we do will be successful means.” Shane lifted his gaze to Jordan’s. “He’s got it bad for you.”
He handed the paper back to her and lay back down. Jordan returned the paper to her stand and then returned her attention to Shane.
He had a big grin on his face, like Patrick’s. “I bet Ma’s going to tan his hide when he tells her.” His grin turned wickedly evil. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall when that happens.”
“When he tells her about me or about joining the resistance?”
He chuckled. “Both.”
“It didn’t occur to me that there’d be any family to approve or disapprove.” She yawned and could no longer keep her eyes open. “This is a conversation we’ll have to save until morning. I need to sleep,” she murmured. “Would you mind rolling over to face the window?”
“No, lass, I wouldn’t mind at all.”
After he rolled to face away from her, she cautiously slid closer, bringing her knees up to her chest and tucking her head under her arm. How quickly she reverted back to the way things were for her before Dennis, when she found shadows of intimacy and comfort in unconventional and covert ways because she gave her heart away too quickly, thinking that the touch meant more. She’d been totally new at all of it back then. Now, she steeled herself against the false intimacy. Tonight it would be so easy to succumb to the illusion that the man lying beside her cared about her.
She’d done that when she first arrived in Circle City. But to her, the closeness between Ambers was all a cruel joke, because the intimacy was a fleeting sensation that left just as easily as it appeared.
* * * *
It was early when Shane slid out of bed. The sun was just starting to lighten the eastern sky from black to a deep blue. He turned to look down at Jordan. She was curled in on herself, reminding him of a fetus.
He stooped for a moment so he could peek at what the arm over her head was hiding. Her face was softer when she slept. There was no mettle, no boldness there in her features without her will to guide them, just an innocent face with pouty lips.
He shook his head. What was Patrick thinking?
Grabbing his pants, he treaded to the bathroom and locked himself in. He immediately recognized the handwriting on the tan square of paper lying on the counter. It was a note from Patrick. He picked it up and read it.
Hedman,
Me and some of my friends were hoping to be invited to your next party. I’m thinking you may have already met my brother. If not, look him up so you can invite him, too. As I’ve already mentioned to Jo, I’ll be around again tomorrow if you want to hook up and maybe fill me in on what’s happening. You’ll have to let me know what you want me to bring to the table for your next blow out, and I’m there. I won’t bail on you. Promise.
PO
Huh. Patrick had a group of people willing to help. That meant Ma already knew about everything he’d gotten himself into. Shane smiled at the thought of his mother giving his twin what for.
God he missed her. He missed everybody he grew up with in the Sapphire Zone. Because of the empty, lonely feeling he experienced when he let his mind wander to them, he’d become good at redirecting his attention to something else before his thoughts gained a foothold and submerged him like they used to.
Turning his attention back to the note, he continued. Patrick wanted him to join the cause on this end. He wanted to meet Jordan again tonight. He was willing to do what they need him to, and he wanted them to know they could trust him.
Shane turned on the water in the shower and pulled his earbud out of his pocket. Putting it in, he activated it.
“Com Patrick.”
When he heard the tone indicating he should leave a message instead of his brother’s voice, Shane sighed. “Sorry I missed you, bro. Just shooting you a com to tell you our friend is okay and sleeping now. I’ll keep an eye on her, but I’m not sure what else you want me to do. I just wanted to let you know. I prefer we’re on the same page. So…that’s it. Later.” Touching his earbud again, he disconnected.
After his shower, Shane began cooking breakfast in the standard galley kitchen along the rear wall of the apartment, by the door. Jordan slept without moving while he clinked and sizzled in the kitchen. When the powdered scrambled eggs and potatoes were done, he turned the burner off and went to the bed.
He gently touched her arm to shake her awake, and she jumped up with wide eyes, swinging her fist.
Shane jerked out of the way of her right cross and caught it with a firm grip around her wrist. It only took a split second more before she gained her bearings.
“I’m sorry I startled you.” He loosened his clasp on her arm and caressed her forearm to her elbow before letting go completely. “Breakfast is ready.”
He walked back to the kitchen, filled the plates with food, and brought them to the small, two-person table on the other side of the kitchen counter, separating the cooking area from the rest of the apartment.
Jordan sat on the edge of the bed.
“Go on, before it gets cold,” he said, back on the move into the kitchen. When he returned, he set out two cups of tea and then sat down in front of one of the plates of food. Jordan looked at him from her perch on the bed. She smiled and moved to the table. “Thanks.”
He nodded and shoveled a congealed lump of eggs into his mouth. “I’ve been thinking about things this morning. The group that’s willing to help will be my mother’s people.”
She cocked her head and picked up her fork. “People?”
“Yeah. My parents are Irish, from Ireland. They were in the States for their honeymoon when the virus started spreading. They were stranded here when the Gov shut down the airports in an effort to contain it. Anyways, early on, before even the walls were completely finished, my ma quickly made friends with other women of Irish descent. They flocked to her, actually. I think her accent reminded a lot of them of their mothers or aunts whoever they’d lost in the pandemic.
“In the last two decades she’s fought hard to keep the customs and history of our ancestry alive. Every person with even a molecule of Irish descent has been absorbed into the Sapphire Zone’s Irish Heritage Club.
“She’ll contact those she trusts completely. I’d say you have a good-sized group of people waiting to do their part. One person, my cousin Kyle, pops to mind because when I left, his job assignment was as a tattoo tagger in the Sapphire Zone Designation Center. Once every few months or so, he was called to the Peacekeepers Compound in the Emerald Zone to tattoo palm codes in new Guard recruits. He’d also have access to official ink colors and a tattoo machine if you ever needed it.”
“Access to the Peacekeepers Compound. That’s where General Morgan spends his days.”
“He’s the one who’s ultimately in charge here in New Atlanta. The people we vote for are his puppets.”
“I agree,” Jordan said. She stared