Later that night, I pulled into my parking spot at my apartment. I hadn't wanted to stay in Duskwood. The others had begged me to; Lilly and Thomas had even left Hannah's bedside when they heard about Richy, and asked me to stay. But I just couldn't be there anymore. I'd lost so much that I cared about to Duskwood; I didn't think I could ever go back again.
I promised everyone that I'd be in touch later, but I asked for some space for the moment. We needed to wrap some things up, get our stories straight in case the FBI came around asking more questions. But for now, I simply couldn't bring myself to care about any of it.
I called Lia on my way home to apologize for missing work that day, telling her briefly what had happened. I thought I would cry more, but I was so numb at this point, so dehydrated from crying, that I guess I had nothing left. She told me to take off as much time as I needed, but I refused.
"I need to come to work tomorrow," I said. "It's the only thing that makes sense anymore in my life."
When I got home, I stripped out of my borrowed clothes. I threw away my shoes, which were completely destroyed by the fire. Then I stood under the shower for a long time, washing my hair over and over again, scrubbing my skin until it was pink. I was trying to wash away the scars that were on the inside now, the ones that encased my heart and squeezed at it painfully.
Once the water ran cold, I stayed under it, shivering. I had tried so hard to fix things, to save everyone. I had naively thought that if I could solve some puzzles that everything would be alright. But it would never be alright again.
A weight was settling in my chest, the heaviness I'd been carrying since that first conversation with Thomas and the gang had taken up permanent residence. Sinking in to all the cracks in my heart and crushing my will. If Jake was really gone, I would not last long. My depression was in full force and I knew I should call my therapist, or a hotline. Or even one of my friends. But part of me didn't want it to go away. These feelings were my punishment for what happened.
Just one more day, I told myself. I would stay in this life for another day, and see what happened. Then I would re-evaluate.
I would have to start surviving by one second, one breath at a time. That was the only way that I could continue on. Focusing only on what was right in front of me, because thinking about the future or past was too much. So step one, turn off cold water. Step two, dry off. Step three, get dressed. Step four...what should step four be? I sat down on my couch and stared at nothing.
Then I pulled out my phone, as I'd done a million times during the past 24 hours, hoping for word from Jake. He still was offline. Like so many times before, I texted him anyway, hoping he would come back eventually and read what I wrote. Just a quick "I miss you." I had to be careful. It hurt to have to hold back all that I wanted to say to him. There were so many things that we never had the chance to talk about. But my fear that my words would put him in danger overrode my need to write them.
I offloaded the last of the texts and information related to Duskwood from my phone and onto the SD card, and hid it back in my purse. I went back to staring at nothing then, wallowing in the pain.
I woke up to my alarm the next morning and found I had fallen asleep sitting up on my sofa, clutching my phone to my chest. Well, this was a good start to the day, I thought, rolling my shoulders and trying to get the kinks out of my spine.
I walked into work at 7:00 am as usual to get the clinic ready for the day. Lia came in shortly after me and gave me a once-over. After a long hug, she insisted on checking all my wounds, including the burn on my arm. "Have you heard from your man?" she asked.
I shrugged, looking down. "No."
She was about to say more when a group of people knocked loudly on the door. "Oh, shit," Lia said, looking at the FBI jackets and guns.
"They're here for me," I murmured, a sense of calm coming over me.
Lia gasped. "What?"
They pounded on the door again. "FBI! We're here for Jayna Chacon, let us in!"
I turned to Lia quickly. "Lia," I said, backing toward the door, "I owe you five dollars." Her eyes widened, and she nodded in understanding. With that, I turned and unlocked the door.
Everything was a blur from that point on. I was handcuffed and searched, then seated in a chair while Lia argued with the agents. They threw around terms like "obstruction of justice" and "harboring a known fugitive." As they pulled me out the door, Lia called to me, "I'm getting you an attorney! Don't say a word to them until she arrives!"
The ride to the FBI's Portland office was short, but I was exhausted. I hadn't slept well in weeks, so I drifted off during the car ride. Someone shook me awake as we pulled up to the building, and I stumbled obediently along at their direction.
I was immediately brought into a room where they removed my handcuffs so I could be searched again more thoroughly by a female agent and everything on my person was catalogued. I watched in amusement as they put my stethoscope on the evidence list, as well as the little notepad and pen that I used when I needed to write down vitals or other random information. I snorted when the agent stared in confusion at notes where I was calculating a medication dose based on the patient's body surface area.
Her head snapped up at the noise I made. "Is this all a joke to you?"
I shook my head, but couldn't help the inappropriate laughter from bubbling up. "No, it's just–the look on your face..." I broke out in an hysterical giggling fit, unable to continue speaking as I laughed and gasped for air.
I had barely started to calm down when she roughly dragged me into a different room and sat me in a chair. I heard someone else come through the door. Oh, great. Agent Carnes.
"Hello again, Jayna," he greeted me in a smug voice.
I rolled my eyes. What an asshole. I watched as he set up some recording devices and mumbled some information about me into them. Then he turned back to me and said in an official-sounding voice, "Ms. Chacon, what is the nature of your relationship with Jakob Fischer?"
Fischer? Well, that was news to me. Lia had said to wait for the lawyer, but what else could I find out if I kept talking? "That name is not familiar to me," I answered honestly.
"The conversations on your phone would say otherwise," he shot back, raising an eyebrow.
I laughed. "There are no conversations with someone named Jakob Fischer on my phone."
That smirk came back again as he ignored my response. "You're a nurse, right?"
I just glared at him. He knew that I was.
"Aren't nurses supposed to care about people? Be compassionate and all that?" I huffed out a breath but otherwise remained silent. This was getting boring. "So how could you end up with a terrorist? Do you even know what he's done?"
When I continued to ignore him, he plopped down a file in front of me. "Why don't you take a look?" he encouraged me.
I was curious what he had, but I studiously looked away. It was probably all lies anyway. Besides, I had told Jake once that I didn't care what he had done, and I meant it. I didn't believe he was capable of doing anything that would purposefully hurt someone.
"Yes, well, I have quite a lot of information about you if you don't care to see what Jake has done. Including evidence that you illegally hacked a private person's cloud storage, that you were a party to stealing and reviewing the private health records of Hannah Donfort, tampering with police evidence, obstruction of justice, and trying to obscure the whereabouts of a wanted fugitive." He sat back, waiting for a reaction from me.
I couldn't manage to care about the accusations against me, so simply I stared back at him. When his scare tactic didn't work on me, he leaned forward. "And this little clinic you work at, imagine our dismay when we discovered that you and your boss see a lot of patients who are not legally authorized to be in this country. Some of them might even be criminals. I wonder what else we would find out if we kept digging into the clinic's records?"
Now he was starting to piss me off. "The government threatening to take action against sick and poor people because of where they were born? How original. Next you're going to tell me that if I cooperate, maybe you'll look the other way? What is this, some bad cop movie??" My chest heaved. I was putting up a brave front, but I was truly scared now. If they raided the clinic, thousands of our patients could be at risk of deportation for something as stupid as an unpaid speeding ticket. Lia could lose her medical license, maybe even face charges for some of the procedures she performed, and how she didn't report certain suspicious injuries like the gunshot wound we treated the other day.
Because of me. All these people were at risk because of me.
Carnes smiled evilly. We were in the middle of a staring contest when a smartly-dressed woman was escorted into the room. She handed a card to Carnes. "I'm Ms. Chacon's attorney, and I will need to speak to my client privately now." She looked at him expectantly, hands on hips, as he shut down the recording equipment and gathered his stuff.
Once he was gone, she shook my hand and sat down. "Jayna, I'm Alicia Atieno. Are you hurt? Do you need anything to eat or drink? Bathroom break?" I said no, and she smiled at me. "Lia filled me in on some details. I'd like to discuss them more with you, but not here. Please tell me what's happened since they brought you here."
I told her about the search, and them taking away my belongings. How Carnes came into the room next. "Had you met this Agent before?" Alicia questioned.
"I...kind of yelled at him when I was in the hospital back in Duskwood," I said sheepishly. "I had not been having a good couple of days."
She smiled kindly. "Understandable. So what did he say to you? And what have you said to him?"
I relayed the conversation to the best of my recollection. Alicia frowned deeply when I mentioned his threats to the clinic. "What, did he get his FBI interrogation training from a bad movie?"
"That's what I said!" I exclaimed, feeling vindicated.
"Did they show you a warrant? Tell you that you were under arrest, explain your rights at any time?"
I thought back. "I wasn't really paying attention to what was said at the clinic..."
Alicia shook her head. "Lia was very clear. They did not do any of those things while at the clinic."
I shrugged. "Well, it hasn't happened here."
"Have they showed you any of the evidence they claim they have against you?"
"No. He's only been jabbering on about it."
Alicia nodded and put her pen down, tapped out a few things on her phone, and then looked at me. "On the way over here, I had my office do a quick check. There are no warrants for your arrest on file, let alone any warrants to search your personal phone records."
I stared at her. "What?"
"Exactly. I can't say whether they attempted to ask for a warrant and one was not granted, but at this time, they are merely holding you for questioning. Where is your phone now?"
"They took it away! Could they be looking at it to try to get information?"
Alicia grimaced. "They could be, but any information they get from it would be useless to them without a warrant first. I'm assuming you have it locked with a PIN?" I nodded. "OK, good." She messed with her phone for another minute, then reached out and patted my hand. "Just go with me on this one, OK? And we'll have you out of here soon."
I smiled, "Thank you, so much."
Alicia walked up to the door and spoke to someone outside. She was followed back into the room by Agent Carnes. When he went to sit down, she stopped him. "I wouldn't bother sitting if I were you. I just have a few things to say and then Ms. Chacon and I will be on our way." He opened his mouth to speak but she kept going. "You are holding my client without charges. As you were unable to obtain any sort of warrant against her, you have also illegally siezed her personal possessions, including her phone. You are to return those immediately."
Carnes reluctantly nodded at the wall behind me, and I turned around, realizing there was another camera up there. He must have never shut it off. Bastard!
"Additionally, my office is currently writing up a petition for copies of all video and audio recordings from your interview with Jayna today."
An agent walked in with numerous plastic evidence bags–one each for my phone, stethoscope, ID badge, notebook, and even my pen. I snorted. "You guys are wasting so much plastic here. Don't you care about the environment at all?"
I saw Alicia smirking as she grabbed the bag with my phone in it and handed it to me. It felt hot to the touch. "Please check that your phone is in working order and has not been tampered with."
I gingerly set the phone on the table and pressed the home button trying to get the screen to light up. When that didn't work, I held down the power button. "It's dead," I commented unnecessarily. "It was working fine before I got here." We both turned toward Carnes, who had a blank expression on his face.
"I will be adding this to the complaint." Alicia said. She looked pissed. She turned to me. "Jayna, are you ready to go?"
I pointed a fake smile at Carnes and said in a cheery voice, "Yes! Absolutely." Carnes didn't say a word as Alicia helped me gather my things and we walked out.
I followed her to her car; she let me in and I sat down, perfunctorily buckling my seat belt. As we were driving away, I started having trouble breathing. A low whine came from me involuntarily, my heart felt like it was beating erratically.
Alcia pulled the car over once we were out of sight of the office. She put a hand on my shoulder. "You were very brave in there. This is just the adrenaline wearing off; you'll be OK. Let it out, Jayna. You can scream, cry...whatever you need to do."
I had thought I knew the lengths that corrupt law enforcement would go to, but I guess I was wrong. The encounter left me angry, frustrated, and scared. "What if they find Jake because of me?" I cried. "I could never live with myself."
She put the car in gear and pulled back onto the road. "Let's go to my office and talk."
Alicia had a nice office in the Pearl District, one of those quaint older brick buildings. We sat in a large conference room and other people joined us. She introduced me to her team, said she specialized in cyber crimes and reviewed a contract with me, which I signed. Next, she asked me to give my phone to one of her tech specialists to see if he could fix it.
"Jayna, I'm sure this must be scary. But I want to assure you that whatever you tell me is confidential. And depending on what you say, I may also be willing to represent your friend Jake."
I hesitated. For weeks, I had been cautious about what I said to anyone. I had to keep things from my friends in the group. I had convinced a police officer to help me rescue Hannah and Richy while telling him almost nothing. Jake had told me some of his secrets, but they were things I shared with nobody else.
It wasn't that I didn't trust Alicia and her firm. I trusted Lia and if she had sent them to help me, then they should be OK. I also had of course heard about attorney-client privilege. But I was still terrified of saying the wrong thing.
Meanwhile, I was alone here. I didn't know where Jake was, if he was even alive. I could really use his advice right now. But without it, I would have to turn to someone else for help to ensure I didn't make things worse for him and myself, not to mention Lia and the clinic.
So I launched into my story. Hannah disappearing, Thomas texting me. Jake and the others coming into my life. Lilly's video and its side effects. Jake admitting to me that he was being pursued by the government, and then having to disappear.
I even told them about Jake being Lilly and Hannah's half-brother, the feelings we had developed for each other, and how he risked himself to protect me. How someone had tried to hack into my phone to get to him. How he had then risked his life going into the mines to save our friends.
I talked about what happened to Richy, and Jake's disappearance, doing my best to keep my voice steady.
When I finished speaking, everyone sat in silence for a moment. I started to worry. Had I made a mistake, telling them everything?
I looked questioningly at Alicia. She had a fire in her eyes, and she smiled warmly at me. "You're a very courageous young woman, Jayna. Most people wouldn't have gone to the lengths you did to help complete strangers. I commend your selflessness."
I was caught off-guard by her response, and even more surprised when the others at the table were smiling and nodding at me. I flushed, not used to this much positive attention. "Um, thanks."
Someone started typing away furiously at their laptop, and the tech guy, who had introduced himself as John, walked back into the room. He set the phone down on the table. "They definitely tried to break in to this phone," he commented blandly. "They did a horrible job of it, too. I was able to finally get it to reboot, but all the data on it is wiped."
I grabbed up the phone quickly, lighting up the screen and starting at the setup page. He was right. It was as blank as the day I'd bought it new.
"Did the FBI wipe her data?" Alicia asked.
"I don't think so," John responded. "Jayna, did Jake link into your phone?"
I hesitated, looking at Alicia. She nodded in encouragement. "Yes, he could see everything."
"From what I know of Jake Fischer, I'm betting he had a failsafe installed on her phone so that if anyone got their hands on it, it would self-destruct," he told Alicia.
"Nymos," I whispered.
John tilted his head at me. "Come again?"
"He installed a program called Nym-OS. When his pursuers tried to hack me, Nym-OS held them off and notified Jake. He came online and shut down the attack, but he said they might have been able to see some of our conversations."
John nodded. "That makes sense. He couldn't make it so that nobody could access your phone remotely, because then he couldn't access it either. But this Nym-OS program was probably set to execute a self-destruct function if someone tried to hack your device in person."
"Can you get any evidence from this? Of what the FBI did, I mean?" I asked, indicating my phone.
John nodded. "At the very least, I can document the tampering. But now that it's unlocked, I might be able to find more."
I slid the phone back across the table to him. "Then keep it. I'll get a new one, and a new phone number as well while I'm at it."
Alicia nodded. "Good idea. You might also want to consider paying cash for a phone and getting one of those pay-as-you-go cards."
"Yes, that's what I'll do." I paused. "Also, I backed up everything related to the case on a micro-SD card before I deleted it off of my phone last night."
John's eyes lit up. "Awesome! Did Jake have you do that?"
I cringed. "No. He probably wouldn't have liked me having copies of things."
This guy now looked like a puppy asking for a dog bone. "Could I take a look at the card?"
"I don't know. Couldn't the FBI ask for copies of the data?"
Alicia frowned. "In theory, yes."
I shook my head. "Then, I'm sorry, no. I can't give you the card and risk any of this coming back on Jake. However, I recorded my screen when someone that I believe to be the FBI was attempting to hack my phone and intimidate me. I can give you that video."
John set me up, and I dragged a copy of the video to his laptop. He had a glint in his eyes like he was about to get into something good. "Thanks." He grinned and took the laptop out of the room.
"Alright then. So, on to the next part of this. Until we know otherwise, I am going to assume that Jake is still alive. Do you think he would want me to represent him?" Alicia asked.
I thought about it. "I'm not really sure. I mean, he's been hiding for so long. I can't help but wonder that if he thought an attorney could help him, he would have gotten one already. Plus, wouldn't being in contact with you mean him having to be out in the open?"
Alicia thought for a moment. "I don't have answers to any of those questions. Do you have a way to get in touch with him?"
I threw my hands up in the air. "I never had his number, he added himself to my phone, and I don't feel like it's safe to reload anything on there, if that's even possible. Besides, he wasn't answering my messages anyway since the mine."
"How about your friends–and his sisters, in Duskwood? Would they have a way to reach him?"
A lightbulb went off in my head. "I know what to do, but I don't know if it will work. I'll be in touch."