The Sigma Asset 🏳️‍🌈 (bxb)║AMBYS WINNER 2022

53: Reality

The Pacific Coast Highway was cold and barren at night, no comfort in the tail lights of the cars rushing onward, no magic in the ships' twinkling lights way off toward the dark horizon. Huddled in Charlotte's car doing one-sixty kilometers per hour, I wondered whether the laws that governed the universe were just corrupt enough to get her a speeding ticket.

Sofi had called Charlotte to tell her that Will had been shot in the lower abdomen while cleaning up his old apartment. He'd called nine-one-one before he'd blacked out, and they'd arrived promptly, stabilizing him on the way to hospital where he was receiving a blood transfusion. They weren't sure if any vital organs had been hit. Sofi had dashed to the crime scene, her phone going to voicemail each time Charlotte had tried to contact her since.

"After the blood transfusion he'll be OK. Stable. It can't have hit a vital organ. We'd be told about that. Wouldn't we? He must be stable." My terrified muttering must been driving Charlotte crazy.

Charlotte chewed her lip and ran manic fingers across her pearl necklace as she drove. "We'll be there soon, Zeph. Just try to rest until we see him."

I sat lower in my seat, willing the tail lights of the cars in front to disappear into the bay, so that Charlotte could drive faster to Maria. My mutterings started again, though I was only talking to stop my teeth from chattering in fear. "I didn't want him to go. I've been feeling so sick today. Missing him. I would have gone instead."

I'd been right there in his arms that very morning. He'd called me at dinner. And five hours later we were gonna find him in hospital, again. His body messed up and in pain, again. Was he gonna recover? Was he injured for life?

Charlotte's voice broke into my rising hysteria. "This is my fault. I made him go get Mozhgan's things. You even told me that setting foot in the apartment again would upset him. The burglars must have expected it to be empty. I could have taken Will at the weekend, helped him. We could have used it as a chance to get closer. I was just thinking about lessening my own work, and now he's..."

Rage bubbled up from fuck knew where inside me. "What are you talking about, Charlotte? He didn't get shot by a burglar. Don't you know who you're sitting next to? I put him in danger. Someone from Sigma must have known about us. They were trying to hurt him to punish me. They've probably been watching the apartment for two months, waiting. I did this!"

Charlotte should have been angry, not me. I'd done this to Will, just like he'd warned. How reckless I'd been over the past two months with phonecalls to Miles, and meeting Luke in Arenosa. Hell, Teresa had even sent a police transcript to my witness protection address. I'd compromised myself so many times, against Will's warnings. And he was the one who'd been hurt.

I wanted Charlotte to scream at me then. To rant at me. To hit me. I deserved it all. But Charlotte set her eyes on the road and ran a finger over her fucking pearls. Like a cliché movie billionairess.

"Will made me a necklace. From a shell he found on the beach. Saved himself ten thousand dollars," I said with a bitter laugh. "Is yours some Lyons family heirloom or something?"

Charlotte drove on in silence. I knew that she was breaking apart too, just better at hiding it, probably for my sake. Seemingly aware of how much she'd been touching her pearls, she latched both hands tight onto the steering wheel. "My necklace cost twenty dollars."

I leaned over to the driver's seat and peered at the little white pearls. They were all misshapen and discolored; some were sandy brown, some gray-tinged, some shaped like big grains of rice, some elongated into tear drops.

"There's a pearl farm on the coast, just south of Arenosa. The good pearls go to jewelry designers. The imperfect pearls are sold in their road-side store.