“What about Amber?” Chill crosses his arms and leans back in his chair, one dubious eyebrow cocked as if to say “Fat chance of that.”
“I don’t know,” I admit, scrubbing a hand over my face. “Amber’s mother’s in Arizona, in some kind of nursing home. Amber wants to see her, but she hasn’t let herself be Culled for a relocation out west. I can’t figure out why.”
“I’ll give you two reasons,” he says, counting them off on his fingers. “Julio. Verano.”
I drag my face from my hands. “You can’t seriously think she has feelings for Julio.”
Chill snorts to himself. “Every girl here’s gotfeelingsfor Julio. Just ask Fleur.”
“They’re not like that!”
“Whoa, Frosty!” He rolls his chair farther away from me as my body temperature free-falls. I turn away so he won’t see the storm swirling in my eyes. The northern lights move like a green smaze through the faux window, and I rest my head against the glass, willing myself to calm. Frost blooms where my skin touches it. Chill sighs. “All I’m saying is that unless Julio’s into Amber as much as Amber’s into Julio, your plan isn’t going to work. For all we know, that kiss back in 1990 didn’t mean a damn thing. I mean, look at you and Noelle—”
I jerk my head from the window. “Back up. What kiss?”
Chill fishes Julio’s file from the floor and flips through the pages. I snatch the fatality report from his hands, sinking onto the sofa as I read it. September 12, 1990. Worcester County Jail. Deceased: Julio Verano. Prevailing Season: Amber Chase. Cause of death: osculation.
“What’s that mean? Osculation? Is it like suffocation? Asphyxiation?” Smuggling a weapon into a detention center is nearly impossible. She must have used her hands.
Chill laces his fingers behind his head. He raises a smug eyebrow, as if he’s surprised I don’t know. “It means prolonged contact of the lips.”
They kissed.
I lurch off the sofa and grab the back of Chill’s chair, spinning him around and rolling him to his computer. “Pull up the surveillance video.”
Chill wrinkles his nose. “I don’t keep that kind of stuff. What do you think I am? Some kind of voyeur?”
“They kissed in a jail. Jails have cameras.”
“Marie and Woody would have confiscated the footage.” He’s right. Their Handlers would have buried it.
“Check the archives on the Control Room servers.”
“Jack—”
“Just do it!”
With an aggrieved huff, Chill draws his keyboard into his lap. I pace the room, waiting as he hacks obscure back channels into the Observatory’s main frame. “There. Are you happy?” He pushes away from his desk, rolling out of my way as I lean toward the screen.
The footage is old, black-and-white and snowy with static, but there’s no mistaking who it is or what I’m seeing. Julio’s locked in an empty cell. Amber tosses him a transmitter through the opening and Julio slips it around his ear. He stumbles to the bars, reaching through them to pull her face close. This wasn’t a quick self-inflicted wound. The lead-up to their kiss is drawn out and slow, his hands tangled in her hair, hers digging into his shirt, struggling to hold on to each other as their lips meet and Julio disappears.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Chill says.
“No, it meanseverything. He was trapped without a transmitter in a concrete cell, and she threw him a life rope. It was mid-September. His season was up.” Chill doesn’t argue. He knows exactly what that means. Julio had staggered to those bars like a dead man walking. If Amber hadn’t tossed him that transmitter, he would have beenin the windbefore his jailers even realized he was gone. That bright yellow sun embroidered over her heart on her gi has nothing to do with me or Arizona. It’s not a talisman against the cold or a token of where she wants to be. It’s her reason for holding back. “She’s in love with him,” I say, certain that I’m right. “She saved his life. Same as Fleur did for me.”
“Jack, that was decades ago. As far as I can tell, they’ve hardly spoken since. They spent months in disciplinary review for that stunt.”Chill hands me an infirmary report detailing the injuries Julio sustained in Reconditioning—contusions, burns, lacerations, fractured ribs... I feel sick when I imagine Fleur going through the same thing. “Julio put in for a transfer the very next year, but Gaia denied it.”
“A transfer? To where?”
He tucks Julio’s file back into his drawer and fishes out an open bag of smuggled Doritos. It crinkles as he grabs a chip and pops it into his mouth. “The West Coast,” he says between crunches. “Presumably to get as far away from Amber as possible.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose against the sharp smell of powdered cheese. The cartilage is still sore and I feel a headache coming on. I thought for sure I had it all figured out. And we’re almost out of time. Amber leaves for her hunt next week. And if Fleur’s Reconditioning was as bad as Doug says it was, I’ll be lucky if she’ll even listen to me. “I must be crazy to think I can save Fleur and Poppy. I can’t even figure out how to get us out of the damn Observa...”
Chill pops another chip in his mouth and licks the powder off his fingers.
Don’t let anybody catch you taking out the trash...
“Vegetable day,” I say under my breath.
