Page 41 of Amethyst Flame
“Are you okay, Mom? What happened?” My voice wobbled.
“I’m fine, honey. You worry too much about me.”
“Well, you sent me a dozen emergency texts!”
“Yes. There is an emergency,” she told me. “Your father called. Your half-sister has run away from home.”
“Oh.” I relaxed back into my seat. “Is that all?” I waved at Dane that we had nothing to worry about.
“Ryan said she’s been acting out a lot lately,” my mom went on, “and he’s very concerned about what she might do.”
“I’m shocked that he’s such a shitty parent,” I said. “Who would’ve guessed that he’d sucksooobad?”
“Imogen, this is serious.”
“Then he should call the police.”
My mom sighed. “Honey, we need to find her before she does anything foolish.”
“Who is thiswe?” Because my father hadn’t been part of anywe.Ever. It’d been my mom and me. Alone.
“She’s just a kid,” my mom said. “And her father thinks that she’d answer a call from you. I know you’re angry with him, but she’s innocent. And she needs your help.”
CHAPTERNINE
No.Just no. I was done with being the garbageman, doing all the dirty work, and sweeping up everybody else’s messes. Done I say!
So I did something I couldn’t remember ever doing before: I hung up on my mother.
Letting the phone drop to the seat, I stared out the window at my side. The desert night reflected me darkly—except for restless purple sparks in my eyes. The mapping command and the fear and the too-high heels had left me tired and shaky. I sucked in a slow breath, willing the moths to settle.
“What’s wrong?” With his reflected gaze meeting mine in the glass, Dane kept his focus on me a heartbeat too long considering he was in command of a large, lethal vehicle.
“I told you, nothing,” I snapped.
“That’s true. You never tell me anything.”
Oh great, just what I needed, Dane thinking he was being funny. I twisted around to glare at him more directly. “My little sister, the one I just discovered, has apparently disappeared. And apparently people think I should do something about it.” I thunked back against the seat behind me. The thick cushioning made it less of a statement than I intended.
“You can’t do anything,” Dane said.
“My point exactly. I don’t even know her. I don’t owe them anything. I have my own life—”
“You can’t do anything because you have a more important mission,” he interrupted. “National security issue, fate of the world, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember.” Without looking down, I thumbed off the power on my phone. And maybe all the old folks were right about kids these days being too connected to their phones, because I felt like I powered down too. With one more trembling breath, I fell asleep.
Some vague time later, when the soothing rumble of the engine fell silent, I groggily levered myself upright. “Whu?” I wiped the drool from the corner of my mouth.
“We’re home,” Dane said. “Your home.”
So we were. Then why didn’t it feel like it? Damn, what did it say about my life lately that being stuck on the road in the Kidnapper felt more restful than my own bed?
When I just sat there, Dane cleared his throat. “Don’t tell anyone where we were or what we found.”
“Who would I tell?” I stared out the window, the words bouncing back to me like a low-tech version of the [map] command showing me just how sad and pathetic I was.
“Ms. Taylor,” Dane said in the quietest tone I’d heard from him yet. “Imogen…”
