Ember
I had gotten so used to Wheeler’s presence that it was strange to not have him with me anymore. I loved being able to be around my mother again, don’t get me wrong. I had … missed her. Like any child misses their parent.
I missed Wheeler, too.
There had been something that felt like it should have been said when he left. I’d felt it in his kiss, the way he’d lingered, the way that he didn’t really want to pull away.
I had fallen for him. And that was the damn kicker, because I shouldn’t have fallen for him. Where had the time gone? It was like we’d gone through every step that was supposed to take years and years in a matter of moments.
It made me lightheaded.
It was a few days after Wheeler left that my mother asked me if I could go run some errands for her. It wasn’t anything that I was particularly jazzed about doing, but it would get me out of the house and give me a little distraction from my thoughts. I wanted to call Wheeler and see what was up, check in, but I knew that I shouldn’t be a distraction. He would already have enough going on on his end of things, and I wouldn’t want to spoil that for him in anyway.
I had another wig tossed onto my head, the blonde one that was my favorite, and the same sundress that I had worn when I’d found out that I was pregnant (that had been at least a smooth- sailing conversation with my mother; it wasn’t like it’d come as a shock to her, at the least.)
I took my mom’s little beaten up Suburban into town. She was convinced that I wouldn’t need my disguise, but with the ways things had gone, I wasn’t going to leave it up to fate, either.
It was a brisk, sunny day. I strode with a confidence that might have been a little fake-it-till-you-make-it. I was still getting used to the fact that I was pregnant. Growing a little life inside me.
I would have to talk to my mother about how she’d handled the mental process of working through that one.
I picked up a few things from the store, mainly a small amount of supplies for the trailer that my mother needed. I didn’t mind getting them for her and splurging on the nicer amenities that I knew she wouldn’t pay for herself. It was a little busy, so it took a while. I decided that since I had some time to kill, I would go ahead and sit in at a little diner and get something good to eat. I was feeling a nice, homemade greasy burger, and there was a joint in town to die for. I wasn’t feeling pregnancy cravings yet, but I figured I’d get in a decent bite to eat before they totally wrecked my good taste in food.
I walked into the diner, the bell chiming to alert my arrival. A waitress called over to me.
“Hey, hun! Seat yourself and I’ll be right with you.”
I took a booth near one of the big, sprawling windows. There were little menus already set onto the table and I thumbed through.
Mushroom Swiss burger …. Bacon cheddar … Double bacon and cheddar jack … Build your own burger …
“Hey, hun.” The same voice from before greeted me, and I looked up to see a cheerful waitress looking down at me. “Sorry for the wait. What can I get you for a drink?”
“Dr. Pepper.”
She scribbled that down.
“All right, and are you ready to order, or would you like some more time to think on that before you’re ready?”
“No, I think I’m good to order now,” I said. “I’ll take the mushroom Swiss? Double decker it. With potato wedges and slaw on the side.”
She jotted that down, nodding.
“Will that be it?”
“And … a milkshake?” God, a milkshake sounded good. “Chocolate.”
“That’ll be coming right up, sweetie.”
The waitress flitted off, and I was excited to get my hands on my food. I was starving after walking around for the better part of the morning, and ready to get myself fed.
I hadn’t paid attention to the man sitting in the booth opposite mine. But as I was watching outside, the people passing by, I was startled when he leaned over my booth and started speaking to me.
“It’s always nice to see a woman these days with a healthy appetite.”
That voice.
I didn’t want to believe it, but when I looked the man in the face—it was Jameson! I initially started to panic, until I realized that he didn’t recognize me.
I laughed a little, playing it off. I didn’t need to be having a conversation with him.
“Yeah, well. It’s been a long day,” I said. I turned my attention back to the window and hoped that would give him the hint to leave me alone. But this was Jameson that I was dealing with, and I knew that he wasn’t a man that paid attention to subtlety—let alone to anything else, either.
“My name’s Jameson, by the way,” he persisted. “Jameson Mathers. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”
I shook my head.
“No, sorry.”
He still didn’t get the hint.
“Ha, that’s all right. Though it’s kind of nice to not be recognized. But.” He leaned over farther, in my space. He had his phone out. “Maybe this will jog your memory.”
He showed me a picture on his phone of him, from one of the interviews that he’d given about me. Anger rose up in me, but then I thought—what if I could use this against him somehow? Jameson loved to talk.
I pulled out my phone discreetly while pretending to be absorbed in his little news article. The phone wasn’t fancy, but it did have a recorder on it.
“Oh, yeah, I know you!” I said, as fake as possible to make it seem like I was star struck. “It’s insane about what happened with the music festival. All those people …”
“Yeah, it was a real tragedy.” I had to resist rolling my eyes as he laid it on real thick for me. “It’s hard to believe that such a thing happened, but it did, so that’s what we have to deal with, you know?”
“I just can’t believe that someone would, you know. Work with a bunch of bikers to set the place on fire,” I said. I leaned close to him. “Is it really true? All of it? There’s gotta be more to it, right?”
He ginned at me, and I knew that I had him hooked.
“Well.” He leaned closer to me. “If you really want to know something. I made most of it up,” he admitted. “At least about Ember. She didn’t set the place on fire, but yanno. She had all that equipment there; she was just as culpable. And then she ended up being seen with that biker.” He laughed. “Funny thing is, she actually tried to put the fires out.”
I gasped. “Why did you lie?”
“Lie? Baby, it wasn’t a lie. It was … Spinning a story. There you go. Spinning a story. A damn good story, if I do say so myself. Listen, look at it this way, they were gonna pin it on someone anyway; might as well put it on some two-bit piece that meant little. Hell, I didn’t even have to really lie when it came to the drugs. It was one of the Sons who dealt the drugs that were at the festival to begin with. Leech? Something like that. It was perfect. It’s not like I was gonna go down for that. Besides. I’m Jameson Mathers. I can do what I want to do.”
I had that all on tape. Every little incriminating lie that Jameson told, laid out there for the world to see. I couldn’t control the grin that was on my face, and I laughed a little.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, giving a laugh of his own, though it was unsure. Like he wasn’t in on the joke.
My hand came up and I slid my wig off, revealing to him who I was.
“I just got that all on tape, you bastard.”
Jameson’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped.
“E-Ember … You—!”
“Me,” I said triumphantly. I slid my phone into my purse and stood up, not intending to stick around now that he knew that he had been caught and by whom he had been caught. “You slick bastard, you thought that you were going to get away with lying about me like that? And the drugs? You dumb asshole, I can’t wait to see you fry.”
I went to head for the door. I felt bad because I wouldn’t be sticking around to eat, but I had the evidence that I needed to get my freedom back, and I wasn’t going to let something like hunger get the better of me. Before I could get to the door, Jameson was on me. He grabbed me back, pressing me to the wall.
“Give me the phone, Ember,” he hissed. “Now. And then we can just let this go and you can go back to your biker boys and get out of my hair. You hear me?”
I sneered at him. “Get your hands off me. I’m not giving you shit, and if you think for a second that I’m going to let you get away with trying to ruin my life, you’re dumber than you look.” I jerked my arm away from him, and shoved him away from me.
“You bitch!”
He grabbed at me again, but we were causing a commotion and this time, we drew some real attention.
A cop’s attention, for that matter.
He walked over while Jameson was still grappling with me, trying to make me concede.
“Sir, I’m going to ask you to get your hands off this woman.”
Perfect!
Before I could say anything, Jameson spoke up.
“Don’t you recognize her, officer? It’s Ember Amor, that woman that was responsible for the music festival fires!” He pointed at me. “I was trying to stop her from getting away again—”
“Bullshit. You were trying to stop me from telling the world the truth about you—”
“Shut the fuck up, you criminal slut—”
“Enough.”
The cop spoke, and stepped between us. He looked like a good man; he didn’t seem like he was going to hurt me. He looked down at me, and I knew in an instant that he recognized me.
“We’ve been looking for you for a long time, Ember,” he said.
I swallowed.
“Officer, I have proof that what he told you guys isn’t true,” I said. “I can prove it. Please, let me prove this to you. You have to understand the situation.”
As I spoke, he took out his walkie talkie.
“Requesting back up at the 57th diner. I have a suspect in front of me and a rather interesting situation. Over.” He looked at me. “What’s this evidence?”
“Oh, you can’t be seriously thinking of listening to this dumb broad—”
“I asked the lady what the evidence she had was, Sir. I would suggest you calm down unless you want me to clock you for the assault that I just witness.”
That shut Jameson up.
I pulled my phone out of my purse, and played the recording for the officer. His brow raised and he looked between Jameson and me.
“Well. This is an interesting development. I’m going to ask the two of you to come in.”
“What? Are you fucking serious? That wasn’t serious talk. All that was was bragging. I was trying to pick the girl up before I realized who she was—”
The officer leveled a look at Jameson and slid his hand to his gun.
“Do you want to make this worse for yourself, son?”
An hour later, I was down at the precinct, giving a statement. I hadn’t been arrested. They were listening to my story.
For the first time, someone was listening to me.
I spoke to a cop, who asked me to detail everything from the start of my employment with Jameson, to the night of the fire, and everything that I had been up until this point. I didn’t want to leave anything out, but I did gloss over a few things—they didn’t need to know about my sex life, for one thing, and they certainly weren’t going to know that I was carrying a fake ID around with me. I was trying to avoid jail, not go to it in any capacity.
Jameson was somewhere else. He hadn’t been happy, and had lawyered up quick. I wanted the process over and done with as soon as possible, and I didn’t have anything to hide in hiding behind a lawyer—I also wasn’t about to have any of these cops try to swindle me into saying I had done something that I hadn’t. I hoped that it was the last time that I would see him, and I hoped to hell that he got every bit of that he deserved.
In the end, I was let go, and told to stay in the area for further questioning.
The first person that I called was my mother.
The next person that I called was Boss.
I had gotten his number before Wheeler had dropped me off at my mother’s, just in case.
“Boss.”
“Hey, Ember. Is everything all right?”
“I need … a favor.”