Page 53 of Amethyst Flame
“I can’t do that,” I told her. “I guess you’re just going to have to trust me.”
Numbly, I grabbed a few things from my room and stuffed them into BantaMatrix’s promotional knapsack and my backpack. The travel bag was my mom’s after all.
When I came out of my room, no one was in the house. Mom had probably gone across the street to Joe’s. He was her source of comfort now. Maybe she didn’t need me anymore.
Well, that was just fine. Fucking fine. What did she expect me to do? Sit on my ass while the world went up in amethyst flames? Or, you know, maybedosomething about it?
I slammed the front door shut behind me loud enough for her to hear it inside Joe’s place. Jacob was leaning against my car, his stuff already stowed inside.
“Need a hug?” he asked as I approached.
“Can’t,” I told him. “I’ll cry.” And it would be ugly.
“Okay, then.” He pushed off the car to stand, took my bags from me, and put them in the back seat with his. “I texted Dane. He wants us to go straight to his place. But he told me to tell you he’s looking for Alex right now and will have information for you when we arrive.” He held out his hand to me. “And he wants me to drive.”
Any other day, I would’ve fought that—Dane washandlingme—but I slapped the keys into Jacob’s palm because, yeah, the world was tilting a little bit sideways.
When we pulled up, Dane stood in his open doorway, his shirtsleeves rolled up, collar open, arms folded over his chest. His dark eyes were hard as granite, muscle twitching on his jaw as he turned to the side to let us enter.
And we’d just had a nice dinner together. We were getting along so well, and nowthis.“Look, I’m sor—”
He shook his head and waved away my apology. “I need you fully focused on the mission. To that end, I downloaded some outdated but restricted intelligence onto the personal computer of one Sean Alexander Mitchell and sent an order through to my people to apprehend him. They are en route to his location now. He’ll soon be headed to a black site for questioning while they sift through the detritus of his life. I’ll find out what he’s been up to with your sister.”
I was stunned for a second, but then I was able to draw my first real breath since my mom showed me the door. The lump in my throat dissolved so I could swallow.
A black site questioning, or rather, terrorizing, sounded just about perfect. And I’d get my answers. But there was more to the problem. “What if Brianna is at his place when they come?”
“I’ll be notified,” Dane said. “If she contacts you for help, however, you need to be prepared with how you’ll respond so that we can concentrate on our mission.”
I tightened my grip on my phone. Be prepared. Well, I’d just offered her a sleepover, so she knew she had another option—me—but it was no good. “With everything going on with BantaMatrix, I-I can’t keep an eye on her right now.” I sighed. “And I won’t send her home to her father. She’ll just run away again, and she’llnevertrust me again either.” Though why that was important to me, I had no idea.
I looked over at Jacob. “Could you…?”
His eyes widened in horror. “Uh…”
“Jacob is needed in another capacity,” Dane told me. “And this house is off-limits too.”
Right. Of course. “I’ll call Swann.” She hid me once. She could hide my sister.
Dane frowned, but Jacob nodded enthusiastically. “Much better idea.”
I texted an SOS.Call asap*prayer hands emoji*
And got back:Free in 15
Dane opened his arm toward his command center, aka the dining room with its pitiful lone computer. “This may soon be over, anyway.”
I gave a short, rough laugh as I went where he wanted. “You expect me to be ableto thinkwhile—?”
“Yes, I do.” He pulled out a chair for me in front of his laptop. “What can be done about your sister is being done. I can’t help you with your mother. Either she is going to support you, or she’s not. It’s something all operators contend with, sooner or later. Most live a lie.”
Jacob trailed us into the room and placed himself on the other side of the chair.
“What do you do?” I asked Dane as I sat down.
“I cut off contact with my family early on,” Dane told me, “and I avoid personal entanglements. Now”—he leaned over me and hit a key on his laptop—“if you will please commit this to memory, we can get started.”
His abrupt shift was another nauseating spin of the tilt-a-whirl I’d been on since seeing my dad and fighting with my mom. I didn’t want to live without her in my life. Cutting off contact seemed so brutal. So cold. I would never hurt her like that. And I couldn’t understand how she had done it to me. It made my eyes burn and the knot tighten again in my throat.
